The Arx Read Online Free PDF Page A

grief. I thought they were supposed to put a suicide watch on people like that.”
    “They should have… sounds like they really screwed up.”
    “I tried to call you, but you weren’t answering. I guess you were off somewhere crying in your beer. I’m disappointed in you, Frank,” she said, breaking down. “Maybe there’s nothing you could have done, but at least you could have tried. I wouldn’t wish what happened to you on my worst enemy, but…”
    Frank said nothing.
    “I’m sorry,” Janet finally said. “I know it’s not your fault. I’m just upset, that’s all. It’s not your fault, Frank. I shouldn’t have accused you.” She was sobbing. “I’m sorry – I have to hang up now.”
    The line went dead.
    Frank set the cell phone down on the kitchen table and sat trembling, staring at the wall.
     
    For several days Frank spiraled downward, circling like a leaf caught in a storm drain, toward a black abyss the depths of which he hadn’t experienced even in the darkest nights of the past year.
    He was burning through what was left of his stores of alcohol, but it no longer provided the anesthetic power he’d valued so much before. Even his nemesis, his recurring nightmare, was now spiked with images of Gloria: taking the final desperate step to break the cycle of anguish and despair, the light fading from her eyes the way it did after she looked away from Ralphie’s picture.
    He was uniquely qualified to understand Gloria’s pain, but, given the chance to help her, he’d turned his back and retreated into his usual pattern of depression and self-loathing.
    His rational mind knew he couldn’t have saved her. The point was that he hadn’t even tried. He was impotent, useless. His emotional mind stood in judgment and found him guilty, a pathetic loser pursuing oblivion in a bottle while an innocent woman was driven to suicide.
    For a while he considered following her, letting go and erasing his own pain forever. But that wasn’t an outlet he was built to pursue. He was baptized and raised Catholic, but that wasn’t it. The fact was that some people were capable of making that leap and some were not. Maybe that was his curse, condemned to sink ever lower into despair while being denied the option of ending it.
     
    Then a dream he hadn’t had for years crowded into his psyche. Seventeen years old, called to the principal’s office at school and told to go home. His mother sobbing on the living room couch. A stoic cop, the bearer of bad news, staring at the floor.
    Frank’s father, a beat cop, had been blown away when he stopped to check a stolen car.
    He remembered the question that had haunted him from that day forward. How could the world tolerate such a senseless crime…?
    Frank opened his eyes. Once again he was at the kitchen table, his forehead resting on the Formica tabletop. He sat up and shook himself awake, trembling, with his fists clenched. Gloria was dead; there was nothing more he could do to help her. But he could use his knowledge and experience to find out the truth about the tragedy.
    If he no longer had the option of saving her life, at least maybe he could redeem her memory.
     
    Just before noon several days later, having staked out the building long enough to learn her routine, Frank stood waiting for Rebecca Hanon to emerge from the main doors and head out for lunch. She appeared on schedule, her long legs moving sensually under a pale yellow dress. Unexpectedly he felt his heart race. She was alone. She glanced around, but didn’t notice him. She headed south toward the restaurant district.
    “Rebecca,” he called. She turned, startled.
    “Oh,” she said, recognizing him. “Frank, – hi.”
    It was hard to look her in the eye, remembering how he’d failed her sister. He stared down at the pavement under her feet.
    “Can I do something for you?” she asked.
    “I’m sorry about Gloria,” he said. “I feel like shit about it. I should have done more to