Page 93 of I’ll Be Watching You

“Do you mind telling us how?” Jack said. “We know the public details, but . . .”

Rachel nodded. “She drove herself off a cliff on Highway 60, above Wickenburg. No drugs or alcohol in her system, and witnesses say she sped up and went over. They ruled it a suicide because of her history of depression and the fact that she was seeing a psychiatrist. Then Dr. Klein came to see me after her funeral.”

Jack and I glanced at each other. “He talked to you?” Jack said.

“Yes. He told me that Christina had been a part of a clinical trial for PTSD and he wanted to know if I had seen a change in her over the three months before she had died. I told him the truth. That she seemed to be getting better, that she was making plans for a new career and future, then suddenly her personality changed. She went from being even-tempered but still grieving to having extreme ups and downs. And her downs were awful.”

“Can you share an example?” I asked.

“Well, while I didn’t know about the trial at the time, in hindsight I knew when she started taking the drug. She came over here in tears, not about her fiancé, but about what happened in high school. It was like it had just happened, all of her insecurities came back. She wasn’t the confident soldier I remembered from her first leave. I thought it was a one-off. Then about three weeks before she died, she came over for dinner. I thought she seemed off, and in the middle of dinner she started crying. She ran out, and I was worried. I couldn’t reach her for two days. She finally returned my calls and didn’t know why I was worried, said she hadn’t gotten hysterical, that I overreacted and blew it out of proportion. Two days before she died she called me in the middle of the night and said she wanted to die. I told her I was coming over and we’d get her help. She wasn’t there. I don’t know where she was, but the police say she’d been living in her car. She was up and down. It was different than when she was grieving. This was more a roller coaster.”

“What did Dr. Klein say when you told him this?” I asked.

“He listened, seemed very upset. Told me that Christina wasn’t suicidal when he saw her, and he would look into it. He also said that after she started in the trial, she only had one appointment and had canceled the others. I never heard from him again. I didn’t follow up. I figured he did what he could do and nothing would change the fact that Christina was dead.”

She glanced over at a grouping of pictures on top of the piano. It looked like a young Rachel and a smaller girl, presumably Christina. They had their arms around each other with silly expressions on their faces.

“Are you investigating the same study?” Rachel asked after a moment.

“Yes,” Jack said. “Dr. Klein believed that the drug trial excluded adverse side effects in the final report. We’re trying to prove that.”

“I didn’t know until after the fact that Christina was part of any drug trial. I can’t state with certainty that she was different only on the days she took the drug, or even if she took it every day. But generally, I can give a statement about changes in her behavior. I can look at my old calendars to be more specific, because the dinner that she had a breakdown on was my youngest son’s birthday.”

“It may help,” Jack said. “Write down what you remember. If this case goes to court, we may ask for a statement.”

“Was anyone else hurt?” Rachel asked with concern.

“We haven’t uncovered any other deaths associated with the trial, but there is at least one other person who may have had a serious adverse reaction. Our colleagues are talking to him now.”

I asked, “Did Christina have any close friends, someone she may have confided in?”

“I was her closest friend,” Rachel said. “But there was someone else she met after she left the military. Not a romantic relationship, but they bonded in grief counseling. Mike . . . darn, I don’t remember his last name. I’ve talked to him once or twice, and he came to her funeral. Wait, I have his card.”

She jumped up and left the room. A moment later she returned with a brochure. “This is him, he runs a pool cleaning service. Works for himself. Mike Zachary. He came to her funeral, but I haven’t talked to him since.”

Mike Zachary was working but agreed to meet us at a coffee shop in Avondale at ten thirty. We waited at a table by the window and only minutes later he pulled up in an old Ford pickup with pool equipment rattling in the back. A simple stencil on the door bore his name and phone number.

He was a big guy: muscular, tall, with broad shoulders that made him look like he belonged on a football field. One arm was covered in a vivid sleeve tattoo, a striking blend of Christian and sports imagery, anchored by a whale at the center that disappeared under his white polo shirt. I had a small, hidden tattoo myself—only visible in a bikini—and no plans for another, but I admired the artistry. His ink wasn’t random; it meant something.

He spotted us, nodded an acknowledgment, and headed to the counter with a large YETI tumbler. They filled it with iced coffee.

A man after my own heart, I thought, sipping my own.

Mike joined us a moment later. “Jack and Margo?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “Thanks for meeting us.”

“When you said it was about Christina, it’s the least I could do. Good woman. Crappy hand she was dealt.”

I noticed a simple platinum wedding band on his left hand.

“Rachel said you were friends,” I said. “How did you two meet?”

“Group therapy,” he said without hesitation. “Grief counseling, through a vet program.”

“Honor House?” I asked, wondering if there was a connection between the drug trial and the private charity.

He shook his head. “No, a church group out here. My pastor had been a chaplain in the Army and started a support group for veterans when he retired. I’d been going for a while. My twin and I enlisted together almost twenty years ago. He didn’t come back.”