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“So our job,” Fletch continues, “is to make sure the case was run appropriately. That’s all this is.”
“So what do you want with me? What could you possibly find all these years later? Moby!” He speaks to us normally, followed by a fast command for the dog.
“He’s okay.” I scratch Moby’s ear and turn the dog into a melted rug draped on my knee. “Can you talk to us about the days and weeks leading up to Holly’s death, Henry? How was she feeling? How was she acting? Was anything strange going on?”
“We were getting married.” Scowling, he watches my hand, but I get the distinct feeling he’s not watching me at all. Instead, he’s traveling back in time and thinking of the woman he once proclaimed to love. “It was a busy time for us, Detectives. We were young and a little wild. We were planning our wedding, and Holly was giddy like a schoolgirl some days, and others, just…”
“Just what?” I ask. “What was shejust?”
“Not so giddy,” he fills in. “Some of the time, she was who I knew, ya know? Spontaneous and silly and fun. She never minded hard work, so when we bought our house, instead of complaining about the fixes we had to do, she was sewing cute overalls to wear, because she wanted to look the part. She was experimenting with her hair,” he murmurs. “Dark, then light. Streaks, then highlights.”
He stops for a moment, as though to revisit old memories. “She spent the first twenty years of her life growing her hair long. Then when the celebrities started getting creative with their hair, Holly decided she could too. She tried dark colors, bright colors. She would cut an inch or two off one day, then maybe another few inches a couple of months later. Sometimes it was permed, so the stench of chemicals was a constant in our home. Other times, it was straight as could be. Back then, Holly was playing around with it, and she was having the time of her life doing so.”
Glancing up, he meets my eyes. “She enjoyed life, Detective. She was ahead of her time, carefree and not so beholden to expectations and social norms as her peers. She would get looks in the street sometimes because she liked to stand out, but that’s what I loved about her.”
Looking past me to the door, Henry checks no one is near—possibly his current wife. “I loved her very much. I loved her passion, and I was addicted to her fire. I enjoyed how adventurous she was, and I was entertained by the trouble she would sometimes land herself in.”
“What kind of trouble?” I don’t write notes today. My arm hurts too much, and my brain would rather listen. Absorb. “What sorts of things did she do?”
“Like the hair thing,” he says. “Made it hard for her to keep a job, since our elders back then weren’t keen on change. And Holly liked to protest…loudly. Colorfully. She staunchly believed in women’s rights, so if something was happening politically that pissed her off—” He stops then, blushing when his brain processes the fact he cussed. “She, uh, she would draw up a sign, and place herself in City Park—which,” he adds, “was the place people gathered back then. It’s not like how it is now. In the 80s, though the mayor’s office was downtown, the park was where things happened. The fact she would skip work to take up these events was another reason she struggled to keep a job.”
“So she was a wild spirit,” Fletch concludes. “She wouldn’t be held down.”
“But she didn’t only protest for herself and other women,” Henry explains. “She protested foranyonewho was being stepped on. School teachers not being paid enough. Nurses whose workload was too heavy. Black folks who were still, despite the fact we weresupposedto be past racism, being discriminated against. It didn’t matter if you were a man or a woman, black, white, or something in between. Elderly or a minor. A mother or barren.”
He sits back and shakes his head. “If someone was taking more than their fair share, and someone else missed out, Holly was there to fight back.” He chuckles now, soft and only for him. “She was a force. And if you were on the wrong side, you were bound to be mown over.”
“So how does that play into her mental health history?” Fletch asks. “How does this vibrant, loud, activist woman suddenly become diagnosed with bipolar disorder? Depression?”
“Well…” He shrugs and thinks for a moment. “I’m not sure. I mean, it makes sense, right? When she was up, she was up, and when she was down, she took all the color with her. Especially in that last year she was with me. When she had an opinion about something, she made it known. And when she couldn’t summon an opinion at all, particularly about something important, everyone felt the chill of her absence.”
“So you agree she might’ve been bipolar?” I ask. “Do you agree with her mental health diagnosis?”
“I don’t…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t then, and I’m certainly not now, qualified to make those statements. But I do know that the medication she took was…” He grimaces. “It was like we didn’t have those high highs as much anymore, but we still had the lows. It never felt like a fair trade to me.”
“How so?”
“I didn’t want her to hurt, Detective. It broke my heart when she was down. But the times she was up?” He looks across and meets my eyes. Surprisingly, I find tears in his. “Those were some of the happiest, most vibrant memories of her existence. The medication she took flattened the curve a little—which I suppose she needed. But it robbed us of the spark I fell in love with.”
* * *
“Call me crazy,” Fletch mumbles as we make our way back to the car. “But I actually believe he loved her.”
“Mm.” My feet take me to the driver’s side door, but my shoulder reminds me I’m not driving anywhere unless I want the pain that comes with it.
With a huff, I move to the other side and slowly climb in. I don’t have to wade through the cotton brain anymore, but that means I get to feel every single stab of pain that my wound sends out.
I wonder if Holly felt her own version of cotton brain when she was medicated?
“He’s either a really good actor, or… yeah,” fixing my seatbelt, I look across to Fletch, “he loved her.”
“Which points us… where?” Starting the car, he leaves it in park and peeks across at me. “She might’ve been depressed when she died, Arch. Maybe she really did kill herself, and the cops who came before us got it right.”
I consider that for a moment. The ups she and Henry loved, and the downs they both would have feared. The constant rollercoaster ride they were both on, and, if her diagnosis was legitimate, Holly’s inability to regulate herself.
“Maybe she did,” I muse. “Maybe she wanted out of this life that was fun when it was fun, but soul-destroying when it wasn’t. But she’d just married the love of her life, right? She should’ve been happy, not suicidal.”
“I don’t know.” Nibbling on his bottom lip while he thinks, Fletch enters a new address in the GPS and takes the car out of park. “I’m not a psych, Arch. I don’t get to decide how someone is gonna feel, marriage or not. But it’s entirely possible she did this to herself.”
