Blatchford’s face against the hospital bed was wan, his features relaxed by medication. Eyes unfocused, he looked toward the laptop camera and smiled.
“I should charge you per stitch,” he said.
“Do you remember being attacked?”
“Not a thing. Something about a smell, maybe. Like wet coals after a beach fire.”
“That’s very poetic, Tim.”
“I just remember that smell, then trying to walk and not being able to.” He yawned. “Dale Petrie is not our guy. That I’m sure of.”
“It seems to be Lee Henry Crowhurst,” I said. “You met him. What put you off him?”
“Wasn’t playing with a full set of chromosomes. Took him a long time to answer anything.”
“Could it be an act? Or affectation?”
His head slumped side to side. “I know acting.”
“Says the pro wrestler.”
Blatchford hit the button on the beige remote that hung from off his guardrail. “Almost time for my medicine. I gotta get dinged up more often, this morphine shit’s great.”
“Lives on a mud farm outside Redmond. Lots of secondhand shit.”
“Knives?”
“He had a kitchen. Nothing stuck out. Get it?” A corner of his mouth raised, forming a lopsided smile.
The nurse came, pushed the laptop away and adjusted his dosage. When we resumed, Blatchford was drowsy, his answers even less specific. I got ready to sign off, but something told me to ask once more about the smell.
“Can you describe it? Do you mean he smelled?”
Blatchford’s mouth barely moved. Spit bubbled on his lips.
“Not sure ’zactly,” he said. “Smoky but not like cigarettes. Not dope, either. I recognized it, but I don’t know from where. Might’ve dreamed it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He needs to sleep now,” the nurse said. She’d been sitting off-camera and now began taking down the apparatus.
“Sounds stupid,” Blatchford said, “but I had this dream once about my dad coming back. He made it out of Vietnam and had me when he was older. Shot himself when I was in my teens. In my dream he’d sit me down and say, I’ve got something really special for you. You’re a man now. This is yours. Holds out the cartridge, the one from his bullet. He used to reload his own cartridges, had the machine in our basement, sacks of powder and all that shit. Said this’ll be a special load. ’Zactly the same. I watch him re-make the bullet he did himself with. Measure out the powder, tap in a primer cap. I had that dream a few times and never made it to the end. But that smell, on the ferry, that was the smell of my dad pouring in the powder. I don’t want to smell that again. When I kill myself—I mean, y’know, if—it won’t be with a fucking gun.”