Leaving Time: A Novel by Jodi Picoult Page A

She whacks her cane on the cushions of the couch and even looks in the microwave. “Where is it?”
    “Where’s what?” I ask, playing dumb.
    “Satan’s tears. Barley vinegar. Joy juice. I know you’re hiding it somewhere.”
    I offer her my most innocent smile. “Would I do something like that?”
    “Victor,” she says, “do not lie to me.”
    I cross my heart. “Swear to God, there is no booze in this room.” I get to my feet and stagger to the tiny bathroom attached to my office space. It is big enough for a toilet, a sink, and a vacuum cleaner. I close the door behind me, take a piss, and then open the lid of the toilet tank. Fishing out the bottle I started last night, I take a long, healthy swig of whiskey, and just like that, the dull throb of my head starts to fade.
    I put the bottle back in its hiding place, flush, and open the door. Abby is still hovering. I haven’t lied to her, just massaged the truth. It’s what I was taught to do a lifetime ago, when I was training to be a detective. “Now, where were we?” I ask, and just then, the telephone rings.
    “Drinking,” she accuses.
    “Abby, I’m shocked,” I say smoothly. “I didn’t think you indulged.” I steer her toward the door, the phone still ringing. “How about we finish this later? Over a nightcap, maybe?” I push her outside as she protests, then grab for the phone and fumble it. “What?” I snap into the receiver.
    “Is this Mr. Stanhope?”
    In spite of the quick swig of whiskey, my temples feel like they’re in a vise again. “Yeah.”
    “
Virgil
Stanhope?”
    When a year passed, and then two, and then five, I started to realize what Donny had told me was true: Once a cop has a ghost, that ghost is there to stay. I couldn’t get rid of Alice Metcalf. So instead, I got rid of Virgil Stanhope. I thought, stupidly, that if I started over, I could start fresh—free from guilt and questions. My dad had been a veteran, a small-town mayor, an all-around upstanding man. I borrowed his name, thinking some of his traits might rub off on me. Ifigured maybe I could become the kind of guy people trusted, instead of the one who’d fucked up royally.
    Until this moment, no one had questioned me.
    “Not anymore,” I mutter, and I slam down the receiver. I stand in the middle of my office, pressing my hands to my aching head, but I can still hear her. I can hear her even when I go back into the bathroom and pull the bottle of whiskey out of the toilet tank again, even when I drink it down to its last drop.
    I never actually heard Alice Metcalf speak. She was unconscious when I found her, unconscious when I went to the hospital to see her, and then she was gone. But in my imagination, when she’s sitting across from me passing judgment, she sounds exactly like the voice that was just on the other end of the phone.
    We had been sent to the sanctuary for a reported death that wasn’t suspicious at the time of the initial call to the police. And in fact, there was no reason on that morning ten years ago to assume that Alice Metcalf or her child was missing. They could have been out grocery shopping, blissfully unaware of the goings-on at the sanctuary. They could have been in the local park. Alice’s cell phone had been called, but by Thomas’s own admission she never remembered to carry it anywhere. And the nature of her work, studying the cognition of elephants, meant that she often disappeared into the far reaches of the property for hours at a time to do observation, often—to her husband’s chagrin—taking her three-year-old with her.
    I was hoping she’d turn up with a cup of coffee, back from an early morning Dunkin’ Donuts jaunt, the baby gumming a bagel. The last place I wanted them to be was in the sanctuary, with that seventh elephant still running loose.
    I didn’t want to let myself think of what might have already happened to them.
    Four hours into the investigation, MCU had collected ten boxes of evidence: husks