Harris leaned in, reading the labels without touching them. “They’re prescribed,” he said quietly. “Antidepressants. Anti-anxiety meds. Looks like she’s been on them awhile.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t mean anything by itself,” he agreed immediately, his expression unreadable. “A lot of people take these.”
He moved down the hall toward the bedroom. The door was open.
The bed was made—but only just. The bedding was disheveled, as if the bed had been slept in and then hastily straightened. The nightstand held a glass of water and another bottle of pills, this one nearly empty. Several piles of laundry were heaped on the floor, untouched. There was an empty bottle of flavored vodka lying on its side next to the bed.
“None of this is recent. She’s been struggling for a while.”
“She’s always in a good mood. Every time I see her.”
“She was good athidingit,” Harris said softly, sounding sad. “Some people are.”
“You say that like you’re speaking from experience.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, his gaze locked on the pill bottle beside the bed. “After Paul died.”
The name settled between us, taking up more space than it ought to have. I hadn’t heard him say it before. Who was Paul?
“I was functioning,” Harris went on. “Mostly. I eventually went back to work. I took showers. I ate. I talked to people, like I was supposed to. From the outside, I was fine.” His jaw tightened. “But inside, I didn’t really care if I woke up the next day. It’s the darkest place I’ve ever been.”
I swallowed, staring at him. It was hard to believe he’d ever felt that way before. And I didn’t want to think about how lost and alone he must’ve felt.
“She’s better at managing it than I was,” he added. Then he gestured to the room at large. “But this? This is the same thing. Even keeping up with simple things takes way more effort than it should. You kind of get buried under everything until it becomes too much.”
The house felt colder suddenly. My wolf whined in my chest, wanting to comfort Harris. But I couldn’t go back to that earlier version of him. I couldn’t make any of it right.
Harris straightened and turned to face me. “And the hiker—the first victim. Did anyone look into his mental state? Do we know?”
I frowned, still feeling emotionally off-kilter at his revelation. “I don’t think so. We focused on the physical injuries.”
“Mm.” Harris considered this. “People don’t usually ask those questions unless they think to.”
“How would we even know?” I asked.
“Toxicology, I guess. If there are antidepressants in his bloodstream, that’d let us know there’s a pattern.”
“Dr. Langley said she was going to run some tests.”
“Then we should talk to her.”
“Now?”
Harris nodded.
“I’ll call her,” I said, already pulling out my phone. I dialed Dr. Langley and put it on speaker.
“It’s about time,” she said when she picked up, sounding wide awake. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me.”
“Sorry, Hattie—” I corrected myself. “Err, Dr. Langley. We need to know about the hiker. About Scott Vogler.”
I heard the rustling of paperwork through the phone. “That poor bastard. I managed to get some information out of the deputy. The rest I put together on the web.” She paused. “He was thirty-nine. From South Seattle and recently divorced. It seems as though he planned to go into the mountains and just… disappear.”
Harris and I traded an uneasy look.
“How do you know that?” I demanded.
