Page 84 of Echoes of a Silent Song
And I’d made the biggest mistake of my entire life.
Chapter Thirty-One
CALLUM’S CONDUCTINGand performing career had taken him to many unusual places.But a police station had never been one of them.
Until today, anyway.
He sat next to Blair in a conference room at the Peterson police department, where they were due to meet with two detectives Keira had called who’d agreed to take a peek at Iris’s file.Apparently Blair’s father had pulled a few strings with his golfing buddy the police chief.
Callum and Blair had arrived a few minutes early, so he sipped on a Styrofoam cup of terrible coffee while she scrolled on her phone, nibbling absently on her lower lip, the way she always did when stressed.
The door opened and in strode two plainclothes officers: an intense-looking dark-haired man carrying a white cardboard box, followed by a willowy blond woman with a bag from a local sandwich shop draped over her arm.
The woman extended her free hand to Callum.“You must be Callum.I’m Detective Kate Stanton, and this is my partner, Detective Dan Valentine.”
Detective Valentine plopped the box on the table.“We haven’t got much time.”He popped the lid off the box.“We’re kinda on our lunch break.”
“That’s okay.”Callum glanced at his watch.“So are we.”
“Teachers and cops, always behind and eating lunch on the run.”Stanton passed a sandwich to her partner, then put the other one on the table a healthy distance from the box and unwrapped it.“I glancedthrough the case a minute ago, and it seems the original investigators didn’t spend a lot of time on it.”
“Probably ’cause they didn’t need to,” Valentine piped up around a bite of sandwich.“Seems pretty open-and-shut.Suicide note, bottle of pills spilled on the desk, a history of anxiety.”
“Keira McLane mentioned Iris suffering from anxiety.”Stanton pulled a sheaf of paperwork from the box.
“That was a catch-all term for a wide variety of mental illnesses back then.It also encompassed depression,” Blair said.
Valentine peered over his partner’s shoulder.“Says here Iris was prescribed diazepam for her ‘anxiety’ after spending a week in bed.Parents just thought she was being dramatic.Guess they weren’t much help.”
Callum’s heart twinged for Iris.At least Rayne had been surrounded by people who’d believed her and supported her.How devastatingly lonely Iris must have been.
“I think this is our suicide note.”Stanton pulled out a plastic bag containing a piece of paper, and they all crowded around.Callum’s heart sank as he recognized the handwriting.Blair read the words aloud.“The waters are come into my soul / The calm, cool face of the river / I am come into deep waters / The river asked me for a kiss / The floods overflow me.”
Wait a minute.Why did those words sound so familiar?
“Original report confirms it’s her handwriting.”Stanton pulled another plastic-covered piece of scrawled-upon notebook paper from the box.“Her parents provided a sample.You gotta admit, the suicide note sounds pretty dark.”
“But I don’t think that’s what this is.”Callum studied the words.Where had he heard those before?Iris was quoting something.“My former fiancée died by suicide, and her note was more rambling and apologizing.This is almost like ...”
“A song text.”Blair pulled out her phone.“The ‘calm, cool face of the river’ part is a poem by Langston Hughes.And the other parts, I think those are from Psalms.”Her thumbs danced across the screen.“Yes.Psalm 69.Iris quoted verses one and two.And while those verses are dark, the psalm itself ends with hope.”
“But the Hughes poem is called ‘Suicide’s Note.’”Valentine held up his own phone, the original title and text of the poem onscreen.
A melody wafted through Callum’s head.Not one of his, though.One he’d heard somewhere else.And the text Iris had written fit perfectly.Itwasfrom a song.But which one?
“Vic said in that text I sent you guys that Iris left a suicide note,” Blair pointed out.
“This had to have been what he was talking about,” Stanton’s voice sounded far away.
“Kind of a dark pun if it was,” Valentine commented.
“Unless this was just a song text and nothing more,” Blair said.
That melody.Callum knew that melody.Had he performed it?Conducted it?Was it—
The truth slammed into Callum with all the subtlety of a two-by-four.
“It’s one of Vic’s earlier songs.”Callum had sung it.College, maybe?He couldn’t remember.Over the years all but the most special of concerts had run together.But he knew the melody now.And he knew its source.
