journal recorded in tight, coiled, perfect script. “And the hooch.” The
next night, another damning entry: “Mike loses it. His fucking rages
scare the shit out of me.”
A detective from Utqiagvik didn’t let it go. Mike’s fingerprints
clutched the gun, along with Leonard’s—over Leonard’s. The shot had
demolished Leonard’s head from the side. Then add two margin notes,
from maybe a dozen, in Mike’s copy of Moby Dick he said he’d finished
reading just the night before. Mike printed, “How to stop it?” Beside
an underlined sentence from Ahab’s final words: “Towards thee I roll,
thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with
thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath
at thee.”
On the last page, beneath “finis,” following Ishmael’s rescue in his
floating coffin, Mike had printed in block letters, “Only one survives?”
Mike, voice even, called from jail in Utqiagvik. August 18. Charged,
he said—“Are you sitting down?”—with murder. Voices laughing in the
background, he whispered, “My postdoc accidentally shot himself, or for
all I know he did it on purpose. They’re blaming me.”
“They’ll sort this out,” I said. “You’ll see.”
Then that next morning, for only the second time in my life, I was
unable to pee. No dice.
I had to do what I had been taught by a Mayo urologist if this should
occur. I scrubbed my hands. I cleaned the tip of my penis with an antiseptic wipe. I unpeeled the packaging of a long thin catheter. I coated
it with lubricant—what my doctor’s nurse told me “could be your best
friend.” Then I inserted it, slowly, inched it in, hit an obstacle, backed
out an inch how she showed me, pushed again, until urine, warming
the tube, rushed out, tinged with blood. The relief made this demeaning
damn procedure worth it. For those minutes I had not thought about
Mike.
Mike said, “It feels like they’ll just make this up however they want.”
“Evidence,” I said. “Trust the evidence.”
“I know about evidence. I’m a scientist, Dad. You’re a scientist. I know
how evidence can be refuted. Look at fucking climate change.”
“This isn’t political. Not like that.”
“Just wait.”
“Have faith.” My heart clenched against my ribs, and my eyes
brimmed, but I did not cry. Truth was we’d only spoken to Mike a few
