Three Days Before the Casket Was Delivered, My Son Asked Me to Sign a Document

Then I went to the nurses’ station and asked the deputy at the desk to send for the detective.

She came along the corridor in a navy windbreaker with her badge clipped at her belt.

I held the phone out to her.

“That’s my son,” I said.

“I want you to take it.”

She accepted it with both hands and asked me to state the time aloud for her recorder.

I did.

She slid the phone into a paper sleeve and wrote my name on the tab.