Then came the toxicology.
They had found methylene chloride in my blood.
Methylene chloride is an industrial solvent. A paint stripper. A degreaser. The kind of chemical found in warehouses and manufacturing facilities, the kind of chemical an inventory manager at an auto parts distributor would have access to every single working day.
The levels were not consistent with a single accidental exposure. They were consistent with repeated small-dose ingestion over an extended period. Months.
Someone had been feeding it to me.
I did not scream. I did not cry. I went completely still in the way that happens when information arrives that is so far outside anything your brain has prepared a category for that the whole system simply stops processing. The man who handed me tea and said good night. The man who kissed my forehead before work sometimes. That man had been dissolving my nervous system by spoonfuls, one evening at a time, for five months.
Detective Fam let the silence sit for an appropriate length of time and then began asking questions in a methodical, undramatic way that I found, under the circumstances, deeply reassuring. When did the tea taste change? Who made it? How often? What did Leo do for work?
When I said auto parts distributor, she wrote something and underlined it twice.
She asked about our finances, about Freya’s involvement in daily life, about whether Leo had taken out any insurance policies recently. I said I did not know. Her expression told me she already suspected the answer.
The search warrant for our house came through the same day. In Leo’s garage workshop, behind a shelf of paint cans and old bowling trophies, officers found a half-empty container of industrial-grade methylene chloride. Leo’s employer confirmed he had been signing out this compound for six months, consistently more than his inventory role required. His supervisor had never questioned it because Leo had worked there for eight years and was considered reliable. That is the thing about a cultivated reputation for reliability. It is the perfect hiding place.
The financial forensics followed.[]
