Leo was denied bail. The forged insurance policy, the secret apartment, the signed-out solvents, taken together they established premeditation and flight risk in terms that no argument could soften. He sat in the Kenton County detention center wearing orange instead of the chili cookoff shirt. Freya could not post her five-hundred-thousand-dollar bail. She sat in a holding facility twelve minutes from her son, and they could not contact each other.
The full reinvestigation into Raymond Gutierrez’s 2011 death was authorized. A forensic toxicologist was reviewing the original medical records. The district attorney’s office had filed for potential exhumation.
With the poisoning stopped, my body began the slow work of recovery.
The neurologist explained it honestly. Peripheral nerves regenerate at approximately an inch per month. Some of the damage from five months of methylene chloride exposure might be permanent. I might always have some numbness in my feet. I told her I could live with that. Living was, after all, more than Leo had planned for me.
