Somebody has to come up with these commonplace profundities. Might as well be me.
I smiled at an old woman who looked up and saw me looming in the doorway, then double-timed it to catch up with Dobbs, who was speaking to the receptionist at the front desk.
“…moved in about seven months ago,” the woman was saying, “and in all that time I don’t remember her ever having a single visitor.”
Dobbs gave his head a slow, sad shake. “That’s terrible,” he said, sounding like he meant it.
“One of the things we try to do here at The Maples is make sure that none of our residents feel isolated—it’s a terrible thing to be getting on in years and feel alone and lonely. We encourage everyone to interact with their neighbors—you know, sort of keep an eye on each other’s well-being so that no one feels ignored or forgotten…but Miss Driscoll never really allowed herself to become part of The Maples’ community. Oh, she’d be pleasant enough at meals and come to the weekly residents’ meetings, but aside from those times, she rarely left her room.”
Fred put on his stroke-face again, considering this. “And she never had any visitors?”
The woman behind the desk shook her head. “Not unless you count delivery people. And the thing is, she has—had—one of our bigger apartments. People who can afford anything on 7 or above are, well…comfortable, you know? They’ve been careful with their money. And—oh, God, this is going to sound so mean—our older residents who have a little money, they tend to get visitors. You know—family and friends who want to be left a little something in the will. Not to imply that they don’t love their grandma or grandpa or great aunt or whoever, but…oh, my; I’m really putting my foot in it here, aren’t I?”
“Not particularly,” said Dobbs.
The woman shook her head. “But not Miss Driscoll. Never a visitor, just the deliveries. I’ll bet she had two, three packages a week delivered to her. And some of those packages were fairly sizeable. On days when she had deliveries, she never came down for meals, just called the desk and said she wasn’t feeling well and could she have her meals sent to her room. We do that here, send meals to a resident’s room if they’re not feeling good enough to come down.”
“So she’d sometimes miss, what—three meals a week?”
“More, if it was a big delivery day.”
I couldn’t help but wonder why Dobbs was asking all these questions, unless it had something to do with what he’d told me about treating the dead with respect; maybe asking questions gave him some sense of what kind of person they had been while alive, and helped him decide how best to treat their remains. And maybe he was just a good, old-fashioned, first-class nib-shit. The woman behind the desk gave the freight elevator key to Dobbs. “Your gurney doesn’t squeak, does it?” “No, ma’am, it certainly does not.”
She nodded her head. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want the other residents to be disturbed by this—at least, not any more than they already have been.”
Dobbs thanked her for the key, turned to leave, then looked back. “You don’t by chance know who called this in, do you?”
“I know it wasn’t me, I just came on-duty a couple of hours ago, but…wait a second, please, I’ll check the phone log.” She called up something on her computer. “We have to keep records of who makes this kind of call, and when, all that good stuff.” She found was she was looking for, scrolled up, then down, then said, “Huh.”
“Something wrong?” asked Dobbs.
“There’s nothing here. If the call had been made from this desk or the manager’s office, it would be entered in the phone records. But…there’s nothing.”
“So maybe it was one of her neighbors?”
“Let me check.” She called up another file, then another, then one more. “Okay, this is odd.”
Dobbs gave me a quick look, then went back to the desk. “You’re not gonna actually make me ask, are you?”
The woman looked at him, then back at the computer screen as if she expected the information she’d been searching for to have suddenly appeared during the interim. “We have certain rules that all our residents abide by, and one of those rules is that in a situation like this, if they make the call to the police, they are to immediately inform us so that we can enter it into the records. When a resident passes away on the premises, it’s vital that we record every bit of information—not just for the family’s peace of mind, but to protect ourselves should any legal questions arise.” She looked back at Dobbs. “There’s nothing here about Miss Driscoll’s dying—and I mean nothing.” Her eyes narrowed. “This is lazy and thoughtless and inexcusable. We could get into a lot of trouble for this.”
“I won’t say anything,” said Dobbs. “But it looks like maybe this’d be a good time for you to enter some information, huh?”
“I…I don’t know any of the specifics, I wouldn’t know where—”
Dobbs handed her a photocopy of the forms given to him by the Coroner’s Office. “Most everything’s there; when we got the call, when the doc arrived here, the estimated time of death, the doc’s official conclusion, all of it.” She took the forms from him. “Do you always carry extra copies of this stuff?” “All the time. You’d be surprised how many people forget to write this stuff down when someone dies.” She pressed the forms against her chest and sighed with relief. “You’re a life-saver, you know that?” “All part of my famous curmudgeonly charm.” And with a wave, he left, gesturing me to follow. “Why all the questions?” I asked him as we re-entered the parking garage.
“You mean about Miss Driscoll?” He shrugged. “I dunno, it’s just something I do on jobs like this. Seems like, since I’m gonna be the last human contact their bodies will ever know outside of a funeral home, I ought to know a little something about them. It’s a terrible thing, to have your last human contact be with a total stranger. Just seems right somehow, knowing a few things.” Another shrug. “Or maybe I’m just a nib-shit.”
I laughed, but not too loudly.
Dobbs inserted and turned the key, pressed the button, and the freight elevator doors opened. We maneuvered the gurney into the too-wide, too-deep, too brightly-lit compartment and Dobbs pressed 7. The doors closed with a thump! that seemed so loud I actually started.
“Easy there, Rambo,” said Dobbs. “This ain’t the time to get a case of the willies. You just follow my lead once we’re up there, okay? Let me do the talking with the officer, and once we get inside, don’t do a thing unless I say so, okay?”
“Okay.” I sounded just as anxious as I felt.
“Hey, look at me. The first time I had to go along on one of these, I was so scared I thought I was either gonna piss my pants or throw up. I surprised myself by doing both.”
“If that was meant to make me feel better, it needs a little work.”
“I’m just saying that it’s okay to be nervous. Do yourself a favor and don’t fight it. Fighting it’s what makes it worse. If it’ll help, just pretend that you’re moving a piece of antique furniture. I know that sounds cold-hearted as all get-out, but if you can put yourself into that frame of mind—that you’re moving a thing, not a person—it’ll go easier. Besides, when you get right down to it, that is all we’re doing, moving a thing. It’s not really a person, it’s just something they once walked around in.”