The incident occurred on April 3. Patricia had been relocated to the EC facility on April 20. When oncoming nurses went in to check patients early in their shift on the morning of June 17, Patricia was absent from her bed. That was the way the administrator put it when he called. Absent from her bed. Like it was summer camp. The call came in at 7:06. Half an hour later, 7:38 by the brass-and-walnut clock on the wall, I was sitting in the administrator’s office with a cup of venomous coffee in hand watching said administrator, Daniel Covici, MBA, CEO, rub a thumb against the burnished surface of his desk. It was the facility’s desk, of course, but I had no doubt he thought of it as his own.
Most investigations are little more than paint by the numbers. You ask a string of questions in the proper order, when they don’t get answered you ask them again, sooner or later you find your way to the husband or wife, spurned boy- or girlfriend, business partner, parent, younger brother, gardener, eccentric uncle, jealous neighbor. This was no different. Within the hour, down in the Human Resources basement office looking over a list of recent terminations, I came across the name of an orderly who had quit without prior notice at the end of his shift on June 16, saying simply that he was going on to another, better job. He’d been with the hospital sixteen years. Douglas Lynds. Address out by what was at that time Southwestern, a tiny freestanding wooden house.
From the street I caught glimpses of the university’s Gothic spires and buttresses among the trees. The house sat ten or twelve yards back, though the frontage could scarcely be called a yard. Traces of old foundation showed, like teeth rotted to gum level. Probably there had once been a stand of such structures, housing for graduate students maybe, of which only the one remained. It was in immaculate condition, however, freshly painted pristine white, window frames and trim a light, minty green.
Things were a lot looser those days. When I didn’t get a response to my knock, I went around back, knocked again there, then shimmed the kitchen door. If it ever came to it, I’d just say the door was ajar, I heard sounds inside, suspected intruders.
Three rooms. Kitchen with counters and stove immaculate, bath just off it to the right, living room straight ahead, bedroom to the left. That’s where I found her. She was propped up with pillows, dressed in a pale pink nightgown with small blue flowers at neck and hem and larger blue flowers for buttons. Her hair, clean and bright, lay on the pillow, framing a face wherein eyes rolled left, right, left. Mucus ran out of one nostril and snarled towards the slack mouth.
“Please don’t hurt her,” a voice said behind me.
I told him I wouldn’t, told him who I was.
“I’ve been out shopping. I never leave her alone any more than I have to.” He put the bag of groceries on the floor by the door. “She needs changing. All right if I do that?”
Yes.
Going to the bed, he unbuttoned the nightgown and unpinned the towel doing service as diaper. The strong chemical smell of her feces spilled into the room. He took the diaper into the bathroom, to a covered pail there. He ran water till it was warm, and wet a facecloth. Brought it out and, holding her up effortlessly with the flat of one arm, wiped her clean. He took the facecloth back into the bathroom, rinsed and hung it on a rack there, washed his hands. He replaced the diaper, buttoned her gown and smoothed it. Then reached up to snap a fingernail against the IV feed, checking patency, drip rate, level.
“I thought I’d have longer with her. Just the two of us.”
“I’m sorry.”
He hadn’t meant for this to happen, he told me, standing there looking down at her, into her face; hadn’t intended to cause any trouble. He only wanted to take care of her. That’s what he’d been doing at Parkview, for a long time now. Cleaning and bathing her, seeing after her feeds. But there was always too much else to do, too many others needing attention. She deserved better than that.
“What will happen to her now?”
“She’ll go back to the hospital.”
“Parkview, you mean.”
“Right.”
“And I’ll be going to jail.”
“For a while.”
“Any notion how long?”
“Hard to say.” God knows what they’d charge him with. Kidnapping, endangerment? Excessive kindness? “A year, eighteen months, something like that. After that you’d be on probation.”
He nodded.
“Once I’m out, I’ll be able to visit her.”
Chapter Nine
Breakfast was strong coffee and bagels. There were five kinds of bagels in a paper bag in the freezer (shipped in from Memphis? Little Rock?), butter, homemade fig preserves and cream cheese with chives below. Also a package of lox we both agreed should be put to rest. I washed my face and did what I could by way of brushing teeth while Val assembled it all; then, once we’d eaten, took care of the kitchen while she showered and dressed.
In the yellow Volvo on the way into town I thanked her.
She smiled. “Any time. It’s a pleasure to have someone to talk to. You like my house?”
“I like your house a lot.”
At the office she signed out the forensics kit and told us she’d be in touch when word came down. I walked her to the car.
“You get caught in town again, there’s always my spare room,” she said.
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.”
“Take care of yourself, Turner.”
I watched till the Volvo was out of sight. Eyes swiveled towards me when I went back in the office.
“Guess you two hit it off,” Don Lee said.
“Guess we did.”
“House look good?” This from Sheriff Bates.
You’d better believe it, I said, and filled him in on what I’d seen. Floors taken down to bare wood, missing pieces of banisters and mouldings pieced in, layers of paint painstakingly rubbed away.
“Wish there were more like her,” Bates said. “Most of those old places have been torn down by now. Or fallen down. We won’t ever see their like again. Coffee?”
“Sure thing.” I chewed my way through half a cup of it. Busy day in town. Every four or five minutes a car passed outside. The phone rang and went on ringing in the real estate office next door.
“The mayor’s mail?”
“Beg pardon?” Don Lee said.
“What you found on the body. Outgoing mail or incoming? Circulars? Bills? Bank statements? Personal letters?”
“Bills, mostly. That’s what he put out for pickup. Clipped them to the front of his mailbox with a clothespin. Same clothespin’s been out there eight or ten years.”
“His mailbox at home.”
“Right.”
“On the porch or streetside?”
“These parts, they’re all by the street.”
As Bates was pouring more coffee, a fortyish woman pulled the door open and stepped in. She stopped just inside, blinking. Ankle-length pants that had started off black and with repeated washings gone purplish gray, red-and-blue flannel shirt over maroonish T-shirt. She was tall. The shirt’s sleeves, left unbuttoned, came halfway up her forearms.
“Billie,” Don Lee said. “How you doing?”
“C. R.’s left again.”
“Honey, he’ll be back. He always comes back. You know that.”
“Not this time.”
“Course he will.”
“You think so?”
Bates walked over to her. For a moment before she looked off, their eyes met.
“Thought he liked the new job.”
“Job was okay, Sheriff. What he didn’t like was me.”
Steering her to the desk, Bates said, “You had any breakfast? I could call across, have something sent over.”
“Kids ate good this morning.”
“They always do.”
“Pancakes.”
“Billie does great pancakes,” Don Lee told me.
“Put pecans in, the way they like them.” Her eyes swept the ceiling. “Woodie has to turn in his geography project today. I made sure he packed it up safe.”
“You get any sleep, sweetheart?” Bates asked.