Page 11 of Her Last Refuge

"Seemed fine. Confident, even, which either means she's got it down or she has no idea how much she doesn't know." She smirked as she slipped into a shirt and started buttoning it up.

"I'll ask her again over breakfast, make sure she's not worrying herself sick about it like usual."

“Thanks,” Rachel said. She kissed him quickly on the way back into the bedroom to get a pair of pants. And just like that, her day seemed to be frantic and several steps ahead of her.

***

Ashford Glen looked different in the soft golden light of early morning. The manicured lawn was dulled by dew, and all of the benches near the front where she’d seen people spread out yesterday were empty. Rachel parked in the same visitor spot she'd used yesterday and glanced at Novak as he finished his coffee in three long swallows.

"Nice place," he said, looking up at the building through the windshield. "You'd almost forget people come here to die."

"Yeesh, Novak. Just don't say that inside."

"I'm not an idiot, Gift."

“You sure about that?” she said with a smile as they stepped out of the car.

They walked in together, and this time Rachel didn't bother with a cover story. She had her badge out before they reached the desk, and the young woman behind it went pale and reached for the phone without being asked. Miriam Colt appeared within a minute, her composure from the day before replaced by something tighter, more brittle around the edges. Miriam's heels clicked to a stop a few feet from the desk, her eyes moving from Rachel's badge to her face and back again. "You were here yesterday," she said. "You said you were a family friend."

"I did." Rachel kept her voice even. "I'm sorry for the deception. I had a personal connection to the case that made it complicated for me to come in through official channels at the time."

"A personal connection." Miriam's mouth tightened. "So you knew something was off before this morning's call."

"I had a hunch. Nothing I could act on." Rachel held her gaze. "I'm not going to pretend the timing looks good. But I'm here now, with a badge, and a second resident is dead. I'd rather spend our time figuring out what happened to them than relitigating yesterday."

Miriam studied her a moment longer, jaw set, then gave a short nod, more resignation than agreement. "Fine. But I expect you to be straight with me from here on."

"You have my word."

Mariam turned on her heels and started leading them deeper into the building. As she did, Novak gently took Rachel’s arm and said, “Um…what the hell was that about?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, wishing she’d just come clean with him on the ride over.

He looked a little wounded, but nodded and left it at that. Meanwhile, Miriam led them back through the east wing without much conversation. A night nurse was waiting for them near the nurses' station, a heavyset woman in scrubs with dark circles under her eyes and her hair pulled back in a loose bun. She introduced herself as Donna Pryce and shook both their hands, her grip firm despite how exhausted she looked.

"Forgive my appearance," Donna said. " I've been up since yesterday afternoon. I should've gone home hours ago, but I wanted to be here when you all showed up."

"We appreciate that," Rachel said. "I know this has probably been a long few days."

"You have no idea." Donna led them down the hall, her sneakers silent against the floor. "I found him myself. Howard…." She gestured to a room they passed, the door closed. "I started compressions, called the code, the whole thing. But it didn't matter. He was already gone by the time I got to him."

"Can you walk us through what you saw when you found him?" Rachel asked.

Donna stopped near the nurses' station and crossed her arms, her exhaustion settling into something more focused as she spoke. "His door was open a few inches, which wasn't like him. Howard didn't sleep with it open, ever. He always claimed he could hear all the noise from the hallway, even though the hallway is completely silent after eleven. So I went in, and he was on his back, blanket up to his waist, and his hands were folded right here." She touched her own chest to demonstrate, fingers laced together below her collarbone. "Just like they found the other one, Ruth Durst. I heard about that from one of the day nurses. Same thing. Hands folded, real neat, as somebody laid him out."

"Had he shown any signs of decline in the past few days?” Rachel asked. “Confusion, agitation, anything physical?"

"None. That's what's been eating at me." Donna shook her head and rubbed at her tired eyes. "I saw him at dinner two nights ago, and he was sharp as anything, cracking jokes with one of the aides about the food. He had good days and bad days like everybody here, but nothing that night suggested this was coming. I looked back to his records, and his vitals were fine yesterday after lunch."

"Would you mind pulling up his recent health records? Anything from the past few weeks."

"I can do that." Donna led them to a computer at the nurses' station, gesturing for them to follow. She typed in a password, pulling up a chart with practiced speed. She turned the monitor so Rachel and Novak could see. "His blood pressure's been a little high, but nothing outside normal range for a man his age. Heart rate's steady. He'd had a mild UTI about a month back, but that cleared up with antibiotics and hasn't come back. Otherwise he was in decent shape. Better than a lot of our residents, honestly."

Rachel scanned the numbers on the screen, showing columns of vitals recorded over the past three weeks. Granted, she wasn’t a doctor but she had seen enough of these kinds of records to know what she was looking for, and nothing jumped out as a warning sign. Novak leaned in beside her, arms crossed, reading over her shoulder.

"No cardiac history?" Novak asked.

"Nothing flagged. He'd had a stress test done about eight months ago when he first moved in, but that was just standard intake stuff. And it all came back clean." Donna looked back down the hall as a sad look swept over her eyes. "I keep going over it. I've done this job fifteen years and I've seen plenty of people go in their sleep. This wasn't that. I mean, I didn’t realize it until after the fact, but something about this looked arranged."