Page 12 of Her Last Refuge

Rachel glanced at Novak, and something passed between them, a subtle little communication that confirmed there did seem to be something odd going on here.

"We're going to need copies of everything you just showed us," Rachel said. "And we'll need to see the room."

Donna nodded. “Miriam will be the one to show you to the room,” she said. Rachel looked down the hall, where Miriam was speaking with two other employees. She looked back and their eyes locked for a moment.

And for that split second, Rachel was almost certain she saw something like guilt in the woman’s eyes.

CHAPTER NINE

The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and well-worn shoes when Rachel and Novak stepped inside. Miriam hadn’t put up any sort of argument when they’d asked to go in, but she was hovering near the doorway as they entered.

Howard Pelham's bed had been stripped down to the mattress, the linens already bagged and sent off for testing. But from what Rachel could tell and based on what Miriam had shared, the rest of the room remained untouched. A recliner sat by the window with a folded newspaper on the armrest. A row of law books lined a small shelf near the closet, their spines cracked from age rather than recent use.

"No forced entry," Novak said, crouching by the door to examine the frame. "I mean, I know Donna said the door was already opened a few inches when she came to it, but still…figured I’d check. No scratches on the lock, no damage anywhere. Same as what the report said about Ruth Durst's room, from what you told me."

"Same as here." Rachel walked the perimeter slowly, taking in the space. "Nothing knocked over, no sign of a struggle. If someone came in here and did this to him, Pelham never fought back. Never even seemed to wake up." She shrugged and added, “Unless, of course, the people who tried to save him cleaned up afterwards.”

“Like, as their duty or trying to hide something?” Novak asked.

“Don’t know. Besides…I doubt that’s the case. They’d be trained to leave things as they were if there’s going to be a police presence.”

Novak straightened and looked at the empty bed frame. "The chart said he was eighty-two years old,” Novak said. “It’s not exactly going twelve rounds with anybody."

Rachel nodded and crossed to the window, checking the latch. It was locked from the inside. When she unlocked it and opened it, she could see no proof that anyone had been tampering with it from the outside. the same as the door had been when Donna found him. She turned back to face the room, running through what she'd seen in Ruth's file two nights earlier, the photographs Warrick had shown her. The composed hands. The undisturbed blanket. The peaceful, staged stillness of it.

"I need to tell you something," she said. "And I should have told you before we drove out here. It’s about the comment Miriam made to me that had you so puzzled."

Novak looked up from the closet he'd been checking. "Okay."

"Ruth Durst's grandson called me yesterday. His name is Caleb. I had visited with his grandfather when he’d been in hospice a few years ago. He recalled that I was with the FBI, and he asked me to look into Ruth’s death, unofficially. Just as a favor." She kept her eyes on Novak, watching for a reaction. "I came out here yesterday afternoon after you went out for that lead. I talked to Miriam and a nurse…took a little tour of the place. From here, I went to the local PD and looked at the crime scene photos and notes with a Detective Warrick."

Novak was quiet for a second, his expression unreadable. "That’s…well, not messed up, I don’t guess. But I don’t think Anderson would approve."

“Probably not. And I’m sorry I didn’t just tell you right away. But, it wasn’t a case. It was a favor for a young, sad man whose grandmother had just died and nobody would answer his questions." She held his gaze, half-expecting him to challenge her on it. "I didn't think there was anything to it beyond an old woman with dementia passing in her sleep, but I just wanted to put his mind at ease.”

“Okay, so what did you find?”

"I looked at photos of her hands folded on her chest exactly the way Donna just described Pelham's." She heard the edge in her own voice and pulled it back. "I should have told you before we got in the car this morning. I'm telling you now."

Novak studied her for a long moment, then shrugged, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. "I'm not mad you did some digging on your own time. I'd probably have done the same thing." He walked over and leaned against the dresser, arms crossed. "But two deaths with a similar posture isn't a pattern, Gift. It's two data points. Elderly people die of cardiac events all the time, and sometimes families or nursing staff arrange the body out of respect before anyone gets there. It happens more than people think."

"The nurses didn’t stage Pelham’s hands like that,” she pointed out. “You heard Donna. She had to move his hands to start proper chest compressions. Somebody positioned them while he was dying or right after he’d died—before Donna found him."

"Maybe. Or maybe Donna's memory of exactly how he looked got lost in the shuffle because she was so concerned with trying to save his life…especially now that she's looking for something to explain what happened." Novak held up a hand before she could argue. "I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying the ME hasn't confirmed anything yet. We don't even know cause of death on either one of these. Until that comes back, we've got two old people who died of what looks like natural causes and a staff member's recollection that their hands ended up in a similar position. That's thin."

Rachel didn't answer right away because she understood the path of logic. But her gut told her there was something here, and her gut wasn’t wrong very often. She crossed back toward the bed, crouching down to look beneath it out of habit more than expectation. But as soon as her knees touched the floor, she stopped.

A pillow sat wedged against the far leg of the bed frame, half in shadow. It would be easy to miss unless someone was looking directly under the bed. She reached in and pulled it free, turning it over in her hands. It was standard hospital-issue, the same as the two still on the recliner by the window. It was unremarkable, with little cushion and quite flat.

"Novak."

He crossed the room and crouched beside her. "What is it?"

"A pillow. Under the bed." She held it up. "That's not exactly where a pillow ends up on its own."

"Could've fallen during the code. People aren't exactly careful when they're doing compressions."

"Maybe." She turned the pillow over again, running her hand along the seam. She could see no clear signs of stains, and nothing that would tell her anything without a proper run through a lab. "But it's also a convenient place for something to end up if somebody needed it gone fast. Shove it under the bed, keep working, let the chaos of a code blue cover for it."