Page 14 of Her Last Refuge

"I know how that sounds," Miriam said. "But it's deliberate, not an oversight. Families push back hard on camera coverage in the halls. A lot of our residents have advanced dementia, and their dignity is already compromised in ways they can't always advocate for themselves. Having a camera catch them disoriented, or undressed, or having an episode in the hallway outside their own door, that's a line most families don't want crossed, and frankly, neither do we. We had a task force look at it a few years back, and the decision came down on the side of privacy over surveillance for residential areas."

"I suppose you can see how that would backfire in a situation like this, yeah?" Novak asked, slightly annoyed.

“I do.” Miriam's jaw tightened slightly. "We'll cooperate with whatever you need from the cameras we do have. I can have IT pull footage from the exterior and common area systems by this afternoon."

"That would help. Thank you,” Rachel said. “In the meantime, do you think you could help us arrange a few interviews with some of your staff?”

Rachel saw the briefest flicker of irritation before Miriam’s face settled back to its cool composure. “Yes, I can arrange that. Come with me, and I’ll show you to a comfortable spot.”

CHAPTER TEN

Miriam had mentioned one particular name as she led them to the small staff lounge where they would be conducting the interviews: Desmond Yates, an orderly who worked closely with Howard on the day shift. He came into the small but cozy room just a few minutes after Rachel and Novak walked in. He was a relatively short, but stout man. His shoulders and forearms were well-defined, likely from a career of lifting people who couldn't lift themselves. When he sat down in one of the lounge’s armchairs, his scrubs appeared a size too tight across the chest.

"Miriam said you wanted to talk about Judge Pelham," he said. "I already told the police everything when they came out."

"We appreciate you going over it again," Rachel said. "Sometimes small details come back to people the second or third time through."

"Sure." He didn't sound convinced, but he leaned back slightly, settling in. "What do you want to know?"

"How well did you know him? Howard."

"Fairly well. I did a lot of his personal care. Getting him up in the morning, helping with meals when he needed it, that kind of thing." Desmond shrugged. "He was sharp, for someone with his diagnosis. Had good stretches where you'd talk to him and forget anything was wrong at all. Then he'd slip, sometimes mid-sentence. But he liked to talk about his old job. He was really proud to have been a judge.” He smiled sadly and added, “Man, some of the stories he’d tell were wild…"

"Did you ever notice him seem distressed?” Novak asked.

“Like agitated more than usual?" Rachel clarified.

The sad frown deepened a bit as he gave this some thought. He crossed his arms and nodded. "There was one time, maybe two weeks ago. I was helping him get dressed in the morning, and he got real quiet all of a sudden, staring off at nothing. I asked if he was alright, and he looked at me like he didn't even know who I was for a second. Then he said something strange."

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'No one can prove anything.' Just like that, out of nowhere." Desmond's jaw tightened as he recalled it. "And it wasn't like he was confused when he said it. It was cold. Mean, almost. Like he was talking to somebody who wasn't me.”

"Did he say anything else? Explain what he meant?"

"No. He just kind of snapped back a second later, apologized for spacing out, asked me what we were doing that day like nothing happened. And I…well, I didn't think much of it at the time. I mean, he used to be a judge so the comment kind of fit with that, you know? I figured maybe it was just a memory lapse. We get that a lot here. People slip into some other moment in their heads and say things that don't make sense to us because we're not the ones they're talking to."

"Did you report it?"

"I logged it in his chart, yeah. Agitation, disorientation, unclear referent. Just like we're trained to do." He said it without defensiveness, like it was simply the shape of the job. "It's not like we ignore it. We document everything, even the stuff that seems like nothing. But we've got residents saying all kinds of things all day long. If we called a doctor every time somebody said something odd, we'd never get through a shift."

Novak leaned forward slightly. "Did it strike you as odd at the time, even for dementia? The tone of it?"

Desmond considered the question for a moment before answering. "Honestly, yeah. Most of the time when residents get confused, it's more scared than mean. Lost, you know? This felt different. Felt like he meant it for somebody specific and there was like…malice to it." He shrugged again, like he was trying to shake off the memory. "But I've been doing this ten years. I've heard plenty of things that felt like something in the moment and turned out to be nothing. I try not to read too much into it.”

Rachel thanked him and let him go. He left the staff lounge without looking back, looking considerably more deflated than he had when he’d entered the room.

They spent the next hour working through a handful of shorter conversations. A daytime aide remembered Pelham being quieter than usual in the days before his death but chalked it up to the season change. She claimed that residents often had rough patches when the weather shifted. A physical therapist who worked with him twice a week hadn't noticed anything unusual at all and seemed mostly interested in getting back to her schedule. The kitchen staff barely knew him beyond his food preferences, but a few did recall Ruth fairly well. None of them reported either of the recently deceased acting strange or looking especially ill as of late.

None of it added much, and by 10:30, Rachel felt the morning narrowing down to two solid threads worth pulling.

When they were done with the interviews, Rachel and Novak found Miriam in her office. It was a spacious and very tidy room with a window looking out over the pond on the western grounds. Her desk was clear except for a laptop and a framed photo of a golden retriever. She waved them in and gestured to the two chairs across from her desk, her composure from the rough morning mostly restored.

"I pulled the records you asked for," Miriam said, turning her laptop so the screen faced them. "Admission dates, incident logs, all of it. I want to be as transparent as I can here. This is difficult for the facility, obviously, but I'd rather we get through it honestly than have this drag on."

“And the security footage?” Rachel asked.

“The IT department is working it now. I expect you’ll have it all by two or three this afternoon.”