Page 26 of Her Last Refuge

Slightly concerned now, Cecilia set the book on the nightstand. She tucked her bookmark of a prayer card from church into it to keep her place. She swung her legs out from under the covers and stood carefully. The floor felt cool under her bare feet and the creaking noise they made under her slight weight was a familiar one. It was almost comforting. Mitch continued snoring and for a moment, Cecilia thought about trying to wake him up. But she knew how difficult that was and besides, she was probably just overreacting. The motion light was some of that newer technology Mitch was always griping about, Maybe it was just on the fritz, or the batteries were going dead.

She looked at him once more and wondered if she should cross the hallway and head to the closet. Their handgun was tucked away in an unlocked trunk Mitch had placed there years ago when a neighbor’s house had been broken into.

She decided to go ahead and do that, just in case. She’d only ever held that gun once and the idea of it made her feel gross.

She moved to the doorway and paused there with one hand resting lightly on the frame. The hallway light was still on. The spare-room door stood slightly open, the way it sometimes did when the air shifted through the house. From where she stood she could see a narrow slice of the room beyond it—the edge of the guest bed, the corner of the dresser, the darker shape of the window.

She took one more step into the hallway.

The figure came through the doorway of the spare room faster than she thought humanly possible. She saw the shape and nothing more—not enough detail to see if it was a man or a woman, or to see what they were wearing. They reached her before she could draw a full breath to call for Mitch. The sound gathered and the wind was in her lungs, but it never left her throat. A hand closed hard over her mouth while another caught her shoulder and turned her, driving her backward into the spare bedroom with a force that made her feel like she was being carried. In the sudden dark, she felt the solid weight of him and the unyielding pressure across her face. She reached for anything—his arm, the lamp on the bedside table that hadn’t been used in at least six months.

But she found nothing. And the last clear thought she managed was that the house had been quiet only a moment ago, when her detective had discovered the name of the killer. Distantly, she could still hear Mitch snoring and she could only hope she might be able to make a noise to rouse him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Rachel and Novak stepped out of the interrogation room a little after five in the morning and let the door ease shut behind them. The hallway outside was quiet but Rachel knew it would slowly come alive over the next hour or so. Currently, it was quiet enough so that she was able to hear a coffee machine finish its cycle somewhere further down the hall.

The silence seemed thicker than usual, though. Brian Spencer had given them everything he had, and none of it helped with their case.

For an hour and a half, Brian had sat in the small room with his wrists cuffed to the table and walked them through what he’d been up to. For five months, he’d been stealing things from the rooms of Ashford Glen residents. He had taken cash from wallets and dresser drawers, small pieces of jewelry, a watch here, a set of earrings there. According to him, he had struck nine residents in total, all of them advanced enough in their dementia that he believed they would never notice and even if they did, no one would really take it all that seriously if they decided to report it. He estimated that with the cash he’d taken and what he’d gotten from pawned items, he had cleared just under seven thousand dollars.

He’d cried through most of the admission, repeating that he had only taken from people who wouldn’t remember—as if that somehow made it more forgivable. He said that he’d never touched the ones whose families still came every week. He had also, without much resistance, supplied alibis for the two nights that mattered. On the night Ruth Durst died he had driven to his sister’s house in Fredericksburg after his shift, stayed until nearly 10:30, and then arrived home around midnight. He willingly showed them the Ring doorbell footage of when he’d arrived home. On the night Howard Pelham died, he’d been at a pub trivia night with friends. Some photos from one of his friend’s Instagram accounts backed this up.

In other words, he was clean. He was a thief who had preyed on the vulnerable. He was not a killer by any means. And as that certainty had become clearer and clearer, Rachel had started to feel the case getting away from her. She knew it was only because when they’d spotted a figure slipping into the facility, she’d felt deep down that it would be the end of the case. But to have that pulled out from under her was almost like a weird, personal attack.

“Colt and Ives are going to come at this hard,” Novak said as they walked away from the interrogation room, toward the break room at the end of the hall. His voice was rough and tired. “A staff member stealing from dementia patients is the kind of story that does not stay in a personnel file.”

“They’ll try to contain it,” Rachel said. “They’ll release Spencer, of course. But it’ll be quiet. Statements about full cooperation with law enforcement an all of that. But if this comes to light, the murders are going to be discovered, too.”

“And if it gets out?”

“Then every family that ever toured Ashford Glen starts second-guessing the place, and Ives spends the rest of his career doing damage control.” She inhaled the smell of coffee and realized just how badly she needed one. “He already looked like a man running risk calculations when we sat with him. This will put him into overdrive.”

They turned into the break room, and Rachel wasted no time. The pot was fresh and full, and she filled a cup. She poured in a packet of sugar and leaned against the counter as she drank.

“You think they’ll try to pressure us to keep it quiet?” he asked.

“They’ll pressure whoever they think can keep the arrest from becoming a headline. We just give them the facts and let the rest land where it lands. I wouldn’t be surprised if they call the brass above us—Anderson, maybe even Anderson’s boss.”

Novak sighed and started doctoring up his own cup of coffee. Just as he began to stir, Rachel’s phone rang. She checked the caller display and saw Anderson’s name.

“Huh. Speak of the devil…” She answered the call, hoping for at least a small crumb of good news. She answered on speaker and held the phone out.

“This is Gift.”

“I’ve got a new one,” Anderson said, skipping the formalities. He sounded like he had been awake for some time. “It may be nothing, but worth checking out. An elderly woman was found dead in her home across town. Initial report says she was strangled. Local PD is on scene.”

Rachel frowned at the phone, a bit confused. “Forgive me for saying so, but that doesn’t sound connected.”

“It didn’t to me either until they mentioned the staging. Her hands were clasped over her stomach, folded peacefully...the same posture as Durst and Pelham. I want you and Novak out there as soon as you can, just to see if it lines up. And if it turns out to be nothing, then you can pick up where you left off.”

“Sounds good. What’s the address?”

“I’ll text it to you right now.”

She ended the call with that and, sure enough, Rachel received a text with the address just ten seconds later.

“Looks like we’ll be taking these coffees to go,” Rachel said, already opening a cupboard to get a paper cup and lid. They hurried out of the building and when they got into the car, Rachel did her best not to instantly chalk this little side-quest up as a waste of time. She knew Anderson wouldn’t lead them astray; if he thought it was worth checking out, then it surely was.