Page 31 of Her Last Refuge

Just like the story of the drowning, the information on Roy Alcott came in stages rather than all at once. Rachel watched over Novak’s shoulder as the basic identity match came through. Roy Alcott, born in 1963, had been living in the Richmond area for the better part of twenty years now. The address history indicated he had always lived within about half an hour of the city but had come back and settled eventually. There was a short stretch in his youth spent at college at Virginia Commonwealth University. They found proof of two semesters of general coursework in the early 1980s before the enrollment simply ended without a degree. After that the trail turned into a series of short-term jobs: warehouse shifts, delivery driving, seasonal work on landscaping crews. The pattern held until the 90s, when his employment history came to a stop under a single company name that had remained consistent for nearly three decades.

“Grounds maintenance,” Novak said, reading the entry. “Same firm for almost thirty years. They handle commercial properties, apartment complexes…and a number of care facilities in the area.”

“This has got to be our guy,” she said, more to herself than Novak.

She typed the company name into an online search bar and found the company’s website was enough. She scanned quickly and found a Customer Satisfaction tab. From there, she found what she was hoping to get: a summarized client list. Ashford Glen was not listed by name, but the firm advertised specialized contracts specifically for memory-care and senior-living sites.

Without even bothering to discuss it with Novak, she dialed the main number listed on the company’s website. It rang twice before a woman’s voice answered, bright and professional.

“Good afternoon, GreenField Maintenance, this is Denise. How can I help you?”

“This is Special Agent Rachel Gift with the FBI. I’m calling about one of your contracts.”

There was a brief pause on the other end, the kind that usually followed the mention of federal credentials. “The FBI?”

“Yes. Would you like my badge number?” She gave it anyway, without waiting for an answer. That seemed to draw the woman out of whatever disbelief had snagged her.

“Of course. What do you need?”

“I’m trying to confirm whether your company currently holds a maintenance contract with Ashford Glen, the memory-care facility out near Brandermill.”

“Yes, we do,” Denise said without hesitation. “We’ve had that account for several years, in fact. For as much as a decade, maybe. Our crews handle the grounds work, exterior maintenance, and some of the lighter repairs to the exterior of the building when they come up. It’s on a regular schedule.”

“How regular?”

“Bi-weekly for the grounds, and then as-needed for anything inside. We send the same rotating crews most of the time so the staff there gets used to the faces.”

Rachel glanced at Novak, who was still looking at the employment records on his screen. “Would you be able to tell me if a Roy Alcott is one of the people assigned to that site?”

Denise’s tone stayed even, but it cooled a fraction. “I can’t give out individual employee schedules over the phone without more formal process, Agent. Privacy rules. I can transfer you to scheduling if you need specific service dates or want to put in a written request.”

“That won’t be necessary right now,” Rachel said. “Confirming the contract is enough for the moment. Thank you for your time.”

“You’re welcome. Is there anything else?”

“No. That’s all.” She ended the call and looked to Novak, her expression grave. “He services Ashford Glen. And he does it regularly enough that the front desk knows the contract without having to look it up.”

Novak nodded and was already starting to run a criminal history on Roy Alcott. It took less than forty seconds, and it all came back clean. There were no convictions on his record, though there was one thing that, while not alarming at first glance, slowly chilled Rachel’s heart. Roy Alcott had been detained for loitering near a public swimming pool in Chesterfield County after closing hours a few years ago. The responding officers noted that he had been sitting on a bench outside the fence for more than an hour, simply watching the empty water. The report also indicated that it looked like Alcott had been crying recently. The pool manager had called it in as possible trespassing. Charges were considered and then dropped when Alcott agreed to leave the property and not return. The report listed no further incidents of the same kind.

Rachel considered the detail in silence. A man in his late fifties or early sixties lingering outside a closed public pool after dark was not enough to support an arrest. If anything, given what happened to his brother, it was incredibly sad. But it also supported the motive they were piecing together.

She turned back to the older articles and opened the piece that had quoted Howard Pelham at length after the lawsuit ended. The article was essentially just a brief interview with the young attorney, conducted a week after the case was dismissed. Pelham had spoken with careful precision. He told the reporter that the evidence simply did not support a finding of negligence. The pool had been staffed within the required ratios for the number of swimmers present that day. The lifeguards had all been properly trained and certified and there were plenty of other witnesses who claimed all three were doing their jobs at the time…not one was goofing off or not paying attention. No one had seen the boy go under until it was already too late to reach him. The water had been crowded, and visibility had been limited by the number of people in the pool. Pelham’s final statement in the article was the same line that had surfaced decades later during Howard’s brief lucid moment with the orderly: no one can prove anything.

Rachel read the interview a second time, more slowly. The tone was clinical and detached. There was no acknowledgment that an eight-year-old boy had been present at the pool and ignored when he tried to raise the alarm. The article presented the dismissal as the correct and final outcome and then moved on to other local news of the week.

She closed the file and looked across the table at Novak. The separate pieces of information had settled into a single, coherent line.

“Roy Alcott was eight years old when his brother drowned in front of three lifeguards who were not watching closely enough. Howard Pelham was the attorney who stood up in court and told everyone that no one could prove anything to point to negligence. Ruth Durst ends up living in the same facility where Roy has been working maintenance for years. He would have recognized her the first time he saw her in a hallway or out on the grounds. Then Howard Pelham moves into the same building—the same man who closed the case all those years ago. Both of them start showing the kind of old guilt that dementia can drag back to the surface without warning. Ruth asked over and over to be forgiven. Howard repeated the exact line he used in court. Roy would have seen it for what it was. He would have known exactly what they were remembering.”

“Or him suddenly reappearing might have triggered it,” Novak said. “A chance re-encounter with the first of the three lifeguards. Then the attorney who cleared all of them walks into the same facility. That is more than enough to reopen something that never really closed for him.”

Rachel already had the next search window open on her screen. “We need a current address. If he is still working the Ashford Glen contract, he is local and reachable. And we need to find this third lifeguard, this George Tremaine, and make sure he’s under police watch until this is over.”

“I’ll update Anderson and make the call to have someone find and watch over Tremaine,” Novak said, already heading for the door. “You good to find an address for Alcott?”

“I’m already on it,” she said as she typed the name again and applied filters for active residential records. Ten seconds later, when she found an address, she typed it into her phone and hurried out of the room to catch up to Novak.

They had a name. They had an address and motive. And if the rest of the day went smoothly, Rachel was quite sure they’d also have their killer.