Page 9 of Her Last Refuge

Warrick scanned back through a few pages, found what he was looking for, and turned the folder slightly so she could see it. A section near the bottom, pulled from the facility's own notes, described a pattern of chronic nighttime restlessness. It specifically called out difficulty settling, occasional wandering within the room. It wasn't a diagnosis so much as a habit documented by staff, something they'd apparently noted more than once in her chart.

Rachel looked at the photograph again. The folded hands. The evenness of the blanket, tucked with a precision that seemed at odds with a woman who, by her own chart, rarely stayed still long enough at night for anyone to find her that composed.

"That's a little unusual, don't you think? A woman with documented restlessness passing so quietly that she ends up looking like that."

"People die in their sleep peacefully all the time, even restless ones. The body relaxes." Warrick closed the folder, not unkindly, more like a man closing a door he needed to get back to. But she also saw hesitation in him now, as he started to feel that maybe he was being a little too fast and loose with the rules…and that maybe he was being lied to. "I know it's tempting to look for something more here. Families always want an explanation bigger than her heart gave out. But there's nothing in this file that points anywhere else. No injuries, no signs anyone else was in that room. I wish I had more to give you, but I don't."

"I appreciate you showing me what you did." Rachel stood. She knew she’d come to the end. If she pushed anymore, he was going to stop being so hospitable. He maybe even ask if he was being played somehow. and Warrick walked her back out through the small station, the front desk officer barely glancing up as they passed.

"Tell your friend I'm sorry for his loss," Warrick said at the door. "And tell him the file's closed, but if the ME's report comes back with anything unusual, we'll follow up.” Was it her imagination, or was there something in his eyes that indicated he knew she was only playing a role but that he was willing to help all the same? She wasn’t sure.

"Thank you, Detective Warrick. Really."

As she stepped out to her car, she noticed that the day had grown cooler, darker. It was nearly five, and traffic was thickening; she could hear it from the parking lot and didn’t look forward to joining it on her way home. As she got into her car, she kept seeing the photograph of Ruth Durst in her mind, the folded hands and the smooth, undisturbed blanket. It had looked like a body arranged with a kind of care that didn’t come naturally to those who died in their sleep.

By the time Rachel had pulled out into traffic, she'd stopped telling herself that it probably didn’t mean anything.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Donna Pryce checked her phone at the nurses' station and saw it was 12:04. She pulled her cardigan tighter around her shoulders and picked up the tablet with the resident roster. She was just old enough to remember using the paper system and though she did miss it, she still couldn’t get over how much faster and efficient the digital files were. She was better with the tablet than half the twenty-somethings on day shift, and she liked reminding them of that when the opportunity came up.

The east wing was quiet except for the low mechanical tick of the HVAC and, somewhere down the hall, a television left on low in one of the rooms. Donna had worked nights for fifteen years now, first at a hospital in Petersburg and then here, and she'd long since stopped noticing the particular hush that settled over a building full of sleeping people. She liked the quiet, if she was honest. It gave her time to think—mostly about trips and plans she knew would never come to fruition but most notable, as of late, her son's wedding. They were just six weeks out now, and she still hadn't found a dress that would efficiently show off the figure she’d been hitting the gym so hard for over the last six months.

Her night-time rounds consisted of walking the wing every two hours, checking on each resident through a cracked door or a soft knock. It meant confirming they were breathing, confirming they were in bed, and making sure nothing had gone wrong since the last pass. For residents on higher acuity, it meant actually stepping inside to check vitals or reposition them if they couldn't do it themselves. Most nights it was uneventful. Most of the residents were snoozing by ten at the latest. Some were even asleep by nine.

She started at the far end of the hall and worked her way back, tablet tucked under one arm. Mrs. Okafor's television was still going, the light flickering blue under her door. Donna eased it open enough to see the older woman asleep in her chair with her mouth open, the remote still in her lap. She left her be. Waking her to move her to the bed wasn't worth the fight it would start. Not tonight. Maybe a sore back would teach the old lady to stop staying up so late.

Two doors down, Frank Ketchum was pacing around his room, which wasn't unusual for him after dark. Donna talked him back toward his bed the way she did most nights, telling him his wife would be by in the morning, which was true in the sense that his daughter visited most Tuesdays and he'd stopped being able to tell the difference. He smiled and settled down once she said it. He always did.

She kept moving. The hallway lights were dimmed to a soft amber after ten, enough to see by without waking anyone who was sensitive to it, and her sneakers made almost no sound against the floor. She passed the activity room, dark and empty, chairs stacked along one wall from the afternoon's session.

Howard Pelham's room was the third door on the left. Donna slowed as she came up on it. His door was open maybe four inches, a thin wedge of hallway light falling across his floor. That wasn't right. Howard was a stickler about his door. He'd told her more than once in his gruff yet somehow soothing voice that he couldn't sleep with it open even a crack. He said the noise from the hall bothered him, though Donna had never heard much of anything from that end of the building after eleven.

She knocked lightly and pushed the door the rest of the way open. "Howard? It's Donna."

Nothing.

"Howard, are you awake?"

The room was dim, lit only by the small nightlight near the bathroom door. Howard was in bed, on his back, the blanket pulled to his waist. His hands were folded on his chest, fingers laced together. His eyes were closed, as if he was resting peacefully. He also looked composed in a way that struck Donna as odd before she could say why. People didn't sleep like that. They curled, they sprawled, they kicked the blanket half off during the night. Howard looked like he'd arranged himself…almost like he was paying a part in a very strange play.

She stepped closer and said his name again, louder this time. Still, he didn’t stir at all.

Donna crossed to the bed and touched his shoulder. It was just barely cold enough under her hand that something in her chest went tight. She looked at his chest, studied it for five seconds, and saw that it wasn't moving. She pressed two fingers to his wrist and found nothing there. She then tried his neck, and found nothing there either.

She hit the call button mounted above his headboard and didn't wait for a response before she was moving.

"Code blue, room fourteen," she hollered into the hallway, her voice carrying farther than she meant it to. A code blue meant a resident was in cardiac or respiratory arrest and needed immediate resuscitation. Every staff member on duty was trained to drop whatever they were doing and respond. Somewhere behind her, Donna heard another nurse's footsteps pick up. She knew she’d made a mistake by saying it so loud. They weren’t supposed to let residents become aware of this sort of situation. But it was too late to worry about that now.

She turned back to Howard and started working. She tilted his head back to check his airway, one hand under his jaw and one on his forehead, and found nothing blocking it. She needed him flat and clear before she could start compressions, and his folded hands were in the way, sitting square in the middle of his chest like something out of a wake. She swept them aside without thinking about it, more focused on getting her palms in place. In doing so, she also absently chucked one of the spare pillow on the bed into the floor. It slid off the mattress and dropped to the floor, sliding under the bed frame.

But she didn't even glance down. She was barely aware of anything other than Howard’s chest. She had her hands stacked on his sternum and was starting compressions by the time another nurse entered the room, bringing a crash cart.

"Get me the pads," she said, not looking up. "And somebody call it in."

The other nurse—Donna didn’t even know which one because she wouldn’t take her eyes off of Howard—was already tearing the AED's plastic wrapping loose. The machine's electronic voice started its instructions in the same flat, patient tone it always used, and Donna kept counting under her breath, one and two and three. Her focus narrowed down to the rhythm of it and nothing else.

But Howard didn't respond. His face stayed the same as it had been when she'd first pushed his door open, still and unbothered. And though Donna somehow knew her efforts were in vain, she kept trying anyway.