Wicked Lies (30 page)

Laura’s voice sounded from down the hall, and he looked over to see her walking his way. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail. The earpiece of a stethoscope peeked out of the pocket of her scrubs, and a look of worry darkened the even features of her face.

Relief washed over him and he shot to his feet. God, it was good to see her.

She was near enough not to shout when she said, “What are you doing here?”

“I got your message. Called you back, but you didn’t pick up.”

“I know. I’m on duty.” She glanced around and seemed to notice the teenager slouched in one of the nearby chairs. He appeared to be asleep, his iPhone tethered to his ears as he listened to music. Nonetheless, Laura shepherded Harrison away from the cluster of uncomfortable chairs.

“I knew you were working, but I just didn’t know if you . . . needed me. You told me to call you, and when I couldn’t get through . . .” He left the thought unfinished, thinking about how she’d challenged Justice. “I just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“Everything’s fine.” She glanced around again, very aware of others’ listening ears. As if on cue, an older nurse appeared from the south hallway, one Harrison recognized from Friday night. Perez, he remembered as she approached, a frown deepening across her face as her gaze fell on him.

“You’re that reporter,” she said, her dark eyes moving from him to Laura.

“I’m following up on the victims of Justice Turnbull’s attack,” Harrison said to shift the spotlight from Laura.

“One of them was released earlier today,” Laura answered, giving him a grateful look, which Perez didn’t see.

“I’m assuming that would be Dr. Zellman, as he had the less critical injuries?” Harrison asked.

“I really can’t give out any patient information,” Laura said, and he caught the warning in her eyes.

Nurse Perez jumped in. “Mr . . . . ?”

“Frost,” Harrison supplied. “Harrison Frost with the
Seaside Breeze
.”

“Frost,” she repeated. “If you have questions, there’s a protocol. Talking to our nursing staff isn’t the way it’s done.” She shot Laura a warning glance.

Harrison nodded. “All right. I’ll check with the front desk and have them connect me with your media liaison.”

“Good,” Perez said with a bite. She looked Harrison up and down, clearly wondering at his easy capitulation.

He sketched a good-bye to both Nurse Perez and Laura, keeping up appearances, but his jaw was rock hard on his way back to his Chevy. Perez’s attitude bugged the hell out of him, but he reminded himself that Laura was healthy and safe. That was all he really cared about here, at Ocean Park. As he was getting into his vehicle, his cell rang and it was Laura.

“I only have a second,” she said. “I’m off around eight tonight.”

“I’ve got a meeting with a woman from the TCSD at the same time,” he said. “I’ll come by your place afterward.” He made it a statement, but he was waiting for an answer. “Make sure Nurse Ratchet isn’t with you.”

“Nurse Rat . . . Oh, I get it. Funny,” she muttered, and he thought there might be relief in her tone. “Trust me, Perez slash Ratchet is not invited.”

“Good.”

“See you.”

“Looking forward to it, Lorelei,” he said, meaning it.

“Only my family calls me that,” she told him again.

“I know.”

“Okay,” she said after a moment and then hung up.

Lang checked the clock in his Jeep: 5:15 p.m. He was driving back from the crime scene site, where he’d met with Deputy Delaney and viewed the dead male body that had attracted the carrion birds. He and Delaney had ended up hanging around a lot longer than either of them wanted while the CSI team swarmed over the scene and the ME finally arrived and examined the body before it was sent to the morgue.

“Busy day for Gilmore,” Delaney had said, referring to the medical examiner. “First the body at the nursing home and now this guy.”

Lang had nodded. “I’m going to check in at the department and then call it a day.”

“You and me both,” Delaney had said, giving a last look around, his nose wrinkling in distaste.

Lang drove straight to the TCSD without encountering too much traffic and caught O’Halloran as the sheriff was getting ready to leave. “The would-be wife’s on her way from Salem to see if the body belongs to James Cosmo Danielson, her significant other,” O’Halloran informed him as they stood on the worn wood floor of the hallway outside the sheriff’s office.

“Did our Jane Doe’s picture hit the news?” Lang asked.

“Uh-huh. Got her photo and Turnbull’s posted about everywhere we can think of.”

“Okay. I’ve got a little paperwork to finish. Then I’m outta here. Unless there’s anything more to do tonight?”

O’Halloran sighed and shook his head. “Nope.”

“Nothing from the cars watching the lighthouse or the motel?”

“We’re having to move around and answer other calls, you know,” the sheriff said, a bit defensively. “We’re short staffed already and stretched thin with this Turnbull business and the Tyler Mill fire, along with everything else, but we’re still patrolling regularly. Somebody’ll find him.”

Lang had fallen in step beside the sheriff as the older man headed for the back door. They could see through a window to the back lot and together watched as a beat-up Ford Focus dragging its back fender suddenly careened through the mud puddles of the parking lot and came to an abrupt halt outside the back door.

“Who’s this?” O’Halloran muttered.

“Don’t know.”

A woman jumped out of the Ford, her long brown hair a mass of tangles, a baby in one arm and a toddler stuck to her leg like a burr, holding on to her around a tie-dyed dress of olive green, brown, and burnt orange that looked as if it could use a good cleaning.

“Glad I’m leaving,” the sheriff muttered.

“Me, too,” Lang said.

As she was obviously headed for the back door, they both retraced their footsteps into the hallway, giving her room. Then she burst inside, her face red and puffy, her eyes wild, still balancing both of her kids. The back door was used almost exclusively by the members of the sheriff’s department, and when she entered, May Johnson steamed over to bar her from entering.

“Ma’am, you are not allowed through here,” Johnson told her sternly.

“I’ve got my sister’s car!” the woman wailed. “I have to see him! I have to see Cosmo! Oh, God.”

“The would-be wife,” Lang realized in an aside to O’Halloran. He felt instant sympathy for her. She was frantic and then there were the little kids. . . .

“Ahh.” The sheriff nodded.

“Ma’am . . .” Officer Johnson had on her deepest scowl.

Which cut no ice with the newcomer, who screeched hysterically, “Where is he? Where’s my man? Oh, God. Oh, please, please, God, where’s my beautiful man!” And then she collapsed on the floor along with her children, and for once May Johnson looked perplexed and at a complete loss.

CHAPTER 24

H
arrison was buzzed into the reception area of Seagull Pointe and then was immediately greeted with suspicion by the woman at the desk as soon as he said he was a reporter. This was nothing new; it was a condition of the job, a reporter’s bane. After dealing with her, he was ushered swiftly into a small room with a calming decor: gray walls, a jade plant near the window, a seascape mounted over a bookcase that held a few tomes, including the Holy Bible. He took a chair at the round Formica-topped table and faced both the director of the place, Darius Morrow, a man in his late sixties with a pious expression and a way of folding his hands in front of him in a holier-than-thou way that set Harrison’s teeth on edge, and his female head nurse/administrator/jailer, Inga Anderssen, who, if you looked in the dictionary, the picture beside her name would read “Battle-ax.”

“You need to be a relative to receive information on a patient,” Darius informed him as soon as he asked about Madeline Turnbull. The man had a habit of wrinkling his nose, as if there were a bad smell in the room, and with the way he held his hands, he looked as if he were about to pray.

“I understand Madeline died from either smothering or strangulation,” Harrison said.

“Confidentiality, Mr. Frost,” he was reminded tartly.

“The police are investigating,” Harrison pointed out. He was winging it, in a way, but Geena Cho’s information was generally golden, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch, and he’d seen a cruiser parked outside. “They’re going to release her name to the media soon enough. I’m going to start reporting today, one way or another. You can give me facts, or I can go on conjecture.”

Inga had leaned close to him, glaring at his audacity, but Darius held up a smooth white palm. “Seagull Pointe is a prime facility with an excellent reputation. Of course we don’t want
conjecture.
”

Harrison thought he heard a little capitulation in his tone. Just a little. “It sounds like Justice Turnbull came to your facility, found his mother, and killed her.”

“That is untrue. He could not get in,” Inga snapped as she threw Darius a harsh look that said as well as any words, “Don’t buy into his BS.” To Harrison, she said aloud, “The doors are locked.”

“You need a code,” Darius explained and Harrison nodded; he’d been granted entry by the woman at the desk, who clearly watched every newcomer enter with a suspicious eye.

“But if he had the code, he could get in any door, right? He wouldn’t have to pass the front desk.” Harrison sat back in his chair, growing impatient with the way they carefully thought through every response.

Both Darius and Inga stared straight ahead, as if they were both, independently, trying hard not to give away something on their faces. Harrison reviewed what he’d just said, and it came to him as if their thoughts had materialized in the air in front of him. “The desk isn’t manned at night.”

“After ten,” Darius admitted.

“But he’d still need a code.” Harrison was puzzling it out. “Is it a big secret, or just a means to contain the patients with dementia?”

“He’s never been here before,” Inga stated. “He would not know it.”

“Before,” Harrison repeated. “So, you do think he did come last night. And it’s definitely what the sheriff’s department thinks, too.” When they didn’t respond, he said, “The other woman he killed . . . maybe she gave him the code?”

“She wasn’t a patient here,” Darius told him. “She is no one we know.”

“Maybe she was visiting someone?”

“She was a stranger,” Inga said firmly.

“You know everyone who visits everyone?”

Darius dropped his pious look for a brief moment to shrug and spread his hands. “This is a nursing home and an assisted-living facility,” he explained. “If a new face comes through, it’s noticed. Someone notices. No one knows this woman, and she would not have been able . . .” He let his voice trail off, as if realizing he was giving away more information than necessary.

“Would not have been able . . . to . . . let him in? Because she was already injured before she arrived?” It was like pulling teeth.

“She was not attacked at Seagull Pointe!” Inga declared.

On this, he thought she might be right. She came here with him, Harrison realized. And, on the heels of that thought . . . She was his transportation.

Darius pointedly consulted his watch at the same moment Harrison’s phone bleeped at him: a new message. He glanced down and saw it was a Portland number. He was pretty sure it was Pauline Kirby.

“Excuse us,” Darius said, and he and Inga turned toward the south hallway. Harrison headed back to the reception area, but tried to keep out of earshot, searching for a modicum of privacy. He found a nook with a fake ficus tree and a window that overlooked the parking lot and punched out the number for his mailbox. Sure enough it was Pauline who had left him a voice mail.

Phone tag,
he thought.
Pain in the ass.
Punching in his security code, he waited for his voice mail to deliver.

“Hey, there.” Pauline’s assured tone reached his ears. “You avoiding me, Frost? And just when we found each other again. Give me a call. We’re rolling, but I’d like your thoughts. . . .” She rattled off her cell number, which matched the one on his caller ID.

Yeah, right. She’d like his thoughts. She’d like to rip the facts that Harrison had gathered, put her own spin on them, and regurgitate them like they were her own.

Sure thing, Pauline. Can’t wait for it.

Nevertheless he called her back, once more deflected by her voice mail. Tersely, he told her he would be available most of the afternoon. Hanging up, he gave a mental shrug. What the hell did he really care, anyway? If Pauline wanted to bounce over to the Deadly Sinners story, so be it; he couldn’t stop her. Harrison planned to meet with Noah Vernon the next day and hopefully get the boy’s skewed perspective on the whole thing, but then he was going to move full speed ahead on the Justice Turnbull investigation.

An older gentleman in a V-necked navy sweater and gray sweatpants came into the reception area from the north side hallway at that moment. He was pushing an empty wheelchair in front of him. Seeing Harrison, he cocked his head. “You the one who was talking to our esteemed director just now? What’s his name again?”

“You mean Darius Morrow?”

“Oh, yes.” He pursed his lips and rolled his eyes like he’d had more than enough of Morrow.

Having been brushed off by both Morrow and Anderssen, Harrison considered this new source. The receptionist looked like she wanted to say something, but then the desk phone rang and she was forced to answer it. Taking his moment, Harrison crossed to meet the man. He could feel the woman at the desk shooting him daggers. He half expected her to slam down the phone and call security.

“I’m Herm Smythe,” the older man greeted him with a handshake. “Mind if I sit down?” He indicated the chair he was pushing.

“Do it,” Harrison invited, holding the chair while Herm worked his way around to the other side, sinking heavily into its leather seat, heaving a sigh.

“Who’d you come to see?” Herm asked him and waved toward the hallway, as if he expected Harrison to push his chair.