CHAPTER FOUR
They found parking on a side street half a block east of Monument Avenue and walked to the building.
The Hargrove announced itself before they reached the corner.
It was a broad, ten-story brick building with limestone trim along its window frames.
Its setback entrance was framed by a low stone balustrade.
It was plain to see that it was the oldest building on the block.
The facade had been cleaned at some point recently, which gave the brick a faintly scrubbed quality that made it look less its age without entirely disguising it.
A canopy in dark green stretched over the entrance, its brass fittings polished and its fringe hanging perfectly still in the cold morning air.
Rachel took it all in as they approached.
There were flower boxes on several of the upper floor windows, empty now in late October.
A black iron lamp post stood at the edge of the walkway.
The lobby, visible through the glass doors, had the warm amber tones of a place that had spent a century looking comfortable and refined.
Novak pulled the door open and held it for her.
Inside, the lobby ran deep and smelled of old wood and something faintly floral.
The floors were dark marble, the ceiling high and coffered, and an elevator with a brass accordion gate stood against the far wall.
Two upholstered chairs near the front window were positioned toward the windows, though they had likely never been used for actual sitting.
The building had the contained, deliberate stillness of somewhere that prided itself on running quietly.
Rachel thought local design and travel magazines might describe it as “a hidden gem” or something similar.
A man came out of a door to the left of the elevator before they'd taken more than a few steps. He was in his late fifties, with a full head of silver hair and a face that looked chiseled despite the apparent age lines. He wore a dark blazer over a collared shirt and moved with the bearing of a man who had greeted many people in this lobby and never got tired of it. She assumed, though, that he approached it with much more enthusiasm when those visitors weren’t federal agents.
"Agents." He said it flatly, confirming Rachel’s suspicions, and extended his hand. "Conrad Hale. I’m the building manager."
They showed credentials after they were greeted by handshakes. Hale looked at both IDs with more attention than was strictly necessary before he met their eyes again.
"We appreciate you making time," Rachel said.
"I wasn't given much of a choice, if you want the truth." He said this without heat, almost conversationally. He then turned toward the office he'd come from and waved them along. "Come in."
The office was small and orderly, with a desk that faced the door and a single window looking out onto the side alley.
Framed photos of the building's exterior at various points in its history lined one wall.
Hale went behind the desk but didn't sit, which kept things from feeling like a meeting. Rachel rather appreciated the move.
"I've already spoken with Detective Purcell twice this week," he said. "I've cooperated fully with her office. I want that on record."
"Noted," Novak said. “And that is also listed in the case notes. So I hope that level of cooperation continues here, today.”
"I also want it understood that this building has been in continuous operation since 1924,” Hale said, completely ignoring Novak’s comment.
“We have forty-two units and a waiting list that currently runs to two years.
Our residents choose this building because it offers a certain standard.
Three deaths in six weeks, regardless of their nature, is something I'd rather not have associated with the Hargrove's name. "
"We understand," Rachel said. "And we'll be as discreet as we can."
"I would hope so.” Hale looked at her for a moment. Something in his assessment shifted, though not enough to call it a change of mood. "What do you need?"
"Access to your staff. Anyone who works in the building, maintenance, front desk, cleaning. And we may need to speak to residents, depending on how the line of investigation goes."
"The residents here are private people. Some of them have been in this building for twenty years. They're not going to take kindly to being questioned."
"We'll be respectful," Rachel said. "But just be prepared for the likelihood that we may need to speak with them."
"I'll make it known that you're here." He said it carefully, emphasizing the gap between making it known and guaranteeing anything. "I can't force anyone to open their door."
"We don't expect you to," Novak said. "We'd also like to see the most recent crime scene. Sylvia Marsh's apartment."
Hale's jaw tightened slightly. "It's been released by Detective Purcell's office. I was going to have it cleaned this week."
"We'd ask you to hold off on that," Rachel said.
There was another pause, which Hale ended with an abrupt sigh. "Fine." He reached into his desk drawer and produced a key card; he set it on the desk without quite handing it over. "Seventh floor. 7-C. I'll take you up."
The elevator was slow and the brass gate made a sound when it closed—a metallic clang that rang out through the lobby and probably through several floors above.
Hale stood facing the doors with his hands clasped behind his back.
Nobody spoke as the numbers climbed slowly above the gate: three, four, five.
"How long had Sylvia Marsh lived here?" Rachel asked, finally breaking the silence.
"Eleven years."
"Did you know her well?"
"I know all of my residents." He said it with the weight of a policy rather than affection...like knowing them was a task to be checked off a list. "She was pleasant. Quiet. She'd had some health issues in recent months but was managing."
"Did she have family nearby?"
"A son. He lives in Charlotte, I believe. He was here last week."
The elevator reached the seventh floor with a slight lurch and Hale pulled the gate back.
The hallway was carpeted in a deep burgundy runner, and the walls were papered in a pattern that probably hadn't been updated since the eighties.
But it had all been kept immaculate enough that it didn't matter much.
7-C was the third door on the right. Hale used his master key and pushed it open, then stepped back.
"I'll be downstairs if you need me," he said.
Rachel watched Hale walk away for a moment before she and Novak stepped inside.
Almost instantly, the apartment showed clear signs of a life managed with care and increasing difficulty.
The living room furniture was good quality and had been for a long time — a rolled-arm sofa in ivory, a mahogany side table, a floor lamp with a silk shade that had developed a slight lean.
Several framed photos sat on the bookshelf beside the television, including a row of Reader's Digest condensed books that no one had touched in probably twenty years.
The bedroom was off to the left. They both naturally headed in that direction without discussing it. The bed had been stripped by the forensics team and the bare mattress had the stark, slightly indecent look of something that had never meant to be seen.
Rachel turned back into the hallway and entered the bathroom.
The medicine cabinet was closed but a side table next to the toilet held an overflow of what wouldn't fit inside: a blood pressure cuff, a digital thermometer, a small notebook with what appeared to be blood pressure readings logged by hand in neat columns.
She opened the cabinet shelf above the sink and counted five prescription bottles arranged in a neat row.
She took out her phone and photographed them without touching anything.
One was a sleep aid, and another was a stool softener.
There was also a cholesterol supplement whose label had been refilled so many times the original print had worn through.
Five bottles, two of which were for fairly regular causes, made Rachel think Sylvia Marsh had been in decent health for her age.
She stood in the bathroom doorway for a moment, looking back toward the bedroom. Novak was photographing the nightstand.
"Five prescription bottles," she said. "She seemed to be in decent health, all things considered."
Novak glanced up, nodded, and went back to his inspection of the bedroom.
Rachel went back to the living room. A folded walker stood against the wall near the front door, the kind with the hand brakes and a small basket mounted between the front legs.
There was a pair of slip-resistant slippers tucked beneath the console table, and a small sewing kit sitting perfectly in the center.
Everything here had been adapted to accommodate old age.
The furniture was pushed back slightly, and a rubber-backed mat had been placed in front of the kitchen sink.
Sylvia Marsh had been making this apartment work for her body. She'd been doing it thoughtfully and without apparent help, and from the look of the place, she'd intended to keep doing it.
Rachel moved to the kitchen window and looked down at Monument Avenue seven floors below.
Two people were walking a dog along the far sidewalk, bundled against the cold.
A delivery truck idled at the corner. From up here, Monument Avenue opened up in both directions, the trees lining the median stripped to their branches.
She thought about Eleanor, lying in her room on the ground floor of a Victorian a few miles north of here, working through a list of books she intended to finish.
She then thought of Sylvia’s blood pressure readings logged in the little notebook by the toilet, the prescription bottles lined up carefully.
Rachel looked to the walker by the door with its basket and its hand brakes and a phrase popped up into her mind that made her feel sick for a moment.
Angel of mercy.
She’d read up on angel of mercy cases before—cases where someone killed elderly people under the guise of ending their suffering.
As she stood in Sylvia’s apartment, she couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what they were looking at.
All three victims had been in their late seventies or early eighties.
But based on what she’d gathered from the bathroom, Sylvia Marsh had been in decent health.
Still, it was possible. It was the first thing that fit, really.
They had an elderly resident with significant medical needs, living alone, the death ruled natural causes until someone looked more carefully.
She'd seen two angel of mercy cases during her career, both involving a caregiver with access, both with a logic to them that the perpetrator believed was kindness.
The five bottles on the shelf and the walker by the door could, in that reading, look like evidence of a suffering worth ending.
Of course, the so-called “suffering” would be defined by the killer, which then boiled the entire thing down to guesswork on her end.
Rachel still believed that there was no sense in this apartment of someone waiting to die. There was the sense, instead, of someone who had made an arrangement with her own aging, had worked out the terms of it, and had been keeping to it without complaint.
She was still looking at the street below when Novak appeared in the kitchen doorway.
"Anything in the bedroom?" she asked.
"Nothing that wasn't already in Purcell's notes. No signs of entry, no disturbance. And according to the ME’s notes, her body showed no defensive injuries.”
Rachel nodded, looking all around the living area again. She decided not to share her angel of mercy thoughts yet, though she couldn’t help but wonder if Novak had already considered it.
“Any ideas about next steps?”
Rachel figured that if they really wanted a clearer picture on the lives and the health of the victims, the most reliable source was all around them.
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go find somewhere to work. I’d like to speak with the residents, but I want to check all three victims in the bureau database first.”
“You know, that lobby downstairs looked pretty nice,” he said with a grin.
“It did. You think Hale would be cool with us using it?”
“Only one way to find out,” Novak said, heading for the door.