CHAPTER EIGHT
It was Novak’s idea to get out of the Hargrove for a bit—not just to stretch their legs, but to give Hale a break. And because they’d missed lunch, grabbing a bite to eat while going over the notes they’d gathered so far seemed like a good idea.
They decided on a restaurant four blocks from the Hargrove on a side street that ran parallel to Monument Avenue.
It was an Indian restaurant that occupied a narrow room with eight tables and a handwritten specials board.
It was called Saffron and was identified only by a small sign above the door that a person could easily miss if they weren't looking for it.
Novak had found it on his phone while they were still in the elevator.
They ordered samosas and a paneer dish to share. Novak sipped on a Coke while Rachel enjoyed a chai. With their food and drinks at hand, Rachel spread the tenant list across the table between their plates.
Rachel picked up a samosa and looked at the list. Purcell had done thorough work, that was for sure.
Each name came with a unit number, floor, approximate age, length of tenancy, and a brief note on whether the resident had been interviewed by local PD.
Checkmarks ran down the right-hand column in clusters, with gaps where residents had been unavailable or unresponsive.
"Forty-two units, all occupied," she said. "Thirty-five of them interviewed by Purcell's team.”
“Yeah, it seems that there were a few that have been out of town. There’s a note somewhere that the occupant in 2-D has been in Spain for almost two months. And another note says there were three people who simply refused to open their doors.”
"Three people in a building where three residents have died in six weeks didn't open their doors to the police…"
"Privacy is very important to some people," Novak said.
"So is not dying in your bed." She reached for her chai and added, "Maybe we should try those three ourselves."
Novak made a note on his phone. The samosas were good — crisp and well-spiced — and for a few minutes they ate and read without talking.
The lunch crowd had thinned by the time they'd arrived and only two other tables were occupied: a pair of women sharing a large dish near the window and a man eating alone at the back with a paperback propped against his water glass.
Rachel pulled the interview notes up on her phone and went back through them.
Most of what the PD had gathered from residents in the immediate aftermath of each death was consistent with what she and Novak had heard that morning.
These were people who were shaken and seemed to be completely baffled that that anything criminal could have happened in the Hargrove.
The word unthinkable appeared in three separate interview summaries, which she found telling in its own way. Not impossible. Unthinkable.
"Can I ask you something?" Novak said, not looking up from the list.
"You're going to regardless."
"Bernard Coles. 7-A. When we interviewed him this morning, did he strike you as nervous?"
Rachel thought about it. The pressed shirt, the straight posture, the offer of water. The forty-five minutes before a doctor's appointment that he seemed to make a point to mention. "Not exactly nervous. Careful, I’d say."
"Careful about what?"
"About being useful without being involved. There's a difference." She set her phone down and cupped her tea again. "He gave us Frank Deluca at chess, gave us the Baxter situation, and answered every question directly.
But he was…I don’t know…seemed like he was walking down a checklist, you know?"
"You think he knows something?" Rachel asked.
"I think he's lived on the seventh floor for however long and pays attention. Whether that means he knows something relevant…” He shrugged and said, "We can go back to him." He then looked at the paneer dish and then at Rachel. "Do you want the last of this or are you being polite?"
"I'm not being polite, I just didn't want to look grabby."
"It's lunch."
"Take it," she said. "I want to look at the floor breakdown."
She pulled the list back and ran her finger down the unit column, grouping by floor.
The deaths had occurred on three different floors — four, seven, and nine — with no obvious geographic pattern within the building.
The victims hadn't been neighbors. They hadn't been on adjacent floors and according to interviews and the preliminary police reports, they hadn’t been friends.
Whatever was connecting them wasn't proximity.
She looked at the ages clustered on each floor.
The building didn't appear to organize itself by age.
There were older residents scattered throughout, mixed in with the handful of middle-aged tenants.
Irene Baxter was listed at 6-A. She looked at the note Purcell had made beside Irene Baxter's name: 78.
Long-term resident, 21 years. Declined interview.
"Irene Baxter is one of the three who didn't open the door," Rachel said. “Seems weird, right?”
Novak looked up. "Interesting."
"Could be nothing. Could be she's just private." Rachel looked at the note beside Neil Baxter's name, which has been added to Irene’s as sort of an addendum: 54. Resident 3 years. Interviewed — cooperative but agitated. Repeated concerns re: building management response.
"Cooperative but agitated," she said.
"That tracks with what the residents told us about him."
"Our friend Mr. Mitchell, the retired judge, said someone ought to say something to his face." Rachel set the list down and picked up her tea. "Maybe we should be that someone."
"You want to antagonize a man whose only documented offense is being loud in an elevator?"
"I want to talk to the only name that keeps coming up. And I want to do it before he has a chance to hear we've been in the building all day and gets his story straight." She looked at him over the rim of the cup.
Novak smiled at that, briefly and without making a thing of it. "Agreed. We hit Neil Baxter first when we get back."
They finished the tea and Rachel paid after a bit of light-hearted arguing over the matter. It was the same way they’d argued about small things over the years, in a comfortable, low-stakes back and forth that always ended the same way. Novak left the tip.
Outside, the afternoon had gotten colder while they were inside. The sky had gone gray and the wind off the avenue moved with some purpose. Rachel buttoned her jacket as they walked, the Hargrove's green canopy visible after they’d covered the first three of the four blocks.
"There’s one thing that keeps nagging at me," Novak said, as they walked. "The security footage."
"Pruitt?"
"No, not Pruitt himself. But the idea of gaps in the footage before the police got their hands on it. When I spoke to Purcell, she said there seemed to be a few angles that don't cover certain parts of the building. The freight entrance, the stairwells, the basement corridor."
"Seems sort of standard for a building this age. They didn't design it for cameras."
"No," he said. "But someone who'd lived there for twenty-two years and knows every hallway and corner would know exactly where the gaps were."
Rachel didn't answer immediately. A gust came off the avenue and she turned her collar up. The Hargrove was half a block ahead, its limestone trim pale against the gray sky.
"Let's talk to Baxter first," she said. "It seems important that his name came up so often. I know he didn’t answer his door before, but maybe he’s back now.”
"Agreed." Novak glanced at his phone. "It's almost four."
"Then let's not stand around out here."
They crossed the last half block and pushed through the Hargrove's front door, back into the lobby's amber warmth and its deliberate quiet.
Rachel headed for the elevator without stopping at Hale's office.
She pressed 2 and they stood together, waiting for the elevator to arrive as she realized this building was, to her, starting to feel more like a haunted house than a historic hotel.