CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
The bathroom mirror gave back a version of herself she barely recognized. Her hair was gray with dust, matted in places where she'd pressed against the passage walls during the climb. There was also a dark smear across her left cheekbone that turned out to be old grease from one of the iron rungs.
She ran the water hot and bent over the sink, working her fingers through her hair and watching the water run off brown before it went clear, then straightened and used a washcloth from the rack above the toilet to scrub her face and arms and the back of her neck.
Her ribs ached when she twisted to reach her shoulder blades, a deep, bruised ache that she knew was going to be worse tomorrow.
She worked as methodically as she could, not rushing it.
When she finally looked in the mirror again, the person looking back at her was at least recognizable, if not exactly fresh.
She came back out into Irene Baxter's apartment to find it transformed.
Purcell and three members of her team were working the unit, two of them already in and out of the spare bedroom where the access panel stood open.
Their voices were low and professional as they documented everything.
The passage beyond it was lit now by portable work lights someone had threaded in from the entry point, casting a flat, bright glow into a space that had never been designed to hold light.
A crime scene tech she didn't recognize was working the floor near the baseboard, photographing the boot prints pressed into decades of dust.
Conrad Hale stood near the living room window with his arms crossed and a look of agony on his face.
He wasn't saying anything to anyone, just standing there taking it in, and when Rachel came far enough into the room that he could see her, his expression shifted into something she could only describe as grief.
He opened his mouth once and then closed it again.
She gave him a short nod and kept moving.
She found Novak near the hallway, standing with Neil Baxter.
Neil looked hollowed out in a different way than when they’d last seen him.
She crossed toward them, already calculating the hours ahead.
She knew there were more feds on the way, and there would be statements to give, the building to manage, and then dealing with all of the residents who had started drifting into the hallway in ones and twos as word spread from floor to floor.
She could only imagine the PR nightmare poor Conrad Hale was going to have to manage over the next few weeks.
As for her and Novak, it was 5:40 in the afternoon now, and the coming evening and night was going to be long and complicated.
Novak noticed her coming and said something quiet to Neil, who nodded and stepped back. Novak moved toward Rachel and pulled her slightly away from the doorway.
There was a fresh bandage at the back of his head, white against his dark hair, and someone had gotten him a clean shirt from somewhere. It was a bit too small, pulled tight across the shoulders. He looked better than he had an hour ago but still not entirely steady.
“Stitches?” she asked, nodding to his head.
“Eventually, They say no more than ten or fifteen. But, listen…I just got word," he said, keeping his voice low. "Pruitt died somewhere between getting wheeled out of the ambulance and into Intensive Care about ten minutes ago."
Rachel absorbed the news, and thought back to a moment just thirty minutes ago.
Her, Novak, and Detective Purcell had dragged Pruitt's crumpled body out through one of the lower access panels, the three of them working in near-silence in the cramped space, while the paramedics waited.
He'd still been breathing then, shallow and irregular, his face slack, the angle of his neck wrong in a way that had told her even then that the fall had done something beyond what the gunshot had.
A fractured skull, a dislocated ankle, and a broken neck, the paramedic had said.
And those were only the visible things, in addition to a bullet through the right knee.
Novak watched her face. "You good?"
"Yeah." She looked toward the spare bedroom, where one of Purcell's team was coming back out through the panel for the second time, brushing dust from her sleeves. "I'm going to go check in with Purcell. There's a lot left to work through tonight."
She was halfway to the bedroom doorway when her phone buzzed against her hip.
She pulled it out and looked at the screen.
It was Jack. The call display showing his name while she was on a case that had just broken wide open made her pause.
He understood better than anyone outside the job what a call at the wrong moment could cost. He did not call unless it was something that couldn't wait.
Her first thought was Paige. She stepped into the hallway before she answered, pulling the apartment door partly shut behind her. "Hey," she said. "What’s up?”
"Hey." His voice was careful in the way it got when he was working up to something. "I'm sorry to call. I know you're in the middle of it."
"Oh…it’s pretty much over, but…God, it’s been weird. Anyway…is everything okay?”
"The hospice center called about half an hour ago," he said, and his voice sounded heavy. "Eleanor took a turn this morning. They're not sure she'll make it through the night. They said Eleanor was asking specifically for you and…I’m sorry, Rachel.”
Rachel stood in the hallway with her back against the wall, the apartment noise muffled behind the closed door. She pressed her free hand flat against the wall beside her and felt the plaster there, solid and cool, and thought about Eleanor's book list…a list that would never be finished.
They’d thought she had months. Maye as much as half a year on the bright side. But something had changed and…
"Thank you for calling," she said. “I’m going to try to get over there to see her.”
"I'm sorry, Rachel,” he said again.
"I know. I'll be home when I can."
She ended the call and stood there for another moment with the phone in her hand.
Through the apartment door she could hear Purcell's voice, steady and low, directing her team.
Somewhere further along the hallway another door opened and a resident peered out and then retreated again at the sight of the police tape.
Rachel went back inside. Novak was where she'd left him, watching her from across the room with careful attention. He cocked his head, asking without words: You okay?
"I have to go," she said. “Sort of a family thing. Sort of. I…”
He looked at her face and seemed to read enough of it not to press. "That’s fine. Go do what you need to do. I'll hold things down here."
“Thank you.”
She left the apartment without looking back at Hale or Neil Baxter or the lit-up opening in the spare bedroom wall. Beyond the hall, she took the stairs rather than waiting for the elevator, moving down through the quiet floors of the Hargrove toward the lobby and the waiting afternoon outside.
And by the time she reached the lowering sunlight, she was running.