Chapter 38
The elevator doors opened onto the basement level of Adirondack Medical Center and the smell hit them before they'd taken two steps.
The same disinfectant and cold air from hours earlier.
Noah and Callie walked the corridor toward the ME's office with the fluorescent lights buzzing above them and the sound of their footsteps echoing off the tile in a way that made the basement feel emptier than it was.
Adelaide looked up from her desk when they appeared in the doorway. Her reading glasses were on and a stack of files sat in front of her, paperwork that accumulated around a body like sediment around a stone. She frowned.
"That was fast. I'm still waiting on the dental records. These things take time, you know. I can't just snap my fingers."
"It's not about that," Noah said.
Adelaide took her glasses off and set them on the desk. "Okay. What can I do for you?"
"Jessie Maddox. Does that name mean anything to you?"
"Should it?"
"She was a nurse here. Went missing a long time ago. Her daughter told us she worked at Adirondack Medical Center before she joined the Three Pillar Community."
Adelaide leaned back in her chair and thought about it. "How long ago are we talking?"
"Twenty-one years."
She shook her head. "I've only been here about four years. Never heard the name." She paused. "But there are plenty of nurses who have been here longer than me. Maybe even a doctor or two. Your best bet would be the front desk. They can point you to whoever's been on staff the longest."
"Thanks, Addie,” Noah said.
Noah and Callie turned to leave. They were almost through the door when Adelaide's voice followed them.
"Actually, you know who you should ask? Lydia Holt. She's been here longer than anyone. Twenty-seven years, if I remember right. If this Jessie Maddox worked here, Lydia would have overlapped with her."
Noah stopped in the doorway. "Good thought. Is she in today?"
"No, it's her day off. But Paul was here earlier. He might still be around if you want to leave a message with him."
Noah turned around. "Hold on. Paul works here?"
Adelaide looked at him with the mild confusion. "Oh, he doesn't work here. He volunteers. Has done for a couple of years now, since his father passed. Mopping, emptying bins, that sort of thing. It gives him purpose." She smiled. "He's a sweet guy."
"Right," Noah said. "Thanks."
He walked out of the office and into the corridor.
Callie was beside him. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead and the basement stretched out in front of them.
It was the same corridor that Hailey Benton would have walked down the night she disappeared.
The same floor Paul Holt mopped. The same building where a girl had entered a stairwell, vanished from the cameras, and had never been seen again.
Lydia had told him Paul helped around the property. Helped his sister with the kids. Didn't need a job. She'd bristled when Noah pushed on employment. Talked about the hardware store disaster. The boys who made fun of him. The mother who never put him through that again.
She never mentioned the hospital.
They were halfway to the elevator when Callie looked at him.
"What is it?"
"What's what?"
"Your face just changed. What did Adelaide say that I missed?"
Noah pressed the elevator button. The doors opened immediately, the car already waiting on the basement level. They stepped inside and he hit the button for the main floor.
"When I spoke with Lydia at her farm, she told me her son didn't work."
"Maybe she meant employed. Volunteering isn't the same thing." Callie watched him. "Why? You tracking something?"
The elevator climbed. Noah stared at the numbers above the door. "Not sure."
The doors opened onto the main floor. The lobby was busy with the mid-afternoon traffic of a small hospital, visitors signing in, a nurse pushing a wheelchair toward radiology, an orderly mopping near the vending machines. Noah glanced at the orderly as they passed. Not Paul.
They approached the front desk. A woman in her thirties with her hair clipped back and a lanyard around her neck looked up from her screen.
"Hi. Is there anyone on staff, nurses or doctors, who's been here for more than twenty years? We're trying to track down someone who might have known a former employee."
The woman frowned and looked at the colleague sitting beside her, a younger man sorting through a stack of intake forms. "Do you know who's been here over twenty years?"
He shook his head. "I've been here a year."
"Sorry," the woman said. "I don't really know off the top of my head. HR might be able to pull that for you but they're closed for the day."
"That's fine," Noah said. "What about Paul Holt? He volunteers here. Is he still around?"
The woman glanced at the sign-in sheet on the counter, running her finger down the column. "Paul signed out about an hour ago."
"Thanks."
They walked toward the exit. The automatic doors slid open and the afternoon air came in, cooler than the hospital's recycled warmth. The parking lot stretched out in front of them, half full, the mountains visible beyond the tree line at the far edge.
A light rain had begun to fall.
"I'm going to drive out to Lydia's farm. Follow up on Jessie Maddox. See if she remembers anyone Jessie was close to."
"You want me to come?"
"No. Do me a favor. Stay here and pull the volunteer records for Paul. Check the dates. Then pull the external camera logs for the night Hailey disappeared. I want to know if Paul was signed in that evening."
Callie studied him. "You think he might have something to do with this?"
"Anything is possible."
She held his gaze for a moment, reading whatever was behind his eyes. Then she nodded.
"I'll call you as soon as I have something," she said.
"Do that."
Noah got into the Bronco and pulled out of the hospital lot. He turned south toward Mountain Lane, where the pavement turned to gravel and the gravel turned to ruts and the cell signal dropped to nothing.