Chapter Nineteen #3
Jude remembered the sound of the winch lowering the casket into Myrna’s grave.
Emmy snorted a laugh. “I Tell-Tale Hearted myself.”
Jude smiled. The Edgar Allan Poe story had been one of Myrna’s favorites. A murderer is driven mad by the imagined sound of his victim’s heartbeat. She quoted, “‘And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?’”
Emmy managed a half-smile. She turned over the watch, looking at the details. “Mom would be furious at me for being so weak.”
“Grieving is not a weakness.”
Emmy sighed. “Cole’s waiting for me.”
“Wait.” Jude didn’t want to let go of this moment. She knew it could be one of the last. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“That I don’t have time for this.” Emmy looked up at the building.
“I’ve got a suspect on the loose. Half my force is out looking for him while I’m freaking out in my car.
My son thinks I’m too scared to arrest Bill Garrison because he beats women.
You keep trying to leave and I keep needing you to Humpty-Dumpty me back together.
I hate delegating. My second-in-command calls me Hellbitch behind my back.
The mean girls I went to high school with are trashing me online.
There’s a little girl in a hospital room fighting for her life and I’m sitting in a car holding a watch. ”
For once, Jude knew exactly what to say. “You know, Hellbitch was the name of one of the horses on the Lewis and Clark Expedition.”
Emmy laughed so loudly the sound bounced around the car. Jude laughed, too. This was the trap of their closeness. Jude had always known she loved her daughter. She hadn’t realized how much she would genuinely like her.
“Okay.” Emmy wiped her eyes. “Let’s get this over with.”
Emmy tucked the watch into her pocket as they got out of the car.
Jude looked at Taybee’s Mercedes. She knew she should leave, but she followed Emmy to the building.
They both slowed as they crossed the threshold.
It was the smell. The heavily scented cleaning agents, plug-in deodorizers and floral arrangements that provided a sickly-sweet cover to the underlying odor of sickness.
“Mom?” Cole rounded the corner at the end of the hall. He must’ve seen them on the CCTV. “I got the APB on my phone. Did you find Shane Russell?”
“Not yet.” Emmy tightened the Velcro on her duty vest as if she was refastening her armor. “Report.”
“I spoke to a nurse, Teena Nixon. She took care of Mitch Bellingham while he was in hospice. She couldn’t give me information on his health because of HIPAA, but he was in hospice, so it’s not like it was a surprise when he died.
I asked security to see the visitor logs. There’s only one name on Mitch’s list.”
Cole took a dramatic pause.
“Allison Vickery.”
Jude smiled at his clever work. He’d earned the drama.
Emmy asked, “How many times did Allison visit?”
“Couple times a week starting back in August. Usually stayed around an hour each time.”
Emmy looked at Jude. “She started talking to him two months ago.”
Cole said, “Mitch was still on the senior living floor when the visits started. Then she followed him up to hospice. Teena’s working up there now. I cleared it with her supervisor for you to talk to her.”
“Okay,” Emmy said. “What else?”
“I asked the security guard to put together CCTV clips of Allison’s visits.
Mitch was in a wheelchair toward the end.
Once he was in hospice, they kept to the break room.
The cameras have microphones, but the sound’s not great because they usually took a table in the far corner, but you can see them talking. ”
“Good,” Emmy said. “Who else visited?”
“He’s got a son and some grandkids, but it looks like the last time they were here was over a year ago. I emailed you their contact details. They had a service clean out Mitch’s room after he died last week. The guard told me everything went to the thrift store.”
Emmy nodded. Her hand went into her pocket. She was holding on to the watch again.
Jude said, “Good work. Is that all?”
Cole hooked his thumbs in his vest. “The security guard knows what he’s looking for. I’m gonna go out and search for Russell.”
“No, I need you to stay here.” Emmy spoke with a steely intensity.
“Shane Russell’s already spoken to your aunt twice.
Once is a coincidence. Twice is a warning.
He knows what I look like. He probably knows where we live.
I’ve got this whole county turned upside down searching for him.
He’s gonna be desperate and violent. He’s not gonna want to go back to prison.
I don’t want you anywhere near that man. Do you understand?”
“No.” Cole’s eyes flickered to Jude, then back to Emmy. “Why?”
“Coleman, this isn’t a discussion. Text me when that CCTV is ready.”
Jude shot Cole a look of sympathy before following Emmy to the elevator.
Emmy opened a text on her phone. “I’m telling Julian to check Russell’s visitor log while he was in prison going back to day one.”
The elevator doors opened. Emmy let Jude go first. Her hand went to the button for Myrna’s floor, then she caught herself and hit the number for hospice. The doors closed. The backs were coated in a flat white vinyl. Emmy’s silence lasted eight floors.
She asked, “You ever get tired of being right?”
“About your not wanting to put Cole in danger?”
“Yep.”
“Did Dad ever hold you back?”
“Dad didn’t grow me in his belly and almost die pushing me out.”
The doors slid open. The lights were low in the hallway.
Jude felt her own tension mirrored by Emmy as they walked toward the nurses’ station.
They were both intimately familiar with the layout of the Azalea Place Assisted Living and Nursing Home.
Tommy had joked that the building was like a ladder to Valhalla.
Active seniors filled the lower floors. The rehab patients were housed above them.
Then long-term care. Then the memory care center. The top floor was devoted to hospice.
When people talked about the five stages of grief, they tended to erroneously ascribe them to the grieving rather than the dying.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross had designed the model to help terminally ill patients face their own deaths.
By the time most people entered hospice, they had reached the stage of acceptance.
There was a calmness about them, a quiet resignation.
Jude saw cheerful signs, photographs, and greeting cards on the walls as they walked to the nurses’ station.
TVs softly chattered behind closed doors.
It was so different from the memory care center, where every step toward acceptance was lost to memory.
Over and over, they forgot where they were, why they were here, the very fact of their dying.
Jude likened it to a cruel form of stasis.
Teena Nixon looked up from her computer when they approached. She was older than Jude, her white hair curled tight to her head. Heart stickers bordered her name tag. Her pink scrubs were dotted with flowers.
“Ms. Nixon,” Emmy said. “I’m Sheriff Clifton, this is Dr. Archer. She’s consulting on a case with my department.”
“Teena.” Her smile was warm and open. “Sheriff Clifton, what a well-mannered son you’ve raised. He told me your mother was a patient here. May her memory be a blessing.”
“Uh—thank you.” Emmy’s hand went into her pocket again to hold on to the watch. “I know you’re working, but if you don’t mind, I have some questions about Mitch Bellingham.”
“Poor Mr. Mitch. He was a real Oscar the Grouch.” Teena laughed with fondness.
“I like a challenge, but he tried my patience, I can tell you that. Man was never happy with anything. Bed was too hard. Light was too bright. Room was too hot. Dinner was too cold. Some of them, they get to the end, and they feel out of control. If it makes them feel good to boss me around, then I figure they’ve earned it. Especially our veterans, bless them.”
“Did he have any visitors?”
“Just Allison. I never saw his family.” The smile had ebbed.
“These old gentlemen, most of them didn’t put in the time with their children, so they don’t get many visitors.
The ladies, now, they’re covered up in people.
Too many, some of them. But it’s sad with the gentlemen.
You can see they want to go back and change things, but they don’t know how. Or they’re too proud to admit it.”
Jude thought that sounded a lot like the Gerald Clifton she’d grown up with.
Emmy said, “I’m interested in Mr. Mitch’s visits with Allison Vickery. Did you ever notice anything about their interactions?”
“Well, she loved him, and he loved her.”
Emmy’s visible surprise was shared by Jude. “Why do you say that?”
“She’s the only one he ever smiled for.” Teena shook her head. “We called her the Lion Tamer. He’d be grumblin’ and complainin’ then she’d show up and flowers would come out of his mouth.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Well, everybody said it was because she was pretty, and I’m sure that’s part of it—even with half a lung and one kidney, these old gentlemen think they’ve got a chance—but if you don’t mind my saying, I’ve spent a lot of time on this floor.
It teaches you about people. Death shows you who they are.
Sometimes, they’re so broken you can see the hard edge of ’em.
Then another person comes along who’s just as broken, and somehow, their edges fit together. ”
“Why did you think Allison was broken?”
“You could see it in her eyes.” Teena indicated her own face. “Had that haunted look, like she was waiting for the next blow.”
“I imagine you’ve read about Allison online?”
“No, darlin’, I don’t need to go on the World Wide Web for gossip. I get plenty of that round here.”
Emmy asked, “Did you ever overhear any conversations between Allison and Mitch Bellingham?”