Chapter Six
Mr. Marples was a pudgy, ruddy-faced, middle-aged man with a comb-over. He stood roughly five feet, ten inches in height and had a stomach that looked like someone had tucked a basketball underneath his shirt. His rounded shoulders hunched forward slightly as he padded into the waiting area.
After introductions, he asked to see their badges.
“I’m sorry for the request,” he said after they produced them.
“Don’t apologize for being thorough with your job,” Rochelle stated, taking the lead.
“If you’ll follow me,” he said with a smile of acknowledgment and a hint of pride.
Then, he turned and walked them to his office.
It was small and had a window that looked out onto the backyard, where various games were set up for residents.
“We’re short on staff, as you might have already guessed. ”
“Is this Ms. Worth’s usual shift?” Rochelle asked, taking a seat in front of the large oak desk. Camden took the one next to her.
“Yes, ma’am,” Mr. Marples said as the executive chair groaned underneath his weight when he sat down. “I have another worker out sick today.”
“Can we have a list of employee names, highlighting anyone who routinely worked with Ms. Worth?” Rochelle asked, wishing she could split herself into two people so she could be in two places at once.
Three, if she counted Kage’s apartment, which she would like to stake out so she could track his movements.
“Yes, ma’am,” Mr. Marples said. He banged on the keyboard to bring his monitor to life.
Then, he squinted through his glasses at the screen before banging on the keyboard some more.
He shook his head as he motioned toward the box that seemed to confound him.
“Darned if I’ll ever be able to understand these things.
One minute, everything is working fine, and the next, I can’t get it to do anything.
” He spoke low and almost under his breath, like he was having the conversation solely with himself and there was no one else in the room.
A couple of framed prints hung on the wall, mostly of turbulent ocean tides with waves crashing against boulders.
The kind of art folks chose said a lot about their own lives.
Rochelle surmised that life wasn’t easy for Mr. Marples.
That he saw it as a struggle. Then again, a good part of his job was likely dealing with insurance claims, which had to be a nightmare.
“Here you go,” he said after banging the enter button. A printer came to life on his desk, spitting out two pages. He picked them up, squinted at them, and handed them over. “I added phone numbers in case you need to reach anyone.”
“Thank you,” Rochelle said before taking the offering. She perused the list, looking for any names that stood out that she might know had a criminal history.
“Our hiring process should weed out anyone with an unsavory background,” Mr. Marples said.
“Of course, we have the occasional hire who slips through the cracks, but most of our personnel issues are with individuals who fudge paperwork or attempt to slip a pill meant for our patients inside a pocket to take home for themselves.”
“Does that happen often?” Rochelle asked. “An employee stealing drugs?” It could explain Justina’s behavior changes.
“No,” he quickly reassured them.
“Can you tell us about Justina Worth?” Rochelle wanted to know if she had ever been suspected of taking anything home.
Mr. Marples shook his head. “Shame. I hope she turns up soon.”
“Has she ever missed work without calling in?” Rochelle continued, trying to steer the conversation down the right road.
“No,” he stated without hesitation. His gaze moved from Rochelle to Camden and back.
“Justina was a model employee. Always on time. Never took too long at lunch. She stayed in the building and ate in the staff lounge.” He pursed his lips.
“The others weren’t the nicest to her. Complained she was too much of a rule follower. ”
Had she snapped? “She lost her father recently, didn’t she?” Rochelle asked.
“That’s right,” Mr. Marples confirmed. “I didn’t know her father had passed until I saw her wearing all black one day and asked her about it. Said she laid her father to rest before coming into work.”
“Was she always private about her personal life?” Rochelle asked, figuring she knew the answer, but it never hurt to ask anyway.
“One hundred percent,” Mr. Marples responded. “She clocked in on time and did her work without complaining. Most of the residents liked her even though she was quiet.”
“Did she ever receive complaints?” Rochelle asked.
“Every person on the floor has had complaints against them,” Mr. Marples explained.
“The residents here have been diagnosed with some form of dementia. There’s not one person on the floor who doesn’t have at least one grievance—Justina, too.
” He paused and issued a defeated-sounding sigh.
“We monitor our staff as best as we can. I look at the number of complaints someone gets and their employment history before I start to make a case against any one individual.” He flashed tired, sunken eyes at her.
“Even I have a list of complaints about me. I can print it out if you want to see it. As for the others, those are matters of privacy, and I’d get into trouble if I took it up on myself to show you those without a reason, as in a warrant.
” He shook his head. “I hope you can understand.”
“Again, we wouldn’t want you to say or do anything that would put you in a compromised position,” Rochelle stated. Marples appeared beaten down, but he came across as honest and as someone who cared about the job he was doing.
“I appreciate it,” he confirmed. “The first thing I look for when hiring someone is compassion for the elderly. In this business, we go through staff because the job is physical and can be an emotional drain. Patients have to be restrained at times. They sometimes strike my staff. They say things they probably shouldn’t.
” Again, he sighed as though the weight of the world rested on his shoulders.
And it did. Families made tough decisions to place a loved one with a memory issue into the care of strangers.
She could only imagine how difficult it must be for all involved.
“Some of my staff come in thinking the job isn’t going to be cleaning up residents after accidents or sometimes being spoken to in a derogatory manner.
But these residents are special. We take a family’s trust to place their loved one here very seriously. ”
She believed him. Every word. A good detective always followed up, verified everything they were told, and never took anyone at face value. She would continue to investigate Mr. Marples. “Did you ever get a sense of Ms. Worth’s home life? What it was like?”
He shook his head. “I don’t pry into my staff’s personal lives.
I don’t follow them on social media if they have accounts.
What they do on their time is their business.
The rule has served me well over the years.
” It was probably a good practice. Rochelle didn’t have time for social media.
She had a personal account that she rarely ever used.
Since opening it, she’d probably made less than a dozen posts.
She didn’t stalk exes online either, like some of her coworkers.
Why would she torture herself by knowing a guy she’d once liked enough to spend time with had a new girlfriend? A baby?
Rochelle had always been happily single. No entanglements. No one to feel obligated to call after a long day at work when all she really wanted to do was hop into a warm bath and try to forget the day.
On the flip side, there was no one to talk to when she’d had a tough day. A fact she hadn’t spent a lot of time noticing until recently. Being around Camden was causing the feeling to intensify.
Pushing away the thought he was special, Rochelle cleared her throat and refocused on Mr. Marples after gaining approval to use this office for the interviews.
“I rounded up half the staff,” Ally interrupted after a soft knock at the opened door.
“Are you ready?” Mr. Marples asked.
As much as she’d ever be. “Bring them in one by one.”
Mr. Marples waved to Ally.
“Sir, we need to speak to your staff alone,” Rochelle said.
The supervisor shot her a surprised look, followed by a nervous one, which was understandable given the circumstances.
However, his elevated level of stress didn’t trigger any warning bells in her.
Most people, even those with nothing to hide, got a little nervous in her presence.
Add to the fact a US Marshal was sitting next to her, and it made even more sense.
Camden had been quiet. What was he thinking?
Camden studied Mr. Marples and decided he was telling the truth. One by one, staff walked in, sat down, answered questions, and then walked out. Once they finished the interviews, they thanked Mr. Marples and gave their contact information in case someone remembered anything else.
Outside, Camden waited until they were inside the SUV to speak in case there were cameras with sound-recording devices, like Ring technology, around.
“The consensus on Justina Worth is that she kept to herself, and everyone left her alone,” he said to Rochelle.
The beautiful redhead tugged at the rubber band in her hair until it came off. She shook out her long, wavy locks before starting the vehicle. “Ally is still on my radar,” Rochelle murmured.
“Same,” he agreed. There was something off about her. Unlike her boss, she tipped over into the too-nervous category.
“Should we swing by the nightclub again?” she asked while the engine idled.
“Let’s see if we can catch someone there,” he said.
After a nod, she navigated onto the road, backtracking to the nightclub. This time of year, it got dark early. The sun was beginning its descent, and intermittent clouds dotted an otherwise blue sky.
“I keep thinking about the life Justina Worth lived,” Rochelle said after a few moments of quiet. “How small her life turned out to be. From what we know so far, she had no friends. She didn’t do anything after work with coworkers. She basically punched in and out. That was it.”
“A couple of the employees said they thought she might have taken care of her elderly father,” Camden said. Caring for an ill family member hit him where it hurt since he was in Austin while his grandparents were in the hospital.
“No one knew for certain,” she said. “And I get needing to keep work separate from your private life.”
Camden nodded. “It’s a little too easy to live your life for law enforcement.”
“I don’t have one single friend who doesn’t wear a badge,” she said.
“But then, how well do I really know them? We are coworkers. We go to the gym together. Grab an occasional beer after work. Complain about aspects of the job we don’t like.
It’s like an extended family, but you don’t want too much of your business being talked about by people you work with, so you keep a lot to yourself. ”
Camden nodded. Her reflection struck a chord in him.
“I have family that I’m close to, and yet we all have jobs that make us work different hours.
I do the same with coworkers. Keep them at a distance.
Like you, I don’t like my personal life ending up as the butt of jokes.
” One way to relieve the stress of the job was to tease each other.
Most law enforcement Camden knew released tension by poking fun at each other.
It also created a bond as long as it didn’t go too far.
“What do you think about the suggestion that Justina probably disappeared on purpose to get back at everyone for talking behind her back?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Seems extreme, don’t you think?”
“Someone would have to be desperate to play a prank like that,” he agreed. “Plus, we have two other kidnapping cases. What are the chances they were fake, too?” It was a rhetorical question.
“I meant to request the file on Izzy Hopkins and the other victim so we can look for any similarities,” she said, “with any connection that could link the cases.”
Their cell phones buzzed at the same time. A bad sign?
“I’ll check mine first while you drive,” Camden offered.
“Sounds good,” Rochelle said after a concerned glance.
He fished his phone out of his pocket and then checked the screen. A second later, he muttered a curse. “A body has been found.”
“Justina’s?” she asked after a gasp.
“No, the first kidnapping victim,” he clarified. “Izzy Hopkins’s body has been positively ID’d.”
Rochelle cursed under her breath as she cut the wheel right. “Change of plans. Next stop, the coroner’s office.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” he admitted. Losing a victim was always a gut punch. This was no different. Except two females were missing under similar circumstances. Were they already dead?
“What do we know so far?” she asked. Her tone revealed she was taking a similar hit.
“Based on the location where her body was found, it’s possible the perp could have been taking her across the border into Mexico,” he reported as he read the text from his supervisor. “Confirmation was made based on dental records.”
“So there’s no question it’s her?” Rochelle asked.
“Not to the medical examiner.”
Rochelle took a deep breath as she parked at the medical examiner’s office.
Camden exited first and then circled around the vehicle to open Rochelle’s door for her out of habit.
Chivalry had been deeply ingrained in him, but it was always his companion’s choice as to whether or not he opened doors.
Rochelle didn’t seem to mind as she was busy reading the text from her supervisor while he came around the front bumper.
Side by side, they walked into the medical examiner’s lobby, then the lab after a quick couple of taps on the door.
Rupert Sanders, aka Sandman, had the whole Einstein look-alike bit down. He had to be approaching seventy by now.
Sandman waved them in and then motioned toward the wall where scrubs and masks hung.
He had on full gear and was in the process of conducting an autopsy on a female that Camden assumed to be Izzy.
The coroner’s glasses sat low on the bridge of his nose, and he looked like he’d just rolled out of bed and showed up at work with his uncombed hair, wrinkled clothes, and unmatched socks.
“Have you determined how long the victim has been dead?” Rochelle asked after perfunctory greetings and confirmation this was, in fact, Izzy Hopkins.
Sandman nodded. “Ms. Hopkins has been deceased for seven days.”
“The victim was declared missing two weeks ago,” Rochelle reminded them.
The bastard kept his victims alive for a week?