by David Bell
“I did.” He nodded his big head. His scalp showed through the fine hair. “And it came back to me once I looked everything over. What can I tell you about it?”
“You got called to a dispute between Valerie Woodward and Blaine Fant. At his house, right?”
“That’s right.”
“And this was . . . four years ago?”
“That’s right.”
“What was going on?” Kimberly asked.
“He called us. Said his girlfriend was getting violent with him, and he didn’t feel safe. I was the closest officer on duty, so I responded first.”
“And what did you find?”
“They were in a little house, a prefab-looking job out on Spring Mill Road. Out near Morgan Township. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the area, but there’s not much out there, not even farms anymore. He answered the door, Fant. About fifty, sleepy eyes. Wearing a T-shirt and shorts. No shoes. As soon as he saw me, he started trying to get rid of me.”
“Saying he didn’t mean to call?” Kimberly asked.
“Exactly. It was all a misunderstanding. He loved his girlfriend, they’d had a disagreement, but they’d worked it out. I could go on my way because everything was fine. I, of course, told him I couldn’t do that. I said I had to make sure no one inside the residence was injured. He argued a little longer, and then he called back into the house to Mrs. Woodward and said a cop was coming in.”
“Did you see any injuries on Fant?”
“He looked fine,” Mattingly said. “He wasn’t hurt or bleeding or anything. I just wanted to see her, make sure she was okay.”
“And you did?”
Mattingly nodded. “I went out to the kitchen, and she was sitting at the table. She was smoking, had a glass of wine next to her. I asked her if she was all right, if she felt she was in any danger or needed any assistance. She told me no on all counts. Again, I didn’t see any sign of injury, so I figured I’d leave it at that.”
“Not much you could do at that point,” Kimberly said.
“No reason to do anything else,” Mattingly said. “Until I turned to go, and I saw a .38 on the counter. It was underneath a kitchen towel. Just the barrel peeking out. I asked them about it, and Mrs. Woodward told me she was licensed and registered. I asked to see the paperwork, and she produced it. It all checked out. I ran them both through the system too.”
“And?”
“He’d been arrested for DUI once. She was clean. Nothing outstanding, so I left. That was that.”
“Until . . .”
“Right. Until the thing with her daughter.”
67
When I got off the plane in Nashville, I still didn’t know where Morgan’s mom was. Waiting for my flight in Tampa, I’d started calling hospice facilities in Nashville, once again looking for the needle in the haystack. All I knew was her foster mother’s name, which had been given to me by Detective Givens.
Valerie Woodward.
I’d called six facilities before my flight boarded, asking if they had a patient by that name. They all told me no.
As the flight was called and I shuffled toward the jet bridge, I started to wonder if it was worth it. Was I going to travel to Nashville and strike out, never finding her mother?
And even if I did find her, what did I expect to learn?
But I couldn’t stop. And, I told myself, Nashville was on the way home to Chicago.
Once off the plane, I called four more places with no good results. On my phone it looked like there were about thirty facilities in the metro area. More if I included the sprawling suburbs. I might be spending the rest of my life on the phone.
But then I caught a break. The next number I dialed went to the offices of a group of hospice facilities. The receptionist could check their patient list for me, and that covered five locations on the west side of town.
I waited while she put me on hold. And then she came back on and informed me that Valerie Woodward was a patient at a place called River Glen. She even gave me the address, which I wrote down inside the back cover of the paperback novel I still carried.
When I hung up, I rented a car and started on my way.
* * *
• • •
River Glen sat off the road in an upper-middle-class Nashville neighborhood full of new-construction homes, wine shops, and organic grocery stores. From the outside it looked like a high-end doctor’s office. The covered entryway allowed visitors to pull up and walk in without getting wet during rainstorms. An American flag on a tall pole fluttered and then fell with the breeze. Across the front of the building, a series of large windows caught the early-afternoon light. The landscaping was impeccable, the grass perfectly trimmed, the edges fine and clean.
The lobby was filled with comfortable leather furniture. On one side was a Halloween-themed display—hay bales, pumpkins, paper skeletons, and cornstalks. It made me think of autumn. Death. The decorator either didn’t mind the connection or hadn’t thought of it. But I did. Patients came to River Glen for only one thing.
On the other side of a reception desk a woman looked up and smiled at me as the sliding door whooshed shut at my back. Soft, soothing music played over hidden speakers. I asked her which room Valerie Woodward was in.
She checked a list on the desk in front of her and told me room 4, down the hall and to my left. Then she asked me to sign in, which I did. I gave the names above mine a quick scan, hoping to see Morgan’s, but the sheet was new. Mine was only the fourth name on the list. I thanked her and moved along.
The hallways were wide and spacious. Art prints showed delicate flowers and forest scenes. I heard nothing from behind the closed doors of the patients’ rooms. No televisions, no conversations. I wondered how many people were on the brink of their mortal end at that very moment as I walked by, how many family members squeezed the hands of a loved one, eyes filled with tears. I came to room 4 and knocked gently. I waited but heard nothing. So I knocked again. When I still received no response, I tried the handle, which turned easily, so I pushed the door open and went in.
The room was large and spacious. A window, one of the large ones I’d seen when I pulled into the lot, allowed sunlight to stream through and across the floor. I saw a couch and two chairs, an end table covered with flowers and magazines, a coffee maker and a minifridge. A heck of a nice place to stay except . . .
In the middle of the room sat a hospital bed with, I presumed, Valerie Woodward under its covers. I closed the door softly and walked across the laminate hardwood. It must have been new or expertly installed, because my body didn’t create one squeak before I stopped by the side of her bed, my back to the large window.
Valerie’s eyes were closed, her hands on top of the blanket. A single long gray braid stretched across the pillow next to her head. Her chest rose and fell peacefully.
“Valerie?” I whispered, my voice so low I almost couldn’t hear it. She kept on breathing, eyes closed. She looked thin, her skin pallid, but not like a dying person’s. But what did I know? Had I ever seen a dying person before? I hadn’t. The closest I’d come was Simon Caldwell after Morgan beaned him in the Fantasy Farm petting zoo, and he’d managed to survive. “Valerie?” I said louder. “Mrs. Woodward?”
I waited for a nurse or aide to come in behind me, to shoo me away for bothering the sickest of patients. But no one did. I assumed Valerie was doped to the gills, given the gift of blissful sleep by the pain medication. It crossed my mind that I might never be able to wake her, that maybe no one could.
“Valerie?” My voice sounded like a shout that time, and I regretted it. But her eyelids fluttered, her head shifting from side to side.
She swallowed and worked her cracked lips. Her hands moved on top of the covers, the index finger stained by nicotine, the nails thin and brittle. I noticed a slight discoloration on her left elbow, the remnant
of a fading bruise.
Her eyes came all the way open and settled on me. “Are you another social worker?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. My name’s Joshua Fields.”
She pointed at something, her hand lifting and making a gesture in a direction near my right elbow. She worked her lips some more but seemed unable to find the words she wanted. I looked around and saw a large plastic tumbler of water.
“You want some?” I asked.
“Please.”
I held it near her face so her mouth could find the straw. She took several long pulls, and I remembered being in the emergency room just a few days earlier while Detective Givens helped me drink. Was that what people who wanted information from someone did? Help them, get their guard down, and then go in for the kill by asking questions? Was I any different from the cops who offered the suspect a cigarette in the interrogation room on a TV show?
When she was finished drinking, I put the cup down. Valerie looked content, as though the water had brought her some major relief. She closed her eyes again, and I thought she was going to slip away.
But then she asked, eyes still closed, “Who did you say you were?”
“Joshua Fields.” And then I wondered—how exactly would I explain who I was? I took my best shot. “I’m a friend of Morgan’s.”
“Oh.” Her eyelids came open again. It seemed to take her a moment to focus on me that time, but she did. Her eyes were blue, lined with red. Dark circles of exhaustion and pain smudged the skin beneath them. “How do you know her?”
“I haven’t known her long,” I said. “We met a few days ago.”
Her eyelids fluttered and then once again came fully open. “Oh . . .”
“Do you need something? More water?”
“You met her . . . where?”
I felt silly saying it. Almost as silly as I felt being in a hospice facility talking to a dying woman I didn’t know. But I had to learn whatever I could about Morgan, so I had to tell the truth.
“We met in the Atlanta airport, while we were both waiting for our flights. And then we met again after that. It’s all very complicated and strange, I guess.”
“I know. . . .” Her eyelids fluttered again. She turned her head away from me, showing me the back of her neck, the skin blotchy and red. “She’s such a sweet girl, Morgan. I love her.”
I thought she’d fallen asleep, as her breathing became slow and regular.
But then she shifted again, turning her head toward me again, her eyes still closed.
“I know who you are. . . .” She smiled slightly, her cracked lips turning up. But then she seemed to fade away again.
“How do you know who I am, Valerie? Hello? Are you awake?”
She remained perfectly still, except for the rising and falling of her chest.
“Valerie?” I asked one more time.
Her eyelids came wide open. “You’re the boy Morgan was telling me about this morning.”
68
Kimberly finished her coffee. She felt the pleasant buzz of caffeine working through her body, bringing every nerve ending to life. She felt smarter, sharper, more alive. And she wished she could bottle that feeling, uncork it, and tap into it whenever a challenging problem vexed her.
Then she told herself she actually could. Coffee. Brew, swallow, repeat.
If only it were that easy. If only . . .
“So,” she said, “this other thing, the one with her daughter.”
“Foster daughter,” Mattingly said. “Mrs. Woodward initially said ‘daughter.’ Then the daughter herself clarified and said ‘foster daughter.’ But then she added that they were really very close despite that.”
“Right. Go on.”
Mattingly shrugged, sipped his own drink. “This was about a year after the thing with Fant and the gun. We got called there again. Same house. I was the second officer to arrive. Mrs. Woodward had a new boyfriend, some guy named Rick Yates.”
“And, according to the report, this Yates got into it with the foster daughter.”
“Right. First he got into it with Valerie Woodward. They were arguing. The daughter, Morgan Reynolds, who was just visiting, tried to intervene. And Yates got in her face, threatened her.”
“And that’s when Valerie Woodward reached into her trusty bag of tricks.”
“She got out the .38, the same one from my first visit. So Yates called nine-one-one, and we showed up. Almost an instant replay, except the daughter was there.”
“And this time the boyfriend wanted to press charges.”
“Right. He did. So we brought Mrs. Woodward in and booked her. Charged her with assault. She said she didn’t care what we did to her, that she’d do anything to protect her child. Yates didn’t waver, so she pled out. She managed to avoid jail time but received probation. An unpleasant experience for her, but she had a clean record. It could have been worse.”
“It would have been worse if the first guy had pressed charges.”
“Exactly.” Mattingly looked flushed with pride at having important information about a big case. “When you found that body at Fantasy Farm and named Morgan Reynolds a person of interest, it all came back to me.”
“I’m glad it did,” Kimberly said.
“I hope it helps. I wish I could tell you more.”
“This is very helpful,” Kimberly said. She couldn’t expect a trooper to remember the specific details of every call he’d ever responded to. She knew what they dealt with on a daily basis. The domestic disturbances and disputes, the petty squabbles over property and family. Someone waving a gun at someone in Gordon County might barely register with an experienced cop unless something else made it stand out. “As you know, we do want to know everything we can about Morgan Reynolds. Anything else about her?”
Mattingly shook his head. He looked frustrated with his limited ability to remember. “Nothing I can think of. She seemed educated and smart. Pretty. Tall. She was very concerned about Mrs. Woodward. Said her health hadn’t been great, that she’d recently been diagnosed with cancer, and she worried the stress of being arrested could make her take a turn for the worse.” He shrugged again. “She acted the way a daughter would if she was deeply concerned about her mother. She seemed emotional, very worried about the strain on Valerie.”
“So no real trouble?”
“She was polite. Not threatening in any way.” Mattingly cleared his throat. “I’m sure you’ve already thought of this, but—”
“We’re trying to find Yates now,” Kimberly said. “But it’s a long shot, isn’t it? Why would he be tangled up in this after all this time? He’s the one who pressed charges.”
“You’re right. I’m grasping there.”
“No, I had the same thought,” Kimberly said. “I want to talk to everybody.”
And she wanted to know about that gun. She’d wondered for days how Morgan Reynolds, a tall woman but still a woman, would have been able to overpower Giles Caldwell, an older man with health problems, yes, but still a man. Had she taken the gun from her mother? Had she used it to force her way into Giles Caldwell’s house?
Had she taken a page from her mother’s playbook and then things had gone horribly, horribly wrong, leading to Giles Caldwell’s death?
69
I leaned in closer to the bed, closer to Valerie Woodward. A sickly odor came off of her, like that of something decaying. I knew it was the scent of death wafting over me, but I didn’t step back.
“Morgan was here?” I asked. “She was here this morning?”
“Morgan . . .”
Again her head lolled around on the pillow, from one side to the other. Her eyes closed and then opened a few times, but it was nearly impossible to tell if she was in any way aware of what was going on around her.
My eyes scanned the room. They settled on the water cup again
. I picked it up and held it out to Valerie. I wasn’t sure why. I was grasping at anything I could to keep her with me.
“Here,” I said, angling the straw near her mouth. “Have some of this.”
But she turned her head away. I kept the cup there a moment longer, but she refused to turn toward it, so I put it back down on the bedside table.
I decided to try a more direct approach.
“Valerie? Did you say Morgan was here? This morning? Was she really here this morning?”
“Morgan . . .” Her head stopped moving. The braid lay alongside her face. “She was here. She’s so protective. She worries about me. About falling. About my arm getting hurt.”
“Your arm? What happened?”
“She thinks I’m protective. . . . She told me about you.” She coughed a few times and cleared her throat. “She told me about Joshua.”
“She mentioned me? By name?”
She didn’t answer.
“Where is she now?” I asked.
Valerie muttered something, but I couldn’t make it out. She said the same word a second time. I leaned even closer, breathing through my mouth to avoid the smell of decay.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“Shelly,” she said. “Shelly was here. . . .”
“Who is Shelly? Is she a friend of yours? Or of Morgan’s?”
“Shelly was here. And Bud.”
“Bud?”
“Bud was here too. . . . He came to visit.”
“Who’s Bud?” I asked.
The door to the room swung open then. I straightened up and turned to look. A quick, sudden thought flashed through my mind—maybe it was Morgan.
But it was just a nurse. A woman only a few years older than me, wearing a sky-blue smock and white pants and white shoes that made no sound as she came across the room toward us.
