UNEASY PREY

by Annette Dashofy

Pete studied the man. The confused eyes. The twitching of his mouth. “She’s in good hands.”

  Trout nodded.

  Pete approached the older man and put a hand on his shoulder. “If I hear anything, I’ll be sure and let you know.”

  “Thank you. I don’t think Janie would bother to tell me anything.”

  “Right now, though, I need you to step out of the house with me. Okay?”

  “Can’t I stay here?”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Pete didn’t want to upset the man further by telling him the house was a crime scene and therefore off limits. He guided Trout to the front entryway and was reaching for the knob when the door swung inward.

  Seth recoiled. “Oh. Sorry.” His eyes widened at the sight of the old man. “Where’d he come from?”

  Trout squinted at him. “You know I live up the hill a ways.”

  “I’m aware of that.” Seth shifted his gaze to Pete. “He showed up as the ambulance was leaving with Mrs. Andrews. I sent him home.” Seth turned again to Trout. “What I want to know is how’d you get inside?”

  He seemed puzzled by the question. “I walked. How else?”

  Seth looked from Trout to Pete and made a face. “He must have slipped in when I was around back.”

  “It’s okay. Take Mr. Troutman out to your car and take a statement from him. I get the impression he tries to keep watch over Mrs. Andrews.”

  Trout nodded vigorously. “I do.”

  “He might have seen something,” Pete said to Seth. “Get any information you can from him and then make sure he gets home safely. We don’t want him falling on the ice in the dark.”

  The officer smiled, apparently relieved that Pete wasn’t going to bust his chops for allowing someone to cross a police line. “On it, Chief. And the reason I came back inside…the county guys just pulled up.”

  As Seth escorted Trout down the sidewalk to his patrol car, Pete watched a trio of crime-scene techs gather their gear from the county CSU truck. A figure stepped out of a dark sedan behind it, and Pete recognized the man even in the shadows cast by the streetlight.

  Monongahela County Detective Wayne Baronick wore a long dark wool coat, the collar turned up against the wind. He strode toward Pete and the house. “We have to stop meeting like this,” Baronick said with his trademark smile.

  “Suits me. This is a big county. How do you always manage to get assigned to cases in my township?”

  “I know how much you love working with me, so I have a permanent request in to take all calls out this way.”

  Pete grunted. Not that he’d ever let the young detective know it, but he was glad to see him. Baronick might be overly cocky, bordering on arrogant, but he was a helluva good cop.

  “What have we got?” he asked, his smile fading.

  Pete updated him on Oriole Andrews’ fall down the basement steps and Zoe’s report that the woman had regained consciousness long enough to say she’d been pushed rather than fell. And he told Baronick about the so-called water-company employees’ earlier visit.

  The detective swore. “We’ve had a rash of those all over the county. You say nothing was stolen?”

  “Not that Mrs. Andrews or her granddaughter could tell.”

  “These guys usually case a house on their first visit. Then they come back a day or two later to rob the place.”

  Pete looked around at the old woman’s battered furniture and meager belongings. “I can’t imagine what they planned to steal. She doesn’t own a computer. Her TV has to be twenty years old. No DVD player. Hell, she still uses an old rotary phone.”

  “Does she keep money in the house?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If they believed she did, they may have roughed her up, demanding to know where she kept it hidden.” Baronick shook his head. “Pisses me off. If anyone tried that with my grandparents, you can bet I’d be guilty of police brutality.”

  The trio of crime-scene techs approached, lugging their bags with them.

  Pete held up his camera. “I already photographed the front rooms. I got interrupted at the hallway.” He gestured over his shoulder. “There’s a dresser back there that looks like it might have been searched.”

  “We’ll check it out,” one of the techs said.

  After the team headed inside, Pete nodded toward Seth’s patrol car. The interior lights were on, revealing the officer and Trout sitting inside. “Neighbor guy slipped past my officer while I was in the house. Name’s Alfred Troutman. I bet he doesn’t miss much on this street.”

  “Think maybe he saw the assailants?”

  “Maybe. Seth’s interviewing him now.”

  Baronick gazed toward the Vance Township vehicle. “It would be nice to get a license number. Something to help us nail these bastards who prey on old folks.”

  Pete’s thoughts flashed to his father. Confused. Increasingly frail. And like Oriole Andrews or Trout, an easy victim. “We’ll nail them,” Pete said as much to himself as to Baronick. “No one’s going to get away with brutalizing the elderly. Not on my watch.”

  THREE

  The Emergency Department at Brunswick Hospital was quiet. The bitter cold of a January night must be keeping folks inside and out of trouble. For the most part.

  Zoe replaced the linens on the cot, while keeping an eye on the cubicle down the hall where they’d left Oriole. Behind the closed privacy curtain, doctors, nurses, and assorted techs worked frantically on their patient. Chimes and beeps emanated from the room, but Zoe was too far away to make out the voices.

  She had a bad feeling about the old woman’s prognosis. She’d managed to keep her patient alive during the trip, but she was glad the hospital hadn’t been even five miles farther away.

  “Any word?” Earl appeared from around the corner, a couple bags of IV fluids in his hands to replace those they’d used.

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Did you tell Janie what her grandmother said?”

  “About being pushed? No. I figure Janie has enough to handle right now. And who knows. Oriole had a nasty blow to the head. She might not have been thinking straight.”

  “Uh-huh.” Earl didn’t sound convinced.

  Zoe wasn’t either. Oriole had seemed quite clear about that little detail.

  From the opposite end of the hallway, Janie Baker headed toward them, clutching a cup of coffee. A young teen in oversized clothes plodded along behind her, his head lowered, a phone clutched in his hands. Marcus Baker, Janie’s son. She must have collected him from home before driving to the hospital.

  The strain of the evening etched deep lines in Janie’s forehead and around her dark-circled eyes. She’d only been a year behind Zoe in school, but looked like she was well into her fifties instead of her mid-thirties.

  “Has anyone said anything?” Janie asked.

  “Afraid not,” Zoe said. The nurses’ station behind them was nearly deserted, with the only staff member on the phone. “Everyone’s doing all they can for her.”

  “I know.” Janie stared at the cup in her hand. “I can’t believe this is happening. I always figured I’d just go over one morning and find Gram dead in her bed. I never expected…” She closed her eyes, but uncontained tears dampened her lashes. “I told her at least a dozen times not to go down those stairs. I did her laundry. There was no reason…”

  Zoe moved around the stretcher to give Janie a quick hug. She searched for some words of comfort, but nothing sounded right inside her head. As a paramedic and deputy coroner, Zoe saw a lot of illness and injury. And death.

  Stepping back, she turned to the boy, who still hadn’t looked up from his phone. “Hey, Marcus.”

  He grunted an acknowledgement.

  “I’m glad you’re here to help your mom.”

  He lifted his eyes and shot a glance toward
his great-grandmother’s cubicle before focusing again on his phone. In that fleeting moment Zoe caught a trace of emotion in his otherwise vacant stare. But she wasn’t sure which emotion. Fear. Worry. Both.

  Or something else entirely.

  A woman in cartoon-print scrubs rushed from the room and passed them.

  “Excuse me.” Janie reached out to grab at the woman’s arm. “Can I go in and see my grandmother yet?”

  The woman paused. Gave Janie what Zoe assumed was supposed to be a comforting smile—but wasn’t. “I’m afraid not. We’re still working on Mrs. Andrews, and there isn’t that much room in there. Why don’t you go out to the waiting area? We’ll call as soon as we know anything.” The nurse patted Janie’s arm and then whisked away.

  “They told me that before too.” Janie held up the cup of coffee. “I got this and intended to sit down out there with it. But I couldn’t. I want to be here. To see Gram as soon as they’ll let me.”

  “I know, but the nurse has a point,” Zoe said. “You don’t want to be in the way and hamper their efforts. They’ll be taking your grandma for x-rays and a CT scan. Possibly even surgery. It’s gonna be a long night. You might as well rest while you can.”

  Janie’s gaze shifted to the room where all the action was taking place. “I guess you’re right. I’m just…scared.” She looked at Zoe. “You said she regained consciousness in the ambulance. That has to be a good sign, right?”

  Zoe forced an encouraging smile. “Sure. Regaining consciousness is always a good thing.” Except when the patient’s BP tanks and she immediately loses consciousness again. But Janie needed to cling to whatever hope she could find. Zoe wasn’t about to snatch it away.

  Another round of warning beeps and whistles went off inside Oriole’s room. From over the PA, a calm yet urgent voice announced, “Code blue in room twelve. Code blue in room twelve.” The woman who had passed by only a minute earlier rushed back into the cubicle. Two other nurses hurried into Oriole’s room too.

  Marcus kept his head lowered, but his eyes shifted toward the activity.

  Janie’s hand holding the coffee trembled. “What’s going on?”

  Zoe caught Earl’s knowing glance. She slipped her arm around Janie’s shoulders. “Come on. I’ll walk with you and Marcus out to the waiting room.”

  “No. Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  How could Zoe tell her that her grandmother had gone into cardiac arrest? She couldn’t. Not with Janie as fragile as she was. “They’re having some complications they need to deal with. I know you want to stay close, but they can’t help your gram if they’re tripping over you in the hall.”

  The forlorn look Janie cast at room twelve told Zoe she wasn’t fooling anyone. But Janie drew a sobbing breath and nodded.

  Pete had gotten the call from Zoe as the county crime techs started processing the basement. Oriole hadn’t made it. The news dropped a solemn blanket over the crew.

  By eight a.m., Pete headed home to get a shower and wash the smell of dust and mildew from his skin. Getting it out of his nostrils would take more than that. Then again, he planned to attend Oriole’s autopsy. Mold wasn’t the worst smell he would encounter today.

  By the time he’d dried off and put on a clean uniform, he heard the lock on his kitchen door click. Zoe let herself in. She dropped her handbag on the floor and sunk into the nearest chair, lifting one of the tabbies into her lap. Her exhausted blue eyes met his. “Hi.”

  “Hi, yourself.” He crossed to her, leaned down, and planted a kiss on top of her blonde head. “Rough night?”

  Her short laugh sounded a lot like a sob. “Yeah. For you too, I guess.”

  “I’ve had better.”

  She gave the cat one more stroke and let it slide to the floor with a soft thud and meow before she stood and surrendered into his arms. “Did you find any evidence of foul play or do you think it might have been an accident?”

  “Accident? You’re the one who called to tell me Oriole said she’d been pushed.”

  “I know. But she had a head injury. I’ve been hoping she was imagining things. I just can’t imagine who would push Oriole down the basement stairs.”

  “I can.” Pete told Zoe about the con men posing as water-company employees.

  “And you think they came back?”

  “I think it’s very likely. This may be the first incident we’ve had here in Vance Township, but Baronick told me these punks gain access when the resident is there to let them in and then go back when they’re less likely to be caught.”

  Zoe’s expression darkened. “I’d like to get my hands on them.”

  Pete had seen what Zoe was capable of when cornered. He smiled. “Anyway, the autopsy’s this morning. We should know more afterwards.”

  “You going?”

  “Yep.”

  “Me too. But I need to stop at the barn first to feed and turn out the horses. I’ll meet you there.”

  Which reminded Pete of his other morning task. “I have a favor to ask you.”

  Zoe tipped her head and gave him a provocative grin. “Again?”

  A rush of heat not caused by the house’s furnace surged through him. “Later,” he said, keeping his voice low. “No, this isn’t that kind of favor. Nadine stopped here last evening. Pop’s getting to be too much for her—”

  “She wants to leave Harry here for a while?”

  “No. She’s decided to place him in an assisted-living facility.” Pete enunciated the words clearly. Not a nursing home as he’d called it and been corrected. An assisted-living facility. “The place she picked is in Brunswick so he can be closer to me. She’s bringing Pop out to tour it this morning at ten and wants me there.”

  Zoe gave him the same look Pete’s mother used to fix him with when he wasn’t exactly telling the whole truth. “And the favor is…?”

  “I thought about asking you to go in my place.” He was only half kidding. Even though he knew better, he still hoped she might say, “Oh, sure. No problem.”

  Instead, she said, “You need to do this.”

  Damn. “Yeah, I know. But would you at least go with me? Pop really likes you even if he doesn’t remember your name. And you’re good with him.”

  “You don’t have to sell me on it. Of course I’ll go with you. What’s the name of the place?”

  What was the name of the place? Pete held up one finger and moved to the kitchen table where Nadine had left the card. “Golden Oaks Assisted Living.”

  “I know where that is.”

  He was afraid to ask. “Is it…nice?”

  “I’ve never been inside. But I’ve driven past it. Looks okay from the outside.”

  Great. Except Harry Adams wasn’t going to be living on the outside.

  The stop at the Krolls’ barn took longer than Zoe had planned. She wished her cousin Patsy would come home from Florida and stay a while. Patsy Greene kept her horse at the barn Zoe managed and had always been a huge help with the chores when Zoe was on duty. However, since Patsy had discovered their familial connection, including the part about having a cousin—Zoe’s mother—in Florida, she’d taken full advantage of the open invitation to visit the Sunshine State any time she wanted.

  It was an invitation that did not extend to Zoe. And that suited her just fine.

  This morning, the horses had been exceptionally frisky, racing loops around the indoor arena and kicking up their heels rather than heading straight out to the pasture when she opened their stall doors. By the time she made it to Brunswick and the morgue, the autopsy was well underway. Rather than suit up, she took a seat in the office and watched through the observation window.

  Pete stood inside the autopsy suite with his back to her. County Coroner Franklin Marshall, Forensic Pathologist “Doc” Abercrombie, and a young female assistant hovered around the body on the table.
Zoe couldn’t hear the conversation or see facial expressions, but Franklin’s body language told her he was not pleased.

  The door swung open and Wayne Baronick stopped midstride. “Zoe. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Why not? I was at the scene last night. I’m a deputy coroner. Why wouldn’t I be here?”

  He smiled and stepped the rest of the way into the office. “I meant out here.” He gestured at the room. “As opposed to in there.” He thumbed at the window to the autopsy suite. “The smell still get to you?”

  She’d never live down her history of bolting for the restroom during her first dozen or so autopsies. “Yeah, but I can handle it now.” Mostly. “No, I was late and decided not to barge in halfway through the procedure.”

  “Uh-huh.” He wasn’t buying it. “So do we know anything yet?”

  Before Zoe could tell him she’d arrived only a few minutes earlier, Franklin turned away from the table and headed toward Pete. The coroner spotted her at the window and raised a hand in acknowledgment. “No,” she said to Wayne. “But we’re about to.”

  Franklin stripped out of his protective gear and a moment later joined them in the office. He glared at her. “You’re late.”

  “I know. Sorry,” she said as Pete trailed in behind Franklin and closed the door. She’d been late so often and used all of her excuses so many times, she decided to leave it at that.

  “Find anything interesting?” Wayne asked.

  Franklin took a seat at the desk. “The deceased had fractures of the right tibia and fibula, the left clavicle, and two ribs. She suffered a blow to the left parietal region,” he said, touching the side of his own head, “resulting in a subdural hematoma. All consistent with a fall down a flight of stairs. The head injury caused her to lose consciousness. It did not, however, cause her death.”

  Wayne crossed his arms. “What was COD then?”

  “Exsanguination. She bled out due to a tear in her aorta. Basically, during the fall her heart was partly torn away from the aorta, causing her chest cavity to fill up. If it weren’t for the concussion, she might very well have been up and walking around following the fall. At least until the blood loss became significant. At that point she would’ve crashed.”