“Great-call me Joe. I’ve been told you were in charge last night when Mrs. Sawyer passed away. Is that right?”
Again she nodded, her body still frozen in place. “Was she really murdered?”
“We think so. An autopsy’s being done right now. How was Mrs. Sawyer discovered?”
Sue Pasco spoke quietly, in choppy sentences, as if fearful that longer ones might be traced back to her. “She was sick. On meds. They get checked. To see if they’re okay.”
“You do rounds, in other words.”
“Sort of.”
“Several times a night?”
“Yes. Ten, one, and three.”
“So it was during the one o’clock check that you found her.”
Her head dropped so I couldn’t see her face. “Yes.”
“Sue. Are you worried you did something wrong?” I asked, distracted by the intensity of her distress.
Her features were all twisted, her eyes brimming with tears. “I don’t know.”
“You followed the same procedure you do every night, right?”
“Yes.”
I touched her shoulder gently. “Then you don’t have anything to worry about. Just concentrate on my questions, and be absolutely honest. A terrible thing has happened, but it won’t reflect badly on you as long as you tell me everything you know.”
I paused to let her absorb that. “Okay. What happened when you checked on Mrs. Sawyer?”
She collected herself and then spoke in more measured tones, her eyes fixed on the floor. “We don’t knock, so as not to disturb them if they’re sleeping, but I thought something was wrong as soon as I opened the door.”
“Why?”
“There wasn’t any sound. She always snored. That’s why we moved her next to Esther. Nothing wakes Esther up.”
“What did you do then?”
“I felt for a pulse and discovered she was dead.”
“Did you start CPR, or call for help?”
“She had a DNR-a Do Not Resuscitate order. We’re not supposed to take any heroic measures with them. Those are the words they use-heroic measures-like CPR.”
“So you called for help instead?” I prompted.
She tucked her head again and began to shake. Given both Esther Pallini’s and Janet Kohler’s casualness concerning death, I wondered if Sue Pasco’s sensitivity might not be connected to something else.
I crouched by her seat and grabbed her forearm, forcing her to look at me. I opted for a standard interrogation ploy. “Sue, tell me what’s troubling you. If it comes out now, we can try to fix it. The worst thing you can do is let it fester inside.”
“I didn’t want to wake anybody up. I didn’t know… ” Her voice trailed off.
“… Didn’t know she’d been murdered?” She nodded, sobbing openly now.
“You’re saying you didn’t call for help? How did the doctor get here?”
Between sobs she gasped, “I called him. We’re supposed to get another staffer. As a witness to the death. It’s like a law or something. But we knew she was going to die. It was no big deal. So I let them all sleep. It never mattered before. And now it’s a murder… And I could go to jail.”
I squeezed her hand and reached for the file on Sawyer that Janet Kohler had left behind. I flipped to the back to see where Sue’s name and signature appeared, along with someone else’s, under the timed and dated heading, “Discovery of deceased.”
I showed her the sheet. “You cooked the books, right? Had the other person listed here add her signature early this morning, after she woke up?”
Sue Pasco nodded miserably, slumped back in her chair.
I glanced farther down the sheet. “I take it Dr. Riley played along? His signature’s here, too.”
“He told me once it was bureaucratic nonsense.”
I closed the file and sat back down. “Guess you won’t do that again.”
She looked up, surprise showing through the tears at my casual tone of voice. “You’re not going to tell?”
“Not right now. And not ever if I don’t think it has anything to do with the case. What’s important to me is that the rest of it is accurate-the time you discovered her, for example.”
She slid forward in her seat again, this time eagerly, wiping at her cheeks with the palms of her hands. “Oh no-it’s all true. I checked my watch as soon as I turned on the light-1:22-I still remember. Then I closed the door and locked it, like they tell us, and I phoned Dr. Riley, since he’s on the call list this week. I waited for him by the front entrance, took him up here, he examined her, and signed the death certificate. After that, I called Guillaume’s so they could get her out before the other residents woke up.”
I gave her a supportive smile. “Okay. That’s great. Now, thinking back to before you checked on her, did you notice anything unusual in the hallway, or anywhere else for that matter? Any sounds, any activity? Did you see anyone?”
She paused to reflect. “I always see a few people. Not all of the residents sleep well, so sometimes they wander around-watch TV, read-”
“But nobody struck you as acting odd?”
“No.”
“Were any of them on this floor?”
“No. It was empty.”
“How ’bout after you found the body? Did you see anyone then?”
“No. And we worked very quietly. By 2:45 Mrs. Sawyer was gone.”
I thought back to what Janet Kohler had told me. “Did you contact the next of kin? You didn’t mention that.”
Her face grew suddenly agitated and defensive. “I did, I did. You can check. I just forgot because it didn’t matter. Mrs. Tuttle didn’t care one way or the other. She was even a little irritated-asked me why I couldn’t have waited to call her in the morning.”
“You ever meet her?”
“No. But you could tell they were relatives by their attitude.”
I glanced down at the file. “They were sisters?”
“I think so.”
I closed the file and sat back. “I’ve been told Mrs. Sawyer wasn’t well liked-that she spread rumors, got into fights… ”
“I guess so. Being on the night shift, I missed most of that, but she wasn’t a nice person.”
“Could you list everyone who might have had a grudge against her, for one of my officers a little later?”
“You don’t think one of the residents did it, do you?”
“I can’t say yet.”
“I can come up with a few names, I guess. Some of it would be sort of like gossip, though.”
“That’s okay. Your list will be confidential. We just need something to get us started. Who stripped the bed?”
“I did. She’d peed all over herself, and I wanted to get the sheets cleaned as soon as possible.”
That was disappointing. “So they’ve been laundered?”
“Oh, yes… ”
“Is that pretty typical-a patient peeing on herself before dying?”
“Common enough. Sometimes it’s worse-their bowels open up.”
“But aside from taking the sheets, everything else was left the way you found it?”
She nodded vigorously. “Absolutely, and the door was locked again.”
“One last question. What’s the security like on the building’s exits?”
“All the doors are locked after nine, and the front entrance has a guard to let people in and out.”
“How ’bout fire exits?”
“They all have alarms.” She gave me a small smile. “And we know they work, because every once in a while, one of the residents tries them out.”
I rose to my feet and thanked her, telling her somebody would contact her later for that list of names. I watched her hurry down the corridor, no doubt to compare experiences with Janet Kohler, or to call the colleague who’d faked witnessing the discovery of the body.
I had the strong impression Sue Pasco wouldn’t be bending any rules for a long time to come.
J.P. and his crew were still scrutinizing Adele Sawyer’s room, but I could tell from the doorway they weren’t happy. Each one of them toiled in silence, obviously going through the motions with nothing to show for it. “No luck?” I asked.
J.P. looked up. “There’re enough fingerprints, hair follicles, and loose threads to start a museum. If you want this done right, I’ll have to print and take hair samples from everyone in this place, and even then I doubt I’d have anything to go on.”