“Understandable,” Joe soothed him. “What else did you two discuss?”
“Not much, to be honest. She fell asleep as soon as the heat got to her. I watched her pretty close at first, ’cause I wanted to make sure she was only sleeping. Know what I mean? But she was.” He allowed for a small laugh. “I actually felt better when she started snoring a little. That seemed like a good sign.”
“How did you know where to go?” Sam asked.
“Oh, I woke her up when I got near to Shelburne. She just pointed the way. She didn’t seem totally sure about it, but she got it right in the long run.”
“You remember the address?”
“Not exactly, but it was a dead end, parallel to Route 7.”
“Hillside Terrace?” Lester asked.
“That was it,” he said happily.
“And then what?” Joe asked. “Was the sister there?”
“The nephew was. I knocked on the door when we got there, and this guy opened the door. He was really surprised to see us. You could’ve knocked him over with a feather. He was all pale and at a loss for words. He offered me money, but I said no, that I was happy to help, and that was about it.”
“So you never saw the sister?” Joe pursued.
Nesbitt’s expression saddened. “I think I did, actually, not that I was introduced. But when the nephew opened the door, I saw an old woman in a wheelchair behind him, just staring at nothing. He saw me looking and just said something like, ‘My mom-Alzheimer’s’ or something really short like that.”
“How did you know he was the nephew?” Willy asked.
“He came outside to help me get her out of the car,” Nesbitt explained. “Called her ‘Aunt Carolyn.’”
“How did she act when he did that?”
“She was still pretty out of it,” Nesbitt told them. “She didn’t really say anything to him, and he seemed stunned anyhow. Now that I know more about her from the poster, some of that makes sense. I guess he sure didn’t expect to have her show up on his doorstep.” Nesbitt looked around at them all before asking, “What was she in the hospital for, anyhow?”
“Mr. Nesbitt,” Joe asked instead, “Why did you take all this time to get hold of us? It’s been a while.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh. I been out of state. Like I said, I sort of found myself on involuntary leave-that’s the way they put it-so I went south to visit family for a while. Wasn’t till I got home yesterday that I saw that poster at the town office, where I was settling a bill. There’s no picture, but my eye caught on the name Carolyn. That’s what the nephew called her. And then the description on the poster did the rest, mentioning the date and Waterbury and the storm and all the rest. Even down to her outfit. That’s when I decided I better get in touch, since I was coming to Brattleboro anyhow.”
Joe stood up. “We’re glad you did, Mr. Nesbitt.”
Lester stood also and took their guest’s elbow. “Why don’t you follow me next door so I can get this all down as a sworn statement?” he asked. “That way, we’ll get the whole process squared away and you can be free of us from now on.”
Nesbitt began following him outside, but hesitated at the door to ask, “Is there any reward for what I told you? I’m sorta between a rock and a hard place right now.”
“No,” Joe told him. “Sorry.”
Nesbitt shrugged and left, following Lester.
“Milk of human kindness,” Willy said as the door closed.
“Good for us, though,” Joe said. “What d’you make of it?”
Willy was first. “Tells me Friel was lying his ass off when you and Spinney dropped by to chat.”
Joe nodded, remembering the greeting that he and Lester had received in Shelburne. “Friel asked us to wait at the door, in order to prepare his mother for our coming in-more likely, it was to make sure Carolyn had time to go into her bedroom in the basement.”
“It also means Carolyn wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t know what to do once she got out of the hospital,” Sammie added.
“Okay,” agreed Joe. “But then what? She escapes; they put her up and keep mum to protect her; then something goes off the tracks.”
“Marshall gets killed, for one thing,” Willy said.
“Right after it’s circulated that Carolyn’s on the loose,” Sam added.
“But not circulated by us,” Lester pointed out. “We took a while with her posters.”
“So, by an insider,” Sam came back.
“And then, one-two-three,” Joe chimed in, “Friel gets stabbed, Barb gets cremated alive, and presumably, Carolyn gets grabbed.”
“Or killed,” Willy suggested. “No point keeping her alive, and it would probably be easier to kill her before smuggling her out of the house.”
Joe recalled something Jonathon Michael had told him; “The bulkhead door was unlocked. Anyone could have gotten in, whenever they chose.”
The other two stayed silent, playing out a list of variations in their minds. Joe stood up, pushed the guest chair back against the wall, and reached for his jacket.
“Where ya headed, boss?”
“The scene of the crime.”
* * *
Sam turned to Willy upon Joe’s departure. “That mean anything to you?”
“He has a itch he wants to scratch in private.”
She used that to change topics. “You would know about that.”
“That a loaded comment?” he asked. “Or just practice?”
She smiled, used to how his inborn paranoia processed things. “Checking your dipstick,” she answered him. “You been on some kind of odyssey. I just want to make sure you’re okay. That we’re okay.”
Instead of the usual quick one-liner, he kept quiet, which made her rise from her chair and sit on the edge of his desk, where she rested a hand on one of his crossed legs.
“Herb Rozanski?” she asked.
He didn’t look at her. “He’s got an arm like mine,” he said.
“From the saw?”
“Yeah. He got it sewed up, but it never worked again.”
“He okay?”
He gestured dismissively, but answered nevertheless, “He’s coping. Might as well be hollowed out, though-a living pumpkin. Smile on the outside; nuthin’ inside.”
She squeezed his leg. “There but for the grace of God? That what you’re thinking?”
“Grace of something,” he offered. “Don’t know about God.”
“How ’bout grace of yourself?” she suggested. “Grace of the people that love you? What’s Herb got?”
She’d heard enough about the Rozanski case to know part of what was eating at him. Willy was deemed unapproachable by most people, but to her, he wasn’t that complicated. This was a smart man with a big heart that had been stepped on enough to make him angry, suspicious, and in pain. That’s how she saw it, all the babble about PTSD and the rest notwithstanding. She’d seen him with their daughter, and had been won over by him herself.
“How’d you leave it with Herb?” she asked, thinking that might have played a role in his present mood.
“Told him to go back to his brother and sister.” His voice was so quiet, she barely heard his words.
“You think he will?”
“I doubt it,” he admitted candidly. “He’s pretty far gone.”
“You tell him they’d be open to it?”
His voice rose slightly. “Oh, sure. Mouse fart in a high wind, if you ask me.”
“And so there it sits,” she mused, hoping to be echoing his thoughts. “Like a ball game suspended in the middle of the last inning.”
“Yeah, well…” He left it there.
She leaned over and kissed his cheek, and spoke into his ear. “Unless maybe you get one of them to get in touch.”
He straightened in his chair, pulling away from her a bit. “Not my problem, babe. They wanna fuck up their lives, I’m not their nursemaid.”