Page 21 of Her Last Refuge

"Just an address. No name for the contact, or if there was one it's not showing on this version." He turned the phone around so she could see it, and Rachel read the street name once, committing it to memory before she pulled her own phone out to type it in.

"That's a big help," she said. "Thank you both."

"No problem." Clay shifted his weight, glancing toward the front doors like he was ready to get back to it. "Hope it helps you find whatever you're looking for."

"We'll see." Rachel slid her phone back into her pocket. "We appreciate your time."

Rather than walking back through the building, Rachel and Novak stuck to the sidewalk that circled the entirety of the building. Rachel felt a small surge of hope now that they had a name that, while it seemed promising, had also been conveniently left out by Miriam Colt.

"So," Novak said. "We’ve got a fired orderly, a dead mother, and a possible grudge against the facility. Seems like a lead to me. You want to run him down now?"

Rachel checked her watch. It was later than it felt, but not so late that chasing this down before the end of the day felt unreasonable. It was only 4:08 and she'd rather deal with the disappointment of a dead end today than let it sit overnight and go cold on her.

"Yeah," she said. "Let's go see if Craig Roberts still lives where his old timesheet says he does."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The address Dell had pulled up turned out to belong to a small house on a quiet street a few miles outside the county line. It was half an hour drive from Ashford Glen, located in the kind of neighborhood where the lots ran wide and the houses looked like they'd been built the same decade by the same contractor. On the ride over, Rachel had confirmed through the county assessor's website that the property had transferred to Craig Roberts a little over a year ago, following the death of the previous owner, a woman named Diane Roberts. His mother.

"So he's living in her house," Novak said as they pulled up to the curb.

"Inherited it, looks like." Rachel studied the place through the windshield. It was small, but well kept. It looked like the off-white vinyl siding had either been recently power washed or replaced.

They walked up the short path to the small front porch, and Rachel knocked on the door. It took almost a minute before the door opened, and when it did, the man on the other side looked younger than she'd expected, maybe forty-five. He also looked like he’d been caught between the transition from just-got-home-from-work to relaxing at home. He didn’t look hurried, exactly, but they’d clearly caught him in the middle of something.

“Can I help you?”

Rachel and Novak showed their badges and introduced themselves. “Are you Craig Roberts?” Rachel asked.

He clocked the badges before answering, and something in his face went tight. “Yeah,” he said finally, his voice haggard. “Is this…is this about my mom?”

"It's about Ashford Glen," Rachel said. "We're looking into some things that are currently taking place there, and your name came up. We'd like to ask you a few questions, if you've got a few minutes."

He hesitated, then stepped back and held the door open. "Yeah. Okay. Come in, I guess."

The living room was small and neat. A couch and a recliner were angled toward a television that wasn't on, and a shelf of photographs along one wall contained pictures of various family members at different scenes. Roberts didn't sit. He stood near the recliner with his arms crossed, like he wanted to keep some distance between himself and whatever they'd come to say. On the other hand, Rachel thought he looked hopeful…like maybe the complaints he’d voiced several months ago had finally been heard.

"What's this about, exactly?" he asked. "You said Ashford Glen. I don't work there anymore."

"We know," Rachel said. "There have been two deaths at the facility over the past week. Both under circumstances we're treating as suspicious."

Roberts went still. "Deaths. Like—" He stopped, shook his head slightly, like he was trying to catch up to what she'd just told him. "I hadn't heard anything about that. I don't really keep up with the place anymore. Once Miriam let me go, I kind of cut it off. Didn't want to know. And I knew if I kept pestering them and making noise, it might get out of hand."

"You haven't spoken to anyone who still works there since you were released?” Novak asked.

"No. I mean, I had a couple people text me when I first got fired, asking how I was doing, but that dried up pretty quick. I haven't talked to anybody from Ashford Glen in months." He rubbed a hand over his jaw, and Rachel could see him assuming the worst. "Why are you talking to me? You think I had something to do with it?"

"We're talking to a lot of people who had access to the facility in the past," Rachel said. "Particularly people who may have grievance against them. You had a public falling out with them. That's enough to put you on a list of people we need to rule out."

"Rule out," he repeated, and something in his face tightened again, this time closer to disbelief than the wariness from before. "You think I went back there and killed people. Because I got fired."

"We think you might have a reason to be angry at the facility," Novak clarified. "We're trying to understand whether that anger was ever aimed at anyone in particular, or just the place itself."

Roberts let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. And then he finally did sit down. "It was the place,” he said. “It was always the place. Miriam Colt, the budget, whoever decided one person could cover a whole floor overnight. I hated how they ran things, and I said so, loud, more than once.”

“By any chance do the names Ruth Durst or Howard Pelham mean anything to you?” Rachel asked.

He gave it some thought before answering. “Ruth…yeah, I know her from when I was working at Ashford Glen. Sweet and polite. But…Pelham…he’s a judge, right? An older guy.”