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“Two nights ago.”
“My God, that’s horrible.” She couldn’t believe it. Poor Mr. Lewis had served in Korea, then in the Middle East, in the air force. He had survived three wars. Four decades of military service, then to be murdered in his own home? In bed? How? How could this be? The news shook Dr. Parks to her core. It belied the singular myth she believed: that a person’s home exists as a safe haven from the world, a sanctuary and refuge from danger.
Hernandez continued.
“We have reason to believe the persons who killed him wanted his morphine. Not his life. It’s possible that Mr. Lewis woke up and fought them off.”
“Where—where was his nurse?” said Parks, as she reached for her laptop to pull up Mr. Lewis’s file. “The nurses aren’t mine, you know that, right? I contract out. Various agencies. I get them from all over the place.” She felt horrified. Was she to blame? Was that why the detectives were here?
“His nurse was asleep two floors down, in the TV room,” the second detective said. Morse. Neither gentleman wore a nametag, but this one had said his name was Morse when they came through the door and into her house. “She checked on him at five in the morning, but he had been dead for several hours. She called 911.”
A whirring sound then came from the hall and drowned Morse out. Dr. Parks rose from her desk to shut the door. But before she could, Masha, her housekeeper, pushed the vacuum around the corner and into the room, her eyes fixed blindly on the floor.
She didn’t see them.
“Masha,” the doctor said over the whir, but Masha couldn’t hear. “Masha!” she said again, raising her voice with a nervous laugh.
“Oh!” Masha said, and startled. “Sorry!” She yelled and pulled out her earbuds. “I didn’t know you were in here!”
“We are.” Dr. Parks sighed, and asked Masha if she might start upstairs in the bedrooms. She was having a meeting and needed the privacy and quiet downstairs.
Masha said, “Sure. Yes, Mrs. Parks. Hello.” She smiled at the gentlemen, lifted the vacuum, and walked out.
Dr. Parks closed the study door, moved to the desk, and sat back down. Morse looked amused, and she knew why.
“She looks great, right? She cleans in high heels,” she said to the men. Her housekeeper always cleaned in stilettos, with a full face of makeup, in a matching outfit, jewelry, and elbow-high silicone gloves. She always wore gloves to protect her nails. “Cocktail casual. It’s impressive.”
The officers smiled.
“Well,” said Hernandez, moving on, “whoever murdered Mr. Lewis, Dr. Parks, they got in and out and no one saw them except Mr. Lewis. We have very few leads.”
The doctor shook her head and exhaled slowly. This was a terrible and sad event on so many levels. Poor Mr. Lewis, his poor family, and the police showing up at her house like this, sitting inside her home. She’d never had trouble with the law before. Not once in her life.
“So why are you here?” she asked the officers. “Am I a suspect?” She gestured around the decorated study with its imported wallpaper, chesterfield sofas, Queen Anne chairs, walls lined with built-ins and leather books. “Do you think I need to steal morphine? I still write prescriptions. I can still practice.”
Parks had started the private hospice after her aging mother had died, after she’d seen the terrible job the care facility did in her mother’s final months. She contracted out with St. John’s and Cedars, and was doing well. She had worked hard to afford her life, her home especially: the purchase of the house, the expansion, two renovations five years apart; her home was her hobby, obsession, and escape. She’d paid it off and owed nothing, except for the annual property tax. She’d live and die there. No old nursing home for her. She’d promised herself.
Morse opened a file on his lap.
“Over the last few months, Dr. Parks, we’ve seen a pattern of residential burglaries. A string,” he said, “in upscale neighborhoods: Bel Air. Beverly Hills. Hancock Park. Entrance gained through unlocked doors. No damage. No broken windows or locks. And no one hurt, until Mr. Lewis. The perps—whoever they are—they’re not there to kill. They come to lift tramadol, lithium, fentanyl, Oxy, codeine…”
“Oh, drugs,” the doctor said. “I see.” Prescription drugs were a hot commodity. She knew that.
“And all of the homes have two things in common. A person inside is sick or dying…”
“That makes sense.”
“And they’re being cared for by City of Angels Healthcare and Hospice… Incorporated.”
Dr. Parks blanched. She hated the way he gave her this news. Morse said the word “incorporated” with some kind of edge, some kind of attitude she couldn’t read, as if she were committing some kind of crime by profiting from sickness and death. Then he paused, and in case she hadn’t followed his point, he said:
“Dr. Parks, all of the victims are your clients.”
CHAPTER 3
THIS WAREHOUSE SMELLS like death, Sophie thought, as she handed Boris the envelope. Five thousand dollars for her son. That was the offer. That was the deal she’d made with the Odessa brothers and their LA lackeys.
Boris was solid and mean looking, with ink that covered over his bald head and down his neck, and across his chest there were tattooed stars and snarling tigers in front of the Kremlin.
