Once Pined

by Blake Pierce

  But the bourbon was diluted. Amanda Somers apparently preferred her whiskey with more water and ice than Riley did.

  She remembered something that Prisha Sanders had said about how Saddam Hussein had assassinated dissidents.

  “When some of them were released from prison, they were offered congratulatory drinks to toast their freedom.”

  Was the drink poisoned?

  The theory didn’t click for her. There was only one glass for only one person. Amanda had made the drink alone, and she’d sat down to drink it alone.

  Riley put the glass down exactly where she’d found it. Then she walked into the very modern kitchen. Two clean teacups and saucers had been washed and left in the drying rack.

  Riley felt a tingling sensation.

  She’d had a hot drink with her visitor, Riley thought. And Prisha Shankar had said thallium might be delivered in a drink.

  Riley wondered if they’d shared tea or coffee.

  In either case, Amanda Somers had cleaned up after the visitor had left. She had still been alive and able to function then.

  The carafe in the coffeemaker was empty. But of course, Amanda Somers might have washed it when she washed the cups and saucers.

  Riley opened the garbage pail. A few papers and other scraps were still inside, but she saw neither coffee grounds nor teabags. That seemed odd. What had they used the teacups for?

  Finding nothing more of interest in the kitchen, Riley stepped back into the living room. A chronology of events was starting to form in her mind.

  Bill stepped back inside.

  “Rigby wants us to go to the South Hills Hospital when we’re finished here,” he said.

  “The hospital where Cody Woods died?” Riley asked.

  “Right. The director there might be able to help us.”

  Noticing the glass on the coffee table, Bill asked, “Do you think her drink might have been poisoned?”

  “No, she’d barely started drinking it,” Riley said. “I don’t think she even knew she’d been poisoned when she fixed it. My guess is that her visitor had been gone for hours. It was probably late at night.”

  She stood still and thought for a moment.

  “She started feeling sick as soon as she sat down to drink it,” she said. “She decided to go upstairs for a nap.”

  Riley walked toward the stairs that led to the second floor. Bill followed behind her. At the base of the stairs was a small table with some scattered books on it. She could tell by two bookends that the books were normally neatly placed. The woman who kept her home this tidy wouldn’t tolerate even this slight disorder.

  “She was dizzy and nauseous by the time she got here,” she said. “She stumbled and knocked these books over.”

  As Riley and Bill continued up the stairs, Riley saw that some pictures on the walls on each side were hanging askew.

  “She kept staggering as she went up the stairs, bumping into the walls,” Riley said.

  In the hallway at the top of the stairs, a carpet was bunched up in places.

  “She was stumbling badly by the time she got here,” Riley said.

  They walked into a spacious bedroom. The bed was made, but slightly disheveled. The pillow had a head-shaped dent in it, which was slightly stained. Riley bent over and sniffed the pillow.

  “She was sweating when she finally lay down,” she said. “She must have started to realize that something was very wrong. Or perhaps she was too dizzy and disoriented to think much of anything at all.”

  Riley was beginning to empathize with the victim’s agony. She felt a bit sick to her stomach.

  This wasn’t what she wanted.

  Usually at a murder scene, Riley could step into the mind of the killer.

  She wasn’t used to identifying with the victim.

  But she had to make the most of it.

  “She was miserable lying down,” Riley said. “She couldn’t sleep. Her head may have been spinning and hurting. She decided she needed a breath of fresh air. She sat up. Maybe she got a bit of a second wind, was able to walk more steadily.”

  Riley retraced her steps in the hallway, then continued onto the outside deck.

  “Why didn’t she call nine-one-one?” Bill asked, following her.

  “She was delirious. She no longer had a clear idea of what she was doing.”

  “The police said that she fell from the roof,” Bill said.

  With Bill behind her, Riley walked up the stairs that led to the roof from the deck.

  “She must have had some vague idea she’d be more comfortable up here,” Riley said.

  Indeed, the air on the roof patio was remarkably crisp and clean. The area had square patches of artificial grass and real potted plants. An elegant furniture set with a sofa, a chair, and a coffee table looked like it would fit well in an expensive living room, although Riley was sure that the upholstery was thoroughly weatherproofed. One of the sofa cushions was turned awkwardly.

  “She collapsed here for a while,” Riley said. “Maybe she even passed out. When she came to, she got up and made her way over here.”

  Riley followed the woman’s steps to the railing overlooking the water, with Seattle on the opposite shore. The air was clear now, and Riley could see far across the water. But the view would have been different then. She imagined it by night, with scattered lights shining through the mist over the water. It must have been lovely. Perhaps Amanda was even able to enjoy the view for a moment or two before …

  Before what?

  Then she remembered something that Prisha Shankar had said this morning. The poisonous cocktail had contained a certain substance—Riley couldn’t remember the multisyllabic name off the top of her head, although she had it written down in her notebook.

  For the moment, the name didn’t matter.

  Riley recalled Dr. Shankar’s exact words about the substance.

  “It’s a muscle relaxant. It can cause short-term paralysis.”

  Riley could feel what Amanda must have felt—a tidal wave of weakness and despair as her body ceased to obey her.

  But the question remained—had Amanda’s final houseguest poisoned her?

  If not, who could possibly have done so?

  Riley closed her eyes and tried to capture Amanda’s final thoughts before she tumbled over the rail.

  She’d felt betrayed …

  All I wanted was a friend to talk to, to pass the time with.

  So I allowed someone into my lonely home

  And my guest did this to me.

  And now I’m going to die just as I’ve lived—alone.

  Riley felt a growing certainty.

  Now she remembered something that Highland had said about the visitor.

  “She seemed—generous, I guess.”

  He’d also said …

  “I was glad that someone nice had come to see her.”

  Riley’s certainty grew stronger by the second.

  Yes, it had been that final houseguest.

  The visitor had been charming—too charming. She was capable of kindness, perhaps even believed herself to be a kind person.

  And yet she was a true outlier. The killers Riley had hunted before had watched their victims die. That was part of their compulsion—to exult in the painful final moments of those they killed.

  But this one was capable of a magnitude of cruelty Riley had seldom encountered.

  She thought nothing of leaving her victims to die alone.

  She had left even this loneliest of women to die alone.

  There was a strange emptiness inside her, an abyss that even she knew nothing of.

  She doesn’t even know what kind of monster she is, Riley thought.

  Riley’s eyes snapped open. She looked at Bill. He clearly saw that she had come to a realization.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It was the visitor,” Riley said.

  Then with a gasp Riley added, “And she’s truly insane.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY
FOUR

  Riley’s jaw tightened as she and Bill walked into South Hills Hospital. She was still jangled by the disaster at Parnassus Heights Hospital earlier that morning. She wasn’t sure what to expect at South Hills, but she had no reason to think anything might be much better here.

  This was where Cody Woods had died. Of course, the local cops and FBI agents had already interviewed the hospital director and much of the staff. Now she and Bill were going to start in on them all over again. In Riley’s experience, interviews like this seldom went well. People who were tired of being questioned often got nervous and defensive.

  When they met Director Margery Cummings in her office, Riley breathed a sigh of relief. She was a pleasant woman with a ruddy complexion, and she greeted them with handshakes and a hearty smile.

  “I heard about the meeting at Parnassus Heights,” Cummings said. “Sounds like it was quite a scene.”

  Riley and Bill glanced at each other. What could they discreetly say to her about this morning’s debacle?

  Cummings laughed a little. She seemed to sense their awkwardness.

  “Gossip gets around fast in the medical community,” she said. “I’m pretty new to Seattle. But I’ve heard lots of stories about Briggs Wanamaker. He’s got a taste for grandstanding. I try not to follow his example.”

  Riley smiled a little uneasily. Although she found Cummings’ cheerfulness refreshing, it also struck as just a little bit odd. The idea that a patient in her hospital had been poisoned didn’t seem to weigh on her mind very much.

  Cummings got up from her desk.

  “Come with me,” she said. “I’ve got my people waiting for you.”

  She led Riley and Bill up an elevator and through a hallway to the hospital’s staff lounge. Some twenty people were there—orderlies, nurses, physicians, and even maintenance workers. All of them had worked on the floor where Cody Woods had been a patient during the times in question.

  Riley was relieved that this meeting was nothing like the catastrophe at Parnassus Heights. Everybody was cooperative and patient as she and Bill asked them questions they had surely been asked before.

  Still, the whole effort didn’t seem very productive to Riley. Most of these people had excellent memories. The floor team chief had kept careful records of work shifts and general comings and goings.

  Might a supposed visitor to another patient have gotten into Cody Woods’ room either time when he was here?

  The staff didn’t think so, and Riley herself soon realized that it was highly unlikely. Director Cummings ran a tight ship, and her staff was vigilant. A stranger straying among the rooms would surely have caught somebody’s attention.

  Probably just a wasted trip, Riley thought.

  Not that a wasted trip was completely unexpected. Dead ends like this were part of an investigator’s routine. What mattered was leaving no stone unturned.

  Riley and Bill were about to end the meeting when a nurse’s hand shot up.

  “Excuse me,” she said, “but does anybody else remember that patient awhile back—the guy who kept saying he was being poisoned?”

  There was a general murmuring among the staff. Yes, some of the people remembered.

  “We checked him out,” a young physician said. “There was nothing to it.”

  “I thought so at the time,” the nurse who had spoken said. “But now that this has happened, it makes me wonder.”

  Cummings looked surprised.

  “Who are you talking about?” she asked.

  “It happened about a month before you took over,” the nurse said. “What was his name, anyway?”

  Another nurse was bringing up information on a tablet.

  “George Serbin,” she said. “He was here for about a week with a case of pneumonia. We seriously looked into his complaints, but didn’t find anything to back them up. We followed up after he was released. The last we heard, he was alive and well.”

  “Do you have any contact information for him?” Riley asked.

  “I’ve got it right here,” the nurse with the tablet said.

  Bill wrote the information down. Riley and Bill thanked everybody and called the meeting to a close.

  As they rode back down the elevator, Bill commented, “Maybe at last we have a live witness.”

  “I really hope so,” she replied. “Our interviews have led us exactly nowhere so far.”

  As soon as they got outside, Riley dialed George Serbin’s number on her cell phone. She got a monosyllabic answer.

  “Yeah?”

  “Am I speaking to George Serbin?”

  “Yeah.”

  The man’s voice was very odd—slightly high-pitched and nervous sounding.

  “I’m Special Agent Riley Paige of the FBI. My partner and I would like to ask you a few questions in person.”

  A silence fell.

  “What about?” Serbin asked.

  “We just talked to some of the personnel at South Hills Hospital,” Riley said. “They said that you thought you’d been poisoned. We’re checking into it.”

  Serbin’s voice cracked with alarm.

  “I’m OK,” said.

  Riley glanced at Bill.

  He doesn’t sound OK, she thought.

  “Are you sure?” Riley asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I made a mistake. I was wrong.”

  “We’d like to make sure,” Riley said. “We want to hear your story. Are you home right now?”

  An even longer silence fell.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  Then he ended the call.

  “What do you think?” Bill asked.

  “He’s scared of something,” Riley said. “We’d better check him out.”

  She and Bill headed straight for their car.

  George Serbin had sounded so strange on the phone that she had to wonder whether he was a prospective victim or a suspect.

  *

  The apartment building was a short drive from the hospital. It was a simple structure, no different from a dozen others lined up along several city blocks. Once they confirmed the location, Riley and Bill walked up to the second floor and knocked on his door.

  “Who is it?” the occupant called out.

  “Agents Paige and Jeffreys, FBI,” Riley said. “I called you a short while ago.”

  “Oh.”

  Riley heard the clatter of chains and deadbolts.

  The door opened into a tiny, rather untidy efficiency apartment. George Serbin was a swarthy little man with a frightened expression on his face.

  “May we come in?” Riley said.

  “Sure,” Serbin said, stepping out of the way.

  Serbin didn’t offer them a place to sit. He paced about uneasily, avoiding eye contact. He struck Riley as extraordinarily awkward—as if he didn’t trust his own skin and wanted to get out of it.

  Riley glanced around the single room. She noticed that the windows were covered inside with clear insulation sheets. That seemed peculiar to her. The weather here in Seattle hadn’t seemed especially cold so far.

  Bill said, “Mr. Serbin, you were hospitalized fairly recently for pneumonia. The staff said that you complained that you were being poisoned. What was that all about?”

  Serbin waved his arms as he talked in that odd, high-pitched voice. He sounded to Riley almost like a cartoon character.

  “Yeah, well. Like I said, it was a misunderstanding. I wasn’t accusing anybody of anything.”

  “Could you tell us what happened?” Bill said.

  “It was nothing. Really, nothing.”

  Serbin continued to pace.

  Riley’s eyes fell on a laptop computer sitting on the Formica-topped kitchen table. She was surprised to see herself, Bill, and Serbin on the screen.

  She asked, “Mr. Serbin, are you recording us on video?”

  “Kind of,” he said warily.

  After a pause, he added, “Actually, we’re live on Facebook.”

  Riley didn’t know what to say or do. She
had no idea how many of Serbin’s friends might be watching—maybe a handful, or maybe hundreds.

  Fortunately, Bill seemed to know how to handle the situation. He walked over to the computer and spoke directly to the screen.

  “Hi, folks,” he said. “I appreciate how you’re all watching out for Mr. Serbin here. Your loyalty and vigilance is admirable. But I promise, my partner and I don’t mean him any harm.”

  He took out his badge and displayed it for the camera.

  “I’m Special Agent Bill Jeffreys, FBI,” he said.

  He nodded at Riley. She peered into the camera, flashing her own badge.

  “I’m Special Agent Riley Paige.”

  “We’re here to conduct a perfectly routine interview,” Bill said, looking into the camera again. “The thing is, we really can’t do this with lots of people watching. So Mr. Serbin is going to log off now. I guarantee that he’ll be back online in fifteen minutes. If not—well, you know who we are and who we work for. You can hold us to account.”

  He turned toward Serbin with a friendly smile. Looking somewhat relieved, Serbin logged off.

  “You can’t be too careful these days,” Serbin said.

  “I agree,” Bill said. “But why did you think you were being poisoned at the hospital?”

  Serbin shook his head almost frantically.

  “I wasn’t being poisoned at the hospital,” he said. “I was being poisoned everywhere. Surely you know all about it. That must be why you’re here.”

  Riley and Bill looked at each other.

  Riley said, “Mr. Serbin, I assure you, neither my partner nor I have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re going to have to spell it out for us,” Bill added.

  Serbin sat down at last. He seemed to relax a little.

  “You guys really don’t know about it, do you? I guess you don’t have clearance at that level. Oh, man. You don’t even know the truth about who you work for. We’re all getting poisoned—or at least everybody’s exposed to it. But only a few of us are actually targeted.”

  Serbin shrugged, as if he thought he was making all the sense in the world. Then he gestured toward a window.

  “Come over here,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

  Riley and Bill looked with him out the window. The sky was still mostly clear, with just a few clouds.