Don't Ever Forget (Adler and Dwyer)

by Matthew Farrell

  “First things first.”

  The woman pulled back the covers and, with one motion, yanked his pants down to his knees and slipped the bedpan underneath him.

  “Go.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Go.”

  “You’re here. I can’t.”

  The woman sighed and turned around so she couldn’t see anything. He felt his face flush as he relieved himself. When he was done, she took the pan, set it on the floor, and pulled his pants back up. She looked disinterested, as if she’d done this a thousand times. She probably had.

  “You ready to get out of bed?”

  “I guess so.”

  The woman swung his legs out and got him into a sitting position. When he was upright, she brought the wheelchair over and helped him fall into it. The pain in his neck and shoulder was beginning to dissipate now that he was in the chair. She was right. He’d probably just slept wrong.

  “You want some breakfast?”

  “I want Rebecca,” James said without really understanding what he was saying. The request and the name just slipped from his lips. “Where is she?”

  The woman got behind him and began pushing him toward the living room. “Who’s Rebecca?”

  “My nurse. Where is she? Did she call out sick today? Are you my nurse today?”

  “No. I’m Cindy.”

  “Where’s Rebecca?”

  “There’s no Rebecca. Just you and me.”

  “Cindy.”

  “That’s right. Do you remember me from yesterday? And the day before that? And the day before that?”

  When she said her name, bits of memory began to show themselves, a half scene here, a quarter of a scene there. But nothing he could string together with any cohesion.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I do remember. I do. You’re Cindy.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You brought me here to take care of me instead of putting me in a hospital.”

  “Right again.”

  “They were beating me at the hospital. They threw me onto the floor.”

  “If you say so.”

  “No, it’s true. They threw me down. Two men. I hit my head.”

  “Okay.”

  He closed his eyes to steady his thoughts. “I’m in this wheelchair . . . because of a car accident?”

  Cindy stopped pushing and bent down in front of him. She looked him in his eyes, her gaze deep and focused. “Can you tell me your name?”

  “My name?”

  “Yeah. What’s your name?”

  And just like that, it was gone.

  “My name . . .”

  He struggled to remember, but the fog moved in quickly, thick and gray, overtaking the slivers of memory he’d held only seconds ago.

  “My name . . .”

  He fought to hold on. The car accident. The basement. Cindy. But those details, too, began to fade, and only a single question surfaced.

  “Where’s Rebecca? Did she call out sick today? Are you her backup?”

  The woman’s chin dropped to her chest as she stood and gently took the coffee from the table, handing it to him. “We were almost there.”

  “Where? Where are we?”

  She dug into her pocket, came away with a pill bottle, and opened it, shaking two pills in his hand.

  “What’s this?”

  “Tylenol. For your neck. It’ll make you feel better.”

  He took the pills and sipped the coffee. “I want to go outside. I need some fresh air.”

  “We will. Gotta stop raining first.”

  “And can we fix that clock? I never know what time it is. It’s hard to tell what’s up and what’s down. I need to go outside or upstairs or something. I need to get with people. Interact.”

  “You do. You’ve been up and out and in group sessions and to physical therapy. You’ve interacted with doctors and volunteers, and you have friends at the community center. You just don’t remember any of it.”

  James closed his eyes, frustrated and sad. He tried to force the fog to part for just a moment so he could grab on to something. “You’re . . . Rebecca.”

  “No.”

  “Cindy! You’re Cindy.”

  The woman smiled. “That’s right.”

  “I’m . . . James. James Darville. Don’t call me Jim because I hate that. Just James.”

  Cindy clapped her hands. “Yes. Very good.” She parked the wheelchair at the edge of the couch and sat in front of him. “The man from last night who came down to help you into bed. Do you remember him?”

  “Yes. Nasty fella. Tried to talk to him, but he had nothing to say.”

  “He told me you were asking for Bonnie.”

  “Who’s Bonnie? Why was I asking for her?”

  “Think. Try and remember.”

  “I am,” James said. “I don’t know who Bonnie is. I’m sorry.”

  The woman nodded and sat back against the couch cushions. “Let’s try this. Tell me about yourself. Where did you grow up? What did you do for a living?”

  He closed his eyes again, searching for the answers he knew were in his head, his heart aching for reasons he couldn’t quite understand. The fog had rolled in like a giant wave over a jetty in high tide. There was nothing. He looked at the woman, who looked somewhat familiar.

  “Where’s Rebecca?” he asked. “Did she call out sick? Are you her replacement?”

  Then he was gone.

  19

  The next office on the list Triston had made for her was Traveling Healthcare of New York. It was tucked away in a nondescript brick building in Mount Kisco, about a mile east of Northern Westchester Medical Center, on the border of Bedford Hills. The building’s tenants covered almost every kind of medical treatment that might come to mind: podiatry, cardiology, ENT, joint replacement, obstetrics, rheumatology. The directory itself stretched from floor to ceiling. Susan found the staffing agency on the third floor and took the elevator up.

  Beth Ruelle was a short woman, maybe four feet, with cropped silver hair that hung just below her ears. A white lab coat covered a black dress that fell past her knees. Black-rimmed glasses took up most of her face and magnified her brown eyes. Susan watched as she made her way around several cubicles and out to the waiting area, a tiny hand extended in greeting.

  “Beth Ruelle,” the woman said as they shook.

  “Susan Adler. Sorry to call you in on a Saturday.”

  “No worries at all. This is important. Please, follow me.”

  Susan retraced Beth’s steps around the cubicles to the back of the spacious office and followed the older woman into a conference room. Beth sat on one side of the long table while Susan sat opposite her, her back to the glass wall looking out onto the rest of the floor.

  “I can’t believe this happened,” Beth said, her gaze fixed elsewhere as the words floated out of her mouth. “As soon as I saw it on the news, I started getting calls. Still no sign of Rebecca or Mr. Darville?”

  Susan took out her notepad and slid her chair forward so she could write on the table. “Nothing yet.”

  “Such a shame.”

  “As I mentioned on the phone, I just wanted to get a sense of Rebecca Hill’s history with your firm.”

  Beth waved a hand. “Ask anything you want.”

  “How long has she been employed here?”

  “Twelve years. She’s been assigned to Mr. Darville for two. Mr. Darville came to us through Medicaid as a referral. His disease had progressed to the point of him needing care more often than not.”

  “Alzheimer’s.”

  “That’s right. He hasn’t reached the point of needing full-time care in a facility just yet, but that’s, unfortunately, inevitable. Perhaps in another few years.”

  “Any relatives?”

  “None that we’ve ever known of. No visitors. No calls. I know Rebecca herself tried to do some digging but came up empty.”

  “So why not just roll him into a nursing home or specialized facili
ty, rather than having him live on his own, if he has no family around?”

  “It’s all about the budget,” Beth said quickly. This wasn’t the first time she’d needed to explain this. “Right now Mr. Darville is in a house that’s paid off in a town where property taxes are relatively cheap, and his social security covers them. As far as Medicaid is concerned, one of our nurses, a home food-delivery program, and his current household expenses were less expensive than a skilled nursing facility. They’re going to save every penny until full-time care is mandatory. That’s how these things work.”

  Susan jotted a few notes. “You said Rebecca kept files?”

  “Yes. All my nurses have to keep daily patient files so we know what’s going on day to day. We share these updates with the patient’s primary or secondary care doctors so everyone’s in the loop. It also helps if a nurse leaves us or calls in sick. The files can make those transitions seamless.”

  “I’d like a copy of her files as they pertain to Mr. Darville.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Beth said. “You know, HIPAA and all.”

  “Do you know anything about Rebecca’s personal life? Any idea why she might’ve been driving north on the Taconic at two in the morning?”

  Beth shrugged. “None of that is my business. My focus is on the medical side of my nurses’ lives. What they do off shift is not something I care to know.”

  “Was James Darville Rebecca’s only patient?”

  “Yes. Rebecca requested Mr. Darville when he came up in our queue and had seen him Monday through Friday for the past two years. Never had a problem. Never called in sick. She was a good nurse. That’s why this is such a shock.”

  Susan stopped writing and looked up. “Wait, she requested Mr. Darville? Is that the normal process?”

  “No, but he came through, and Rebecca had the availability, so she raised her hand. I think she knew it would be a long-term assignment, and long-term assignments bring steady paychecks.”

  More notes. “Who looked after him on the weekends? Or if he needed something overnight?”

  “From what I understand, he had neighbors look in on him on the weekend. We never had an episode with him at night, but if he did need us, we have a direct dial on his phone that he knows how to use. And, of course, there’s always 911.”

  “Do you know which neighbor looked in on him? Because we’ve been through the neighborhood and everyone said they knew of James, but didn’t interact with him.”

  “I don’t. I’m sorry.”

  Susan dug into her bag and came away with several sheets of paper. She laid them out on the table side by side and pushed them closer to Beth.

  “I found a notebook in Rebecca’s apartment. These are copies of its contents. As you can see, there are names and lists of drugs and dosages next to each one. Do you know these names?”

  Beth took the papers and read through them, nodding as she went, her crooked fingers tracing the names and drugs across the page to the dosage. “Yes, the names listed here are Rebecca’s old patients. Can’t be certain that every single name was with our firm, but I do recognize most of them. My guess is she kept this with her so as not to forget who gets what when it comes to administering their medications.”

  “Is that normal?”

  “It’s good practice, if you ask me. We obviously provide a full charting of each of our care patients, and most of it is digital now, but if this was a backup to what we gave her, I’d say she was being prudent. Smart.”

  “Do you know if any of these people live up toward where she was driving?”

  “I wouldn’t know without looking at each patient file.”

  “And HIPAA.”

  “Exactly.”

  Susan took the papers back. “Last question. Would you say Rebecca is a good employee? A good nurse?”

  Beth took her glasses off and leaned forward, her eyes locking on Susan’s without blinking. “Investigator Adler, I’ve owned this company for twenty-two years, and in those twenty-two years, I’ve had countless nurses come work for me. Some stay. Some move on to more permanent positions in hospitals and nursing homes. Some get fired. During a few rough years, I’ve even had to lay some off. But all that being said, I’ve never had a better nurse than Rebecca Hill. She’s smart, caring, efficient, and one hell of a good healthcare provider. There’s no way she did what you all think she did to that poor trooper. And if she didn’t do it, then someone had her car, which begs the question, where is Rebecca? And if something’s happened to her, it will impact those she never had a chance to care for, and our world will suffer because of it. I pray that Rebecca and Mr. Darville are okay and that you find them soon. And with that same prayer, I ask God that you find the person who’s really responsible. I pray you find the person and that he or she pays for what they’ve done. That is my only wish. My only prayer. Find the real murderer, because my Rebecca wouldn’t hurt a soul.”

  20

  It was normally a thirty-minute drive from Mount Kisco to Tarrytown, but traffic was light and Susan made it to Phelps Hospital in twenty. She pulled in from the side entrance, drove down past the ER and the outpatient surgery center, and parked around back where the endoscopy center and therapy wing were. She’d checked in with the barracks after her meeting with Beth Ruelle to see if there had been any developments, and Crosby let her know they were expecting the dashcam footage from Kincaid’s cruiser at any moment. There was nothing more to report.

  Dr. Alfred Trammel was a tall man in his late thirties with a full head of dirty-blond hair. His skin was pocked with old acne scars, but what drew more attention were his sparkling green eyes. He stood on one side of a long counter, leaning on the surface as if he were about to take a drink order. Susan sat on one of the stools opposite him. Behind them, a handful of patients and therapists worked on exercises and stretching among weights, treadmills, Smith machines, mats, and an array of other materials.

  “We appreciate you calling this in,” Susan began. “A lot of people might’ve ignored the change in routine and not gotten involved. We were able to connect Mr. Darville’s disappearance with the homicide quickly. I’m glad you gave us a heads-up.”

  Trammel nodded. “I knew James’s absence wasn’t normal. They were always on time on each day he was scheduled. Rebecca made sure of it.”

  “Tell me about Mr. Darville. How long has he been coming to see you? What do you know about his condition?”

  “James has been coming to us for almost two years now. We started with some basic exercises twice a week after he was first assigned a full-time nurse. I guess at that point he’d been diagnosed for about a year, and things were starting to take a turn for the worse. As the disease intensified, we increased his visits to three days, and finally the Tuesday through Friday schedule he has with us now. He’s been on the current schedule for three months.”

  “And then all of a sudden he stopped coming.”

  “That’s right. We saw him, as usual, on Tuesday, and then nothing. I really didn’t think anything of it at first, but after the third day of no show and no call, I started to think something might be wrong. We checked with the agency Rebecca works for, and they hadn’t heard from her, either, so I called a few area hospitals and then you guys. Next thing I know, I’m watching the news about the trooper and see that Rebecca is a suspect. Crazy.”

  “How was Rebecca with James?”

  “Those two had quite the relationship,” Dr. Trammel replied. “He trusted her, and she was so kind to him. I think, even when he was having a particularly bad flare-up, that he somehow knew she was by his side. From what I could tell, she cared for him deeply. There’s no way that woman killed anyone, let alone a state trooper. I can’t wrap my head around that.”

  Susan made a few notes in her pad. “What would a session look like for a patient with Alzheimer’s?”

  Trammel gestured to the others who were working around them. “Not that much different from our other patients here. We give them the cardiovas
cular fitness, the endurance, and strength they need from a physical standpoint to be able to get around. Maintaining a semblance of physical fitness can increase motor skills and, in some cases, reduce the rate of mental decline. It’s a mandatory part of treating the disease, as far as I’m concerned, and James was doing great.”

  “Any staff here different or new in the last few months?”

  “No. We run lean and mean here. There’s me, Dr. Ramis—who’s been my partner since I got out of medical school—and Jason and Audrey, who’ve been our assistants for six or seven years now. No new staff.”

  “What about new patients?”

  “Well, sure. We’re always getting new patients.”

  “Can I get a list of who they are?”

  “Not without a warrant. I’d love to help you, but we have HIPAA laws to abide by.”

  “Of course.” Susan got up out of her chair and shook the doctor’s hand. “Thank you for your time. I appreciate you seeing me.”

  “I wish I could help more. If I think of anything, I’ll call you. And, of course, if I hear from either James or Rebecca.”

  “Thank you.”

  Dr. Trammel walked Susan past the exercise machines and the patients grunting their way toward rehabilitation. He stopped when they reached the door.

  “We heard James’s house was bad,” he said. “Is that true?”

  “Can’t talk about it,” Susan replied, opening the door. “You got HIPAA, and I got an open investigation. Sorry.”

  21

  James didn’t know how long he was sleeping, but when he woke up, he was in his wheelchair, sitting in front of the television. The TV was on, and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was playing. It was just at the part when Tippi Hedren was meeting Rod Taylor at the pet shop where she would buy the two lovebirds. Chaos would ensue soon after. He knew the scene—and the entire film—as well as he knew his legs were in braces, but he had no recollection of starting the movie or watching it up to that point. The remote sat on his lap, yet he couldn’t recall a single moment when the woman or the man helped him start the movie. He aimed the remote at the screen and turned it off.

  The basement was quiet, and from what he could hear, the rest of the house was as well. There were no footsteps walking above him or muffled voices having conversations he couldn’t make out. The hairs on his arms stood up. He had no reason to feel frightened, but the atmosphere made him uneasy. Something wasn’t right.