Джон Гришэм - Camino Winds

No, it had to be significant.

Little progress was made the following day during their second exchange. Bruce asked:

Why the letter?

We need to talk but not sure if we can.

About Nelson?

You catch on fast.

Look, if you want to talk, then let’s do it. So far we’re just dancing.

That’s probably safer.

Do you know who killed him?

I have a pretty good idea.

Why keep quiet?

Oh that’s much safer, believe me. Now there’s another dead body.

Am I expected to respond?

A young lady in Kentucky.

Again, I’m treading water.

Better go. Same time tomorrow.

Bruce tried to print the exchange but the site wouldn’t allow it. He quickly scribbled down the words.

The following day, Bevel was a no-show. Same for the day after. Bruce did not want to alarm Noelle, so he didn’t tell her.

2.

Two days later, Bruce flew to Washington Dulles and went to his hotel room near the airport. Three hours later, Nick Sutton arrived by car and brought a girl with him, which Bruce had not anticipated. Nick assured him she would not get in the way and had family in the area.

After a leisurely semester abroad in Venice, Nick was drifting through his final weeks at Wake Forest and claimed to be in a funk at the prospect of leaving college. Bruce had little sympathy and told the kid it was time to get off his ass and find a real job, not the usual summertime bookstore gig where he split his time between reading crime novels and stalking college girls on the beach. Nick wanted to write fiction for a living and do it the old-fashioned way, with a big advance that allowed him to work at a leisurely pace of a few pages a day before long lunches and plenty of booze. His dream was to become a famous writer and hell-raiser at a young age, much in the tradition of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald, though he planned to put aside literary aspirations and write mysteries that would sell. Bruce thought he had talent but was already worried about his work ethic.

They quickly retired to the hotel bar and ordered sandwiches, without the girl. Bruce summarized the developments in the state’s investigation, of which there were few, and described his own efforts to solve the crime with Alpha North Solutions. Nick loved the idea of hiring a secretive security outfit to handle an investigation that the police were in the process of botching.

Bruce wanted him in the room because, so far, his instincts had been near-perfect. And because he was only twenty-one, he was far tech-savvier than Bruce could ever hope to be.

Bruce showed him the transcript of the two exchanges with 3838Bevel.

“A huge step in the right direction,” Nick said with a satisfied smile. “This is our guy, the snitch who knows it all and contacted Nelson with the goods. Beautiful.”

“But he’s gone silent. How do we get him back in the loop?”

“Money. That was his motivation to begin with. How much did you get for the novel?”

“Three hundred thousand.”

“Has that been reported?”

“No, but the sale has. Bevel certainly knows there’s a book deal.”

“And Bevel wants the cut that Nelson promised. He’s not going away, but he’s also afraid of his shadow.”

“So what’s our next move?”

“We wait. He’ll contact you because he needs you, not the other way around. Your goal is to solve Nelson’s murder. If you fail, your life goes on unchanged. He ain’t your brother. But Bevel here wants the money Nelson promised. For him it’s a definite game changer.”

3.

Promptly at nine Friday morning, Bruce and Nick entered the nameless mirrored tower where Alpha North Solutions hid itself. Lindsey Wheat met them at the elevator and Bruce introduced Nick, who drew a look with his faded jeans, battered sneakers, colorful T-shirt, and oversized sports coat with tattered elbow patches.

“Nick here was a friend of Nelson’s and was with me when we discovered his body,” Bruce said, almost apologetically, though he didn’t care if she approved or not. He was paying her.

They followed her to her office, with Nick soaking up all of the surroundings, what little there were. The interior designer who outfitted the place had apparently been ordered to avoid all color and warmth.

They gathered around a small conference table and prepared their coffees. Bruce cared little for chitchat, and when Lindsey asked Nick for his plans after college, Bruce said, “Look, let’s skip the preliminaries. You have news. I have news. Let’s get on with it.”

She smiled and said, “Indeed.” Then she picked up a report, adjusted her reading glasses, and began, “We infiltrated three nursing homes in rural Kentucky. One owned by Fishback, one by Grattin, one by Pack Line Retirement. As you know, Fishback and Grattin are privately owned and have deplorable compliance histories. Pack Line is the worst of the publics. More about them later. We started in Flora, Kentucky, a backwater little town of three thousand, and quickly managed to sign up a couple of employees. The first was Vera Stark at Glinn Valley, the Fishback facility. I handled Vera myself and slowly brought her along. She provided the names of the advanced dementia patients, the nonresponsive ones, more commonly referred to by staff as ‘Nons,’ as I have learned, along with several other nonflattering nicknames. After she gave us the names, I convinced her to research the types of formula and meds that are tube-fed to the patients. Because the place is perpetually understaffed, Vera began volunteering to handle the feedings, something that is not unusual. The syringes are usually loaded in the pharmacy and given to the staff on duty, but security is not tight. Rules and procedures are not always followed. She lifted a new syringe, brought it to me, and I ordered a box of the same. We loaded a substitute with the same formula and Vera agreed to swap it with a real one. Over the course of two weeks, she made about three dozen swaps from four Nons, giving us plenty of samples to analyze. The bottom line is that there is nothing suspicious being administered to these patients, not at Glinn Valley. As far as Vera could tell, the meds are always given with the feedings, three or four times a day. She also noted that the Nons receive much better care than the other patients. Plenty of calories and water, cleaner beds, hourly turnings, and so on. Gotta keep ’em alive, you know.

“Meanwhile, a colleague named Jumper was handling a young lady named Brittany Bolton, an orderly at Serenity Home, a Grattin facility across town. Brittany’s story became far more complicated because she planned to be a star witness in an abuse case. Seems she saw one of her coworkers raping a young lady who’s been brain-dead for a long time. Brittany claimed the girl was pregnant and she was probably right. Brittany did the same syringe swap and gave us over forty samples from seven different patients. Our lab technicians here in D.C. found the usual concoction of various formulas and meds for blood pressure, diabetes, dementia, blood clotting, blood thinner, blood thickener, pretty much the entire menu. Plus some vitamins. And then they found something they could not identify. A mysterious ingredient that was neither food nor vitamin. And it appeared in all forty samples Brittany lifted from Serenity. Our scientists ran test after test but got nowhere. So Jumper went back to Brittany and said we needed more, we needed to get inside the pharmacy.

“This would take time. I moved on to the third facility, a Pack Line Retirement home in an even more rural area about an hour from Flora. I made contact with a twenty-year-old newlywed father with a kid, working for thirteen dollars an hour. Because Pack Line is a public company its pay scale is slightly better. He needed cash and took the deal. We eventually got samples from five Nons, and all checked out. Nothing suspicious.