Chương 5
“Before your security does.”
That was the second fracture, wider than the first.
Vega closed her notebook. “Mr. Cade, I’m placing an officer outside this room. No outside food, medication, or personal items. Hospital pharmacy only. Anyone who objects can object to me.”
Gabriel looked at Elias, waiting.
Elias nodded once.
Gabriel left without touching the coffee he had brought.
Celeste stared at the cup until Detective Vega noticed.
“You think it’s poisoned?”
“No.”
“Then why are you looking at it like that?”
“Because he knows I don’t drink coffee.”
Vega glanced toward the doorway. “Maybe he was being polite.”
“Maybe.”
Celeste still did not touch it.
Silas Venn remained missing for thirty-six hours.
During that time, Elias improved enough to speak without oxygen, though his hands continued to tremble and pain moved unpredictably through his feet and legs. The arsenic treatment made him nauseated. He refused to complain, which turned each unpleasant sensation into an argument between him and the nursing staff.
Celeste stayed because no one told her to go and because leaving felt like abandoning a patient in the middle of a medication error.
She slept twice in the chair for less than an hour.
Her sister arrived on the second afternoon carrying a clean blouse, a toothbrush, and the expression of someone who had already rehearsed an argument in the elevator.
June Harllo was four years younger, shorter, and better at showing anger. She worked as an elementary school counselor and wore bright scarves even in summer. Today’s was dark green.
She looked at Elias, at the armed officer outside the room, and then at Celeste.
“Hallway,” she said.
Celeste followed.
June waited until the door closed. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Probably.”
“You’re on television.”
“I noticed.”
“They’re calling you his private nurse.”
“That was my job.”
“They’re also saying you handled his medications.”
“I did.”
“And that you left St. Vincent’s after a medication investigation.”
Celeste leaned against the wall. “They found that quickly.”
“Mom found it faster. She thinks reporters are outside her building.”
“They aren’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No reporter willingly goes to Berwyn before lunch.”
June did not laugh.
Celeste rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry.”
“That isn’t useful.”
“I know.”
“Do the police think you did this?”
“No.”
It came too quickly.
June’s eyes narrowed. “Celeste.”
“They’re asking everyone questions.”
“You always say that when the real answer is worse.”
“I found the vial. I preserved it. The paramedics documented everything.”
“And you were alone in the room with him.”
“He was being poisoned before I worked there.”
“Can they prove that?”
“Further tests may show repeated exposure.”
“May.”
Celeste looked through the narrow window in the hospital door. Elias lay with his face turned away. From that angle, without the expensive pajamas and the men waiting outside, he looked like any exhausted patient.
June lowered her voice. “Come home.”
“I can’t.”
“You absolutely can.”
“If I leave now, the people who poisoned him control the records, the house, and the story.”
“He is a criminal, Celeste.”
“I know.”
“Not a rude dentist. Not a businessman with tax problems. People have been hurt because of him.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you risking your life to keep him alive?”
Celeste looked at her sister.
The honest answer was not noble. It was not that every life mattered equally, though she believed that in hospital rooms more easily than outside them. It was not loyalty. Elias had never asked for hers, and she had never offered it.
She was staying because someone had altered a sick man’s medicine and expected his weakness to hide the crime. She knew what it felt like to have careful records dismissed by people with cleaner reputations. She knew how institutions turned uncertainty into permission.
And, beneath that, she was angry.
Anger had carried her through more nights than courage ever had.
“I was there when it happened,” she said.
June’s face changed. “That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the one I have.”
A commotion at the far end of the corridor interrupted them. Two detectives emerged from the elevator with a uniformed officer between them.
Silas walked behind the officer.
He wore the same black suit from the mansion, but the jacket was unbuttoned and his shirt collar had come loose. A bruise darkened his left cheek. His hands were not cuffed.
Celeste stepped away from the wall.
Silas saw her and stopped.
Detective Vega came out of Elias’s room. “Mr. Venn turned himself in at the Twenty-Fifth District station.”
“Where were you?” Celeste asked.
Vega raised a hand. “Not here.”
Silas looked through the door window toward Elias. “Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
His shoulders lowered slightly.
“Did you poison him?” June asked.
Celeste turned. “June.”
“What? Everyone else is pretending not to ask.”
Silas looked at June with tired courtesy. “No, miss.”
“Did you carry the tray?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see the vial?”
“Not until I reached the bedroom.”
“Why did you run?”
Silas looked at Celeste.
“The east elevator,” she said.
He nodded.
Vega guided them into an empty consultation room. June remained despite Celeste’s attempt to send her home.
Silas sat at the small table and folded his hands. Without the mansion around him, he looked less like a butler than a man who had spent his life learning how not to take up space.
“The tray was prepared at ten fifty-five,” he said. “Soup, bread, water, and the prescribed blister pack. I watched Mrs. Ochoa cover it in the kitchen.”
Mrs. Ochoa was the night cook.
“Who had access afterward?” Vega asked.
“The tray remained on the service counter. I was called to the west sitting room because Mr. Gabriel had broken a glass.”
Gabriel had broken a glass.
Celeste wrote the words.
“How long were you gone?” Vega asked.
“Six or seven minutes.”
“When you returned?”
“The cover had been moved. Not much. The handle was turned toward the wall instead of the hallway.”
May you like
“Why did that matter?”
“I place it the same way each night.”
