Nancy Bush's Nowhere Bundle: Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide & Nowhere Safe. Nancy Bush
with video-gaming distributors. “Military, schmilitary. They’re just developing video games. Lots of shooting and fake blood and gurgling sound effects. Rad showed me some backdoor ways to get to upper game levels. That’s about the extent of their secret military involvement. And with Phillip Berelli as the company comptroller, they look like they’re paying all their bills and taxes, too.”
“So, you’re saying this wasn’t about Upjohn or de Fore,” Gretchen said.
“Doesn’t read that way. And it doesn’t seem like this was some disgruntled employee. Most everyone who’s worked for Upjohn left on their own accord.” George looked at September. “You okay?”
He knew all about the body they’d discovered; September and Gretchen had reported all they knew to D’Annibal with George standing by. D’ Annibal had gone to talk to someone at county.
“I keep wondering where Wes is,” September said. “He met the first vic at a bar.”
“He was miles away. On his way back,” George said.
Gretchen’s desk phone rang and she walked over and scooped up the receiver. “Detective Sandler.”
“You look like hell,” George observed.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Who would you look at?” September asked him. “As the target for the Zuma shootings?”
“Possibly the receptionist. He shot her twice in the chest and that’s pretty serious business.”
“But he kept on going,” September pointed out. “He shot de Fore. Then Maltona. Then he went after Upjohn and Dirkus who were together in Upjohn’s office. Maybe he made a try for the upstairs.”
“I hear your brother’s contacted the other one, the bookkeeper. She’s damn lucky she wasn’t there on Friday. Maybe she’s the target and that coulda been her Waterloo.”
Gretchen slammed the receiver into the cradle. “Nine,” she said shortly.
September looked at her.
“Camille Dirkus is with Upjohn at the hospital. Let’s roll.”
Grandview Senior Care was a squat, brick hospital with wings sprouting like spokes from a central hub. Some of those wings were connected in the back, and Auggie imagined hallways that turned off hallways that turned off hallways until you were back where you started. He also suspected that when the facility had been a mental hospital, its halls and rooms weren’t quite so tired looking. Or, maybe it was just that with so many wheelchairs, walkers and elderly residents the place had picked up that sense of being in another time. Somewhere slowed down. Out of rhythm with the goings-on outside their doors.
“Hello,” a middle-aged woman with a lean, outdoorsy look greeted him. Her narrow face had a windburned quality to it, etched by lines around her mouth and eyes.
Auggie glanced back, through the sliding glass doors to the parking lot. Liv was sitting in the passenger side, staring at him through the window, her eyes covered by sunglasses. She’d been afraid to come in, and she’d been even more afraid to let him go alone, but in the end she’d allowed it, saying simply, “Go on.”
She was discombobulated, he knew. Making fatalistic choices. The only way he’d been able to penetrate her defenses and make love to her.
To the woman, he said, “I need to talk to someone about one of the doctors who was here when Grandview was a mental hospital.”
She lost interest immediately. “Oh, that was a whole different company. They’ve been gone a while.”
“Is there someone, though, who might know about that company?”
“I guess you could talk to Sofia,” she said reluctantly. “She didn’t work for them, but I believe her sister did.”
“Is Sofia here now?” Auggie asked. Inside his pocket, his cell phone was feeling very heavy. He needed to call D’Annibal again. He needed to make certain the lieutenant felt he was actually working the job. In truth, he wondered if he really was. He’d sort of lost perspective on his own directive. From putting a tail on Liv Dugan to becoming her hostage, and then her lover . . . well, that wasn’t exactly in the playbook for detective work.
The receptionist pushed a button and said into the receiver, “Sofia? Are you available? There’s someone at the front door for you.” A few moments later the phone buzzed back and she picked it up. Her gaze met Auggie’s and she nodded. “She’ll be right up.”
“Thanks.” There was no chair but there was a short bench along one wall. Auggie sauntered over to it, casting an eye toward the door and Liv who was still looking his way. He gave her a surreptitious thumbs-up.
Ten minutes later a large woman with short, gray hair above her ears, wearing pink surgical scrubs, her breath heaving as she half-waddled, half-strode into the waiting area, skewered Auggie with a look. “You wanted to see me?” she said with a trace of disbelief as she looked him up and down.
Her voice was gravel. Her expression was bland, but he sensed a certain disapproval coming from her. “I wanted to talk about Grandview Hospital, before it was a senior-care center.”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“I understand your sister worked at Grandview?”
She cast an eye toward the receptionist, who met her gaze blandly and shrugged. “She did. For a short time.”
“Can you help me, or should I talk to her?”
“What do you want to know?”
This was normally where he would haul out his identification and suggest they go in a room and have a talk. Most people, upon realizing he was with the police, fell all over themselves to give him what he wanted and get him on his way. Unless, of course, they had something to hide.
But without the ID, he was relying on Sofia’s cooperation out of the goodness of her heart. Her very large heart, in a very large chest. And he didn’t want to take a chance that Liv would find out who he was before he was ready. Especially after what they’d now shared . . .
“I’m actually looking for a Dr. Navarone,” Auggie said, cutting to the chase.
Sofia’s eyes glared down at him. “Why?”
From across the room the receptionist was looking at them curiously now, too. Auggie said, with a mixture of fact and fiction, “I think he treated my brother when he was at Grandview. The treatment didn’t help him. I’m not interested in a lawsuit. I just want to talk to the man, find out what Dr. Navarone’s treatment was.”
Sofia snorted and it was a loud noise. “Treatment,” she said with a curl of her lip.
“I heard it was unconventional,” Auggie encouraged her.
“That’s a nice word for it.”
“What would you call it?” he asked.
“Dangerous. Stupid. Maybe even criminal. That’s what my sister said, and she would know.”
“What kind of things are we talking about?”
“What’s your brother’s name?” she asked.
“Hague Dugan,” he answered without hesitation.
She seemed to think that over. “Dr. Navarone used psychotropic drugs. Deprivation techniques. He experimented. Got his hands slapped for it, too, according to Andrea, my sister. To his credit, Navarone seemed to really believe he was helping his patients. A lot of people bought into it for a long time . . . until they didn’t.”
“What happened?”
“Somebody