Page 12 of Her Last Doubt

Neither had building access outside their scheduled hours, and neither had ever been in the basement. Rachel made a note to verify their alibis anyway, then crossed the names off her list. She honestly couldn’t see a man like Wayne Hudson, nearing seventy-five with poor haring and arthritis killing people without much effort.

With them crossed off, she knew the custodian was next. And that was fine, because he was the one who actually interested her. When she went back to Hale to ask to speak with the custodian, he told her that Dale Pruitt was currently available—he was the custodian, and he had a permanent residence in the basement. As he shared this information, his tone made it clear that he considered the question an imposition.

So Rachel found the stairs were at the end of the main hallway, past the elevator and through a door marked STAFF. This opened up onto a stairwell that was considerably less polished than the rest of the building. The carpet stopped at the threshold. Below it was bare concrete, the walls painted a utilitarian gray, and the temperature dropped a few degrees as Rachel descended.

At the bottom, a single hallway ran the length of the building. Exposed pipes ran along the ceiling, and the lighting was functional rather than atmospheric. Storage cages lined one side, padlocked and stacked with the accumulated overflow of forty-two units. Most were filled with things like luggage, seasonal furniture, and boxes that had probably not been opened in a decade. At the far end of the hallway, she spotted a door with a small placard that read SUPERINTENDENT. She could hear the slight murmur of a television coming from the other side of the door.

She approached the door and knocked.

The man who answered didn’t look surprised to have a visitor. He was apparently one of the many who Hale had given an advanced warning. He was in his mid-fifties, broad through the shoulders, with close-cropped gray hair and the kind of hands that had been doing physical work for a long time. Rachel could see a small scar on his index finger, and a grease stain on the back of one hand that looked new. He wore a clean flannel shirt tucked into dark work trousers and looked at Rachel's credentials with calm attention.

“I’m Special Agent Rachel Gift, with the FBI,” she said. “Are you Mr. Pruitt?”

“Just Dale, please,” he said, stepping back from the door. "Come on in."

The apartment was not what she'd expected at all, considering it was tucked away in the basement of such an old building. It was small, for starters. The living area, a kitchen alcove, and a single door that she assumed led to the bedroom was all there was to see. But it was carefully kept. The furniture was modest but well-maintained: a leather armchair with a side table beside it, a bookshelf along one wall with a mix of paperbacks and what looked like building maintenance manuals filed neatly. A single print of the Hargrove's exterior hung on the wall, unframed. It was in black and white, and a small label had bene inscribed in ink along the bottom—Hargrove, May 1941. The building looked almost exactly the same.

“How long have you been living down here, Mr. Pruitt?” she asked.

"Twenty-two years," Pruitt said, following her gaze to the photo. He sat in the armchair with an ease that indicated it was where he spent most of his time. "People think it's strange, living down here. But I know every inch of this building. I know every sound it makes, every system, every problem before it becomes a real problem." He looked at the photographs with something that was close to fondness...almost pride. "I take care of it and it takes care of me."

"Do you have access to every unit in the building?" Rachel asked.

"I do. Well, most of them," Pruitt said, nodding at a ring of keys hanging by the door.

“Is that normal for a custodian?” Novak asked.

“Depends on the building and the manager. It does seem strange, I know. But those keys have spared some of the residents a ton of money in repairs. If a pipe bursts or a toilet overflows, the sooner I can get in, the sooner it can be fixed. Plus, with so many older residents, I can get in quickly in the event there’s a fall or some kind of medical emergency.”

“You ever have to deal with any of that?”

“Yeah, a few times. Nothing too bad, though. The worst was a small fire a few years ago when a resident’s microwave short-circuited.”

"So you could get into any apartment here,” Rachel said.

"I could. I don't, unless I'm asked to or something's wrong." He said it plainly, no defensiveness in it. "Comes with the job. And the twenty-two years, I suppose."

Rachel finally sat on the small sofa across from him and took out her phone. "Mr. Pruitt, I also want to ask about the security footage first, actually. Detective Purcell's notes indicate you were involved in isolating the relevant recordings."

"I was." He said it without any particular emotion. "When Deluca died and then Osley, nobody was treating it as anything other than natural causes, but I keep an eye on the system as part of my regular duties. When Marsh died, I went back through the footage myself and pulled everything relevant to the windows of time when each of them would have died. Packaged it up and handed it to the detective."

"You did that on your own initiative?"

"I did. This is my building." He said it simply, without heat. "I wasn't going to wait to be asked. And if we’d waited for Hale to take care of it…well, we’d all be dead by then."

"That was helpful. We appreciate it." Rachel kept her voice even. "I do need to ask where you were on the evenings of each murder, though. It's standard — we're asking everyone who works here."

Pruitt nodded as though he'd expected the question and found it reasonable. "Of course. And I already answered it all for the cops. When Mrs. Marsh died, I was on the fourth floor. There was a call about a leaking tub in 4-B at around nine in the evening. I was up there for the better part of an hour dealing with it. Both residents in the unit can confirm that, and I told Detective Purcell the same thing." He tilted his head slightly. "She checked. They confirmed."

"And the other two? Deluca and Marsh?"

He smiled at that — a mild, patient smile. "The police already went through all three with me, like I said. I had clear alibis for each one. Purcell seemed satisfied." He leaned back in the chair. "I'll tell you whatever you need, same as I told them. I've got nothing to hide and I've got no reason to make any of this harder than it needs to be."

Rachel looked at him for a moment. He held her gaze without effort and without aggression, the way a man holds eye contact when he's genuinely untroubled rather than performing calm. She believed the alibi — not because he'd said it pleasantly, but because the details were just specific enough without being over-planned or dramatic. For the night of Deluca’s murder, he was at a bar downtown, watching the Commanders game…the first game of the season. For Marsh, he’d been in the lobby, working on a wiring problem for two of the lamps in the lobby.

And though she knew these were strong alibis, something stuck out…something that was difficult to put a name to. It wasn't anything he'd said. It was the photograph on the wall, and the maintenance manuals filed alongside the paperbacks. It had been in the way he'd said this is my building with a quiet ownership that had nothing to do with a lease or a paycheck.

He cared deeply for this building and what it stood for. To think he’d harm any of the residents was hard to fathom.