Page 16 of Her Last Doubt

“Any reason they came directly to you?”

“I’m not sure, honestly. I had gone down to check my mail and Hale called me over when he was speaking to one of the detectives. He knew I had at least a passing acquaintance with Frank. And so they asked me about all of them.”

“I see,” Novak said. “So…can you go on?”

Looking very irritated now, Neil continued. “Sure. On the night Margaret Osley was killed, I was at a work dinner. It was me and five other people, at a restaurant on Cary Street called Palino's. I can give you names if you need them. I even had to drive two of them home because they’d had too much to drink. Then when Ms. Marsh was killed, I had a friend visiting. She stayed until around eleven or so. I can give you her name as well.

Rachel knew that none of this was airtight. The GrubHub order could establish he was home at some point in the evening, but not for the whole of it. And a friend confirming a visit was easy to manufacture and harder to disprove. Neither alibi was particularly solid. She noted both on her phone without comment.

"Can you tell me about your relationship with your aunt?" she asked.

The shift was more pronounced this time. He set the phone down on the table and looked at her. "What does that have to do with any of this?"

"We've spoken to a number of residents today. Your name came up a few times in the context of your aunt's situation. It’s apparently a bit of hot gossip that, quite frankly, doesn’t paint you in the best of lights."

"My aunt's situation…" He said it with a pointed sigh, as though the phrase was offensive. "My aunt is seventy-eight years old and she has moderate congestive heart failure. She lives by herself on the sixth floor of a ten-story building. That's her situation. I've been asking her for the better part of a year to consider assisted living, where she'd have access to actual medical care, not just a handyman in the basement and a building manager who worries more about the state of the carpet in the lobby than the health of the people in his building." His voice was controlled but barely. "If some of the residents found that uncomfortable to hear, that's fine. I'm not embarrassed about it. She’s making a stupid decision.”

"Has she been receptive?" Rachel asked.

He laughed; it was a short, dry sound with no humor in it. "She threw a brochure at me. No, she has not been receptive." He picked up his phone again, then set it back down, as though he wasn't sure what to do with his hands. "I've given up, actually. A few weeks ago I decided I was done arguing about it. She wants to die in that apartment, and that's apparently what she intends to do. I think in a way I get it. She wants to go out on her terms, which is commendable. But for me…it sort of hurts. So…" He spread his hands and shrugged. "I've accepted it. I still check in. I still bring her groceries twice a week. But I'm done fighting her on it."

Rachel kept her face neutral. She noted the phrasing — she wants to die in that apartment — without letting it register visibly. It seemed overly harsh and struck her in a highly negative way. It sat in the back of her mind anyway, small and specific.

"Did you know the three victims personally?"

"I knew Frank, but not well. They have that chess club and I sort of dabbled in it for a bit. As for the others…I mean, I knew who they were. You can't live in a building this size without knowing who your neighbors are by name and by sight. But I didn't have relationships with any of them." He paused. "Osley I'd spoken to in the elevator a few times. She seemed to be a very polite woman.”

"Did your aunt know them?"

"I have no idea. Probably. She's been here twenty-one years; she knows everyone."

"And she hasn't talked to you about any of this? The deaths?"

He looked at the floor for a moment. "My aunt and I are not on great terms right now. Most of what we say to each other is logistical. Groceries, appointments, things like that. She's not sharing her feelings with me, and I've stopped pushing for it. I do know that when Frank died, him being the second, that she started to get worried.”

They stayed another ten minutes, Rachel working through the remaining questions at a pace that felt thorough without being aggressive. Baxter answered everything, and nothing he said was evasive in a way she could specifically name. But his defensiveness was constant, a low current running beneath everything. He wasn't rude, and he wasn't hostile. He was simply a man who'd been braced since the moment he opened the door, and had never relaxed at all.

When they left, Rachel pulled the apartment door closed and they walked the length of the second-floor hallway. When they reached the elevator, Novak pressed the button.

"He has no real alibi for Deluca or Marsh," he said, once they were clear of the doors.

"I know." Rachel looked at the floor numbers above the elevator gate as it descended. "But he's not our guy."

Novak didn't argue. "Why are you so certain?"

"Because he's too jittery. Whatever else is wrong with him, he couldn't have pulled off three murders without showing it somewhere. He was wound tight just talking to us about his aunt." She shook her head slightly. "Three times he reached for his phone and put it back down. His arms were crossed the entire time until he had something specific to look up, and then he crossed them again immediately after. He's anxious down to the bone. A man like that isn’t capable of killing three people without anyone noticing. Plus, the arguments with his aunt. If he’s trying to keep a low profile, that is not the way to do it."

The elevator arrived. The brass gate rattled open and they stepped in.

"I agree," Novak said. "There's also the question of motive. We can put together a circumstantial argument around Irene, maybe, some theory about trying to force her out of the building by making residents nervous. But it doesn't hold. Killing three elderly residents to pressure his aunt doesn't make any internal sense. It's too complicated and too indirect for someone who can barely hold himself together over a conversation."

The gate closed and the elevator began its slow descent toward the lobby. Rachel looked at the numbers and thought about what Baxter had said, the specific words of it. She wants to die in that apartment. It was not a new idea in this building. She'd heard it or seen it now in several forms — the statement from Osley's daughter, Marsh's doctor, Deluca's own decision to set up home hospice rather than leave.

They had all drawn the same line. They had all said, in their own way, this is where I’m staying.

She didn't know yet what that meant for the case, or for who was doing this, or why. But it meant something. She was certain of that.

The lobby opened around them as the gate slid back, amber and quiet as always. Hale's office door was closed.