Snow Blind - Lori G. Armstrong [43]
“Fine. I’m going. I need some fresh air since something sure stinks in here.” To make my descent into good PI/bad PI complete, I slammed the door. I didn’t get far. Dee blocked my retreat before I hit the receptionist’s area.
“Who are you?”
“Someone who is very, very pissed off right now, so get the hell out of my way.”
“Not until you answer my question. Are you really a private investigator?”
“Yes.”
“And you came here pretending to check out the facility so you could spy on us?”
“Pretty much.”
Her face turned a mottled red. “You’re despicable,” she spit. “Lying, sneaking around, acting—”
“You know what I think is despicable, Dee?” I crowded her against the wall until her frizzy hair caught on the ridged wallpaper. “That an eighty-five146
year-old man has been missing for three fucking days and no one cares. You’re all too busy covering your goddamn fat asses to get off them to find him. So the day you can call me despicable is the day you stop worrying about your fucking paycheck and start worrying about the people who are stuck with this facility’s pisspoor implementation of elderly care.”
I stormed out the front door. The minute my boots hit the pavement, I lit a cigarette and started stalking the interconnected sidewalks. Fucking idiots. Wasn’t like Vernon Sloane was my grandfather. I don’t know why I’d gotten so worked up.
Yes, you do. Neglect is neglect; doesn’t matter if the person is five or eighty-five. Wrong is wrong. And this is wrong.
Stupid ideology. My life would be so much easier if my conscience would take a powder once in a while. I smoked. And walked. And marveled that the sidewalks were snow free. What was the point? Who the hell was out here clattering around in a walker? I’d bet not many octogenarians were clamoring to get out in the fresh air and pop wheelies in their wheelchairs. That thought stopped me. Vernon Sloane not
only wanted to get out of Prairie Gardens, but he’d been successful at sneaking out. Several times. What if he’d done it again?
What if he’d gone looking for his car?
Nah. Even if he had managed to escape, he
couldn’t have gotten far with the arctic temperatures, 147
the blowing snow, and his advanced age.
A worse thought settled in, one too awful to contemplate, so naturally that’s the one my brain stuck on. I stopped and gauged where I was outside the complex in relation to the inside. Off to the right, way at the back of the acreage, were the separate buildings housing the acute care. Then the temporary care wings with separate entrances and parking lot. Around the corner to the left was the private condo wing. If I followed the sidewalk straight back, I’d end up at the rear of the main building, by the hive. Each corridor had an exit. Where did the exits lead? To a common courtyard? Somewhere by the common rooms? No. I’d parked in the east lot and remembered the single unit apartments were to the west of the common rooms.
Since the emergency alarms on the exterior doors were disengaged, anyone could leave easily. What about the security cameras? Wouldn’t there be a record? Why hadn’t Boner brought it up?
Duh. Because there were no cameras. But at least that security oversight fell on his head. No matter what he claimed, that fact couldn’t be hidden from the cops. As I walked the perimeter, I began to pay very close attention to benches and bushes and trees. The machine used to clean off the sidewalks left the discarded snow in neat, uniform rows along the side. Snowdrifts behind the ridges were postcard pristine. No people or animal tracks marred the thick crust.
148
In my neighborhood, the snowy areas surrounding the houses were trampled from kids making snow angels or Eskimo forts or snowballs. Or from them carving a channel to the woodpile or a path to a friend’s house. Even at the ranch, where the white space was vast, there were bumps and dirt everywhere; in the empty fields, in the shelterbelt, in