“Dorothy told you she just saw someone murdered?” I asked.
“Yes, she thought it was a woman. I looked in the room. No body, nobody missing. Checked the log, day-shift releases, and night maintenance man. I think maybe Dorothy had a bad dream.”
“The room where Dorothy said she saw the murder,” I said. “Where does the window open to?”
“Back of the building,” said Emmie. “Nothing but dark, woods, snakes and a crazy half-blind gator with a bad temper.”
Darrell looked at me. He was smiling. The existence of the promised gator had been validated.
“We’ve got a patient who keeps feeding the damned thing. One day that Stevie Wonder gator is going to take her arm off.”
“Jerry Lee,” Ames corrected.
“Who?” she asked.
“Gator’s name,” Ames said.
“Whatever,” she said with a sigh. “You want to see Dorothy?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Know where her room is?”
I told her we did and she moved behind the desk to sit heavily in the wooden chair and close her eyes.
Dorothy was fully dressed and sitting in the small upholstered and faded salmon-colored chair next to her bed. She was watching something on television but turned it off with her remote when she saw us.
“Mr. Fonesca and Mr. McKinney,” she said with a smile. “And the young man?”
“Darrell Caton,” he said, not sure whether he should offer his hand, starting to hold it out, then changing his mind and pulling it back to his side.
“You found the murderer?” she asked.
“No, not yet.”
“You find out who got killed?”
“No, but I think I’m getting close. Has anyone tried to get you to stop me from talking about the murder?”
“No one’s asked me to stop, nobody but the nurses and some of them just look at me like I’m a dotty old coot keeping herself busy with a harmless delusion.”
“Want to take us to Rose Teffler’s room?” I asked.
“That’s not where the murder happened,” Dorothy said.
“But on the same side of the building a few doors down from her room?”
“Suppose so,” said Dorothy. “Waste of time. I already asked her if she heard or saw anything.”
“Still-” I started and she interrupted with, “Okay. Let’s go.”
We walked down the hall, a bizarre quartet, probably looking like a spoof of the walk down the corridor at the beginning of Law amp; Order. We went to the right, though the most direct way would have been back past the nursing station.
It took us about five minutes to get to Rose Teffler’s door. Dorothy moved slowly with her walker. A sprig of some dried flowers hung on the door. Their color was almost gone.
I knocked. No answer from inside, though Ames did cock his head as if he had heard something move behind the door. Then the door opened.
Rose Teffler was tiny, no more than four foot six. She squinted at us with suspicion and Dorothy said that we had some questions.
“What about?” the old woman said.
“The night Mrs. Cgnozic saw someone a few doors down being attacked,” I said. “If someone committed murder and took the body out during the night, they would have to go past your window.”
“What time?”
“After eleven at night,” I said.
“I’m not up at that time,” she said. “Always get nine hours of sleep.”
“You get up to feed Jerry Lee,” said Ames.
Rose Teffler looked at Ames with fear.
“They don’t care about the gator, Rose,” Dorothy said. “Everybody knows you feed the gator.”
“They do?”
“They do,” Dorothy repeated. “These people don’t care about your feeding Jerry Lee.”
“I do,” said Darrell.
“The night-” I started, but Rose Teffler was already saying, “Yes. I thought Jerry Lee had gotten whoever it was. Lots of noise. Heard Jerry Lee out there thrashing around. I was about to feed him. Someone screamed or something. By the time I got to the window and opened it, all I could see was someone or something slouching away next to the building. Looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
“Charles Laughton,” I said.
“Lon Chaney,” Rose corrected.
“Right,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Maybe it was Charles Laughton,” said Rose. “You won’t tell about Jerry Lee.”
“No one left to tell except Trent. No one tells him anything,” said Dorothy, but Rose wasn’t listening.
We left and walked Dorothy back to her room, promising her that we’d get back to her soon.
“I know what I saw,” she said, sitting in the chair next to her bed. “Wait.”
She reached back to the bedside table to her right. She opened the drawer and came out with a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints. She handed the box to Darrell.
“Thanks,” he said.
Darrell, Ames and I moved out of the room. Behind us Dorothy clicked on the television remote and the long-dead people on a laugh track I’d grown up with found something very funny.
We passed the nursing station. Emmie was now drinking a cup of coffee. She nodded at us.
“Get anywhere with Dorothy?” she asked.
I told her we had and we went down the corridor and through the sliding glass doors. At the end of the building we turned left where Ames and I had been two nights ago.
The grass, shrubs and trees were thick, and through them you could see patches of the small marsh beyond.
“We gonna find the gator?” asked Darrell.
“Not if we’re lucky,” I said.
Ames had his shotgun out. The windows of the rooms of the residents in this wing of the Seaside were to our left. The ground was soggy.
I kept my eyes on the ground.
“What’re you looking for?” asked Darrell.
“Something that doesn’t belong here,” I said.
We were under Rose Teffler’s window now.
“Like this?” asked Darrell, reaching down to pick up something.
He turned to show us a slipper, dark blue. He handed it to me. I handed it to Ames.
“Hasn’t been here more than a week, maybe,” Ames said.
Ames and I were thinking of the same possibility. Someone could have taken the dead body out through the window and carried it past here. The slipper could have fallen off the body.
“Gator could have come thinking he was going to be fed,” I said.
“Maybe he was,” said Ames.
“You mean that old gator ate someone?” said Darrell gleefully.
“Let’s keep looking,” I said.
We did. No blood. No body parts. No second slipper. No evidence. We did manage to draw the attention of an old, nearly blind gator named Jerry Lee, who came slithering out, head raised through the thick reedy grass.
“There he is,” shouted Darrell.
Ames had his shotgun out. He was aiming it toward the slow-moving animal. Ames’s hands were steady.
“You gonna shoot him?” asked Darrell.
