“It’s been vacant for years,” Josie said. “But the house is made almost entirely of glass.”
“Like a greenhouse,” Mettner said.
“Yes,” Josie said. “It wouldn’t look like a greenhouse to you or me—”
“But to an eight-year-old, it might,” Mettner filled in. “We’ll check it out.”
Josie said, “Follow the buttons.”
Thirty-Six
It was just after midnight when Dr. Justofin appeared at the door to the waiting room. Only Josie, Noah, Sawyer, and Trinity remained. Everyone else had left, gone to get rest and sustenance. Josie nudged Noah awake when she saw the doctor. Sawyer sprang out of his chair. “What is it?”
Dr. Justofin gave them a pained smile. “I’m sorry, but your grandmother is declining. We don’t believe she’ll be strong enough to undergo surgery in the morning.”
“Is she still alive?” Trinity asked, putting a hand on Josie’s back.
“Yes. She’s still alive and still lucid—when she’s not sleeping—but I’m not sure there’s much more we can do for her. She’s declined any further life-saving care.”
“Can she do that?” Noah asked.
Dr. Justofin nodded. “She can. She’s already signed the paperwork. We’re going to move her down to a regular floor and do our best to make her comfortable. There won’t be any restrictions on visitors. I’ll see to it that any of you can stay with her as long as you’d like.”
Josie could barely choke out a thank you. Once the doctor was gone, Trinity pulled Josie into a hug. Josie let herself sob into Trinity’s shoulder for several minutes. Across from her, she could hear Sawyer weeping as well. She wanted to comfort him but couldn’t bring herself to move. Did he really have no one in his life?
Noah squeezed Josie’s knee. “I’ll call your parents.”
“And your team,” said Sawyer. “This is about to be a homicide.”
An hour later, Josie and Sawyer sent everyone home to rest, even Noah, while they kept vigil over their grandmother. They sat on either side of Lisette’s bed in a new room. The floor was much quieter, with fewer alarms going off at the nurses’ station. Lisette looked better without all the equipment hooked up to her. Only a single IV was left in her good arm. She smiled, first at Sawyer, then at Josie. “This is better,” she said.
No, it’s not, Josie wanted to shout.
“They’re making me comfortable,” Lisette went on. “That means they’re giving me the good stuff. The really good stuff.”
She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. Without opening them, she said, “I never got to say goodbye to your father, Eli. I always wished I had. Or my daughter. She was with me such a short time, and then one day, she was gone.” Pausing, she took several breaths. “I never got to say goodbye to her. This is a blessing.”
“How can this be a blessing?” Sawyer said, his voice breaking.
Lisette opened her eyes and looked at him lovingly. “I couldn’t stay here forever, dear. We all knew that. I wish I had more time, I do…”
She drifted off, exhaustion and the drugs taking their toll once more. Josie moved her chair closer and took Lisette’s hand. On the other side, her arm was in the cast, so Sawyer put her bedrail down, got as close as he could to the bed and rested his forehead on her shoulder. Josie saw his shoulders quaking.
She wasn’t sure how much time went by. Her middle finger was on the inside of Lisette’s wrist, counting off the faint heartbeats. Sometime later, Lisette opened her eyes again. She stared straight ahead at the foot of the bed and smiled. Then her face relaxed. Josie thought she might be going, but her pulse was still thready beneath Josie’s finger. She stayed that way for several minutes.
“Sawyer,” she whispered.
He lifted his head and leaned even closer, so that his ear was over her mouth. She whispered something to him that Josie couldn’t hear. He went back to his position at her shoulder, weeping into the bedsheet. Lisette turned her head toward Josie.
Josie stood and folded her upper body over the bed, her face hovering just over Lisette’s. Lisette whispered into her ear, kissed Josie’s forehead, and squeezed her hand for the last time.
Thirty-Seven
Josie and Sawyer waited until the medical staff made them leave the room. They stayed with Lisette until her body was cold. They waited in the hallway, standing awkwardly, until Dr. Feist arrived. She hugged them both. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I promise I’ll take good care of her.” She looked at Josie. “I’ll give my findings to Detective Mettner.”
Josie nodded. She’d never imagined that Lisette would need an autopsy after death. She had always envisioned Lisette passing away quietly in her chair while playing cards in the cafeteria at her nursing home. Or going to sleep in her room one night and simply not waking up. Dying of old age. A peaceful death. But she’d been murdered. Coldly, savagely, before Josie’s eyes, and when Josie caught the person who did it, the criminal justice system would require that the extent of the injuries that killed her were documented by autopsy.
They watched as Dr. Feist wheeled Lisette’s bed out of the room—her face covered with a sheet—and into one of the staff elevators at the end of the hall. Josie felt strangely numb, but she knew it was just her body clicking over to survival mode. This was how she had managed to get through a childhood of trauma, losing her father, then losing her first husband. Her mind took the unfathomable horror of her new reality and shut it away so that her body could keep doing all the things it needed to do to function and live. Sometimes, later on, there was a reckoning, if she wasn’t able to keep all those bad feelings down. Most of the time, she kept them buried so far beneath the surface, she could go for long periods without any of them being triggered. It was getting more difficult with each year that
