Title: Do No Harm
Rating: PG-13.
Series to Date: Fearful Symmetry, Can't Fight This Feeling, Gold Medals, Surprises, Honeymoon, Blackout, the Hopes and Fears, Anniversary, Framed, Sight for Sore Eyes, Trials and Tribbulations, Premonition, and Do No Harm. Are you getting tired of this yet? We have at least four more after this one, so I hope not. The whole series is archived on fanfiction.net (deb3), Lonely Road, and a few other spots at this point. Maybe, if it keeps traveling, it will reach Jerry Bruckheimer, and he will offer me a job. If you want to, Jerry, I'd be interested.
Disclaimer: I don't own them. If I did, Horatio and Calleigh would have been married for the last several episodes. Try it, TPTB. You can have great cases while bringing them together. It doesn't ruin the plots. I also make no money from this, but if you'd like to change that, PTB, let me know.
2nd Disclaimer: The information on Alexx's background in this story is entirely consistent, at this date, with that in her "official" biography on the CBS site and anything presented in the show. I recently found out that the show departs from the "official" biographies and that the biographies themselves can change. When TPTB change Alexx's background in the future, just remember, this story violated nothing at the time it was written.
3rd and Final (I promise) Disclaimer: I have the utmost admiration and respect for the people who work in nursing homes. My grandfather is in one with Alzheimer's, and I visit him regularly. The staff there have the patience of saints and can still wear a smile at the end of a shift that would have had me pulling my hair out in 30 minutes, tops. Not everyone in this story is as diligent as the actual nursing home employees I know. Sorry for planting a murder on your turf, people, but I had to plant it somewhere. The less than caring people in this story's nursing home are fictitious. The more caring people in this story's nursing home are, many of them, based on real people. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Ladies, I salute you.
***
"First, do no harm."
Hippocrates, Epidemics
***
Angela started down the long hall with the med cart, giving early morning medication to those who required it, taking vitals on those patients for whom they were ordered. The same steps she took every morning at this same time. Nothing more routine could be imagined, except that it was never just routine to her. The nursing home was stirring sleepily to life. In thirty more minutes, the day shift would arrive to be briefed by the night shift on any changes. Shortly after that, the breakfast cart would appear to deliver food to those who could not go down to the dining room. Now, though, the nursing home was still mostly peaceful, the halls still mostly abandoned, the quiet blanket of night not entirely shaken off yet. It was about to be.
Angela stopped the cart and entered room 36. The woman in the first bed looked at her blankly. "I need help," she called in a voice like a croaking raven.
"Good morning, Mary. Time for your pills." Angela crossed to the bed and carefully raised the pills to her lips, followed by a glass of water. None of the physical functions were lost. Mary swallowed the pills easily.
"I need help," she insisted as she finished the glass of water. Her hands fumbled at the bed rails.
"We'll get you up in your chair in a few minutes, Mary. Breakfast soon. Are you hungry this morning?" Angela smiled at her, then picked up the second pill cup from the nightstand where she had set it down and walked around the pulled curtain to the room's other occupant, the one in the bed with a view out the window. "Good morning, Grace. Did you sleep . . . " The greeting trailed off into a piercing scream. The quiet blanket of night fell off the nursing home and landed on the floor in a tangled heap.
Mary, in the first bed, never turned her head, but as the other nurses and aides began to pour into the room, she tried to sit up eagerly, seeing an unexpected flood of people to petition. "I need help," she repeated hopefully. Her statement wasn't even noticed.
***
"Knock, knock, knock." His words tickled the back of her neck. Calleigh turned already smiling from her inspection of the room.
"Sorry, Horatio. Was I blocking your view?"
"No, just improving it." He stood behind her in the doorway to what was becoming the nursery. Over the last few weeks, they had been picking out baby furniture and setting the room up while Calleigh still felt like taking an active hand in the shopping. She was six and a half months pregnant now and looked it. Horatio caught her shoulders as she turned to face him and kissed her deeply. Calleigh returned it, but she definitely felt like there were three people in all of their embraces now, rather than just two.
"This is getting more difficult all the time," she said as she came up for air.
"I'll work around it," he replied, doing so.
"Mmm," she purred. "I don't think life can get better than this."
"You'll be saying differently in two months. You'll be praying for life to get better than this." He straightened up, and they surveyed the room together. "I like the combination." She had wanted blue, and he had wanted yellow, so they had compromised.
"It does look nice together. Why did you want yellow?"
"Sunlight," he said. "There were too many shadows when I was a kid. Rosalind is going to have a happy childhood. Also, it reminds me of you, both physically and in personality." He combed her hair lovingly with his fingers. "Why did you want blue?"
"To match your eyes, and hopefully to match hers."
He smiled at her. "If you're going to order the eyes, I'll put in an order for her to have your hair."
"Can we compromise on that?" she asked. They kissed again, and the phone rang at that moment.
Horatio let her go with a sigh. "We've got to train that phone better. We're not due at work for another hour." He headed into the kitchen with a resigned stride, and Calleigh smiled at his back. He had just returned from a solitary morning run - she had deleted the runs now, although they took a walk every night - and he was still wearing his midnight blue sweats. As many times as she had seen him wearing them, the sight never got old. He looked stunning in that color.
She trailed him to the kitchen more slowly, and he had just hung up the phone as she got to the doorway. His expression told the whole story. "Who got murdered?"
"A resident in a nursing home."
"In a nursing home?" It made it even more of a violation somehow, like murder in a hospital or at church. Death was a frequent enough visitor to those places under normal conditions without coupling it with violence.
"In a nursing home." He had already peeled off his shirt as he headed for the bathroom. "Give me five minutes to shower and dress, and we're out of here." Calleigh hurried back to their bedroom. She was almost ready herself, only lacking shoes and jacket, but she knew that Horatio honestly meant five minutes and might even mean three and a half. She had just finished putting her shoes on, a procedure that was starting to get difficult these days, when he left the bathroom, the consummate professional once more in his silk shirt and suit. She wondered how the team would react if he ever wore those sweats to CSI one day, and the image had her smiling as she met him in the hall.
"What's funny?" His eyes were already out at the scene, and his tone wasn't sharp but preoccupied. Calleigh was jolted back to professionalism herself, remembering the victim. Horatio hadn't forgotten the victim, even for a minute.
"Nothing," she said. Nor likely to be, today. They left the house together, headed for another routine crime scene, except that it was never just routine to them.
***
Darla, the administrator, was bustling uneasily in the doorway to room 36 when Horatio and Calleigh arrived. Adele was already inside the room. "Can we please keep this as discrete as possible?" she pleaded instantly on seeing the badges. "I don't want to upset the patients."
Horatio privately thought that Darla was much more likely to upset the patients with her fluttering than the team was. "We'll do our best, but this is a crime scene." He pushed on into the room. "This room is a semiprivate. Was the other resident here?"
"Yes, but you won't get anything from her. She has advanced dementia, and she only ever says one sentence. Whatever she saw, she wouldn't have understood it. We moved her for the moment."
"Thank you," said Horatio. He finished surveying the first half of the room and stepped around the curtain. Adele was standing there studying the body, but she hadn't touched anything. "Morning," Horatio said, eyes already busily processing the room.
"Morning," Adele replied. Neither of them called it good.
The victim lay in her bed with the handle of a pair of scissors protruding from her chest. Horatio studied her, the small circle of blood around the blades, then knelt, looking under the bed. "Freeze, Adele," he said, and the detective stood absolutely still as Horatio reached just under the bed next to her feet and carefully retrieved a blue fiber. He held it up so they could all see it. It looked like thin blue yarn. "Nursing homes are kept clean. I doubt that's been lying there very long. It may have come from the killer's clothes." Eric and Alexx arrived together at that point, and Horatio put the fiber in an envelope and passed it to Eric. "What can you tell me, Alexx?"
Alexx snapped on her own set of gloves and moved in close to the body. "Between the ribs and straight into the heart, looks like. This perp is either lucky or good, Horatio."
"Neither one," Horatio corrected her. "If he's good, he's not good enough, and if he's lucky, his luck just ran out." Calleigh abruptly wanted to capture the moment. The analytical, methodical anger, the slight tilt of his head, the certainty of his confidence that they would find this killer. She took a picture with the camera of her mind and tucked it away with many others to savor. How she loved watching him pursue a cause.
Horatio, oblivious to her thoughts at the moment, went on. "Do you mean he has medical training, Alexx?"
The ME studied the scissors carefully. "I'll be able to tell more at post, but it's a difficult wound to inflict by chance. Possible but difficult. Most people would go straight for the heart and hit a rib or the sternum. This person knew exactly where to strike and at what angle. Or, like I said, he just got lucky." She smoothed the woman's hair back. "Looks totally peaceful, doesn't she? I'll bet you were sound asleep, angel. Never even knew." She hoped so, anyway.
Speed ambled in at that point. "Sorry, H. Got stuck in traffic."
"I'll bet," muttered Eric from the other side of the bed. "Was it traffic in your bedroom or on the roads?"
"That's enough, gentlemen." Horatio's quiet voice sliced through the banter like a knife. The idea of someone preying on the elderly in a nursing home lit all of his fires. Like children, many of these people were completely helpless. "Speed, Eric, you two process this room. Calleigh, stick with Alexx and learn what we can from the scissors when they come out of the wound." He turned to Adele. "Who found the body?"
"One of the nurses. Angela. She's down in the staff break room. She was pretty upset."
"I'd like to talk to her." Horatio and Adele exited the room, but he did give Calleigh a smile along the way, and she loved him more for it. He always kept tabs on her, even in the middle of a crusade.
Darla was still fluttering outside the room like a bird shut in a garage, frantically seeking the exit. "How long do you think it will take to clear this up?"
"As long as is necessary, as short as is possible," Horatio replied.
"Is there any way to keep this out of the papers? The families of the residents might get uneasy, you know, thinking that a murderer was running around our nursing home." She straightened slightly, taking the image as a personal affront to her efficiency. "This is a very well-run home, you know."
"If I were you, I'd worry more about the patients and less about what the families think," said Horatio. "If the families think one of the residents was murdered in her sleep last night, they're exactly right. The best thing you can do is to cooperate with us so we can close this investigation as quickly as possible." He sounded more polite than he felt, although the icy edge in his voice was there. He would be willing to bet that Darla's mind at the moment was occupied with the financial ledger, not the patients or their families as people. It was the private paying patients, not those on Medicaid, that made the biggest difference to any nursing home. Losing one or two of those would be a painful wound to the income. "Was the woman who was killed also demented?"
"Not as badly as Mary, her roommate, but she was pleasantly confused, yes."
Horatio seconded Alexx in hoping that she had died in her sleep, never having the chance to be unpleasantly confused. "Are the doors locked at night?"
"Yes, from the outside. From the inside, you can still get out. We can't bolt the doors from the inside because of fire regulations."
"What about the patients with dementia or Alzheimer's? How do you keep them here?"
"We don't have a locked ward, although we're building one next year. Even with that, the doors would open if you leaned on them long enough, but it would set off the fire alarm. At the moment, what we use is a Wandergard system. The demented patients wear a bracelet, and it triggers an alarm if they try to leave."
"How loud an alarm?"
"Extremely. It won't shut off until it's disabled, either. I haven't asked Angela, but I'm sure if one went off last night, the night shift would have noticed."
"How many on night shift?" asked Adele.
"Two per wing. Angela and Karen were on last night on this wing. The other two shifts, of course, have much more staff."
"Thank you," Horatio said. "I'd like to talk to Angela." Darla indicated the way to the break room and started to trail along with them. "Alone," Horatio clarified. Questioning a witness in the presence of his or her supervisor rarely helped. Darla gave a fluttering sigh and turned back to the door of room 36. Horatio and Adele continued on down the hall.
"She's a prize, isn't she?" Adele commented.
"Right. What she's concerned about is losing patients, from a purely financial standpoint."
"Doesn't mean she's guilty of anything," said Adele.
"Doesn't mean she's guilty of murder," Horatio corrected. "She's definitely guilty of callousness." They reached the break room and entered. Angela was sitting at the table staring blankly at a cup of coffee like she wasn't sure how it had arrived in her hand. Horatio knocked gently on the door they had just come through. "Angela? Could we please talk to you for a minute?"
"Yes," she said in a flat tone. "Did Grace suffer? Do you know that yet?"
Horatio instantly marked her humanity score card much higher than Darla's. "We're pretty sure she didn't. She probably never knew the murderer was there. Just went in her sleep." He and Adele sat down at the table. "Could you tell us about this morning, Angela?"
"I was doing meds and vitals. I went in, and she was just lying there with those scissors sticking out. So I screamed."
Adele put a soothing hand on the other woman's. "I'm sure most people would have screamed." Angela looked up and gave her a wavering smile.
"Did you notice anything on entering the room? Before you saw Grace, I mean. Any impression that something was wrong?"
Angela thought about it. "No. I was busy with Mary, though. She's in the first bed. I try to focus on the patient I'm with, so I'm not sure I would have noticed anything."
"Is Mary any hope as a witness?" Horatio already knew the answer, but it never hurt to verify it. He planned to make his own observations of Mary later, just for good measure.
"No. All she ever says is, 'I need help.' Even if she wasn't asleep, she wouldn't realize what was happening."
"Tell me about last night, Angela," Horatio said. "Was it a quiet night? Did the Wandergard go off at any point?"
"No, the Wandergard didn't go off. It was a pretty quiet night. Melinda, in 28B, had a rough night. She has inoperable cancer and no family left. She's just here to die. She couldn't sleep last night. She wanted to just talk instead of take a pill, though, so I spent most of the night sitting there listening to her." She looked up and smiled at Horatio suddenly. "So many of these people have wonderful stories, and no one will even bother to listen."
Horatio wished, not for the first time, that he had known his own grandparents. "I'm sure of that. So you talked to Melinda all night? Never got called by the aide on duty to help with someone else?"
"No. Karen usually just reads a book at the desk. Night shift is pretty quiet. I do have a few patients who need meds during the night, so I made the rounds then, but that's only a few."
"Did you go into room 36 at any point prior to this morning?"
"No. Neither one of them needed anything during the night."
"So Karen would have been more likely to notice anyone moving around, since you were with Melinda most of the time."
"I doubt it, actually," said Angela. "Like I said, she reads. I have to speak to her three or four times to get her to surface. If one of the call buttons went off or the Wandergard, that would be loud enough to jolt anyone. But I really think someone walking quietly could go right by her, and she wouldn't notice."
Horatio and Adele exchanged looks of resignation. "Thank you, Angela. I would like to hear this Wandergard, if I may. Just to see how loud it is."
Angela stood up from the table. The nursing home was shaped like a giant starfish, and they walked in silence past the center hub and back into the wing where the murder had occurred. Angela surveyed the patients moving around the hall and stepped forward to gently place a hand on one arm. "Pearl. Good morning, Pearl. Would you like to go for a walk with me for a minute?"
The patient, who actually resembled a pearl with her round, fluffy, white hair framing her face, smiled at the nurse. "Certainly, Angel."
"Angela," Adele corrected, sotto voce, so that only Horatio could hear. "Poor woman."
"Actually, I imagine several of them call Angela that," he responded just as softly. She considered, then nodded.
"This way, Pearl. Let's go." Angela steered the woman toward the door. The instant they went through it, the alarm went off. It was absolutely piercing, carrying clear down the hall. Horatio didn't think that anyone, even the most oblivious reader, would be too lost in thought to hear that. "Sorry, Pearl, I can't take a walk after all." Angela steered her passenger back into the wing.
"Some other time, Angel," Pearl replied pleasantly and meandered off back up the hall.
The alarm was still sounding. Angela indicated the small control box, and Horatio leaned closer, studying it. "It keeps ringing until one of us disables it." She pulled out a ball point pen and stuck the tip into a tiny slot on the bottom of the control box. The alarm stopped, and the silence seemed oppressively loud for a minute, rushing to fill in the vacuum.
Horatio looked at Adele. "I think it's safe to say that anyone would have noticed that. Thank you, Angela. We'd like your phone number, but you can go home now and try to get some sleep. You've been a lot of help."
Angela gave them a weak smile. "Thanks. Let me know, would you?"
"Of course," Horatio replied. Adele started taking down Angela's information, and Horatio walked up the hall again toward 36. Alexx was just coming out of the room. Walking down the hall ahead of Horatio was a man in an expensive looking suit. His distinguished gray hair was perfectly styled, not one strand out of place. Alexx exited 36 right as he was almost up to the door, and they both gave a startled jump, then stared at each other. Horatio was reminded of two circling cats, fur rising in anticipation of a fight. This was so unusual for Alexx that he lengthened stride a little, moving with calm speed to stand at her side. "Everything okay, Alexx?"
"Fine, Horatio," she replied. He accepted the answer and just stood there quietly, a silent but imposing presence, ready if needed.
The man finally spoke. His voice was as silkily expensive as the rest of him. "Alexx Woods. Amazing who you run into down here."
"That's Doctor Alexx Woods," she said proudly, emphasizing the title.
"Unfortunately. If it were my decision, it would have gone differently."
"We both know what your decision was. Just like we both know what your responsibility was." Horatio had never seen Alexx like this, claws unsheathed, eyes blazing with contempt. "What are you doing here?"
"Fulfilling my responsibilities," he replied smoothly. "I'm staff physician for this nursing home."
"You on staff at a nursing home? Why? What's in it for you?" Alexx all but spat the words at him.
"I'm helping the sick. Don't you remember our oath, Alexx?"
"That's Dr. Woods to you," she insisted. "And I do remember the oath. It actually meant something to me." She looked away suddenly, as if he deserved no more of her time. She faced Horatio, deliberately turning her back on the man. "Horatio, I'm heading back for CSI. I'll call you when I'm done with the post."
"Thank you, Alexx." She spun on her heels and marched toward the exit. Calleigh, who had been standing in the door of the room watching this exchange, shot Horatio a questioning look and then hurried after her friend. Horatio deliberately turned and planted himself directly in the path of the man he had mentally dubbed J. R. Ewing. "I didn't catch your name, Mr. . . " He paused invitingly. Actually, he had already worked out that it was doctor, but if Alexx thought he didn't deserve the title, Horatio wasn't going to give it to him.
"That's Doctor," the man insisted. "Dr. Christopher H. Sterling III."
Horatio refused to be impressed and refused to yield ground. "Lieutenant Horatio Caine, Miami-Dade Police," he replied smoothly.
Sterling closed the distance a little, trying for the conspiratorial two executives exchanging information tone. "Does Alexx work for you? How much do you know about her?"
"All I need to know," Horatio said firmly. "She's a passionate, caring, and brilliantly competent ME who is an invaluable asset to this city."
Sterling met his eyes for a minute, then shrugged, recognizing a brick wall. "I'd better get to work. I have patients to see." He stood there for another second, then, as Horatio still refused to move, went sideways around him and on down the hall. Horatio followed him with his eyes. Now what was that about? He determined to have a conversation with Alexx later today, to give her a chance to talk if she wished to. For now, he refocused his mind with a little difficulty on the case.
Rating: PG-13.
Series to Date: Fearful Symmetry, Can't Fight This Feeling, Gold Medals, Surprises, Honeymoon, Blackout, the Hopes and Fears, Anniversary, Framed, Sight for Sore Eyes, Trials and Tribbulations, Premonition, and Do No Harm. Are you getting tired of this yet? We have at least four more after this one, so I hope not. The whole series is archived on fanfiction.net (deb3), Lonely Road, and a few other spots at this point. Maybe, if it keeps traveling, it will reach Jerry Bruckheimer, and he will offer me a job. If you want to, Jerry, I'd be interested.
Disclaimer: I don't own them. If I did, Horatio and Calleigh would have been married for the last several episodes. Try it, TPTB. You can have great cases while bringing them together. It doesn't ruin the plots. I also make no money from this, but if you'd like to change that, PTB, let me know.
2nd Disclaimer: The information on Alexx's background in this story is entirely consistent, at this date, with that in her "official" biography on the CBS site and anything presented in the show. I recently found out that the show departs from the "official" biographies and that the biographies themselves can change. When TPTB change Alexx's background in the future, just remember, this story violated nothing at the time it was written.
3rd and Final (I promise) Disclaimer: I have the utmost admiration and respect for the people who work in nursing homes. My grandfather is in one with Alzheimer's, and I visit him regularly. The staff there have the patience of saints and can still wear a smile at the end of a shift that would have had me pulling my hair out in 30 minutes, tops. Not everyone in this story is as diligent as the actual nursing home employees I know. Sorry for planting a murder on your turf, people, but I had to plant it somewhere. The less than caring people in this story's nursing home are fictitious. The more caring people in this story's nursing home are, many of them, based on real people. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Ladies, I salute you.
***
"First, do no harm."
Hippocrates, Epidemics
***
Angela started down the long hall with the med cart, giving early morning medication to those who required it, taking vitals on those patients for whom they were ordered. The same steps she took every morning at this same time. Nothing more routine could be imagined, except that it was never just routine to her. The nursing home was stirring sleepily to life. In thirty more minutes, the day shift would arrive to be briefed by the night shift on any changes. Shortly after that, the breakfast cart would appear to deliver food to those who could not go down to the dining room. Now, though, the nursing home was still mostly peaceful, the halls still mostly abandoned, the quiet blanket of night not entirely shaken off yet. It was about to be.
Angela stopped the cart and entered room 36. The woman in the first bed looked at her blankly. "I need help," she called in a voice like a croaking raven.
"Good morning, Mary. Time for your pills." Angela crossed to the bed and carefully raised the pills to her lips, followed by a glass of water. None of the physical functions were lost. Mary swallowed the pills easily.
"I need help," she insisted as she finished the glass of water. Her hands fumbled at the bed rails.
"We'll get you up in your chair in a few minutes, Mary. Breakfast soon. Are you hungry this morning?" Angela smiled at her, then picked up the second pill cup from the nightstand where she had set it down and walked around the pulled curtain to the room's other occupant, the one in the bed with a view out the window. "Good morning, Grace. Did you sleep . . . " The greeting trailed off into a piercing scream. The quiet blanket of night fell off the nursing home and landed on the floor in a tangled heap.
Mary, in the first bed, never turned her head, but as the other nurses and aides began to pour into the room, she tried to sit up eagerly, seeing an unexpected flood of people to petition. "I need help," she repeated hopefully. Her statement wasn't even noticed.
***
"Knock, knock, knock." His words tickled the back of her neck. Calleigh turned already smiling from her inspection of the room.
"Sorry, Horatio. Was I blocking your view?"
"No, just improving it." He stood behind her in the doorway to what was becoming the nursery. Over the last few weeks, they had been picking out baby furniture and setting the room up while Calleigh still felt like taking an active hand in the shopping. She was six and a half months pregnant now and looked it. Horatio caught her shoulders as she turned to face him and kissed her deeply. Calleigh returned it, but she definitely felt like there were three people in all of their embraces now, rather than just two.
"This is getting more difficult all the time," she said as she came up for air.
"I'll work around it," he replied, doing so.
"Mmm," she purred. "I don't think life can get better than this."
"You'll be saying differently in two months. You'll be praying for life to get better than this." He straightened up, and they surveyed the room together. "I like the combination." She had wanted blue, and he had wanted yellow, so they had compromised.
"It does look nice together. Why did you want yellow?"
"Sunlight," he said. "There were too many shadows when I was a kid. Rosalind is going to have a happy childhood. Also, it reminds me of you, both physically and in personality." He combed her hair lovingly with his fingers. "Why did you want blue?"
"To match your eyes, and hopefully to match hers."
He smiled at her. "If you're going to order the eyes, I'll put in an order for her to have your hair."
"Can we compromise on that?" she asked. They kissed again, and the phone rang at that moment.
Horatio let her go with a sigh. "We've got to train that phone better. We're not due at work for another hour." He headed into the kitchen with a resigned stride, and Calleigh smiled at his back. He had just returned from a solitary morning run - she had deleted the runs now, although they took a walk every night - and he was still wearing his midnight blue sweats. As many times as she had seen him wearing them, the sight never got old. He looked stunning in that color.
She trailed him to the kitchen more slowly, and he had just hung up the phone as she got to the doorway. His expression told the whole story. "Who got murdered?"
"A resident in a nursing home."
"In a nursing home?" It made it even more of a violation somehow, like murder in a hospital or at church. Death was a frequent enough visitor to those places under normal conditions without coupling it with violence.
"In a nursing home." He had already peeled off his shirt as he headed for the bathroom. "Give me five minutes to shower and dress, and we're out of here." Calleigh hurried back to their bedroom. She was almost ready herself, only lacking shoes and jacket, but she knew that Horatio honestly meant five minutes and might even mean three and a half. She had just finished putting her shoes on, a procedure that was starting to get difficult these days, when he left the bathroom, the consummate professional once more in his silk shirt and suit. She wondered how the team would react if he ever wore those sweats to CSI one day, and the image had her smiling as she met him in the hall.
"What's funny?" His eyes were already out at the scene, and his tone wasn't sharp but preoccupied. Calleigh was jolted back to professionalism herself, remembering the victim. Horatio hadn't forgotten the victim, even for a minute.
"Nothing," she said. Nor likely to be, today. They left the house together, headed for another routine crime scene, except that it was never just routine to them.
***
Darla, the administrator, was bustling uneasily in the doorway to room 36 when Horatio and Calleigh arrived. Adele was already inside the room. "Can we please keep this as discrete as possible?" she pleaded instantly on seeing the badges. "I don't want to upset the patients."
Horatio privately thought that Darla was much more likely to upset the patients with her fluttering than the team was. "We'll do our best, but this is a crime scene." He pushed on into the room. "This room is a semiprivate. Was the other resident here?"
"Yes, but you won't get anything from her. She has advanced dementia, and she only ever says one sentence. Whatever she saw, she wouldn't have understood it. We moved her for the moment."
"Thank you," said Horatio. He finished surveying the first half of the room and stepped around the curtain. Adele was standing there studying the body, but she hadn't touched anything. "Morning," Horatio said, eyes already busily processing the room.
"Morning," Adele replied. Neither of them called it good.
The victim lay in her bed with the handle of a pair of scissors protruding from her chest. Horatio studied her, the small circle of blood around the blades, then knelt, looking under the bed. "Freeze, Adele," he said, and the detective stood absolutely still as Horatio reached just under the bed next to her feet and carefully retrieved a blue fiber. He held it up so they could all see it. It looked like thin blue yarn. "Nursing homes are kept clean. I doubt that's been lying there very long. It may have come from the killer's clothes." Eric and Alexx arrived together at that point, and Horatio put the fiber in an envelope and passed it to Eric. "What can you tell me, Alexx?"
Alexx snapped on her own set of gloves and moved in close to the body. "Between the ribs and straight into the heart, looks like. This perp is either lucky or good, Horatio."
"Neither one," Horatio corrected her. "If he's good, he's not good enough, and if he's lucky, his luck just ran out." Calleigh abruptly wanted to capture the moment. The analytical, methodical anger, the slight tilt of his head, the certainty of his confidence that they would find this killer. She took a picture with the camera of her mind and tucked it away with many others to savor. How she loved watching him pursue a cause.
Horatio, oblivious to her thoughts at the moment, went on. "Do you mean he has medical training, Alexx?"
The ME studied the scissors carefully. "I'll be able to tell more at post, but it's a difficult wound to inflict by chance. Possible but difficult. Most people would go straight for the heart and hit a rib or the sternum. This person knew exactly where to strike and at what angle. Or, like I said, he just got lucky." She smoothed the woman's hair back. "Looks totally peaceful, doesn't she? I'll bet you were sound asleep, angel. Never even knew." She hoped so, anyway.
Speed ambled in at that point. "Sorry, H. Got stuck in traffic."
"I'll bet," muttered Eric from the other side of the bed. "Was it traffic in your bedroom or on the roads?"
"That's enough, gentlemen." Horatio's quiet voice sliced through the banter like a knife. The idea of someone preying on the elderly in a nursing home lit all of his fires. Like children, many of these people were completely helpless. "Speed, Eric, you two process this room. Calleigh, stick with Alexx and learn what we can from the scissors when they come out of the wound." He turned to Adele. "Who found the body?"
"One of the nurses. Angela. She's down in the staff break room. She was pretty upset."
"I'd like to talk to her." Horatio and Adele exited the room, but he did give Calleigh a smile along the way, and she loved him more for it. He always kept tabs on her, even in the middle of a crusade.
Darla was still fluttering outside the room like a bird shut in a garage, frantically seeking the exit. "How long do you think it will take to clear this up?"
"As long as is necessary, as short as is possible," Horatio replied.
"Is there any way to keep this out of the papers? The families of the residents might get uneasy, you know, thinking that a murderer was running around our nursing home." She straightened slightly, taking the image as a personal affront to her efficiency. "This is a very well-run home, you know."
"If I were you, I'd worry more about the patients and less about what the families think," said Horatio. "If the families think one of the residents was murdered in her sleep last night, they're exactly right. The best thing you can do is to cooperate with us so we can close this investigation as quickly as possible." He sounded more polite than he felt, although the icy edge in his voice was there. He would be willing to bet that Darla's mind at the moment was occupied with the financial ledger, not the patients or their families as people. It was the private paying patients, not those on Medicaid, that made the biggest difference to any nursing home. Losing one or two of those would be a painful wound to the income. "Was the woman who was killed also demented?"
"Not as badly as Mary, her roommate, but she was pleasantly confused, yes."
Horatio seconded Alexx in hoping that she had died in her sleep, never having the chance to be unpleasantly confused. "Are the doors locked at night?"
"Yes, from the outside. From the inside, you can still get out. We can't bolt the doors from the inside because of fire regulations."
"What about the patients with dementia or Alzheimer's? How do you keep them here?"
"We don't have a locked ward, although we're building one next year. Even with that, the doors would open if you leaned on them long enough, but it would set off the fire alarm. At the moment, what we use is a Wandergard system. The demented patients wear a bracelet, and it triggers an alarm if they try to leave."
"How loud an alarm?"
"Extremely. It won't shut off until it's disabled, either. I haven't asked Angela, but I'm sure if one went off last night, the night shift would have noticed."
"How many on night shift?" asked Adele.
"Two per wing. Angela and Karen were on last night on this wing. The other two shifts, of course, have much more staff."
"Thank you," Horatio said. "I'd like to talk to Angela." Darla indicated the way to the break room and started to trail along with them. "Alone," Horatio clarified. Questioning a witness in the presence of his or her supervisor rarely helped. Darla gave a fluttering sigh and turned back to the door of room 36. Horatio and Adele continued on down the hall.
"She's a prize, isn't she?" Adele commented.
"Right. What she's concerned about is losing patients, from a purely financial standpoint."
"Doesn't mean she's guilty of anything," said Adele.
"Doesn't mean she's guilty of murder," Horatio corrected. "She's definitely guilty of callousness." They reached the break room and entered. Angela was sitting at the table staring blankly at a cup of coffee like she wasn't sure how it had arrived in her hand. Horatio knocked gently on the door they had just come through. "Angela? Could we please talk to you for a minute?"
"Yes," she said in a flat tone. "Did Grace suffer? Do you know that yet?"
Horatio instantly marked her humanity score card much higher than Darla's. "We're pretty sure she didn't. She probably never knew the murderer was there. Just went in her sleep." He and Adele sat down at the table. "Could you tell us about this morning, Angela?"
"I was doing meds and vitals. I went in, and she was just lying there with those scissors sticking out. So I screamed."
Adele put a soothing hand on the other woman's. "I'm sure most people would have screamed." Angela looked up and gave her a wavering smile.
"Did you notice anything on entering the room? Before you saw Grace, I mean. Any impression that something was wrong?"
Angela thought about it. "No. I was busy with Mary, though. She's in the first bed. I try to focus on the patient I'm with, so I'm not sure I would have noticed anything."
"Is Mary any hope as a witness?" Horatio already knew the answer, but it never hurt to verify it. He planned to make his own observations of Mary later, just for good measure.
"No. All she ever says is, 'I need help.' Even if she wasn't asleep, she wouldn't realize what was happening."
"Tell me about last night, Angela," Horatio said. "Was it a quiet night? Did the Wandergard go off at any point?"
"No, the Wandergard didn't go off. It was a pretty quiet night. Melinda, in 28B, had a rough night. She has inoperable cancer and no family left. She's just here to die. She couldn't sleep last night. She wanted to just talk instead of take a pill, though, so I spent most of the night sitting there listening to her." She looked up and smiled at Horatio suddenly. "So many of these people have wonderful stories, and no one will even bother to listen."
Horatio wished, not for the first time, that he had known his own grandparents. "I'm sure of that. So you talked to Melinda all night? Never got called by the aide on duty to help with someone else?"
"No. Karen usually just reads a book at the desk. Night shift is pretty quiet. I do have a few patients who need meds during the night, so I made the rounds then, but that's only a few."
"Did you go into room 36 at any point prior to this morning?"
"No. Neither one of them needed anything during the night."
"So Karen would have been more likely to notice anyone moving around, since you were with Melinda most of the time."
"I doubt it, actually," said Angela. "Like I said, she reads. I have to speak to her three or four times to get her to surface. If one of the call buttons went off or the Wandergard, that would be loud enough to jolt anyone. But I really think someone walking quietly could go right by her, and she wouldn't notice."
Horatio and Adele exchanged looks of resignation. "Thank you, Angela. I would like to hear this Wandergard, if I may. Just to see how loud it is."
Angela stood up from the table. The nursing home was shaped like a giant starfish, and they walked in silence past the center hub and back into the wing where the murder had occurred. Angela surveyed the patients moving around the hall and stepped forward to gently place a hand on one arm. "Pearl. Good morning, Pearl. Would you like to go for a walk with me for a minute?"
The patient, who actually resembled a pearl with her round, fluffy, white hair framing her face, smiled at the nurse. "Certainly, Angel."
"Angela," Adele corrected, sotto voce, so that only Horatio could hear. "Poor woman."
"Actually, I imagine several of them call Angela that," he responded just as softly. She considered, then nodded.
"This way, Pearl. Let's go." Angela steered the woman toward the door. The instant they went through it, the alarm went off. It was absolutely piercing, carrying clear down the hall. Horatio didn't think that anyone, even the most oblivious reader, would be too lost in thought to hear that. "Sorry, Pearl, I can't take a walk after all." Angela steered her passenger back into the wing.
"Some other time, Angel," Pearl replied pleasantly and meandered off back up the hall.
The alarm was still sounding. Angela indicated the small control box, and Horatio leaned closer, studying it. "It keeps ringing until one of us disables it." She pulled out a ball point pen and stuck the tip into a tiny slot on the bottom of the control box. The alarm stopped, and the silence seemed oppressively loud for a minute, rushing to fill in the vacuum.
Horatio looked at Adele. "I think it's safe to say that anyone would have noticed that. Thank you, Angela. We'd like your phone number, but you can go home now and try to get some sleep. You've been a lot of help."
Angela gave them a weak smile. "Thanks. Let me know, would you?"
"Of course," Horatio replied. Adele started taking down Angela's information, and Horatio walked up the hall again toward 36. Alexx was just coming out of the room. Walking down the hall ahead of Horatio was a man in an expensive looking suit. His distinguished gray hair was perfectly styled, not one strand out of place. Alexx exited 36 right as he was almost up to the door, and they both gave a startled jump, then stared at each other. Horatio was reminded of two circling cats, fur rising in anticipation of a fight. This was so unusual for Alexx that he lengthened stride a little, moving with calm speed to stand at her side. "Everything okay, Alexx?"
"Fine, Horatio," she replied. He accepted the answer and just stood there quietly, a silent but imposing presence, ready if needed.
The man finally spoke. His voice was as silkily expensive as the rest of him. "Alexx Woods. Amazing who you run into down here."
"That's Doctor Alexx Woods," she said proudly, emphasizing the title.
"Unfortunately. If it were my decision, it would have gone differently."
"We both know what your decision was. Just like we both know what your responsibility was." Horatio had never seen Alexx like this, claws unsheathed, eyes blazing with contempt. "What are you doing here?"
"Fulfilling my responsibilities," he replied smoothly. "I'm staff physician for this nursing home."
"You on staff at a nursing home? Why? What's in it for you?" Alexx all but spat the words at him.
"I'm helping the sick. Don't you remember our oath, Alexx?"
"That's Dr. Woods to you," she insisted. "And I do remember the oath. It actually meant something to me." She looked away suddenly, as if he deserved no more of her time. She faced Horatio, deliberately turning her back on the man. "Horatio, I'm heading back for CSI. I'll call you when I'm done with the post."
"Thank you, Alexx." She spun on her heels and marched toward the exit. Calleigh, who had been standing in the door of the room watching this exchange, shot Horatio a questioning look and then hurried after her friend. Horatio deliberately turned and planted himself directly in the path of the man he had mentally dubbed J. R. Ewing. "I didn't catch your name, Mr. . . " He paused invitingly. Actually, he had already worked out that it was doctor, but if Alexx thought he didn't deserve the title, Horatio wasn't going to give it to him.
"That's Doctor," the man insisted. "Dr. Christopher H. Sterling III."
Horatio refused to be impressed and refused to yield ground. "Lieutenant Horatio Caine, Miami-Dade Police," he replied smoothly.
Sterling closed the distance a little, trying for the conspiratorial two executives exchanging information tone. "Does Alexx work for you? How much do you know about her?"
"All I need to know," Horatio said firmly. "She's a passionate, caring, and brilliantly competent ME who is an invaluable asset to this city."
Sterling met his eyes for a minute, then shrugged, recognizing a brick wall. "I'd better get to work. I have patients to see." He stood there for another second, then, as Horatio still refused to move, went sideways around him and on down the hall. Horatio followed him with his eyes. Now what was that about? He determined to have a conversation with Alexx later today, to give her a chance to talk if she wished to. For now, he refocused his mind with a little difficulty on the case.