Last Licks

“Ms. Coolidge? It’s Rafe Warner.”

That got her eyes open. “Is there a problem? Is Mr. Barnstable okay?”

“Sure,” Rafe replied. “I was just talking with him. He gave me your number.”

Sunny slowly raised herself to a sitting position. “And why was that?”

“I’m getting off my shift now,” Rafe said, “and I’ve got something to give you.” His voice sank to a whisper. “Files.”

“What kind—” Sunny got out, but Rafe cut her off.

“I can’t discuss this on the phone,” he said. “I can be at your house in half an hour. Mr. Barnstable gave me the address.”

Thanks, Ollie, Sunny thought.

“Half an hour,” Rafe repeated. “I’ll see you then.” Obviously it wasn’t up for discussion, because he cut the connection.

Sunny stared owlishly at the receiver in her hand, hung it up, and then grabbed the handset again. She punched in Will Price’s number. When he picked up, he sounded awake and much more human than Sunny felt.

“Files?” he said when Sunny told her story. “Intriguing. Be there in fifteen.”

That gave Sunny enough time to run a shower and get the fug of O’Dowd’s out of her hair. She sat drinking a large mug of coffee when Will rang the bell. He was in jeans and a T-shirt, and so was she.

“I see we’re both dressed to spend the day sorting through files,” he said with a smile.

“The question is, what are they, and how many?”

“I’m betting this is the stuff we asked Reese for.” Will leaned against the front of the refrigerator.

“The stuff he told us it was illegal to give out?”

Will didn’t answer. He stared at the coffeemaker, noticeably inhaling the brewing smell the way Shadow savored a rare scent. Sunny sat up a little straighter. Speaking of Shadow, where was he? He hadn’t been in her room, nor was he around when she came downstairs . . . She finally woke up enough to catch Will’s hints. “Oh. Sorry. Would you like some coffee?” Sunny poured him a cup and sat at the table.

Will added a little milk and sugar to his cup, took a sip, and sighed. “I told you cops live on this stuff. Do I dare ask who makes the coffee in this house?”

“That pot was my dad’s,” Sunny told him. “I found it on when I got down here, along with a note telling me he was off for his walk. Stick around, and you’ll get to try a pot of mine.”

Now that they’d both had their caffeine fixes, the conversation began to flow.

“We know Warner has a mole in Reese’s office,” Will said. “They must have overheard us with the big guy.”

“So Rafe is just going to give us what we want?” Sunny didn’t share Will’s morning optimism. “Why?”

The doorbell rang. Will grinned. “I guess we’ll just have to ask him.”

She opened the door to find a jittery Rafe, standing with a sheaf of papers in his hands. He thrust them over to her. “You don’t know where these came from, got it?”

When he turned to go, Will caught him by the arm. “We may not know who gave them to us, but I’d like to know what they are. Come in and have some coffee.”

Rafe reluctantly accepted a cup. They all sat at the table, the small pile of papers in the middle. Rafe kept looking at them as if he feared they’d explode. “There’s a list of the people who passed away in the last year and a half. Well, cases. Their names are blotted out, but I left the dates and the cause of death.”

That should give them a long enough time period to average out any normal peaks and valleys in the mortality statistics. Sunny figured that a careful search of the obits from the Portsmouth and Portland papers could probably discover names to line up with the dear departed, but she decided to let Rafe go with a fig leaf of privacy.

Will had more practical considerations. “You mean the official cause of death.”

Rafe nodded. “The rest are staff rosters for those days. I figure that’s close enough to what you asked for.”

“What made you decide to take such a risk getting these to us?” Sunny asked.

“I think you’ll look at them and decide you can’t use them.” Rafe’s confidence seemed to come back as he upped his caffeine level. “You’ve talked about a rise in mortality rates at Bridgewater Hall, and that’s true. Right now we’re above average. But you’re suggesting that the spike is because union people are angry, or aren’t doing their jobs, or whatever, because of what Dr. Reese has done since he took over.” He took a deep breath. “Reese has definitely made trouble—I ought to know, I’ve been banging heads with him since he came in—but if you look at the deaths month by month, the spike was higher when Dr. Faulkner was in charge, and we got along better with the administration.”

Will frowned. “So you’re saying—”

“I’m saying it’s not a job action, or people slacking off. As shop steward, I know the folks in the union. They may not all be saints, but they—we—do our best for the patients. I think this information should prove that to you. So you’ll either have to go barking up some other tree or just accept that Mr. Scatterwell died of whatever they wrote on his death certificate.”