Last Licks

Now Will and Mike came into the room. “What’s going on here?” Will demanded in his best cop voice.

“That one was trying to inject the patient!” Dr. Gavrik struggled upright. “She could kill him!”

Will tried to grab Camille’s wrist, but the girl was strong, tearing free. Portia made plaintive noises, her claws apparently caught in the blue cloth, dragging behind Camille.

Shadow gathered himself for another charge, a low, unpleasant growl coming out of him.

Sunny’s voice didn’t sound much more civilized as she spoke through gritted teeth. “Give it up, Camille.”

Instead, the aide charged for the door, ready to stab Sunny or go right through her.

Shadow went for Camille’s leg again, and Sunny went for her face, landing a solid punch on the aide’s cheek. It left Sunny’s hand numb, but Camille spun around, the needle flying from her hand.

Mike came forward to grab it, but Will waved him off. “We need her fingerprints on it!”

He had a job subduing the furious woman. She fought him all the way while he got her arms behind her, pinning her to Mr. Vernon’s empty bed as he put a pair of handcuffs on her wrists.

“Camille.” Sunny tried to rub some life back into her numbed hand. “Why?” She wasn’t asking about the attack on Ollie, or even on her. Obviously they had caught an angel of death, the cause of the bump in mortality statistics . . . and Gardner’s killer.

“Why?” Camille snarled, glaring over her shoulder. “Haven’t you seen this place? They charge four hundred bucks a day to hold a bed for somebody. I don’t make that much in a week—and that’s before taxes. I’d have been better off finding a job with a landscaping company. The work is just as back-breaking, but there I might get appreciated.”

She heaved herself upright. “I put myself into debt, training for this job. Thought I’d be helping folks and moving up from minimum wage. Instead, the pay’s lousy, and the work is worse. Still, I stuck with it. I could put up with people puking on me or wiping their butts. It was the eyes I couldn’t take—having them look right through me. They thought I was invisible? Fine. I’d make them disappear. Who’d notice a couple of extra strokes around here? Especially at night, when everyone has twenty people to take care of.”

“An air embolism in the artery,” Dr. Gavrik said. “It would seem very much like a stroke.”

“Yeah, you didn’t catch it, did you, Doctor?” Camille made a mockery of the title. “It was one thing, getting my own back on the nasty old ladies, but Scatterwell, he was evil.” She turned to Ollie. “And he made all the trouble, bringing the cops in. He knew something, was gonna to talk with the sheriff. I had to go for him—had to shut him up.”

Hearing a gasp behind her, Sunny turned to see Rafe Warner and Frank Nesbit staring into the room.

“Did you guys hear that?” she demanded. “I’d call that a pretty explicit confession.”

19

It was several days later when Ollie Barnstable finally got to enjoy the gardens at Bridgewater Hall. Will Price pushed his wheelchair, and Sunny strolled along beside. A lot had happened. Frank Nesbit had taken Camille Thibaud into custody, where she’d given a detailed, clinical account of her activities in the nursing home. It made for some sensational newspaper reading and TV news viewing.

“She started off just making patients sick,” Will explained. “Then she figured she could come in and be the hero. That really didn’t get her anywhere, though . . . except to show how easy it would be to kill a patient right under everybody’s nose.”

“Camille was on the very bottom of the totem pole, earning peanuts, in debt, afraid of losing her job, powerless. I could see why she wanted to strike back.” Sunny noticed an uncomfortable expression on Ollie’s face.Yeah, it’s not too far from my own situation. Her reporter’s alter ego was grimly amused. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll be sneaking up on him with a pillow. Aloud, she went on, “Stress can do some pretty weird things to people.”

Ollie shook his big head. “I still don’t understand why she came after me. That was just plain nuts.”

“Well, Frank Nesbit would like to think so,” Sunny said. “It might help him put five murders in a different pigeonhole. I think Camille made a string of bad choices. She wasn’t what you’d call a criminal genius. The murders were more crimes of opportunity. She never really had a plan.”