Only, she hadn’t. The walls were bare, save a motel quality oil painting. No signature.
“See?”
Yeah, Vaughn saw.
“Let me ask you something, John.”
“Shoot.”
“You ever see this kid before?”
Vaughn showed the man a photo of Zeke Godfrey. John took the phone, brought it close to his face. Rolled his head around.
“I don’t... think so?”
Not exactly a firm ‘no.’
“Take another look.”
John did, spoke as he stared at the screen.
“It’s the shaggy blond hair...” he trailed off.
“What about it?” Vaughn pressed.
“About two months ago, we had a break-in. I think someone came in through that window there.” John, still focused on Vaughn’s phone, raised a finger and pointed at the window leading to the outside. “Went through Gene’s things while he was on an outing. Also went through the main office.”
“Really?”
Vaughn thought that if something like this had been reported to the PPD, Darnell would have probably come across it while he was digging into Dr.Reeves. Only, Darnell was a loose cannon who could no longer be trusted.
“Yep.”
Vaughn frowned.
“Anything stolen?”
“Don’t think so. Management decided not to report it because—”
“Let me guess? Insurance?”
John pursed his lips.
“Yep. That and the fact that they passed it off as a resident snooping around, that no one came in from the window. They suggested that Dr.Reeves might have just left it open. Some of our residents have... issues. Once, we had this sex addict who made his rounds of the place. Slept with pretty much everyone. We had this one woman, Ms. Murphy, who had a colostomy bag. Right before management cut our resident nympho loose, she curiously developed a case of genital herpes... around the colostomy hole.”
It took a few seconds for Vaughn to clue in to what the man was saying.
“That’s disgusting.”
“Yeah.”
Vaughn shuddered at the thought.
“The thing is, one of our residents is a bit of a savant. A savant with a prostate the size of a grapefruit—no lie, the guy goes piss every hour. Also has a bit of OCD, doesn’t like to piss in the same bathroom twice in a row. Don’t ask me why. Anyway, he said he saw a young guy in a mask around the time of the break-in.” John put air quotes around the final word. “Said he had blond hair coming out of the eye holes.”
“Was it the guy on the phone?”
John rolled his eyes.
