No response.
“Let me ask you,” Waggs said, “those few days she was awake . . . was one of those June nineteenth?”
Rolly squinted upward, at the room’s popcorn ceiling. “Yeah, I . . . that sounds right. Why do you—？”
“What about this woman?” Waggs asked, pulling out Nola’s photo. “Ever seen her before?”
“That’s a terrible picture. Girl can’t smile. But yeah, I seen her.”
“Describe ‘seen her.’”
The orderly went silent.
“Please don’t make me use the badge,” Waggs pleaded.
“She gave me fifty bucks, okay?”
Waggs cocked an eyebrow, confused. “Why would Nola give you fifty bucks?”
“I told you, the news crews—they all wanted access. One of the nurses took two hundred dollars to get a photo of Mrs. Silvestri finally eating her pudding . . . and it wasn’t even the chocolate one.”
“So Nola paid you—？”
“To paint. Draw. I don’t know, I figured she was one of those artists who paints pictures in courtrooms. She asked for ten minutes; I gave her ten minutes.”
“Was that when Mrs. Silvestri went back into—？” She pointed toward the bed.
“What? No! She went back into her coma after. It had to be after.” He thought about it a moment. “Right?”
Waggs pulled out her phone, quickly doing the math. According to hospital records, Nola had been here on June 19, two days after Mrs. Silvestri woke up from her coma. From the online news report, she went back into her coma the following day, on the twentieth. “Do we know why she lost consciousness?” Waggs asked.
“Wait. You think your artist friend—？”
Waggs didn’t know what to think. It could’ve been Nola. Or someone who visited after Nola. Hell, it could’ve been any of the ten thousand things that usually go wrong when someone has a traumatic brain injury. No way to know for sure.
Still staring at her phone, Waggs swiped back to the map with the other locations that Nola made special trips to over the past few weeks. Three places in total.
One down. Two to go.
47
“Does being back feel like a time machine, Mr. Zigarowski? Someone told me this was your old office.”
“It wasn’t,” Zig shot back. “Mine was down the hall, closer to Embalming. And the actual fallen. Where the real work gets done.”
Colonel Whatley stayed all smiles, sitting at his immaculate desk, which was made of glass. Through the top, Zig could see O.J.’s legs, his chair, and his right hand, which held a staple remover that he was clicking like a tiny shark—chomp, chomp, chomp.
Like his predecessor, O.J. dedicated the left wall of his office to freestanding flags: American flag, Air Force flag, POW/MIA flag, and of course flags for Dover’s 436th and 512th Airlift Wings, each on its own flag stand, lined up like a firing squad. The only thing that had changed in the office was the ceiling.
Zig couldn’t see it until he got inside: above the desk, O.J. had removed two of the industrial ceiling tiles and replaced them with translucent ones that held a big full-color photo of what looked like a Hawaiian paradise, complete with crystal-blue water, palm trees, and an empty lounge chair with a coconut cocktail on one armrest and a purple orchid lei draped over the back. Zig had seen something similar in his dentist’s office. The hygienist said the ocean view helped people find calm. A simple trick so you don’t focus on the coming assault.
“You know, I’ve been to your funeral home,” the colonel said, his grin perfectly in place. “Must’ve been four, five years back—I don’t think you were working there yet. A friend of my grandfather— ninety-two years old, full life. Though all I really remember is everyone saying it used to be a Dairy Queen. I mean, a funeral home in an ice cream shop? What’s crazier?”