Decker closed the door and slowly walked down the corridor now populated with uniforms of various colors—doctors, nurses, orderlies, security guards. Busy, busy, busy, in stark contrast to last night.

He felt a little guilty for sidestepping Matty Lopez’s request for help. But he was not about to tell Matty that he was a lawyer. Way the kid was talking, Decker wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if the boy had offered him the case.

Now that would be sorely tempting.

Suing those bastards at the hospital for allowing something like this to happen. Getting out all his frustration of the past three days. Not to mention filling his pockets with some cold cash. Lopez was right. Contingency cases like these, lawyers often walk away with a chunk of the settlement. With punitive damages thrown in, the case could net upward of a couple of mil. Forty percent of that would certainly be enough to add a room, plus.

Decker laughed to himself.

Nice to dream.

19

The Golden Valley Home for the Aged in Arcadia was a sprawling one-story structure of gleaming white stucco that sat in a quiet strip of rural tract. The front held a U-shaped driveway outlined by hedges of boxwood and yew that surrounded a lawn of yellow marigolds. Behind the building were acres of brush and wild specimen trees of oak, maple, sycamore, and eucalyptus. Marge noticed a creek bed meandering through the back woods, but at this time of year it was not much more than a dried depression of rocks and dust.

The afternoon was hot, wisps of clouds drifting through the sky causing the sun to play peekaboo. The results were bursts of bright rays, then muted sunbeams, as if someone were playing with a light switch. Not much noise pollution in the sticks—ambient sounds were provided by birds and insects.

As Marge opened one of the front double glass doors, Nature’s songs receded, taken over by electronic talk and canned laughter. To the right was a lobby with a mounted TV. A lone pink sofa was the resting spot for a lady with an afghan on her lap. To her right was a walker. There was one set of table and chairs, all the seats empty. Around the boob tube was a semicircle of occupied wheelchairs, backs facing Marge. She couldn’t see any bodies, only the tops of the heads. Some were bald, some were crowned with white filaments. The chairs were emitting sounds of their own—a heated conversation about last night’s dinner, a few phlegmy guffaws of laughter, and one deep snore.

If one took into account the wheelchairs, there was actually more furniture in the lobby than a first glance would concede. It was just the mobile kind of seating. Made for easy access back and forth.