Page 57 of Scarred By Sin

“Thank you, Mrs. Pruitt. This is my colleague, Theo Neville.”

Nancy offered her hand, and Theo returned her greeting. She then led them into the living room. A muted baseball game was playing on the television. Owen was already rising from his recliner, his crossword puzzle book set aside, a pencil tucked behind his ear in the same spot it had occupied before. The chocolate Lab was investigating Theo’s shoes, sniffing with considerable thoroughness, before settling on the carpet between the recliner and the couch upon Owen’s directive.

“I had a feeling you’d be back,” Owen said as he shook their hands. “Please, sit down.”

Instead of retreating to the kitchen, Nancy joined them by sitting in the chair opposite the couch. Owen glanced at his wife. Whatever passed between them in that look was brief, but it was significant. Sylvie wasn’t much into gambling, but she would bet her last paycheck that Sheriff Gentry had given them fair warning about his conversation with Brook last night.

"Mr. Pruitt," Sylvie began, "when we spoke last time, you described your relationship with Nestor as friendly. You two were part of the same poker group, and he would come to you with questions about how certain compounds interacted with human biology."

“That’s correct.”

“What you didn’t mention was that your wife filed an informal complaint with Sheriff Caulfield approximately two months before Nestor disappeared. Harassing phone calls in the middle of the night, if I’m not mistaken.”

Owen removed the pencil from behind his ear and turned it slowly between his fingers. Nancy cleared her throat, and it was clear that she and her husband disagreed on the subject.

“That was all a misunderstanding.”

“Was it?” Nancy’s voice was steady, and she held her husband’s stare. She then turned to Sylvie and Theo. “Nestor was calling at all hours of the night, but it wasn’t the phone calls that prompted me to go to the sheriff. You see, Nestor showed up at our house at two in the morning, banging on the front door. We were in bed, asleep, and I was the one who heard it first.”

She paused, and Sylvie noticed that Owen couldn’t bring himself to raise his gaze. Shame, maybe. She didn’t believe that he was angry with his wife.

“Nestor had been drinking. I could smell it from the doorway. Nestor Ellingham was not a man who drank, so the fact that he was standing on our porch at two in the morning, reeking of alcohol and demanding pain medication, told me there was something very wrong.”

“What did he say to you?” Sylvie asked.

“He was upset. Agitated. He kept saying that something hadn’t gone as planned, that he’d made a mistake.” Nancy shook her head at the memory. “Owen brought him inside and sat him at the kitchen table. I made coffee. Nestor was rambling, going back and forth between apologizing for waking us and saying things that didn’t make sense at the time. Owen tried to calm him down, but Nestor was in a state I’d never seen him in before.”

“Did he say specifically what had gone wrong?” Theo asked before Sylvie could inquire as to why they would keep this from her during their first conversation. Maybe that was the reason behind Theo’s own inquiry. Confronting them about withholding information could potentially cause them to do so again. “Did Nestor give you any indication that he was doing something illegal?”

“No. As to your first question, certainly not in a way that either of us understood,” Owen said, picking up the thread from his wife. “Nestor said he’d done something he couldn’t take back. That he’d made poor choices, and nothing could fix what he’d done. I assumed he was talking about his shoulder. Or, at least, how he’d come to hurt his shoulder.”

“After that night, I went to the sheriff,” Nancy said firmly and unapologetically. “I didn’t care what Owen thought about it. A man shows up at your home in the middle of the night, drunk and talking about mistakes he can’t undo. He was pleading with Owen to prescribe pain medication. Actions like that could have led Owen to lose his ability to dispense medication. One doesn’t just go back to sleep and pretend it didn’t happen.”

“You did the right thing, Mrs. Pruitt,” Sylvie said in approval.

The leather of Owen’s recliner complained when he shifted position, and the dog lifted its head to check on his owner before settling again with a heavy sigh.

“Mr. Pruitt,” Sylvie continued, “I’d like to share with you what our investigation has uncovered, because I think it will help put some of what Nestor said that night into context.”

She glanced at Theo, who gave a slight nod of agreement.

“The women buried in the greenhouse were not murdered. They were cancer patients, terminally ill, who we believe came to the estate voluntarily seeking treatment from Nestor. He had built a hidden laboratory on the property where he conducted his research and treated them. When they died of their diseases, he buried them in the greenhouse.”

Owen’s face went through several stages in the span of a few seconds. Confusion, then recognition, then something that appeared very much like a man observing memories from the last thirty years of his life as they rearranged themselves into a shape he hadn’t anticipated.

“Cancer patients,” Owen repeated, barely above a whisper.

“Yes.”

“He was treating them.”

Nancy made a sound of disgust under her breath. Her hand tightened on the arm of her chair, and she turned her face toward the window as though she couldn’t bear to look at anyone in the room while she processed what she’d just heard.

Owen pressed his palm against his forehead and closed his eyes. Nancy eventually shifted toward the edge of the chair and placed her hand on his, and Sylvie gave them the time they needed.

“I thought he’d lost his mind,” Owen said after a long moment. “When Nestor came to the house that night, I thought the isolation and the grief over Claudine had finally broken him. That’s what I believed all this time. That Nestor was beside himself because he’d been ignoring the one person who needed him most.”

He stared at Sylvie and Theo with what could only be described as guilt.