Carers, Ltd.
A Novel
By Ruthie Pearlman

Colin was just about to leave for home that evening when the call came.

When it was over, he went into the outer office, where Wendy and Peter were chatting as they prepared to leave for home themselves.

“David Gross’s parents have just called in,” he said.

“Oh, goody,” Wendy said. “It was getting boring making all those phone calls, and no one seemed to know their contact details. Did they phone in because one of the people I spoke to told them we’re looking for them?”

“Not quite,” Colin said. “They didn’t seem to know we’d been trying to get in touch. No, the reason for their call was to report their son missing. Apparently he’s been out of contact with them for four days, and he normally calls them at least once a day, if not twice. They worry about him living alone so he promised to call every day to reassure them he was okay. Now they are totally freaked, not having heard from him all that time. They’re convinced something has happened to him.”

“Have they been ’round ringing his bell, then?” Peter asked.

“Yes. No reply.”

“Peered through the letter box?”

“Better than that. They’ve been in the house. Just now. That’s why they called. Though they were reluctant to invade his privacy, their worry was greater. After ringing and phoning all day today, they took the bull by the horns and went in uninvited.”

“They have a key?”

“They said David gave them a spare key when he moved. It’s the first time they’ve ever used it.”

“So I gather he wasn’t there,” Wendy said.

“That’s right. But they think maybe we’ll spot something they have missed. After all, they aren’t cops.”

“But this isn’t a crime scene,” Peter growled. “It’s a missing adult male who’s probably on some jaunt. He doesn’t have to inform Mummy and Daddy whenever he goes out the door, surely. The fact that he checked in daily doesn’t make it a prerequisite of his existence. I hate possessive parents!”

Peter was thinking of his own parents. He had left home at eighteen to escape his family, who thought of him as a baby who needed constant monitoring. But he knew that Jewish families were more closeknit and kept a closer watch on their nestlings than most.

“It won’t hurt if we accompany his parents on another look-see around his house tomorrow,” Colin said firmly. “I might even get Leora to go along. She’s been baying about us ignoring David Gross’s disappearance, so she’ll jump at the chance to look around herself, see if she can find any clues as to where he might have gone.”

“He has never gone away before without telling them where he is?”

“No. Apparently he checks in just to keep them off his back. And he hasn’t. For four days.”

“Hmm.” Peter said as he put on his coat. “Disabled or not, I still maintain that he’s an adult and should be able to take off on his own without search parties being called in or his parents asking us to dig up the garden.”

“Who said anything about digging up the garden?”

“Just a metaphor.”

“So who’s going?” Wendy asked.

Colin looked at her.

“Ah,” Wendy said.

* * *

“So will you go with Wendy?” Colin asked Leora that evening.

His wife made a great show of consulting her diary, though she was champing at the bit with this latest news. Her true answer was “Try and stop me,” but she couldn’t appear so eager, even to Colin.

“I have to go back to that crime scene tomorrow, the Pakistani kicking homicide. There’s something I have to check out. But I should be able to join Wendy after that. Tell her I’ll be at the Gross house by eleven, if that’s okay.”

“Thank you, Leora. We appreciate your input.”

She nodded regally and bit her tongue to stop herself from saying, “Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away.” One must keep up appearances, after all.

* * *

The Grosses were already waiting outside the house when Wendy and Leora showed up at eleven on the dot. Leora had brought her forensic toolkit in its lightweight aluminum case straight from the crime scene she had just left.

At first glance, Leora would have placed the couple well into their seventies, which seemed strange since David was only in his twenties. Stooped and frail-looking, they sat on the low wall, waiting for the police to arrive, and the pathetic hope that ignited their eyes at the sight of the two women only served to remind Leora, and she was sure Wendy felt the same, how inadequate she actually was in the scheme of things. To be the only source of hope for this elderly couple was a responsibility she could hardly bear to shoulder and a very humbling one at that.

Mr. Gross stood up first and introduced himself as Yitzchak and his wife as Gita. At closer examination, he couldn’t be much older than sixty, and his wife a little younger. It was the tension and worry that had etched deep furrows into their faces that made them appear older.

Yitzchak Gross was tall and thin, with a white scraggly beard and a thick thatch of snowy hair. His thinness made his face fall into crags and wrinkles, through which eagle-sharp blue eyes regarded the two women. Gita was plumper and shorter. Round of face and body, she wore a fuzzy gray-blonde wig that Leora spotted at once was made of partly synthetic fibers. It had a nylon sheen about it in the weak sunshine. Gita’s eyes, also blue, regarded Leora and Wendy hopefully.

“I’m so worried,” Gita confessed as Yitzchak fumbled with the front door, hands shaking so much that eventually, sighing and shrugging, he handed the key over to Wendy. “I’m all fingers and thumbs today,” he confessed, embarrassed.

Wendy half hoped that she would have at least a bit of a struggle to open the door, just to lessen the humiliation of the older man, but as fate would have it Wendy got the door open easily. Yitzchak made as if to step inside, but Leora held up a restraining hand.

“Wait,” she said. “We don’t want to contaminate anything by trampling over it.”

She held up the aluminum case she was carrying. “My forensic kit,” she explained. “I’ll fill you in as we go along, okay?” The Grosses nodded, confused. They obviously didn’t know much about forensic science.

Wendy was fascinated. “I’ve always wanted to do forensics,” she admitted to Leora. “One day I’m going to go to university and study it.”

“Meanwhile you’re studying it on the job, which is far better.” Leora smiled. She hoped she didn’t sound patronizing, but Wendy was in hero-worship mode and couldn’t be patronized if Leora tried.

“Wow, this is such a great opportunity for me to watch an expert at work,” she gushed.

“All right. Before we examine any potential crime scene closely, we should look at it from a distance to make sure we don’t trample on any evidence. That’s where this light source comes in.” Out of the case came a flashlight, which, when switched on, shone a broad and powerful beam that illuminated the entire entrance hall of David’s house.

“It’s good there’s only one floor,” Leora commented as she slowly directed the beam around the room. “Makes my job faster, that’s for sure.”

The hallway looked a little cluttered. Papers were scattered on the floor, and a few days’ post lay by the mailbox, but there were no obvious signs that gave her reason to worry. She tried to remember what it had looked like when she had visited that one time, but she had only passed through and the memory was too vague.

“Is this how the hall usually looks?” she asked the older couple.

“About the same,” Yitzchak said.

“Okay, step inside, and if possible do it in single file and step into my footprints. That way we cause the least possible disturbance.”

Obediently the three followed Leora into the house, stepping in her footprints as if to walk outside of them would be to fall into a poisonous swamp alive with crocodiles and other nasties. In the middle of the hallway Leora stopped and swiveled around, shining the flashlight in all directions. The others paused, too, and waited for Leora to make the next move.

“Nothing here at first glance,” she said to Wendy. “Okay. The living room next.”

The living room had a lot of empty floor space, which made sense if it was used by a wheelchair-bound person. There were only a couple of armchairs and a giant stereo system standing against the wall. A low marble coffee table with a solid oblong base stood in the middle of the room. The carpet was a mottled dark color.

“We checked in here,” David’s parents announced, as if that ruled out any possibility of any clues being found here.

“This room is very neat and tidy compared to the hallway,” Wendy commented.

“Is it usually like this? Do you notice any differences?” Leora asked the Grosses. They peered around.

“David doesn’t use this room very much. That’s why it’s so tidy,” Gita explained. “The hallway is where the post comes in and goes out, and if papers fall on the floor he can’t pick them up so easily. He waits till his carer comes and helps him clean up.”

“You mean Leon.”

“Yes. Or his daily help. Leon doesn’t do the heavy cleaning. He just looks after David and does a bit of tidying.”

“What’s your opinion of Leon?” Leora asked.

“Seems a nice enough young man,” Yitzchak said. “To be honest, we were relieved when David employed a carer. We had been so worried about him living all by himself. What if he fell? He couldn’t pick himself up off the floor like other people.

“I have a weak heart, and my wife has high blood pressure, and all this worry was doing neither of us any good. That’s why, even after he hired Leon, I made him call in at least once a day to reassure us he was okay.”

“Did Leon come back at all after David went missing?”

“I don’t know. No one answered the phone or door, that’s all we knew.”

“Did Leon have his own key?” Wendy asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe, if he tidied up for David while he was at work.”

“Okay. The bedroom next.”

David’s bed was a double, presumably to make it easier for him to get in and out of it, and was higher than average. It had a hoist and various other pulleys and aids nearby. The bed was neatly made and showed no signs of having been recently occupied. The room bore an unused look, like a bride’s dress for a called-off engagement. Besides the bed and hoists, the room held a small workstation with a computer and printer. Wendy shot the Grosses a querying look. “May we look on the computer?”

“What do I know about computers?” said Yitzchak. “I don’t even know enough to give you permission. What are you looking for?”

“Maybe some kind of diary or appointment schedule. Some idea of where he might have gone,” Wendy said.

“Oh. I suppose it’s okay.” Yitzchak looked worried, as if looking on the computer would open Pandora’s box.

Wendy sat down before the terminal and jiggled the mouse. The black screen vanished and was replaced by a familiar blue desktop with icons. “It’s still switched on. That’s strange in itself.”

“Why?” Gita asked.

“Well, it’s a good idea to leave a computer on if you’re planning to use it in the next day or so. Computers don’t take very well to being turned on and off all the time like a light switch. The heating up and cooling down damages the processing unit. But if you’re planning to go away for a few days, it’s acceptable to turn it off.”

“What are you saying, Wendy?” Leora asked.

Wendy looked up at her. “What I am saying is that maybe David Gross didn’t plan to be away.”

She looked at the icons. One was a shortcut to a planner, a computerized diary and address book. Wendy brought that up and scanned it.

“No mention of any trips. Did he tell you he was thinking of going away?”

“No,” Gita said. Her voice was pitched high, an indication of her increasing panic.

Wendy ran a printout of all the addresses in the planner. “We’ll call his acquaintances, see if any of them know where he is.”

She looked at other programs and was soon busy reading David’s word-processing documents. Most were business letters. None gave any clue to his whereabouts.

Meanwhile, Leora paced. Like a caged tiger she walked up and down, up and down. It wasn’t until Wendy closed the last document file that she noticed her.

“Leora, what…?”

“Shh. Something…just out of my grasp. I know something is wrong. Something is wrong, and I can’t pin it down.”

“Wrong? Where?”

“In the living room, I think. Shhh. Let me think.”

They left her pacing, and Wendy went back to scanning David Gross’s computer files.

“I’ve never really looked at a computer before,” Yitzchak said.

“Me neither,” Gita said. They both peered over Wendy’s shoulder.

Leora stopped in her tracks.

“Why would the coffee table be in the middle of the room?” she asked no one in particular.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Wendy wanted to know.

“Because a person in a wheelchair needs as much maneuverability as possible, and a table slap bang in the middle of a room gets in the way. A coffee table would normally be placed near a chair, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not if you’re in a wheelchair,” Wendy pointed out. “Then your coffee table needs to be near your wheelchair.”

“Not if it has a solid base,” Leora countered. “Wheelchairs have footrests, and footrests have to fit underneath tables. This table has a solid base, no kneehole, nowhere for the footrest of a wheelchair to fit under.”

"And you surmise from this…”

“That the coffee table wasn’t for David’s use at all. For someone in a wheelchair it is actually a useless piece of furniture. It’s too low for him to reach, and he can’t get close enough because of his footrest. The only way he could reach it would be from a sideways angle. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Leora marched from the room, and they all followed her back to the living room. Leora took a few steps into the room and motioned for the others to wait at the doorway. She stood, feet apart, hands on hips, studying the coffee table.

“I didn’t really see this room before,” Gita said suddenly. “I was a bit distraught, worried about David. We just glanced in and went searching through the rest of the house when we didn’t see him.”

Leora looked around the room, then accusingly at the coffee table. “Why is the table there in the middle of the room?”

They all stared at it, as if by multiple eye contact it would give up its secrets.

Leora said slowly, “Wendy, why don’t you take the Grosses into the kitchen? Make a cup of tea, maybe.”

“But —” Wendy stopped when she caught Leora’s look, which said, “I don’t want them here.”

A moment later, alone in the room, Leora moved the coffee table aside. It was marble-topped and heavy, so she had quite a struggle, but she managed it.

The carpet was dark and speckled, but there was no mistaking the darker stain that had spread on it like an inkblot. Leora pulled out a cotton swab on a six-inch shaft from her kit and wet it from a jar of water with a secure lid, then applied it to the stain. She stuck the shaft into a Styrofoam block to air-dry the swab and then looked at it. Brown. Like dried blood.

She opened her case and ran an instant dipstick test on the stain to make sure it wasn’t dried cranberry juice or ketchup. Not that she suspected it would be with a coffee table strategically placed over it, but one never knew.

Yes. It was blood. And that big stain, well, there was a lot of it.

Now that she had found that one, she noticed several others that the coffee table had not hidden, smaller ones that almost blended with the carpet. Almost, but not quite, not when she was looking for them.

Blood pattern analysis was needed, she thought. She needed those spatters to tell their story to her.

Wendy came back into the room at that moment.

“It’s okay. I’m alone. I just had to see…” She stopped. “Oh.”

“Yes,” Leora said. “Oh.”

“It still might not be a crime scene, of course,” Wendy said, wondering how on earth she was going to tell those poor, anxious people innocently sipping tea in the kitchen. “He could just have had a nasty cut or something.”

“Right. And he moved the coffee table over it so no one would see the mark,” Leora said, thinking of her own struggle to move the heavy piece of furniture, “in a wheelchair.”

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