The Shift

Two women. Two Sundays. Two deaths the paperwork has already explained.

Rachel Adler sets out to prove her friend Cora James was silenced. Officially, Cora, an aide due to testify against the care chain that employed her, died of an overdose ruled self-inflicted. Then, inside Cora’s sealed envelope, Rachel finds names from three of the chain’s buildings and two words pressed through the page. Too many.

Two months later, Detective Ray Nowak, who signed Cora’s ruling, stands over Cora’s neighbor, nurse Debbie Hargrove, dead and arranged on her couch. Her shoes are squared to the wall, her hands washed clean, the pages stripped from her notebook. Still, Nowak signs the ruling: self-inflicted. Preliminary. But he is no longer sure Debbie chose to die.

Meanwhile, to place Cora’s failing mother, Gloria, Rachel can burn through Gloria’s savings on five months in a private home, or take the one bed Gloria can afford, inside the chain Cora died trying to expose. Soon a kind nurse leaves Gloria pills for the bad nights, and when Rachel reads the label, she recognizes the drug class found in Cora’s blood. Gloria has already taken one.