Powers of Arrest

Chapter Thirty-one

Cheryl Beth could feel Will’s left leg start to twitch. It was only forty-five minutes after they had gone to bed. He was still asleep despite the movement. The spasticity must have kept him in a state of REM sleep much of the time. She hoped he had nice dreams, at least. With that thought, she gently snuggled against him, pushed aside all that had happened that night, and fell into a deep slumber.

“Oh, hell!”

His words woke her. He was sitting by the bed, shaking his right leg, his face illuminated by the screen of the computer perched on the arm of the chair. She rolled over and checked the clock: five fifteen.

“Are you okay, babe?”

“I’m sorry I woke you.” His voice sounded miles beyond weary.

“Is it your legs?”

“I wish. I had to sit up to calm down my left leg, so I thought I’d go through the photos from Kristen Gruber’s computer, and I found…”

She waited but he didn’t finish the sentence.

She climbed out of bed naked, surprised how comfortable she was with him. Coming behind the chair, she wrapped her arms around him and leaned forward. He rested his head against hers.

“What?” She asked. Then she saw the photo on the screen.

“Oh, Will…”

“There are more.”

“What are you going to do?”

He sighed. “I’m not going to do what Kenneth Buchanan does. I’m through with that. At six, I’m going to call Dodds and the lead detective in Covington.”

Chapter Thirty-two

The interrogation room at Covington was nicer than Will was used to: clean, new, with unmarred furniture, pristine fluorescent lights in the ceiling, and walls that might have graced a modern conference room. The seats hadn’t yet been beaten down by thousands of felonious butts sitting in them. Will sat in the adjacent room, looking through the one-way glass. With him were Dodds, Cheryl Beth, and an assistant prosecutor from the Kenton County Attorney’s Office. He got Cheryl Beth in on the pretext that she was a witness under protection, which was true.

Only one person was sitting in the interrogation room: John.

Already it was a busy day. A fifty-six-year-old man had been decapitated and dismembered in his apartment and the Covington cops held three suspects in custody. It had been a struggle to get a free room.

Will watched John sit uncomfortably. He was still handcuffed. His expressions moved through anxiety, anger, and dreaminess. This was the sweet boy with the fine singing voice, now an adult under arrest. Will shook his head.

The interrogation room door opened and Diane Henderson stepped inside. She was dressed in jeans and a peach-striped shirt, carrying a tan portfolio. She pulled up a chair across from John and sat. They could only see her back. Will imagined that Cindy was frantically trying to get a good criminal lawyer. They didn’t have much time.

Henderson started a tape recorder, gave the date, location of the interview, suspect’s name, and her name and badge number. She Mirandized John again as he stared down. He mumbled that he understood his rights. Then she slowly laid out sheets of paper like playing cards. Soon they covered the table.

“Do you recognize the photographs, John?” Her voice was calm and almost motherly. It was obvious from his face that he was surprised by the images.

He managed, “Do you know who my dad is?”

Will wanted to melt into the floor.

“I do,” she said. “How about answering my question.”

“I know what they are. Can you take off these handcuffs? They’re really uncomfortable.”

She ignored his request. “So tell me what they are?”

“They’re me and Kristen.”

“Kristen Gruber.”

He nodded.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes.” He stared angrily at her in a face that looked alien to Will.

“Who took them?”

“She did.”

“When?”

He hesitated, then told her: last fall.

“So you knew her?”

“We were friends.”

“Some of these show you naked in her bed,” Henderson said. “Looks like you were more than friends. Why didn’t you tell me this the last time we talked?”

He stared down. She prompted him with his name.

“I was scared,” he said. “She and I had a fling.”

“Last fall?”

“Yeah, last fall.”

Will felt acid boring a hole in his stomach.

“So you picked her up? What? She was a good deal older than you, and a celebrity to boot. Why would she want a kid like you?”

He didn’t answer.

“I’m about her age,” Henderson said, her tone changing from sympathetic to mocking. “I can’t imagine a bigger turn-off than some baby barely out of his acne stage…”

“She picked me up, okay!” He wiggled in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position without success.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“That’s because you’re not Kristen, lady.”

“You can call me Detective Henderson, or detective, or officer.”

“Whatever,” he said. All his sobbing from the night at Hyde Park Square was gone. In its place sat a fuming defiance.

“So why’d she pick you up? You look pretty ordinary to me. Are you some hot lover on the prowl for cougars?”

“As if.” He gave a mordant laugh. “She wanted to deflower me. It excited her.”

Will resisted the involuntary urge to shake his head. He listened to the intonations of John’s voice; could it have been the one he heard behind him the previous night? Then there was John’s pale, short hair: someone might mistake him for bald, especially if she didn’t get a good look. He forced his jaw to unclench.

Henderson sat still for a few beats. “It must have been exciting for you.”

“I wanted somebody my own age. But the girls my age don’t like me. Kristen did. She thought I was mature. She said I had good judgment, that I acted very mature.”

“You’re not showing it so far,” Henderson said. “She’s dead. We have your admission that you were on her boat the night she was murdered and the evidence to back it up. Now we know you were her lover. It’s not looking good. I’d say when you were on the Licking River with your friends and saw her boat. It put you in a rage. While they were passed out, you unlashed the Zodiac, went back, and murdered her.”

“I didn’t kill her!” His face contorted.

“You’re slick,” she said. “You got off the Zodiac, forced her back into the cabin, handcuffed her, and then you got out your knife…”

“No!” he screamed.

“Then you went back to your friends, and you were with them when they went back downriver and saw her boat. You could claim you found her for the first time. You could have called the police, but you didn’t.”

“I already told you, I wanted to!”

“That’s not what your friend, Zack Miller, said.”

“He’s not my friend,” John said.

That was true enough, Will thought. He also knew that Henderson had interviewed the three girls on the boat individually and they all admitted that John had wanted to call the police after he found Gruber’s body. But Henderson kept that to herself, kept the pressure on John.

Leaning forward, she said quietly, You must have really hated her to do such a horrible thing…”

“I cared about her! I was grateful to her!”

The room stayed silent for a long time. The prosecutor was getting antsy. Henderson turned motherly again. “I can understand. So you started out a little reluctant with her, you wanted a girl your age. And then you fell for her. She was attractive. Did she know you cared about her? How did she react?”

“She laughed at me afterwards and never took my call again.”

“Did that make you angry?”

“It hurt.”

“And made you angry.”

“Yes.” His mouth turned down violently.

Will saw a stranger’s face. It chilled him. His right quads starting jumping. It had come to this: what if he was wrong? What if John were about to confess?

Henderson said, “You wanted to get back at her.”

“No.” The stranger’s face went away.

“These photos: you on the bed, you and her. Where were they taken?”

“In her condo.” But Will already recognized the surroundings. At least that wasn’t a lie.

“It must have really pissed you off when she dismissed you.”

“It hurt,” he said. “I didn’t understand.”

“Did you know she saw other men?”

“No.” He sounded surprised.

“You sure? She broke up with you, she was two-timing you. That would make any man really angry. Mad enough to take revenge.”

“No! Never!”

“Mad enough to kill her.”

“I didn’t kill her!” Now the tears were coming down and his hands were helpless to wipe them away.

She let him stew for several minutes. Will had a sudden sense of disorientation. For a moment, from the back with her fair hair, Henderson looked like the avenging ghost of Kristen Gruber. The ghost pointed and spoke: “How about these pictures here?”

“We went bike riding.”

“Where?”

“The trail out in Loveland, that used to be train tracks.”

Will whispered, “Goddamn.”

“It’s a nice place,” Henderson said. “Do you go there often?”

“A few times.”

“Have you been there this spring?”

He nodded.

“Speak up, John.”

“Yes,” he said. “I was out there a few weeks ago.”

“With some friends?”

“Alone.”

Henderson flipped through her portfolio and put a photo of Lauren Benish in front of him.

“Did you see her?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. She’s pretty. I would have noticed.”

“I bet you would have. I bet you did. She was also murdered last weekend.”

John’s face lost all its color.

“Now wait a minute…”

“John, we know you went to bars at Oxford. She was a nursing student at Miami. What if I have a witness who said you were on the trail with her and then started stalking her?”

“That’s crazy! I never…”

Henderson said, “Let’s go through this again.”

Dodds turned down the speaker and said, “What do you think?”

“We don’t have enough to hold him once his mother gets here with a lawyer,” the prosecutor said.

Will shook his head, looked back at Cheryl Beth for some reassurance. She telegraphed it. He said, “I don’t know what the hell to think, J.C. He’s lied and lied. But he’s not bald.”

“You can buy a bald cap from the Internet. It’d be a good disguise, because that’s the first thing any witness would remember.”

Will said, “You don’t really think…”

“No,” Dodds said. “He’s tall but looks out of shape. I don’t see him overpowering Noah Smith. He doesn’t have a knife.”

Now the hole in Will’s stomach was big enough to drop a baseball through.

“But,” Dodds continued, “It’s all what a jury believes.”

He turned the speaker back up.

“So she liked it rough,” Henderson was saying. “Liked to be tied up.”

“Not by me,” John said. “I didn’t like that. It scared me.”

“You never tied her up?”

“I wouldn’t. She wanted me to. She wanted me to call her names and slap her, force myself on her. She said it helped her get off.”

Henderson shook her head and pushed back the chair. “Now you’re lying to me again, John. Why would any woman enjoy that?”

He tried to answer but couldn’t form the words through his sobs.

When he was able to speak, they could barely hear him. “I tried to understand why she was that way. Finally, she told me she’d been raped when she was twenty-five. She’d been on duty when it happened. I don’t know if that had anything to do with how she was, but that was all she’d tell me.”

A tap came at their door and a uniformed officer stuck his head inside.

“His mother and lawyer are here, raising hell.”

Chapter Thirty-three

They made it out to the parking lot and into the car before Will’s phone rang. Cheryl Beth could only hear his side of the conversation.

“Yes, chief…I told Detective Dodds this morning and Covington brought him down for interrogation…No, sir, he lives with his mother, my ex-wife…No, sir…” She watched his face lose its color. “I haven’t read it yet…I don’t know how they could have put together the information about Noah Smith…”

She felt her body tense at the mention of Noah’s name.

Will kept talking, “So the Oxford cops said nothing?” The voice on the other end talked a long time. Will silently gripped his leg. “Sir, with all due respect to Lieutenant Fassbinder, he’s misremembering. I urged him to go public with the connection between Oxford and Gruber. I think it might help bring forward some new witnesses, throw the suspect off balance. Lieutenant Fassbinder declined my advice…Yes, sir…I’d really like to be there. If for no other reason because I think the suspect still might try to make contact with me…”

The police jargon both amused and horrified her. “Contact me.” Sure as hell.

“I don’t believe John is the suspect, sir,” Will said. “He’s stupid and was in the wrong time and wrong place. Based on that, he might end up like Noah Smith, who was a suspect once himself…”

Cheryl Beth hadn’t even considered that. She watched Covington cops coming and going.

Will gave a final “yes, sir” and put the phone down, a defeated look on his face.

“The Dayton Daily News had a story this morning saying the suspect in the Miami killings had committed suicide in Cincinnati last week. The chief wants to know how they put that together. How the hell do I know? We never released Noah’s name. The newspaper didn’t even call me for a comment. Hank Brooks was helpful, giving a ‘no comment,’ which makes a good reporter think something’s being hidden. Goddamn it to hell…”

She put a hand on his arm. He slumped into the seat.

“Now I have to explain this disaster with John. And Fassbinder told the chief that I was the one who said we shouldn’t go public with the connection between Gruber and your students. Damn him. If you don’t mind, would you pull the knife out of my back?”

She smiled. He didn’t.

“They’re going to give a media briefing this afternoon and bring in the Oxford murders and their connection to Gruber. I’m not to be there. The chief wants me to take a leave.”

He suddenly slammed his fist on the steering wheel.

“I’m useless! I’m done! All they see is this fucking cane and they judge me. They keep it to themselves in their nice Cincinnati way, but they judge me and stab me in the back. I’ve cleared more homicide cases than anyone in the unit except for Dodds, but does that mean anything? No. I didn’t even want this case, but the chief assigned me. Now I’m a liability. I’m a cripple who can’t cut it anymore…”

“Stop that!” The words were out of her mouth before she realized it, and all the tension and anger that she had held inside blew out like a high-pressure oil well. “You are not useless, or done, or a liability! The only one who sees that cane is you. The only one who doesn’t see a tall, handsome, impressive man is you. Do you know how lucky you are, Will Borders? Do you remember all those people in neuro-rehab, the quads who couldn’t move the arms and legs? I see people every day who are sick and dying. You’re alive and strong! You got a second chance that so many people never get!”

She was fighting tears now. She tended to cry when she got mad. But her anger quickly dissipated.

In the silence, he took her hand and held it to his face. She could feel his tears, too. His kissed her palm, whispered, “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

The car’s layout, with radios and a computer between the seats, made it difficult, but she scrunched over and gave him a long hug. She didn’t care who was watching.

“No displays of affection in an official police vehicle!”

It was Dodds, standing by Will’s door.

“Check this out.” He handed an official-looking piece of paper to Will. The upper part showed a mug shot of a hard face staring at the camera and above it no hair.

“Charles Wayne Whitaker,” Will said. “Registered sex offender. Convicted of raping a woman in Columbus ten years ago.”

“Yep,” Dodds said. “It gets better. Remember Kristen’s fan mail? We took it back from Covington. They didn’t have the manpower. So I had police recruits go through two-hundred letters yesterday. Mister Whitaker wrote to Kristen, telling her all the things he’s like to do to her.”

“No shit? Does Henderson know?”

“I’m going to tell her. Why do all your white psychos have Wayne as a middle name?”

“Yours have De-Wayne,” Will shot back, but she could see his body relax.

Dodds put a hand on Will’s shoulder. “We’re going to get him. All this is going to work out.”

“Chief wants me to take a leave.”

“Oh, bullshit.”

“Yes, sir, Chief Dodds.”

They rode back through Covington’s old streets in silence. From the bridge, she could see the river filled with pleasure craft, as if Kristen Gruber’s murder had never happened.

“Turn here,” she said quietly once they reached the other side.

She gave a couple more directions and he knew where she wanted to go. In five minutes, they slipped out of downtown, around Mount Adams, and into Eden Park. It was the grandest of Cincinnati’s hilltop parks, with its abundance of trees, grass, gardens, and a view into the distant blue-green hills that instantly relaxed her. The flowers were in full bloom, in more colors than she could count or name. He illegally parked where they could look across the shallow reflecting pond of Mirror Lake at the gazebo. Its jet-stream fountain shot six stories in the air. For a long time, they sat and took in the views, the sweet spring air, and the people walking and sitting in a happy normality, where babies didn’t die, men weren’t struck down in their prime, and killers didn’t roam the darkness.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I should call the university and get them to send my students home. I should have done this before, but first I thought…” Noah Smith’s face hovered before her and she stopped herself. “First I didn’t know if Noah was the killer. Then, I thought my students wouldn’t be in danger because the killer was after you, after us. There’s no excuse. They’ve worked so hard for this clinical time and it’s almost the end of the semester. They want to get this over with. That’s the way I felt when I was a student nurse. But they can make it up in the summer. They’re all potential targets of this Charles Whitaker.”

“I think you’re right,” he said.

“Do I have your permission to tell them there’s a killer at large?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

He smiled. “I’m already in trouble. It’s my middle name. William Howard Taft Trouble Borders.”

“Then, I’ll be at loose ends,” she said. “They probably won’t even pay me for the rest of the semester.”

She watched him carefully. His eyes looked so tired.

“Maybe if you’re not sick of my company,” he said, “we could…”

She smiled. “I’m not sick of your company, Will.”

“If you want to leave, I understand,” he said quietly. “Now would be a good time because…”

“I don’t!”

She spoke over him, regretted it, because he might have thought she didn’t hear the rest of his sentence.

“I’m falling in love with you, too,” she said. “You’re the bravest, truest man I’ve ever known. I lost my temper back there because I can’t stand to hear you talk about yourself that way. Maybe a year after my daughter died, a friend of mine was talking about something in her family, and she said, ‘I guess everything happens for a reason.’ I asked her if she really believed that, because at that moment I thought the whole universe was so fucked up that nobody knew why anything happened. That’s how angry I was for years, and I still don’t know why these things happen, why life is so unfair. I know how much discomfort and pain you’re in. I know how hard it is to stand and walk and make it look easy. You carry it off with such grace. I’m not sure I could. But you do it every day. You can tell me stories that make me fall in love with this city all over again. You’re a wonderful lover. You’re kind. But more than any of that, Will Borders, you stand for something good. You’re willing to fight for it. In this fucked-up, unfair universe, the only hope and protection we have are people like you. And if your bosses are acting like assholes, it’s not because of your physical condition. It’s because they’re assholes.”

He ran his hand across her hair, touched the curve of her cheek, and brought his lips to hers. The kiss lasted until they heard a tap on a horn. A marked police car behind them was saying, move along, get a room. When the cop swung alongside, she waved and Will saluted back.

She laughed. “No displays of affection in an official police vehicle.”

Will’s phone rang. He answered it and listened, then put it away.

“Well, that was short but pleasurable. I hope it was good for you, too.” His voice had a cutting tone. “That was Dodds. Turns out Charles Wayne Whitaker has been in jail in Indianapolis for the past month. Hell.”

Cheryl Beth sighed. “So back to square one?”

He dropped the shift into drive.

“Maybe not,” he said, “Let’s go catch a killer.”

Chapter Thirty-four

The Seven Hills Marina sat on the other side of Lunken Airport, where Kellogg Avenue crossed the Little Miami River. It was separated from the river by a tree-lined sandbar. Hills covered with more thick trees rose up in every direction. Through the marina’s mouth, a boater would steer into the brown Little Miami, turn south, go around a bend, and the big Ohio River awaited: running fast nearly a thousand miles from Pittsburgh all the way to the Mississippi near Cairo, Illinois. There, the Ohio was actually the larger river.

The marina seemed in the country and a little down-market for Kenneth Buchanan, although it was fairly close to his house. Aside from parking lots, outbuildings, storage sheds, and boats for sale, it had room for five sets of floating berths, each one having several slips. They had wide walkways in the center and then narrow walks out to the boats. You learned many things working homicide and from a case several years ago, Will knew the narrow walkways were called fingerfloats.

He also knew from the reports of the detectives that had already been out here where Kristen’s boat had been moored. It was gone now, evidence. Buchanan’s big boat was tied up and looked deserted. About half the slips were empty. In others, groups of people were aboard their boats, either coming back or preparing to go out. It was a warm afternoon and everyone looked happy. Will parked where he had a view and turned off the engine.

“What are you looking for?” Cheryl Beth asked.

“I don’t know. I keep thinking about the river…”

“Mind if I make phone calls?”

He didn’t mind. While she called her bosses and explained the situation, Will watched.

When his phone rang, he stepped outside to take the call.

“Detective Borders?” It was a man with a heavy Southern accent, a harsh sound with none of the lilt and music in Cheryl Beth’s voice.

“This is Special Agent Ricky Northcutt with the FBI,” the man said. “I’ve been out on vacation and only got back to Atlanta yesterday. I saw your ViCAP request.”

Will leaned on the hood and his pulse picked up. “That’s right. It came back with no matches.”

“That might not be quite true,” the fed drawled. “There was nothing for metro Atlanta. But we had a case in Athens two-and-a-half years ago. A coed at the University of Georgia was kidnapped and her body turned up the next day. It had the same genital mutilation you describe. And the scene was clean as a whistle. Not a damned bit of DNA or much other evidence.”

“Much other?”

“She was restrained,” he said. “Her wrists seemed to have been tied with duct tape. There were marks on her wrists and some duct-tape fiber. Works for everything, right?”

“How far is Athens from Atlanta?” Will had never been to Georgia.

Northcutt said about sixty miles. “I’m not sure if that’s any help to you. I would have called sooner, but our resources are stretched so thin now on criminal cases. Anti-terrorism is the priority…”

“Any suspects?”

“Not a one. The other thing that caught my eye about your report was the word ‘deathscape.’ There was an index card pinned on this girl’s forehead that said, ‘Deathscape Number One.’ It was written in block letters with a felt-tipped pen.”

Will stood and nervously walked around the car, taking the information in.

“Was she a nursing student?”

“No,” Northcutt said. “I think she was computer science. But she was out on a secluded trail near campus, riding alone on her bicycle.”

Will heard the women’s laughter before he saw the boat, a sleek new model with several young women wearing bikinis and acting as if everything they heard or saw was the funniest thing they had ever experienced. The boat slowed and came to a halt three slips down from where Kristen’s craft would have been docked.

Then he saw the man.

He was standing at the water’s edge and looked to be somewhere north of sixty with the mien of a Civil War general: bushy beard and moustache and long, white hair combed back from his forehead. The image was broken by his clothes: an old T-shirt and shorts. He was filming the girls on the boat with a video camera.

Will left Cheryl Beth to her calls and walked in his direction, which, as usual, took quite a bit of time. But the man was so distracted that he didn’t notice until Will was right behind him.

“Hi.”

“Oh, howdy.” The man put down the camera and faced him. He had skin the color of Spam.

“Nice view.”

“You better believe it, and I’m not talking about the boats.” He chuckled.

Will used his left hand to show his badge and identification. “I’m Detective Borders, Cincinnati Police.”

“Whoa.” The scraggly face tensed. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea here, officer.”

“Relax,” Will said. “Do you come out here to take pictures often?”

The general hesitated, then nodded. “It’s only harmless fun,” he said sheepishly. “My boat’s over there on that trailer. It’s not like I’m trespassing. There’s so many pretty girls, and, hell, it’s not like I’m going to get any now, but at least a man can dream, can’t he?”

“I said relax,” Will said, sounding a little less relaxed now. He felt time working against him. The detectives Fassbinder had sent out earlier last week interviewed everyone who was at the marina, a small group during a weekday, and then called each slip owner at home. This man might have fallen through the cracks.

Will asked him if he had been here the previous Saturday afternoon.

He had.

“Did you see a young woman who owned the boat that would have been tied up over there?” He pointed fifty feet to the empty slip where Gruber’s craft would have been.

“The lady cop.” He nodded slowly. “Kristen. That was a damned shame, a tragedy.” Then he stepped back and held out a hand. “God, man, you don’t think I killed her, do you?”

Will stepped in closer. “No, I don’t. But did you see her? Did you film her?”

He stared at the ground and kicked it, the camcorder held limp at his side.

“I taped her several times. I knew who she was. I liked her show. She was real friendly, spoke to me and all, knew my name. So, yeah, last Saturday, I saw her. She was such a beautiful girl.”

“Do you have that footage on your memory?” Will pointed to the device in the man’s hand. “It would really help us.”

“Well, let me see. Walk over to my truck where there’s a little shade.” The older man moved quickly ahead, Will following as fast as he could, watching every curve and break in the pavement that could bring him down.

The general leaned inside the cab of an old Ford pickup and ran through his files. It took at least fifteen minutes. Will leaned on the wall of the truck bed.

“This is it,” he said, standing up again. “You can see the date and the time displayed digitally.” He showed Will how to work the camcorder.

In the shade of the cab, Will looked into the little screen. Kristen Gruber was alive and smiling, walking down the fingerfloat, and hopping aboard her boat. Buchanan’s boat was clearly visible nearby. She wore shorts and a white shirt tied to expose her waist. She waved at the cameraman and disappeared below. In a moment, she came back up and her head turned, as if someone had called her name. A man appeared on the fingerfloat beside her boat. He was tall, muscular, and wearing a ball cap. He looked familiar, even though his back was to the camera. At first she seemed to be only listening while he talked. It was too far away and the quality of the recording was too grainy to make out her expression. Then she shook her head.

The man gesticulated-oh, for some sound. His gestures were adamant, and her body language returned the favor. Again, she shook her head and spoke. This went on for a minute.

The man pointed at her. His face was turned enough that he seemed to be shouting. Then he pulled off his cap and walked away. Kristen shrugged and waved again at the general.

“Did you hear that exchange?” Will said. “Between Officer Gruber and the guy in the cap?”

“I couldn’t hear the words, but he sounded mad as hell.”

Will rewound the segment, replayed it. He replayed it a third time, slowing and freezing the screen.

And he knew.

He said, “What happened next?”

“Oh, she shoved off in a few minutes.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah,” he said. “She did that sometimes. Other times, she had male company, if you know what I mean. But she told me she liked to go out on the river by herself to relax. I’m really sorry about what happened to her.”

“What about this man? What did he do after he talked to Officer Gruber?”

“He stomped away, real mad. After that, I don’t know. My fishing buddies showed up and I launched my boat.”

Will took a deep breath. “Have you seen that man around here before?

The old general squinted into the sun. “I don’t pay much attention to the guys. But, yeah, I’ve seen him.”

Chapter Thirty-five

Will climbed back into the car, a curious expression on his face. Cheryl Beth had completed the calls to her bosses.

“Now I’m about to start calling students and ruin their semesters,” she said glumly.

“Hold off,” Will said. He pulled over the computer that was mounted on his dashboard and started typing rapidly. “Now, if only the computer-aided dispatch system is working.” Lines appeared and he scrolled through. He typed in keywords and a blank screen appeared.

“What?” she said.

He laid it out for her. Then he went through it a second time, more slowly. She felt a coldness creeping up her legs, no matter the warm air coming in the windows. Will had his cell at his ear.

“I want you to meet me somewhere.” He gave the address. He mouthed to her: Dodds. “I don’t care if you’re going to the ballgame, they’ll probably lose anyway.” She heard Dodds’ deep and angry voice floating out of the phone. “Well, get there when you can.”

He put the phone down and turned to her. “What if I let you off?”

“No way,” she said. “I’m a witness under your protection. I’m coming with you.”

“Good.”

He sped out of the marina parking lot and regained Kellogg Avenue, turning west. At the first intersection, he flipped on the siren and the emergency lights. They drove that way across town. Sometimes the speedometer hit eighty.

The forlorn brick building in Lower Price Hill looked abandoned. Its front windows were covered in old plywood and the second story curtains looked ancient. But Will parked in front and got out. She picked her purse off the floor and followed him.

After several minutes of banging on the door, it opened and a wisp of a girl with red hair stood there. She wore shorts and a NASCAR T-shirt.

Will said, “Can we come in, Jill?”

“Why?”

“Because we need to talk.”

She reluctantly stepped aside and they walked in. The interior smelled of mold and cabbage. It was dark, which was to be expected from the boards over the front windows. A couple of old lamps provided illumination. The living room was painted a faded burgundy and filled with too much furniture, all of it shabby. Family photos were scattered atop the mantle above a fireplace that probably hadn’t been used in decades.

Still, Cheryl Beth was struck by the young woman’s beauty: the flame-colored hair falling to her shoulders pin-straight, a face with perfect features, and flawless fair skin. She seemed out of place here.

Will sat in a wooden rocking chair, while Cheryl Beth sank down to the boards of an old sofa, fearful of what the fabric might transmit to her clothes. Her Coach purse was wildly out of place. The girl settled next to her, clutching small hands in her lap.

Will waited a long time before he spoke. Then: “Jill, you told me that you were raped near the church down the street. Do you remember that?”

She gave a slight nod. “Yes.” Her voice was faint.

“You said the suspect was black.”

“Yes.”

“And that we never caught him.”

She stared into her lap and repeatedly fluffed out her hair.

“Isn’t that right, Jill?”

“Yes, sir.”

Cheryl Beth heard the soft Appalachian twang in Jill’s voice, looked around at the raggedy surroundings, and thought, There but for the Grace of God… The only thing missing was a second-hand crib and crying baby. She thought of all the girls in her high school that had gotten pregnant and never gotten out of Corbin.

Will was plainly uncomfortable in the rocker. He rearranged himself and leaned forward.

“But that never happened, did it?”

“These niggers yell at me all the time, ‘hey, baby,’ they yell. They follow me. They try to break in here…”

Cheryl Beth winced at the slur but sat there watching.

“But a black man didn’t rape you, did he?” Will’s voice was soft and soothing, inviting confession.

She sighed. “No, sir.”

He asked why she told him that.

She faced him and flushed. “Because I was afraid.” Her voice sounded grown up and battle-scarred.

After another long pause, Will said, “You don’t have to be afraid, Jill. Why don’t you tell me what really happened?”

The silence lasted minutes, with the girl staring at a large mirror on the far wall. Cheryl Beth could hear the old building breathing and settling, as if every brick and piece of wainscoting wanted to tell a story, every one tragic or worse. When Jill began to speak, her voice breaking the quiet startled Cheryl Beth.

“It was last fall. October. I like to ride my bike, and when I can do the hill, I like to go to Mount Echo Park. It’s got the best views of the river and the city, even if all the loaded people over in Hyde Park have never been there. I like it that way. It’s peaceful. I always thought of it as my park…”

She looked at Cheryl Beth, who gave her best reassuring smile.

“It was Saturday afternoon and starting to get dark. The days were getting shorter, and I was in the park later than I thought. Nobody else was around. I’d stopped for one last look at the skyline, when somebody tackled me. Knocked me off my bike, knocked the air out of me. I was mostly surprised at first, and then scared. He started dragging me by my hair. I screamed but no one was around. He picked me up and held me by the throat, and he had a knife in his other hand. I’d never been so scared in my life.

“He said he’d kill me if I made another sound. He was going to rape me, he said, and if I went along, I’d live…”

The room was warm, but she wrapped her arms around herself.

“So I went along. He pulled me into the trees and made me take off my clothes. He was really picky. Wanted me to fold them. Then he made me turn away from him, and he pulled my hands back behind…” Her voice faltered.

“Take your time,” Will said.

“He handcuffed me. And I started to panic, but he held the knife to my throat and said if I wanted to live, I’d better settle down. He said the handcuffs turned him on, and he wouldn’t hurt me.”

“What happened next?”

“He raped me. He pushed my face into the dirt, pulled my legs apart, and did it from behind. It went on a long time…God, forever. He was calling me every awful name: cunt, whore, little bitch. Said that I was asking for it, riding out there by myself. When he stopped, he made me stay that way, bent over, on my knees. I couldn’t hold out my hands. It hurt. It all hurt. Then he was back for more. ‘You got lube?’ he asked. I didn’t even know what he meant at first. Of course, I didn’t have any. ‘Too bad for you,’ he said and laughed.”

She shuddered. “Then he raped me that way.”

Cheryl Beth resisted the urge to gather the young woman in her arms. She stopped herself from clawing at the worn fabric of the sofa arm. She rearranged her purse to the middle of her lap, anything for something to occupy her hands.

“When he was done,” Jill said, “he made me get dressed. My knees were scraped. The side of my face was bruised from being shoved down on the ground, and I felt blood from my behind. Then he handcuffed me again. He said he was going to drop me off, away from the park.”

She took deep breaths, her complexion ghostlike. “So he pushes and pulls me to his truck. It’s a brand new black Dodge Ram. He opens the driver’s door and shoves me in ahead of him. I’m really hurting and scared shitless, and then he tells me that he’s changed his mind. That he’s going to kill me. He starts talking crazy. I remember he said the word ‘deathscape.’ That I was going to model for him. I don’t understand…”

Her voice trailed off into exhaustion. Cheryl Beth put a hand on her arm and Jill didn’t push it away. Her face looked as if tears were coming out of her capillaries.

Will said, “But he didn’t kill you.”

“No.”

“And you’re not pregnant, are you, Jill?”

“No, sir. I lied to you about that. I can’t have babies. I had cysts on my ovaries.”

“What about the ten thousand dollars from Kenneth Buchanan? Was that a lie, too?”

“No.” The word was said neither adamantly nor softly; one dead syllable. “He promised to pay me ten thousand a month cash for a year if I didn’t go to the police. He was real nice at first, but then he started that lawyer shit and said if I claimed rape nobody would believe me, that he’d make me out as a whore in court and take everything I owned. At that moment, I was so glad to be alive and so scattered in my head. I really needed money, too. They sent my job to China and I was getting by waiting tables. I went along with it. He’s a rich, powerful man and I’m nobody in Lower Price Hill. I know how this city works.”

Waves of horror and rage washed over Cheryl Beth. She had heard many dreadful stories, but she was usually going Mach Five in the hospital, doing something to make it better. Here she could do nothing.

Jill continued “He found out where I lived, said he had a private detective watching me. And every month he’d drive over and give me an envelope of cash and ask how I was doing. What I was doing was saving every cent so I could get away from this! Honestly, I didn’t even know his real name until you said it to me the first time, detective.”

“How did you know his son’s real name?” Will asked.

“He called it out when he ran over and pulled me out of that pickup truck. He saved my life.”

Will took a long pause, idly turning the shaft of his cane. “Why would he do that?”

The girl bit her lip. “He said Mike was mentally ill and off his meds that day. They had a terrible fight at home and Mike said he was going to find someone to kill. So Mister Buchanan followed him. Not close enough I guess. Thank God he found me when he did.”

“And you never thought about going to the police?”

“I thought about it, but you heard what I said. I wouldn’t have stood a chance with those fancy lawyers downtown. Mister Buchanan said Mike was his only son, and he promised to get him treatment, get him in a hospital so he wouldn’t hurt anyone ever again. He told me his wife was very sick, and if she knew this had happened, it might kill her. Anyway, Mister Buchanan was real good with words, real good. But there was always something behind them that didn’t take a college degree to understand.”

“And what was that?” Will asked.

“That if I didn’t do things his way, he’d tell Mike where I lived and he’d come finish me off.”

Chapter Thirty-six

Jill jumped when she had heard the knock. Then she walked hesitantly to the door.

Will assumed it was Dodds, but something inside tightened. “Wait!”

But it was too late. She flew back into the room so violently it was as if an explosion had happened. It was the sound Will had heard many times when a door was kicked down. A man came right behind her. He kicked her in the stomach and turned toward Will and Cheryl Beth.

He was tall, bald, and had a face that almost looked like a mask. But it was no mask: it was a younger man with an older face, one sculpted and creased by God-knew-what. Except for the dark eyebrows, he looked like Mister Clean. His clothes were Indian Hill preppy: expensive chinos and a light-blue shirt with a Polo logo.

Mister Clean was carrying a sawed-off shotgun and pointing it their way.

“Ah-ah-ah,” he said.

But it was too late. Will had his Smith & Wesson out and leveled at the man’s chest.

“Get the fuck in there, little whore.” He grabbed Jill by the hair and shoved her to the sofa, all the while keeping the shotgun pointed in Will’s direction.

“You weren’t easy to follow, Detective Borders, using your siren and all, but I did it, all the way from the marina. I sat outside waiting for you, and when I realized you didn’t have any of your cop buddies nearby, I decided to come on in. And what do I find: my little red-haired sex slave.”

Jill was crying and shivering, bent over with pain, her face hidden by her hair.

“And this must be the famous Cherry Beth I’ve heard so much about.” He stepped closer. For the first time, Will noticed the black backpack he was wearing. “This is going to be even better than I fantasized, and I fantasize a lot.”

Will kept the gun steady. It wasn’t the first time he had been on the wrong end of a shotgun. Thanks to years of training and experience, his insides were calm. Suddenly the dread of the next MRI, the possibility of another spinal-cord tumor, didn’t matter. The notion that he would join his father on the wall of police officers killed in the line of duty was over in a second. He had civilians to protect. Not only that, he had Cheryl Beth.

“Put down the gun, Mike. You’re under arrest.”

The man laughed, high-pitched and raw. “No, Detective Borders, you are going to hand me your gun, stock-first, please. That, or I’m going to blow off redhead’s head.”

“You might want to reflect on that, genius,” Will said. “You shoot her, I shoot you, multiple times, end of story.” He studied the man’s weapon: It appeared to be an Ithaca Auto & Burglar Gun, 20 gauge, with no stock and no more than a foot in length. It was rare but still lethal.

“You like my gun? It’s a collector’s item, very expensive. I stole it from my dad’s cabinet. An armed society is a polite society, right? Now…hand…over…your…fucking…gun!”

Will said quietly, “That’s not going to happen.”

Mike’s rubbery face held the exact same expression as the day when Will had first encountered him in Music Hall, on the way to meet the mother. Will realized that he had been talking to the wren in the miniskirt that day about her friend in pain and he had mentioned Cheryl Beth’s name. That’s where Mike must have misheard it.

“One way or the other.” Mike smiled. It was an ugly sight. “I have some things with me to make this fun. Had to bring duct tape. I was all out of handcuffs. But I’m going to make you watch, Detective Borders, make you watch your friend get raped, watch red get raped. As many times as I want. ‘Impotent’? You’ll find out. Then, I’m going to kill you as slowly and painfully as I can figure out. When all that’s done, I’m going to burn down this hole and disappear. Part of the art is knowing when to stop.”

Will would have shot him as he talked, but the shotgun was no more than two feet away. He wouldn’t survive the blast. He had to play for time, hope that Dodds would be there soon.

“Tell me why?” He felt his right quads getting tighter.

“Why?” Mike shrugged. “Killing each other is the only thing humans do really well. But to kill with style, that’s an art. To watch and listen as they beg and bargain and then scream. It makes me feel like God.”

“Every psycho says shit like that,” Will said, watching the man’s gun hand. He was half an hour past his Baclofen dose. All he needed was for one leg to start jumping. “Why Kristen Gruber? Why the nursing students? Why Jill?”

“Is that your name, sweetie? I hope you have some lube in the house, because you’re going to need it. So is Cherry Beth.”

Will wanted to look at Cheryl Beth, intuit what she was thinking, but he kept his focus on the man with the gun.

Mike cocked his head. “There’s never one single reason. I went after Kristen to get back at my dad, but she let me down. It could have been perfect, but it was spoiled. With Jill-what a cute name-I saw her and wanted her. Same with the brunette on the bike trail, only I didn’t realize I’d get three for the price of one. That was close to perfection. I have a thing for girls on bicycles, what can I say? Those pumping legs. But that wouldn’t make great art, would it? I want models that look vulnerable on the outside and yet are strong inside. What’s the expression? Strong at the broken places? The man I took to the graveyard? It was perfection. That’s why I chose you, Detective Borders. You and your cane.” He paused. “That, and you got in my way.”

Will looked at him unimpressed. Then it was as if someone had inserted a key into his quads and they unlocked. His leg relaxed.

“Did the girl in Athens, Georgia, get in your way?”

“Very good, detective. She was my first. I made mistakes. But I learned. No, she didn’t get in my way. She was in one of my classes and I kept having a vision of killing her. One day I did. All the shrinks and medication my parents spent money on never changed me. Death is my art. I won’t be stopped.”

“But you’ve got to know when to stop.” Will started to wonder whose arm would tire faster. Mike looked very steady, those muscled arms doing well by him. Will was conscious of the instability of the rocking chair.

“You said it yourself, Mike,” he went on. “You’ve got to know when to stop. If you would have stopped with Gruber, we might never have caught you. Now it’s too late. How does that make you feel, Mike?”

Mike’s face tensed at the phrase he had probably been hearing from his father since he was three.

“Hand me the shotgun. Stock first.”

Mike’s face was growing redder with rage when Cheryl Beth said, “Mike!”

He swung his torso toward her, dropped the barrel of the shotgun forty-five degrees, and almost got out a reply. Then the room exploded and he lurched back, a red stain on the shirt where the polo logo once sat. Jill screamed. Mike screamed and struggled to regain control of the gun. It went off, an even louder blast, the load of shot hitting the floor. Cheryl Beth held out the.38, ready to fire again.

Two seconds had expired as Will shot him three times, nearly point blank, in the torso.

The shotgun dropped harmlessly from his hand as his body swayed backward and collapsed by the door. Will kept the gun trained.

His ears were still ringing even though the only sound in the room was Jill’s screaming. Cheryl Beth stood and started to the door. “I should help him.”

“No,” Will said. “Stand back. He might have other weapons.”

He was up, his legs miraculously working without the cane, walking slowly to the sprawl of a human being on the floor. Mike Buchanan lay face up, very pale. One leg was twisted beneath the other. His arms were clutching at his chest, which stuck out unnaturally because of the backpack he was still carrying.

Will bent down and got on his knees. He tried to ignore the sharp pain that immediately struck, patting down Mike’s shirt, pockets, pants legs, and shoes. He was clean. He nodded and Cheryl Beth was instantly on the other side. She checked his pulse and opened up his shirt. A blood pool was emerging from underneath him.

She said, “Stop screaming, Jill.” The young woman stopped. “Are you hurt?”

She said she wasn’t.

“We’re losing him,” she said. “If I had a surgical team here right this second…”

“Detective…”

Will looked at Mike’s face. It was turning alabaster and the premature wrinkles were fading. He struggled to breathe, the sound coming from his throat like the grinding gears of an old truck. Will had shot him close to the heart, into one lung, and probably near the aorta.

“What, Mike?”

He whispered. Will bent closer.

“Kristen…”

“What about her?”

“She…” He gasped, his speech slurred. “She was all ready…”

“All ready?”

“No…” And he repeated the word so softly that Will could barely hear it.

All ready for what?”

Will heard one last quick intake of air, and then the man’s eyes went black.

Chapter Thirty-seven

A month later, Will was back in the Homicide offices, and not as a visitor. Along with a medal of valor, he had gotten his old job back. Along with the medal, the chief had given him a dispensation for his physical condition in honor of solving the murder of Kristen Gruber. Fassbinder had retired suddenly and Skeen was taking the lieutenant’s exam. For now, she was the acting Homicide Commander. He sat across from Dodds, who was idly tossing a football in the air. The names of Gruber and Smith had been shifted to black on the white board. But plenty of other names were still written in unsolved red.

A folding knife had been found in Mike Buchanan’s backpack, along with duct tape, a gallon of gasoline, and matches. The knife had been sterilized, so it contained no blood or DNA evidence from the victims. After a search warrant had been executed on the house in Indian Hill, they found four pairs of women’s underwear, one pair of men’s underwear, and Gruber’s badge, keys, and wallet in a hidey-hole of the garage. The DNA matched the young woman in Georgia, Holly Metzger, Lauren Benish, and Noah Smith. There was more: photos of Lauren taken on the bike trail.

Kenneth Buchanan had been arrested and was being tried as an accomplice to rape and murder. They were working with detectives from Georgia to find out whether Buchanan had known about the Athens killing and had concealed Mike’s role in that, too. Buchanan’s former colleagues who went to Elder and Moeller quickly deserted him. Kathryn Buchanan resigned from the symphony.

Will passed his MRI with no new tumors. He had gained another year of bonus time. But, then, the one thing he had learned on this job was that we were all living on bonus time, only most people didn’t realize it.

The LadyCops producers moved their location to Florida.

“Pretty kinky about Kristen, huh?” Dodds tossed the ball hard at Will, who caught it. “Handcuffs, ball gags, sex toys. And such a wholesome face. No disrespect to a fallen comrade.”

“You have a dirty mind.” Will spun the football at his chest.

“Only thing that keeps me going.”

“I’m not a Cincinnati moralist,” Will said.

“Apparently not.” He fired a shot that hurt to catch.

“So are you going to Jimmy Buffett at Riverbend this weekend?”

“No,” Will said. “Cheryl Beth and I will probably take in a movie at the Esquire. And Grammers has reopened in Over-the-Rhine, so we’ll have dinner there. She’s going back to the hospital, you know.”

“Good. Give me back that ball.”

Will tossed it. “You’re the only black parrothead in Cincinnati.”

“That’s an unforgivable racial stereotype.” Dodds faked a pass, kept the ball. “There are at least four of us. You can’t really be a Cincinnatian unless you love Jimmy Buffett.”

“Why is that? We’re about as far from the tropics as you can get.”

The ball came his way, another expert pass. “Partner,” Dodds said, “That’s one of life’s mysteries.”

Skeen intercepted the next pass. She stood between their desks. “Don’t rest on your laurels, gentlemen.” She tapped the casebooks and files that rose several inches high. “They may not be exciting, but they need to be cleared.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dodds said. “Send my poor bones back out into the fields…”

She bopped him on the head with the football.

“I like it when homicide’s boring,” Will said. “Anyway, he’s on call tonight and I’m out of here until Monday.”

Summer had settled its hot towel over the city, so Will took off his suit coat on the elevator ride down. When the doors opened, he noticed the woman talking to the guard. She saw him and immediately walked toward him.

She was tall, blond, and attractive, with a face you’d never forget. But it was one of those out-of-place moments, as if you saw the president serving slop at a chili parlor. It only lasted few seconds. Before he had never seen her so close. He had only seen her onstage, dressed in black, with the mournful cello between her legs.

“Detective Borders,” she said. “My name is Stephanie Foust.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ve admired your music for years. I’m so sorry about Jeremy’s death.”

When she heard the name, her composure melted, second-by-second, and she seemed to age in sudden bursts. Her eyes flooded with tears.

“I can’t…” She started to hyperventilate. He told her to slow down her breathing.

“When he told me he was going to marry that little bitch, I couldn’t believe it.”

“Ms. Foust…”

“We had been together for so many years! That he would do that. Marry that girl! She didn’t understand his gifts. She barely listened to real music. She saw him as a ticket to wear Prada. I tried to talk him out of it. We argued over and over.”

“Ms. Foust…”

“Then when I saw that man had been arrested, I couldn’t let him go to jail.” She pulled on his sleeve. “I didn’t mean to…”

“I know,” he said. “Now I want you to stop talking. You have the right to remain silent.”

“I know that!” For a second, the imperiousness of matchless talent handed out by God surfaced, then she started crying. He Mirandized her.

“Take the elevator upstairs,” he said. “Ask for Detective Dodds.”

He watched the elevator doors make her disappear and then walked out to the street, his cane steady, his right quads arguing with his brain. He thought about Cheryl Beth, a short drive and a bottle of wine away, and allowed himself a smile.

John ran down Observatory Avenue past the fine houses. The lights were on and the drapes open. The people inside seemed so happy in the cheerful light and the company of others. Even in a T-shirt and shorts, he was dripping sweat and sucking in the humid air in search of oxygen. Maybe if he lost weight running, he might be welcome in one of those rooms someday, and not because of his mom’s money and connections.

He thought about his stepdad. Will seemed happier than he had ever seen him. It was the girlfriend, of course. John had told him a week ago that he had decided to stay in Ohio and enroll in Miami, like Will. His grades from prep school were certainly good enough. Will was supportive. He seemed cooler when John said he wanted to be a Cincinnati police officer, like Will. But John knew if he got in shape and got a degree, the service of his grandfather and, yes, his father, would help him onto the force.

Will was the closest thing he had to a real father. He would come around.

John never got back his knife. He bought a new one and it seemed to weigh ten pounds as he jogged through the muggy night. He always had it with him. You couldn’t be too careful.