Powers of Arrest

Chapter Fifteen

She left home and flew down Ravine Street, her favorite in the city. It inclined down the hill toward downtown at a steep angle, offering splendid views. Then she drove out Madison to the Joseph-Beth Bookstore in Rookwood Pavilion. It was this or spend the afternoon in her closet agonizing over what to wear tonight when she went out with Will Borders. A short skirt wouldn’t do, but neither would pants. Men liked her legs. But she didn’t want to come off wrong on a first date. It was a date, right? Cheryl Beth hadn’t been on a real date in a very long time. Maybe on the way home she would get a pedicure.

She was turning the corner of the poetry section when she almost ran straight on into Noah Smith.

“I’m sorry I gave you a start,” he said.

It was true. Her heart rate was still over one-fifty when she asked him what he was doing there.

“I was released this morning. Brooks sure didn’t like it.”

Noah looked gaunt and pale, but still handsome in khakis and a blue long-sleeved shirt. His big smile that must have attracted the girls was gone. “The truth is, I followed you.”

Pulse back up. “You what? You know where I live? How do you know where I live?”

“You can find things on the Internet.”

She took another step back. “Now you’re really creeping me out.”

“You don’t…” He stepped closer and this time she held her ground. “You can’t think I had anything to do with Lauren and Holly getting killed.”

“Keep your voice down.”

“I want to come back to class,” he whispered.

She told him all the ways that would be a bad idea, impossible even. She couldn’t imagine having him as student right now, and the university had suspended him pending the investigation.

She looked around. The store was crowded even on a Wednesday afternoon. She was safe. Except for the fact that he knew where she lived.

“I need to graduate. I need to get a job.”

“I can’t fix that, Noah. You can’t take the NCLEX until you’re cleared of this, anyway.” The national licensing examinations.

“Cheryl Beth, I need something to do. To keep my mind off this. Brooks is going to do everything he can to put me in prison for something I did not do.” His eyes were suddenly older, exhausted.

“What happened out there that night, Noah?”

“I keep trying to remember.” He carefully touched the back of his head. “They said I had a mild concussion, but I keep having headaches. It still burns where they used the Taser on me, and I don’t feel right. It’s hard to keep it all in my head.”

“You screamed something like ‘hostiles! I have wounded!’ What were you thinking?”

He leaned his hands against a shelve and stared at the floor. “I don’t remember. Sometimes, after my deployments, I have flashbacks…”

He seemed sincere. But she pressed on: “Did you have a knife with you that night?”

“No!”

“But you were in the Army, right? You’re good with a knife.”

“That doesn’t mean I would kill those girls. I was crazy about them.”

“Nothing but an an innocent boy from Corbin, Kentucky,” she said.

“You don’t believe me.” He roughly ran his hands down his face. “If you don’t believe me, I’m sunk.”

“Do you know I’m from Corbin, Noah? Is that something you found on the Internet, too?”

“You are? Good lord.”

“It’s a small town. Tell me somebody I might know.”

“I’m a lot younger than you,” he said. “No offense. You’re very attractive.” He shook his head. “Shit, I can’t say the right thing here.”

“Corbin.” She heard the sternness in her voice.

He stared beyond her. She was about to walk away when he spoke again.

“When I was three years old, my father killed my mother, okay?”

She stopped and watched him again. He seemed to age before her eyes.

“My earliest memories are their fights. Both of them screaming as loud as they could. Him slapping her. He finally used a shotgun. I saw it happen. The whole thing. I saw her brains and blood against the wallpaper of the kitchen. I didn’t know that’s what they were, I remember the colors and textures and her head was…” He stopped speaking and the muscles in his neck tensed.

He was breathing heavily, holding his hands tightly at his side. “Then he killed himself. I remember everything. Forget anything you’ve heard about little kids not remembering trauma.” He fought tears as he gave the date, his parents’ names and where they lived, a couple miles out of town. “You can look it up. After that, I was sent to live with my uncle and aunt in Lexington. When I was eighteen, I joined the Army.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. The year he gave was long after she had left Corbin. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Well, Hank Brooks thinks I have my daddy’s homicidal bloodline. That’s the way he put it.”

When he had composed himself, he said, “On Monday, I keep remembering waking up in the grass, then seeing Lauren and Holly. They were maybe twenty feet away, but I could already see the blood. I got to my feet and went to them. I checked their pulses but they were both dead. Cold. Oh, god…”

“What about before?”

He stared at the carpet. “We were pretty drunk and feeling mellow. We were making out. They were making out with each other. Everybody was laughing. We stripped and had sex in the grass. Afterward, we all got dressed again and sat around talking…”

“But they were found nude.”

“I know. But that’s not the way they were when I was hit.”

“And you didn’t see anyone. You didn’t hear anything at all?”

He shook his head. She remembered all that Hank Brooks had told her and she didn’t know what to believe.

“I’ve got to go, Noah. And please, don’t contact me again. I can’t help you.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ve always been on my own. Now it’s me, nobody’s got my back. Only Hank Brooks is following me.”

“You’re being followed, or you’re being paranoid?”

“I’m being followed.”

She angrily tapped her hand on the side of her forehead. “Great, Noah. So Detective Brooks is watching us right now. Smart.” She wheeled and walked out.

She was almost to the front doors when she felt a pull on her sleeve. He was right there again. Now she was on the edge of afraid. Half a dozen people were at the registers, checking out. Nothing could happen right here, could it? Her short, shallow breathing wasn’t so sure. She reached into her purse and took hold of her keys, placing one between her fingers and making a fist around it. If he came any closer, she would call for help. If he did more, she would use the key on his face.

“Noah…”

“Wait. I do remember.”

“Take your hand off me.” She said it loud enough that an older man slowed as he passed and stared at Noah.

His hand dropped but he spoke urgently. “What you said. You brought it back to my mind. When we were making out by the Formal Gardens, it was really dark. But Holly thought somebody was watching us. I remember it now! She said it out loud. She even made a show of standing up and taking off her blouse and bra, like a strip tease.”

Cheryl Beth was dubious. “Somebody was watching? Did you notice anything?”

“No.”

“You were trained in the Army and you didn’t notice anything?”

He shrugged. “I kind of had other things on my mind, if you know what I mean.”

“So Holly says somebody’s there and you go ahead and have sex together, not thinking a thing about it?”

“We thought it was hot if someone was watching us.”

Chapter Sixteen

Will took Cheryl Beth to Zip’s Café for burgers and beers. The talk was easy and relaxing. It helped him forget the anxiety dreams of the night before, where he got his usual four hours of sleep. They knew much about each other already from the time in the hospital. She looked radiant. It was the first time he hadn’t seen her in scrubs. Now they could laugh about the terrible night when he, she, and Dodds had been trapped with the hospital killer. Dodds was knocked cold and Cheryl Beth beaten. That was when Will launched himself out of his wheelchair into the killer and nearly strangled him to death. He only stopped when Cheryl Beth pulled at him, telling him, “I need you.” He wondered if she remembered that?

She told him that she was teaching nursing now. He filled her in on his public information job, with a bit about the case he had been assigned. It was nice not to have to explain his physical condition. She already knew it.

Afterwards, they walked into Mount Lookout Square and watched the traffic go by as the bells from Our Lord Christ the King Church tolled the hour. The night was warm and dry, with a hint of a pleasant breeze and flower scents. Here he learned that the two girls who had been murdered at Miami were her students. So was the prime suspect.

“For once, I’d like us to have some time when a murder wasn’t involved,” she said.

He tried to change the subject, but she wanted to talk, particularly about her questions concerning Noah Smith and her unpleasant encounters with Hank Brooks. Will assumed as much about Brooks from their phone conversations: his gruff defensiveness came through.

Brooks’ case against Smith seemed weak; it was no surprise the man was released. The case had tantalizing similarities to Gruber: use of handcuffs, genital mutilation. The killer had taken their panties as trophies. Now Cheryl Beth told him something that Brooks had omitted: that a bald man was stalking one of the Miami victims, a man who looked like Mister Clean. That description could easily fit Kenneth Buchanan.

Still, he knew from experience not to move too fast to lock in on a hypothesis. Would Gruber’s killer have struck the next night, and be so bold as to take on three people, including a man? He would probably need to drive up to Oxford and also get the autopsy results on the murdered students. All this and keep fielding calls from the national media about Kristen Gruber, even though he was supposed to be getting backup as PIO.

Later, they drove over to Aglamesis Brothers in Oakley Square for ice cream. There were two kinds of people in Cincinnati: those who liked ice cream from Graeter’s and the ones who preferred Aglamesis. It was like Gold Star vs. Skyline Chili. Will was definitely among the latter, and he was delighted that Cheryl Beth was, too. He brought the conversation back to light things, telling her about his days as a student at Miami. “Let’s say I’m not one of the really successful alumni they name buildings after,” he said.

“Well, they should,” she said.

He was happy to be off the clock, had even turned off his cell phone. He had briefed the chief late that afternoon and felt safe in being gone awhile. The case was spooling out, if too slowly for the chief. Will wasn’t happy about it either and felt the pressure. But it was what it was. Some homicides went that way. Woe to the detectives when it was this high profile.

Kristen Gruber’s phone records had turned up two more boyfriends. One was a thirty-five-year-old patrol sergeant in District 2 on the east side. The other was a diving instructor who lived in Butler County. Both were cooperative. Will was able to keep internal affairs away from his talk with the sergeant, so that smoothed things out. Both were tall, good-looking, and muscular; both single.

Neither knew about the other, or about the attorney she was also seeing. Both said she liked rough sex, where she would be bound or handcuffed during the act. It didn’t go both ways, however. She didn’t handcuff the men. Both voluntarily gave DNA samples. The sergeant had been with her on Friday night. The diving instructor wanted to take her out on Saturday night, but she said she had plans: she was going to take her boat out.

News stories were starting to say “the police are baffled” by Kristen’s murder. The chief and Lieutenant Fassbinder would love that. Will was not baffled. He was beginning to wonder if the killer was random, not someone she knew. That would complicate things.

This far into an investigation, you knew some victims like they were brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. Others were like Kristen, cloudy at best. She had grown up on the West Side, the daughter of a mail carrier and a teacher. She was a tomboy, a star athlete in volleyball, swimming, and lacrosse at Seton High School in Price Hill. It was the female equivalent of Elder High, right next door. Her grades were good. At Ohio State, she majored in sociology and came back to join the force. Her parents said she had always wanted to be a police officer, even being a police Explorer in high school.

She always loved the water. Her father owned a boat when she was growing up, and she had bought the Rinker Fiesta 300 five years before.

Her parents said she had married when she was twenty-six and had divorced two years later. They had not approved, being pious Catholics. It had caused a rift between them that had taken some years to heal. The ex-husband was remarried and living in Los Angeles. He, like all the potential suspects, had no criminal record. He told a detective that it had been five years since he had even spoken to Kristen.

Cincinnati and Covington detectives went through the laborious task of sifting through Kristen’s cop life. Her record was better than clean, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t made enemies. Five years before, she had been the first officer on the scene in Sayler Park, where a couple was arrested for starving their baby daughter to death. The crime had shocked the city. Although the ten-week-old was barely alive when officers arrived, it weighed half what a normal infant its age should. At his sentencing, the father, a young white-trash hood, had threatened to rape and kill Kristen when he got out of prison. Such threats weren’t uncommon, but this one, so specific, would have to be checked out. At the same time, they were going through her emails for threats: so far, nothing was panning out.

The false-confession nuts were unchained by the crime. Most were well known to the police and regularly owned up to crimes they didn’t commit. That this was the murder of an attractive woman seen on national television only ramped up the lunatics. Their stories could be easily shot down by the information they couldn’t provide. But it all required detective time, and Will knew his colleagues resented it.

Kristen. She had lovers, many acquaintances, but no close friends, no real boyfriend, as far as he could tell. Work was her life, with sex and her boat to relieve the tension.

Kristen’s timeline also had unfortunate gaps. She had withdrawn a hundred dollars from an ATM downtown on Saturday. She made no calls that day. No one saw her leave the marina. So far, no one had seen her on the river that day or night.

Now he drove Cheryl Beth back home and they fell into silence. But it was a comfortable one. At the little house in Clifton, he pulled into the driveway, opened her car door, and walked her to the porch.

“Thank you for a nice evening.” He held out his hand.

“Oh, Will, come here.” She raised her head and they kissed. It lasted longer than five seconds and less than five minutes, then he held her close to him with one arm as he balanced on his cane, feeling every part of her against him.

He felt normal.

“May I see you again?”

“I’m counting on it,” she said. “Good night.”

Back in the car, he turned on his cell. One message: he listened to his ex-wife. He was way past her, but hearing Cindy’s voice, and the intonations and emotions behind the words he knew so well, battered his tranquility. Why would she be calling? He thought about ignoring it. Then the phone rang.

“Hello, Cindy.”

“Will, I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to talk. It’s about our son.”

Our son. As their marriage had fallen apart, piece by piece like a cursed dwelling, she would refer to John as her son. Tonight it was our son.

He sighed. “Give me the new address.” He wrote it down and backed out of Cheryl Beth’s driveway.

Cindy was now Cynthia Morrison, or Mrs. J. Bradford Morrison. She had remarried quickly and moved to her new husband’s house in Hyde Park. This somewhat surprised Will. Cindy disliked the city. Her insistence several years ago that they move to a new house out in Deerfield Township, such a long commute up I-71, was one more crack in their marriage. But, then, he couldn’t give her a home in the city’s most exclusive, leafiest, old-money neighborhood. Still, on the drive over he was smiling from his time with Cheryl Beth. He was past being hurt by Cindy. It was merely interesting now.

The address went with a massive Tudor behind a sweeping, immaculate lawn, and basking in ornamental lighting. An alarm company sign was prominently stuck into the grass. This was what J. Bradford Morrison had been able to buy as a stockbroker. He and Cindy at least had something in common to talk about: money.

Three steps up. No railing, of course. Will pulled down his lats, and carefully mounted each step, then up the walk to the wide front door.

“Thank you for coming.” She was already waiting. “Brad is out of town.”

Cindy had gone blond, an expensive color job and cut parted on one side and swept over her head. She was about as far as she could get from the twenty-year-old brunette bank teller he had met as a young patrolman. There had been a bank robbery. He impulsively asked her out. She had a baby son, had been abandoned by his father. Will and Cindy married too young. They weren’t the people they would become, and they became those people largely apart. He helped her finish her B.A., then later an M.B.A., as she rose in the bank. Sometimes she slept with her bosses. But she didn’t have to. She was smart as hell.

She led him past the expansive entry hall with its dark, hardwood floor, and into a living room that appeared as if no ordinary humans had ever been inside it, only interior designers. It was flawless. It was larger than his entire townhouse.

He sat in a broad cushioned chair, keeping his Lazarus tasselled loafers off the vast Persian rug, and she settled across from him on a cream-colored sofa, draping one aerobicized leg over the other. She had become a stick person with breasts.

“About our son,” Will prompted, moving quickly past the uncomfortable small talk.

“Something’s wrong with him,” she said, sitting upright with her hands carefully folded in her lap, as if she were talking to a client.

“He’s a young man,” Will said. “I’ve always thought you should lock up the young men until they were thirty. The young women you can let out at twenty.”

Not even a smile.

“He’s so aimless,” she went on. “He wanted to go to Portland State, for god’s sake. So, okay. He ended up dropping almost every class so he wouldn’t get a failing grade.”

Will was tempted to say something about Cindy continuing to give him money, letting him live at home. He held the head of his cane tighter.

“He was out all Saturday night,” she went on. “Dragged himself in at eight the next morning. Thought I wouldn’t even notice! Wouldn’t say where he was. But I knew. I got a call around midnight from Heather Bridges’ mother. She had a date with him. We talked later, on Sunday, after Heather came home. Her mother said they were out on the river all night with some other kids from Summit.”

Atomic particles in Will’s brain wished he didn’t know this information. But hundreds of young people were on the river this time of year.

He said, “What does he do with his time?”

“He still reads all the time. He rides his bike.”

“Does he have a job?”

She shook her head.

“I had to work my way through college.”

“Kids are different now,” Cindy said. “They take longer to grow up. You can read it anywhere. Anyway, he doesn’t need money.”

“That’s part of the problem.”

Her voice rose. “You have no right to judge!”

“Okay.”

“Will, I’m afraid he’s into drugs again.” She leaned forward. “I want you to talk to him.”

“He came to see me the other night,” Will said.

“Did he say anything?”

Will shook his head. “We only had a beer and watched the city. If he had something to tell me, he kept it to himself.”

“William!” It was that familiar voice, harsh and frustrated.

“What do you want me to do, Cindy?” Everything was transactional with her. He felt the old toxic feelings returning. “Why haven’t you talked to him? Have Brad talk to him. What about his real father?”

She stood. “You are so…so much the same.”

He stood and left without another word. The walkway was slanted down. He was extra aware of it and wished he hadn’t enjoyed that second beer with Cheryl Beth. Next came the steps. Those would be more dangerous: Not even a shrub to hold onto. He did all the things he had been taught to steady himself and made the first step down.

Then he was down on the sidewalk, a sudden, scary vertical rollercoaster dip that was over before he even knew what was happening. He reflexively put his hands out and avoided mashing his face in the concrete. His blood was pumping too fast to feel any pain. One second he was upright, now he was down. For a long time, he took in the quiet of the street and the plain black tires on his car. A small bug walked beneath his gaze. He got to his knees and then the agony seared through him. Somehow the rewiring of his spinal cord made being on his knees especially painful. He couldn’t stand the normal way. He thought about turning around and using the steps to get up. But he was in too much pain, and too angry. He used his strength to crabwalk until his body bent in the middle, and then he could push himself up with his hands until he could use the cane to help lift the rest of the way. It hurt like hell. Then he was upright again. His pant legs looked in good shape. His hands weren’t bleeding. He felt his phone vibrating and let it alone.

On shaky legs, he walked around to the driver’s side. Looking up, he saw that Cindy had long since closed the door. Maybe if he had gone on to law school, as he had intended, he could have given her this pile of rocks. It never happened. The more he got to know lawyers as a cop, the less he wanted to be one. He could have stomached being a prosecutor, but there was no money in it. Prosecutors didn’t live in Hyde Park. Cindy never understood how he liked being a police officer. Every day, no matter how shitty, you could come home and know you had actually helped someone. On good days, you got the bad guys. That sensibility never left him. He was so much the same.

He listened to the voice mail: “Will, it’s Diane Henderson, Covington P.D. We matched the shoe print that we found on the boat. It’s a size ten-and-a-half Columbia Sportswear Drainmaker.”