Will watched Cheryl Beth walk through the automatic doors toward the parking garage. He was relieved that she had a guard, even though he thought most security guards would be worthless in a confrontation. Dodds’ talk about her as a person of interest, a potential suspect-he wouldn’t have bought it even if Christine Lustig’s murder didn’t have all the signs of the Slasher. He guessed that Cheryl Beth was about Cindy’s height, five-five, and she had a small-to-medium build: not someone with the strength or reach to kill with a knife with repeated, almost teasing slashes, followed by deeper wounds and a coup de grâce to the throat. The only case he could remember of a woman slashing a person’s throat had been years ago in Price Hill. A drunken husband sleeping it off, he’d beaten his wife once too often. She had taken a kitchen knife and had driven it into the side of his neck. When Will and Dodds had arrived, she was still hysterical about the copious blood from the wound-and she had looked like a tough biker chick. No, Lustig had not been killed by a woman.
Why wasn’t Dodds going after her husband? Will had learned he was a doctor, a surgeon, named Gary Nagle. Neither he nor Dodds had ever been shy about investigating powerful people. A husband playing around had a powerful motive, even if he could hire expensive lawyers or call friends at City Hall. Will knew Dodds didn’t have any real theory of the crime other than the Slasher. Dodds just didn’t want to admit it. If Will had been running the investigation, he would have done anything to get Chambers back in an interrogation room, find probable cause to execute a search warrant. But when Dodds had asked if Will wanted to press charges for the assault, Will had said no. A chickenshit beef where Chambers could make bail, if he were even charged, would just make him more cautious. Or it might make him more dangerous.
All this was on his mind as he watched Cheryl Beth and the guard pass through the last set of automatic doors into the garage. Will had wheeled himself up the ramp into the glassed-in bridge that connected the hospital to the parking garage. He was alone in the long, glassy, carpeted expanse. It looked like a part to a space station in an old science fiction movie. He spent a long time just watching the empty winter street below, watching the traffic in the distance, where healthy people were living their lives on the outside. He held his hand against the glass and let the cold move from his fingers up his wrist and arm. The feeling was good.
The sound behind him caught him daydreaming. His fright seemed to expand every blood vessel. Chambers. Damn. But, no, it was just a doctor or hospital worker striding past toward the parking area. He wore only green hospital garb, no coat. An iron man. At first Will wondered if the man might challenge him, sitting alone out there. It was past visiting hours, past time for him to return to the neuro-rehab ward. He wondered if they would even miss him if he just took an elevator down to the lobby and wheeled himself out into the big world.
With his chilled hands back on the rims of the wheelchair, he reluctantly turned himself around and rolled back inside the hospital. The usually bustling offices on these floors were closed and the hallways empty. Oncology. Diabetes Center. Endocrinology. Blood Services. The signs neatly denoted doorways or directed people down hallways. The signs pointed to dread and pain and suffering, but maybe that was just the mood he was in tonight.
He turned the corner as he heard the voices, a man and a woman arguing. They were standing maybe fifteen feet ahead of him, facing each other but with their sides to Will. They were holding each other’s hands, but the body language was tense, as if the connection could quickly be broken. Will immediately retreated back behind the wall. Her voice was young and emotional, his older, rich-timbred, slightly condescending, words with extra enunciation. He was trying to get her to do something, or calm her down, and she was having none of it. Will knew the woman. It was one of the physical therapists that worked with the neuro-rehab patients in the gym each morning. Her name was Amy and she was cute and kind. The other man was tall and lanky, with a neat beard and wearing a white lab coat over well-pressed slacks, white shirt, tie-a doctor. He couldn’t make out the words, just the mood, stormy, until he very clearly heard the words from the man: “Cheryl Beth” and, a few beats later, “police.”
“Police?” Amy nearly shrieked before bringing her voice down and then Will was back to hearing angry gibberish. He didn’t dare show himself. He strained to hear more.
Then there was silence, too long a pause, followed by footsteps coming toward him. Will hunched forward and fired his arms to get the wheelchair moving. He slid into a deserted waiting area. Muzak piped annoyingly from the overhead speakers, made louder by the emptiness of the room. It was just rows of chairs, tables with sticky magazines, a couple of sickly plants, and windows looking into blackness. Will put his head down and his hands together.
“Hey, Will, are you all right?”
Will raised his head. Amy was bent down on her haunches to be on his level, a position you’d use to speak to a child. He pushed the thought aside and said, “Long day.”
“I bet.” She forced a smile and gave a long sniffle. “Allergies,” she said. Her eyes were red and swollen. Will fished in his little pack and produced a small packet of tissues. She pulled one out and wiped her nose and eyes.
“Thank you. I heard about your fight with Crazy Lennie at the old entrance today. Wow, all those lat pulls you’ve been doing must have paid off!”
She was so young and pretty it almost made him ache, but it also made him sad for her. She spoke with the voice of the young and pretty and innocent. “You know, I was taking a shortcut from neuro-rehab to the cafeteria the other day, and I turned the corner and there was Lennie. I will still shaken up by what happened to Dr. Lustig, but I didn’t put two and two together. It was just Lennie.”
Just part of the furniture here, Will thought, like me.
“He did seem more agitated than I had ever seen him. Said something about seeing the devil, and then he ran to the stairwell. Anyway, I’m really glad you’re okay. You shouldn’t seem down.”
Will watched her face. It was like a dam ready to burst. He lowered his head and shook it.
“My wife told me she’s leaving me.”
“Oh, my god! Oh, Will, I’m so sorry.” She took his hands. He kept his head down.
“I’m not surprised. I can’t really say I blame her.”
“Don’t say that!” Amy started sobbing. “That’s not true. I’m sure you’re a wonderful man. You’ve got…you’re going to come back. How could anybody do that to another human being…”
“She deserves someone who’s not crippled.”
“Don’t say that! She’s a fool…”
He held her hands and let her cry. Back in the old days, this is when Dodds would have given him the look known only to the two of them; it said, you manipulative bastard.
“She’s a fool,” she repeated. “You seem like a nice man.”
“Why don’t you pull over a chair.” She did.
She sat next to him and he put an arm around her slender shoulders as she sobbed. “This is so unprofessional,” she softly wailed but didn’t stop crying. Nobody else was around.
“The first bad call I ever went on when I got out of the academy was a multiple shooting. It was really bad, but we didn’t know what it was. Just an unknown trouble call. I’d been on the job for maybe two months. I knocked on the door and a woman throws the door open. She’s got a little girl in her arms and her expression is…I’d never seen anything like it. She knew she was dying but she’s staring intensely at me. And then she falls forward into my arms and it’s me and her and the little girl in between us. I eased them both down and when I take the girl, I see the woman’s been shot. It’s like she has on a red blouse it’s so bad. The little girl is alive, not a scratch, but she’s completely silent. You’d better believe I cried after all that.” It was true. His training officer had berated him for months as “Weepy Borders.”
This only made Amy’s shoulders heave more until she said, in a very clear voice, “Why are people so cruel to each other?”
“I don’t know.” That they were was the policeman’s paycheck.
“I bet you’ve seen some pretty bad things,” she said.
Will said he had.
“Did you ever play around on your wife?”
“No,” he lied. The dynamic was going his way and he didn’t dare any diversions that might keep him from the chance to find out why she had been talking to the doctor about police and Cheryl Beth. He gently moved his arm from her shoulders, resting his hand on her arm.
“I didn’t think so. You’re a good man. I always fall for the bad boys.” She gave a teary sniffle-laugh.
“Well, he’s a fool if he doesn’t appreciate you. You’ve got way too much going for you to put up with that.”
“He’s married.”
“I figured that,” Will said. “It doesn’t make you a bad person. Stuff happens.”
“He said he’d leave his wife. God, I sound like such a dummy.”
Will didn’t say anything. He could hear a siren in the far distance, through the very quiet hum contained in the hospital walls.
“He was having an affair with someone else, too. He didn’t leave his wife for her, but I thought it would be different with me. He probably told her the same lines. He’s a doctor, of course. They think they’re gods. Such a sense of entitlement.”
“You deserve better,” Will said.
“Oh, god, I don’t know what I deserve. This has gone so bad.”
“So kick him to the curb. If I wasn’t crippled, I’d be chasing you around the room.”
She laughed and put her hand on top of his. “It’s really bad. I’m really afraid.”
After she fell silent for several minutes, he coaxed her. Why was she afraid?
“You’re a cop, right? Police officer, I mean.”
“That’s right.”
“What happens if someone lies to the police?”
His side was killing him from being twisted in her direction. The muscles were twitching like little earthquakes. He didn’t dare move. “It’s not good. It could make someone an accessory to a crime.” It could also be just giving a false statement, but why tell her that? She gave a sharp intake of breath. Her head was down and all he could see of her eyes were long blond lashes.
“He was her husband, you know. The man I’ve been involved with.”
“Whose husband?”
“Dr. Lustig. Gary is her husband. It happened so fast between us. We’ve been seeing each other only about two months. He said they were getting a divorce.”
“It’s okay, Amy. Have you lied to the police?”
She nodded once, half an inch up and down.
“Are you going to have me arrested?”
“No. But you have to make it right.”
“I’m afraid. I could lose my job. He could blackball me.”
“You’re not that way, Amy,” Will said. “I’ve seen the way you work with the quads. You’re no quitter. You won’t let any of us quit. Right?”
The pretty head nodded, more adamantly this time.
“Who asked you to lie to the police?”
“Gary.”
“This was Dr. Lustig’s husband, Gary Nagle?”
“Yes.”
“What did he ask you to tell the police?”
Amy looked him straight on. “He wanted me to say that we were together the night she was murdered.”