The Pain Nurse (Will Borders: Cincinnati Casebook 1)

She nodded. “I’ll feel better to have you between me and him anyway. He’s probably just looking for his car, but…”

“Don’t you worry, Cheryl Beth.” Don peeled off and walked toward the man. Cheryl Beth made her aching legs cross the last twenty feet to the Saturn. By habit, she already had her key out. She stepped between her car and the black Accord parked next to her.

Something in the Accord made her look. It was white, on the front passenger seat. An envelope. Then it all happened at once: the name Dr. Christine Lustig written in a neat script in blue ink. Cheryl Beth hadn’t been snooping, she would later tell herself. She just saw the name—she had always had twenty-twent

y vision—and at first couldn’t believe it. That made her look closer, until she was leaning against the Honda. The envelope was addressed to Christine. It was on a pile of files and a portfolio sitting in the gray passenger seat. She glanced toward Don and saw that both he and the man in the Reds cap had disappeared. She lingered at the window, knowing she was being nosy, feeling a terrible dread from such an ordinary piece of paper. The envelope addressed to Christine had been opened; the top of it was torn and ragged as if it had been unsealed with fingers, not a letter opener. It was just sitting there. She strained to see the return address, but couldn’t. She pulled out her penlight and shone it inside.

The rest of the car looked neat. The outside had been recently washed and glowed under the lights. The backseat was empty, the front seats clean…no spent Starbucks cups in the cup holders like in her car. Just a pile of files and a portfolio, maybe three inches thick, and on top of it a No. 10 envelope addressed in blue ink to Dr. Christine Lustig. A folded letter was visible at the edge of the serration. It wasn’t addressed to her office at the hospital. Cheryl Beth could make out her home address in Hyde Park. The return address, damn, just too small…

“May I help you?”

She gasped in a second of hysteria, then recovered. She slipped the penlight in her pocket. A man had appeared on the driver’s side of the car. He was wearing green scrubs and had a striking face: pale skin, prominent dark eyebrows, small eyes, intense stare. His dark hair was close-cropped and was creeping well back from his prominent, pasty forehead. She guessed he was in his early thirties. And he was wearing only green scrubs in this cold. His upper arms had sharply defined muscles.

“I…dropped my keys. Oh, here they are.” She bent down and scraped her keychain on the concrete. When she stood again, he was still on the driver’s side, staring at her. She was too overcome at being discovered to feel scared. Anyway, he had a hospital identification clipped to his shirt pocket. It read: Judd Mason, RN. She didn’t know him.

“It’s freezing out here.” She forced a smile. “Aren’t you cold?”

“No.”

“Well, have a nice evening.” She turned, unlocked her car, slid down into the seat, and relocked it. Her hands were shaking as she pushed the key into the ignition. Her breath was already fogging up the windows. She didn’t dare look at the Accord again. She turned the key. The engine started.

As she drove away, she looked in the rearview mirror. He was still standing beside his car, watching her go.

Chapter Fifteen

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.