The Pain Nurse (Will Borders: Cincinnati Casebook 1)

“Quit trying to tell me how to do my job!” He bellowed it.

Will yelled, too. “Then do your job.”

“What am I going to have to do to make you stop meddling in a homicide investigation? I will arrest your ass if you don’t stop.”

“This isn’t about me or you. This is what a psycho cop would do.”

“Oh, hell, Borders.”

“This is the best breakthrough we’ve ever had in this case,” Will said. “I’m asking you as a friend.”

“No,” Dodds cut him off harshly. “We’re not friends. You make up any story you want about going to Internal Investigations, but you know. I fired your ass as a partner because you lied to me.”

There was a long silence with only the background noise of a distant generator. Cheryl Beth walked in as if she had just arrived.

“You. What took you so long?” Dodds glared at her with hostile eyes. Will looked as if he were about to crumple and fall out of the wheelchair.

“We need to get you upstairs,” Cheryl Beth said.

“That can wait.” Dodds opened a leather portfolio with a legal pad in it, then picked through several pages of dense handwritten notes and diagrams. He was leaning against one of the old autopsy tables.

“Why are you in here?” she asked.

“Maybe I should ask you that. Come in here often?”

Cheryl Beth felt instantly defensive. “I’ve never been in here. I knew it was here, but they stopped using it before I was even hired.”

Dodds slid a pair of reading glasses over his nose. He silently paged through the notes. “We’re going to do this again, Ms. Wilson. The night you say you discovered the body of Dr. Lustig. I want to hear your story. All over again, from the top. Then I want you to walk me through it, from where you started down here, to when you claim you found her, to what you did next.” He looked over the glasses at Will. “You can leave.”

Will wheeled himself out the double doors, and Cheryl Beth told her story in a hoarse voice. Then she took him out to the main elevator bank, walking down past the shadows of old carts to Christine’s office, then showing him the path she had taken to the stairwell that brought her back to the first floor to get help. It all looked benignly alien with the full lights on. Will trailed well behind them in his wheelchair, saying nothing. His face was a mask of pain and exhaustion. Dodds ignored him.

“So you get off the elevator, walk down the hall, see the light coming out of her office…”

?

?That’s right.”

“What else?”

“What do you mean, ‘what else?’ There’s no more else. I walked down the hall…” And she remembered. Dodds could see it in her face but he said nothing.

“I heard a sound. It was like metal on metal. I just remembered…”

“From where?”

She took her time, but she was sure. “From that direction.” She pointed toward the old morgue. Will, who had rolled closer, looked sharply at Dodds.

“What kind of keys do you have to the hospital?” Dodds asked.

“Oh, come on,” Will said.

“Shut the fuck up,” Dodds snarled at him, then turned again, looming over her.

“Keys? I don’t have any keys.”

“Could you get into that morgue? Maybe after you killed the doctor, you ran down here and opened these doors and took the old elevator up and out? It would be a clever way to avoid being seen. Now you don’t have to talk because you have a right to remain silent.”

“Are you crazy?” Cheryl Beth heard her accent become more pronounced. It happened when she was mad. She thrust her keychain out to him. “See this? Car, house, desk, bicycle lock!”