by Jon Talton
“Creepy dude, huh?” Denise said. “No bedside manner at all. You know he used to be an OR nurse for Lustig?”
Cheryl Beth stopped and held Denise’s shoulder. “What?”
“He scrubbed in with her for years,” Denise said. They stood in the dim hallway next to the code cart, speaking in low voices. Except for the moans coming from the next door, the only sound was loud snoring. “He was good in the operating room, I hear. Lot of those nurses love the teamwork, the stress, the autonomy. They don’t have to be great with direct patient contact.”
“So were they still together?”
“Nope, they had a falling out. This was before Lustig went on leave to do the computer project.”
“What do you mean, ‘falling out’?” Cheryl Beth felt revived by an adrenaline shot through her system.
Denise shrugged. “That gossip never made it to the graveyard shift. Maybe he was another one of Lustig’s conquests gone wrong. They want to know who killed her, they ought to look at the list of her old boyfriends. I think it’s called the Cincinnati phone book. There’s one other thing.”
Cheryl Beth waited, watching Denise swallow conspicuously.
“I had to stop by employee benefits today,” she said. “So I’m in street clothes, in the upscale part of this dump. Out in the hallway I see Stephanie Ott talking to Dr. Carpenter, and I distinctly hear your name.”
“He said he’d have my back,” Cheryl Beth said.
“Hmmm.” Denise closed her eyes for a second and shrugged. “He told me he’d have my back, too, and next thing I knew I was kicked out of ICU. Today they looked pretty chummy, his arm on her shoulder. And I heard your name and Lustig’s name more than once.” She stroked her cheek in thought. “Something I’ve thought about…”
After a pause, Cheryl Beth asked her to continue.
“Oh, you know, after being done in by Ott once before I believe in conspiracies. But think about this. Lustig is working on the digital medicine project—every patient record will be online, every order or change of treatment entered instantly. Think what that would do to docs who screw up.”
“They couldn’t blame the nurses anymore.”
“Right,” Denise said. “Old Doc Palmer? He’s got lawsuits against him. He’s way past his prime. Dr. Stewart—I watch his stuff like a hawk. I’ve seen major screwups from residents that were quietly ignored. How many times have the doctors closed ranks to protect one another? The new computer system, if it worked, would make that a lot harder. They couldn’t bury their mistakes anymore.”
“You’re saying there are powerful docs who wouldn’t have wanted the project to succeed. Who might have wanted Christine… God, if Christine was really pushing the project, it could have threatened a lot of people.”
Denise laughed. “Oh, forget it. I’m just scaring you when you’re already scared. I’m probably being paranoid. But I did see Carpenter talking to Ott about you. Watch out, baby girl. Hospital politics can be murder.”
Cheryl Beth stared at Denise, then found her bearings and walked through the wide doorway. In the first bed was a gaunt young man with skin nearly the color of white paper. He implored her with wide, scared eyes. Faces told so much.
“I’m a pain management nurse,” she began. “One of your doctors wanted me to see if we could make you feel better…”
***
Forty-five minutes later, she took the elevator down to the basement. Her feet felt like lead, making this familiar trip. She never used the basement shortcut now. She had already decided that if the hallway were deserted when the doors opened, she would immediately close the door and go back to the first floor. The car was cold but she was burning up. She should have asked a guard to come down with her.
But when the doors opened, the hallway was brightly lit and she heard voices. She followed them toward the doors that led to the old morgue. The voices were loud and angry.
“We always assumed that he forced those women to take their clothes off, fold them neatly, and be carved up. Don’t you get it? He didn’t, maybe not even with Theresa. He cut them to pieces, then took off their clothes and put them in a garbage bag. Then he folded up clean clothes from their closet, or maybe he even brought some.”
“How do we know any of that?” That was Dodds’ voice. She recognized it instantly.
“How do we not know it? We didn’t know what we were missing. Are you going to call crime scene or not?”
It was Will. She had not heard his voice when it was agitated.
“Why would he do this?” Dodds demanded. Cheryl Beth stood against the wall listening, ten feet from the door.
“He wants to show he’s all-powerful. He can make a woman disrobe for him, make her welcome death.”
“So why would he, or she, leave them here?”
Cheryl Beth shuddered when she heard the pronoun. Leave what?
Will answered, “He must have been interrupted. Maybe he was going to come back for them. Put in a video cam and a transmitter and leave them here once crime scene’s gone over it.”
“Maybe your pain nurse did it.”
Cheryl Beth leaned back against the wall. Somehow just him saying it made her feel guilty. It was like a cop pulling into traffic behind you. It was way worse than that.
“You know she didn’t,” Will said. “Quit being such an asshole.”
“You always had a weakness for the pretty girls, Borders. I think she’s lying. You’ll see.”
“You’re wasting time.”
“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!”
Dodds reached out and delicately took her lanyard. “Tylenol, huh?” He pulled it out from her lab coat and examined it. “Partners Against Pain…NAPI scale…” He let it go and it draped back against her. “That card looks pretty ratty on the edges. Like you used it to pick a lock. Mind if I keep it?”
Cheryl Beth looked at him coldly. In a soft voice she said, “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Get the hell out of here, both of you.” Dodds turned and walked back toward the morgue. Cheryl Beth wheeled Will toward the elevators in silence. Only when the doors closed and the car began to move did she speak.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but what did he mean back there, about him firing you?”
Will was staring straight ahead and didn’t answer. It took a moment before she realized he was asleep.
Chapter Nineteen
Will was so exhausted that he slept deeply for three hours. It was the longest uninterrupted sleep he had enjoyed since coming to the neuro-rehab unit. At five-thirty, a nurse woke him for his meds. Then he dozed fitfully as his roommate, Steve, received a breathing treatment, the technician working hard to get the poor man to cough. His muscle control for even this simple act of living was gone with the spinal cord injury. Will had learned about the “quad cough,” where the nurse or technician used his hand to thrust up in the patient’s abdomen, all the while coaching: “cough…cough…cough.” It sounded like torture. In Will’s mind the thought of “that could have been me” was ever present, yet the sessions behind the curtain a few feet away had also just become part of the background noise. The man never seemed to have visitors. Will didn’t have visitors. Brother officers always deluged cops in the hospital with visits. Not Internal Investigations cops, not the rat squad. Were we all just abandoned here? Will wondered in hazy half sleep, and then he lost the thought, his mind orbiting between the noisy morning coming to life of the hospital and his body’s desperate hunger for sleep.
He dreamed of old arguments with Cindy. Not really dreamed: he wasn’t that far under. His mind, half asleep, reprocessed the same disagreements. They always said the same lines, like veteran actors in a long-running play. Then he fell under enough for dreams and she was there that spring day when the rain came down hard and straight. She was telling him her decision, a decision she had made on her own. It wasn’t fair or right but she had done it. He had been on a big case, working nights, not there. It was done. He was pleading with her and crying, in his dreams at least. It was too late, too late.
His next vision: Cheryl Beth Wilson was sitting in the chair beside his bed. She was in her usual white lab coat and green scrubs, just watching him. The small-boned features of her face were beautiful when it was watchful. It was a warm dream. No, he was awake. He was aware of a wetness at the edges of his eyes. There was so much suffering around him, and he had been so fortunate, so spared, that he couldn’t dwell on old griefs. That would be yet another sin.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” she said. “How are you sleeping?”
“Barely. At least they took the sutures out last night. I got back in the middle of the night, and one of the night nurses took them out. I felt like I was an old suit being let out.”
Cheryl Beth gave her musical laugh. “That’s good.”
“What time is it? How long have you been sitting there?” He felt oddly shy around her, pulling the sheet over his flimsy patient gown. He thought he had grown accustomed to the hospital’s relentless lack of privacy.
“It’s seven-thiry. I just wanted to check on you. How are you feeling?”
Will could already feel a monumental soreness, running from his right shoulder down into his thigh. He pushed the button to raise the head of his bed. It complied slowly with a hum and cranking sound. The movement helped set off the burning ache in his left side. It was the wages of being dumped out of his wheelchair and onto the floor, then getting into a fight with a knife-wielding scumbag. Just another day at the office.
“I can feel yesterday, believe me.”
She bit her lip and looked down. “Could I talk to you sometime today?”
“How about now?” Of course, she could talk to him. He was grateful for the company. But as he came more awake, all the events of the previous day filled his head like a flood of foul water. They needed to talk. He asked her to give him a minute to get dressed and they could get out of the stifling room.
“Can I help you with anything?”
“No,” Will said, feeling that shyness. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Want me to call one of your nurses?”
“No, they have enough to do.”
She walked out, closing the curtain around his bed. Fifteen minutes later he had gone through the morning agony, made more difficult by his body’s memory of the physical exertion of yesterday. He knew he was sweating and looking grim when he wheeled the chair out the door. They moved silently through the busy hallway. He stopped at the nurses’ station to get a cup of new pills. Then he felt her pushing him up the ramp into the main hospital. He sat back and let her do it. His Quickie moved easily and they didn’t talk.
***
They found a deserted spot in the huge cafeteria near a heavily decorated Christmas tree. It was a reminder that he would likely spend Christmas in neuro-rehab, in this hospital prison. For the moment, he could keep those feelings in check. He watched as Cheryl Beth brought them both bagels. She walked fast and lithely. The bagels were a relief from the daily routine of a cup of scrambled eggs, a slice of bacon, and toast. Will knew that his breakfast tray was sitting inside the big cart back in the ward, an aide wondering where he was. His orderly mind worried about it for fifteen seconds, no more.
“Detective Dodds implied that Lennie didn’t kill Dr. Lustig,” Cheryl Beth began, putting the bagel on its plate after taking a single bite. “It’s hard to get anything straight out of him. He’s so eager to arrest me…” She stopped and ran her fingers through her hair, which fell back like strands of light-brown silk against her shoulders. When she spoke again, some of her previous intensity had dialed down. “I’m sorry. I haven’t slept much, and I should leave you alone to get better. I just don’t know where else to turn.”
He watched her face redden as she spoke. “That means the murderer is still out there.” Her voice was drained of its music. “Somehow I knew it. I knew there was more to this than Crazy Lennie.”
“How did you know it?”
“My gut. I’m very intuitive.” She gave a slight smile. “My mother saw ghosts. I’m not that intuitive.”
“Lennie didn’t do it. We have other evidence.” He watched her carefully. She was pulled into herself, as if expecting a blow. He went on, “Why were you down in the basement that night?”
“She left a message at the nurses’ station, up at
Seven-North, saying she was in her office and I should stop by.”
“This was when?”
“I don’t exactly recall. I’ve tried to put a timeline together, though, with the supervising nurse on that floor. I had been called in for a consult. The message came in while I was with the patient. So I went down probably around twelve-thirty.”
“Why would you do that?”
Cheryl Beth pulled back and sighed. Will knew he had made a misstep. He spoke gently.
“I’m just curious. I mean, it’s the middle of the night. That’s a very deserted part of the hospital.”
“Oh, I feel like I’ve told this story so many times. Sorry, it’s not you. I’m here at all hours, especially after dark. That’s when people hurt. It isn’t unusual to see docs here, either, especially surgeons checking on their patients.” That much was true. Will’s surgeon might routinely cruise through at one or two in the morning. It seemed like cops’ hours, with better pay.
Cheryl Beth continued, “After she took a special assignment to work on the digital project—help us get this paperwork on computers—she was working in the admin wing. At some point, she took an office in the basement.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Wouldn’t have been my choice. Maybe it was odd she was working so late, but she was a workaholic. I didn’t really think about it. I take shortcuts all the time. I used to, at least. And that corridor through the basement is a great way around some of the logjams in the main hallways. It just didn’t seem odd until later.”
Her bagel remained untouched. Will had eaten his quickly, appreciating the taste and texture as never before. Now he was drinking a Diet Coke, all these things precious in his hospital jail. He asked more questions. The hallway had been deserted when she got off the elevator. It was only later, when the cops had sealed off the main first-floor hallway because of the gang shooting, that traffic would pick up in the basement, the time when he had been wheeled by, only hours out of surgery. When she had first got there, only the usual bank of lights was on, leaving most of the length of the corridor in darkness. As she had walked to Dr. Lustig’s office, she did hear a metallic sound. She didn’t think much about it at the time.
