The Pain Nurse

by Jon Talton

  “You’re looking way too proud of yourself, Will Borders.” She pulled out in traffic and waited for the car heater to get warm. He just smiled.

  “I’m responsible for you, you know.”

  “And I’m grateful. And thank you for letting me try to do that. It’s important.”

  She was grateful to be out of the jail, and drove slowly past the old industrial hulks and railroad bridges that nested above the untended streets southwest of downtown. High chain link fences were topped with rusty concertina wire. Seeing Lennie again brought back the awful fight in the hospital. Watching the way Will worked intrigued her—it was like a window into a totally different world. But it didn’t make sense. It just didn’t.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked, noting her silence.

  “Who was that, in the picture Lennie pointed to?”

  “A man named Bud Chambers. A former cop. Bad actor.”

  “Chambers?”

  “He was Theresa Chambers’ husband—estranged husband. We always thought he did it. He was our first suspect.”

  Will told her about Chambers, while she remembered what Gary had said that first night, about the husband always being the prime suspect. She felt so tight inside, like all her organs had compressed together and were being wrapped around like the rubber band that propelled a child’s plywood airplane.

  “So you thought he would pick him.”

  “Yes,” Will said. “But I had to do it right, run it with several mug shots. I’ve been wrong before.”

  “Really? You seem pretty sure of yourself.”

  He seemed abashed. She laughed. “It’s fun to see you in your element.” He was sensitive. That was a nice quality in a man, especially a cop. But she switched to a serious voice.

  “Did you show him pictures of Judd and Gary?”

  “I did. He just glazed over, like he didn’t know them. The same with the other pictures. He only recognized Bud Chambers.”

  “So why didn’t you arrest this Chambers in the first place?” Cheryl Beth asked.

  “We worked it hard, and then we caught Craig Factor and the semen from Theresa matched.”

  “But you were never convinced?”

  “No. I knew some corrupt cops were covering for him. It’s not like this never happens. A few years ago, a cop was messing around with his wife’s sister. The sister knifes the wife to death—her own sister. We always thought the cop was present at the homicide and covering for his sister-in-law. Some of his buddies—rotten cops—gave him an alibi. Then they hired a lawyer, a former corrupt cop himself, and he gets the cop off and gets a sweetheart deal for the sister-in-law. When I joined Internal Investigations the guy retired. He came up to me and said he knew I was going to get him, and he was right. So this stuff happens. It did with Bud Chambers.”

  “I just don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know?”

  “I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but…”

  “But?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Lennie’s not the best witness, but he’s a start. I can give this to Dodds and let him do the rest. I can spend my time learning how to walk again.”

  She wondered about that. The murder had seemed to animate him, transport him out of his troubles.

  “I’m not convinced.”

  He seemed flustered, hunched down in the seat. “So, convince me otherwise.”

  “Well, first of all, Gary still scares me. It’s like he’s lost it. When he was standing in that room, swinging his hand like it was a knife, I could see him killing Christine in a rage.”

  “I understand, but I’ve never told you all the details about the Mount Adams Slasher.” He went on to recount the similarities to Christine’s murder: the folded clothes, the murder weapon hidden as if to taunt the police, and the amputated ring finger. By the time he was through, she had pulled the car to the curb and shifted into park.

  “I know it’s upsetting,” he said.

  “I’ve seen worse.” She tried to toughen her voice. But she hadn’t lived worse. She had lived all these “MOs” that night in Christine’s office—alone—where she had been summoned by a message that nobody remembered taking. “It was as if someone wanted me to come down there. To witness it, or to be killed along with her?” That night’s timeline telescoped in and out in her mind. “Maybe someone knew I would be back at the hospital that night. That’s not brain surgery. I go back a lot—people hurt at night. Maybe it wasn’t Christine who left the message for me at the nurses’ station at all. Only, I spent more time with that patient, and maybe I was late getting down to the basement. My God, maybe I was meant to be killed, too. Why?”

  Will adjusted his left leg. Even though he wasn’t in pain, she could tell he was in constant discomfort. Finally, he said, “The only thing that joined you and Dr. Lustig was Gary. And the method of the killing would mean he killed the three other women, and planted the evidence that implicated Craig Factor. A cop could do it. A respected doctor? Talk about brain surgery.”

  “That’s what he does for a living,” she said humorlessly. “He’s very bright. And he knows the layout of the hospital. He would know about the old morgue and the elevator. Someone is trying to kill me! What if it’s him? What are you smiling at?”

  “You.” He paused. “You’d make a good detective.” He wanted to say how happy he was to be out with her, how he loved her voice, with its light Southern accent that made her sentences sound like singing. It wouldn’t be right to say any of that. “Cheryl Beth, if this were an ordinary homicide, I’d ask you what enemies you had, although I can’t imagine you have any. I’d ask you why someone might want you dead. But this is the Slasher. If he’s after you, it’s because he thinks you witnessed the murder.”

  “I’m just not sure.”

  “You said, ‘first of all.’ What else?”

  The car was starting to warm up. She unbuttoned her coat. “Judd Mason is another creep. There’s the whole letter thing, and then he cornered me in the ER the other day…”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “There’s been a lot going on. He didn’t really threaten me. Just acted creepy. Said he knew I’d been spying on him. But he said the strangest thing. He said that he knew I’d been told not to talk about the murder, but he said it in exactly the same language as the vice president of nursing had told me just after it happened. Ever have a boss who’s a political weasel and got ahead for just that reason?”

  “In the police? Never. All our bosses are selfless visionaries.”

  “Ha. Well, this woman jumped down my throat about being involved with Gary, as if that never happens in a hospital. As if I didn’t feel bad about it enough already. Then she says, I am not to discuss Dr. Lustig’s murder with anyone: colleagues, patients, and absolutely not the press. Those are the same words Judd Mason said to me the other day.”

  “Like he had some inside pipeline?”

  “Exactly.”

  Cheryl Beth had been insulted when Stephanie Ott had said it. It impugned her professionalism. But it also probably meant that Stephanie somehow knew about the romance Cheryl Beth had carried on for two years with one of the writers at the Cincinnati Post. It had been the most satisfying relationship since her divorce, and she had secretly indulged in every woman’s hope that it might lead to something—if not marriage, maybe they could live together, really be a couple, something. She had tried to keep the whole biological clock cliché at bay, all the time they saw each other, but keeping hope at bay had been more difficult. He had been smart and funny and worldly. He had been an amazing, giving lover. A real catch. But it was not to be.

  He had left town three years ago. She hadn’t hated him—they had too much fun. She did miss his company, miss the hope, stopped listening to any sad songs. She missed him at odd moments, seeing a street they had walked down, a park where they had picnicked. He had introduced her to jazz and wine—we are so much the product of our old lovers. She mis
sed the feel of his breathing on her shoulder as they slept together, and the way he always made love to her in the morning, before he left. Where Andy had lain atop her and humped, he would raise himself on his forearms and look at her with an angelic smile, and he had taught her so many positions. Damn, she hated thinking about it, and yet many days it was a warm, immediate memory. It did not last. Later, she realized how she had been rebound-vulnerable to Gary Nagle. It was her fault. Damn it. She kept all this to herself. Will probably thought she was a floozy already. Her family certainly did. Her mother couldn’t believe she would divorce Andy, but then she couldn’t believe Cheryl Beth didn’t want to live in that little town forever and just have kids.

  “…Absolutely not the press.” It was as if they had been researching her life. But why? That was too paranoid.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t have an explanation for the letter, either,” Will said. “None of the other victims received letters. We do know that Christine had received threatening phone calls. Did you know that?”

  “No.” She didn’t make an effort to drive. They sat stationary in the warm car.

  “I’ve done some asking around,” Will said. “Berkowitz used to be on the force, and I convinced him to help me a little. The hospital was very sensitive about the murder. They wanted the publicity shut down, which I can understand. What’s unusual is that they weren’t leaning on the cops to get results, to close this case. They just wanted it to go away. Dodds is working alone; his partner’s on maternity leave. That was fine with them. Now that’s odd. In my experience, the big boss would have been on the phone to the chief demanding that fifty detectives be assigned to the case.”

  “They just wanted it to go away,” Cheryl Beth said.

  “Berkowitz said something about accreditation?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The Joint Commission. They accredit the hospital. We just went through that.”

  “Berkowitz said something was wrong. Some major problems, and accreditation might be withheld. Did you know about this?”

  “We’ve been waiting for word.”

  “They can’t just conceal it?”

  “It’s public information,” Cheryl Beth said. “But I guess if nobody asks… I can’t believe they would try to conceal such a thing. You typically have time to lay out a plan to correct the problems. Hospitals can get partial or provisional accreditation. But Cincinnati Memorial? My God, we used to be the gold standard.”

  “Maybe the bosses are trying to figure out a way to put a spin on the positive and bury the rest. I guess big money was at stake. Doctor training funds, Medicare, Medicaid. Some big federal grant for a computer upgrade.”

  “The digital medicine project. Christine had stopped her practice to work on it.”

  “I learned something else about that. She had been reassigned to that basement office a month before. She had been working in the administrative offices. Berkowitz said she was moved. Why? In the police world, it would mean you really pissed off somebody powerful.”

  “That’s exactly what Mason told me. She had been moved. He didn’t know why.” Cheryl Beth shook her head, processing all the new information. Then, “It still doesn’t explain the threatening letter. Maybe Dodds found Mason’s fingerprints on it. Are you really so sure your bad cop did this?”

  Will was silent as she started the car.

  Finally, “If I can’t make the case to you, I sure as hell can’t do it with Dodds. What would it take to convince you?”

  “You’re the detective. What other tricks do you have up your sleeve?”

  He thought about this for a long moment. “Are you willing to try a long shot?”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  They drove east out of downtown on Columbia Parkway, quickly passing the promontory of Mount Adams and the modern condo where a chief executive of Procter and Gamble was said to keep his mistress. On the left were the tree-lined hills with condo towers sprouting out at intervals, and on the right the broad Ohio River curved and dipped. One lonely barge was being pushed upriver by a tug. Will told Cheryl Beth about the time years ago when the river had frozen solid and he had walked across to Kentucky. But she quickly moved back to the case.

  “Wouldn’t the Mount Adams killer have kept the ring fingers as trophies?” she asked.

  “Nobody knows about the ring fingers, so don’t blurt that out accidentally with Dodds or he’ll have a stroke.”

  “I’ll be a good girl, and if he has a CVA, I’ll help treat him. Seriously, though.”

  “That would be the profile,” Will admitted, “and we never found them among Factor’s things. We never even found the kind of tool that would do it.”

  “Surgeons have those instruments.” She spoke more softly, staring straight ahead at the road. “Even a pair of heavy-duty bandage shears would do—they need to be able to cut off leather boots, whatever, in an emergency.”

  She was still sure the killer was Gary Nagle. Will was trying to work out how to deal with Darlene Corley. Her statement had given Bud Chambers his alibi. The night of Theresa’s murder, Chambers had been on duty, except for a four-hour period that would have perfectly coincided with Theresa’s time of death. Once Will and Dodds had established this fact—after days of stonewalling by other officers on Chambers’ shift and even his watch commander—Darlene had emerged. She was Chambers’ girlfriend and he had been with her, at her place down by the river.

  “How do you know she didn’t do it?”

  Will laughed. “You’d make a good detective. How’d you get so cynical?”

  “Old boyfriends.”

  “You deserve a lot better than that.” He was instantly embarrassed he had said it, and continued quickly. “Now that you mention it, she’d be tall enough and strong enough. There’s the little matter of rape. Craig Factor was arrested and the semen matched.”

  “But only one of the cases.”

  Right. They never really had a chance to sweat her. Neither detective believed her story covering for Bud Chambers. But it didn’t seem to matter once Factor was in custody. Now Will would give it one more try. “Turn here.”

  They could have gone north, up Delta into Mount Lookout and Hyde Park, where even the sidewalks seemed to radiate graceful prosperity. But they turned toward the river, past a restaurant called The Precinct, which was once a police station. Another quick turn and they continued on old Highway 52, in the ancient neighborhoods that clung to the riverbank below Alms Park. They usually got the worst of it when the Ohio had its way, defying the most elaborate flood control attempts. You could see the water marks on some of the old houses. Will directed Cheryl Beth to turn again, and he immediately saw the three white police cruisers.

  “Hell.” He pointed to the porch of a tattered duplex. Half a strand of Christmas lights dangled off the rain gutters. Darlene Corley was sitting on the steps, her hands behind her, obviously handcuffed. One officer led a tall, rough-hewn man down the walk toward a cruiser. With stubble on his face and his dark hair poking out as if it had been shellacked, he looked as if he hadn’t bathed for a week. He was handcuffed and cursing, walking down a weedy path and through an opening in a rusty, waist-high cyclone fence. The officer opened a back door and stuffed him inside, holding his hand above his filthy head to keep him from banging it on the top of the door sill. Will had done it thousands of times. He rolled down the window and beckoned the cop over.

  “Hey,” the young cop said when he saw Will’s badge.

  “Hey. What have you got?”

  “Domestic. Briar thing. Boyfriend’s going to jail for assault. The beauty queen up on the porch may be, too. When we got here she was waving an aluminum baseball bat at him and she hasn’t been too cooperative.”

  “It’s always on the domestics when cops get hurt,” Will commiserated. “Her name’s Darlene Corley. She had a prostitution arrest a few years ago, but I think she’s clean otherwise. She’s one of my CIs.”

  The uniformed cop nodded, new enough o
n the job to be happy to be spoken to like a peer by an older detective, to know about one of his confidential informants.

  “Think you could bring her over here and cut her a break if she helps me? Otherwise, throw her under the jail. Hell if I care.”

  “Sure, sure, Detective…?”

  “Borders, Will Borders.”

  The young man turned and walked back to the porch. Will was relieved that he didn’t make the connection a more experienced cop might make between “Will Borders” and “Internal Investigations” and get all paranoid. He stood Darlene up and walked her their way. She hadn’t changed much. She wore jeans, high heels, and a thick pink sweater with a bear stitched on it. But little about her appeared cuddly. She was both lanky and big boned—Dodds had called her “the roller derby queen”—and her face was cut hard, whatever her expression. Her long, unnaturally blond hair was poofed out.

  “Hey, Detective Will. Long time, long time…”

  “What’d you do, Darlene?”

  “Damn Mike.” She gingerly touched the gulf of purple and black spreading out from around her left eye. “He’s my boyfriend. Long story. He’s been drinkin’ and every time he does he thinks he can beat on me, and he’s got another goddamn think coming…”

  Will held up his hand.

  “The officer tells me you’re going to jail.”

  “No!” She whipped her head back and forth. “I ain’t done nothin’.” She wailed. Oh, he didn’t miss this part of the job.

  “Here’s the thing, Darlene. You might be able to help yourself.”

  Her drama ended instantly, her eyes intent on the potential transaction.

  “I need information. You have it. If you help me, I might ask the officer to let you go, although the call is his.” Will looked toward the young patrolman, who nodded appreciatively.

  “Anything, Detective Will. Who’s your partner with the pretty eyes? What happened to that fat nigger you used to run with?”