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They followed him as he turned down another hall. This one was lined with gurneys—each one of them holding a patient. Some of them slept. Some curled in on themselves and moaned. One man watched a video on his phone, the sound of an action movie blaring.
“Please turn that down,” Holmes told him as he passed by.
The man chose not to turn it down.
Holmes stopped to speak with a woman clutching her stomach. Josie and Gretchen waited out of earshot while he performed a brief exam. From behind them came the sounds of tires screeching and men shouting. The action movie guy had turned his volume up.
Holmes finished with the woman. Before he could move on to one of the sleeping patients in front of him, Josie said, “We’re not done, Dr. Holmes.”
He didn’t slow down.
Now the movie was playing automatic gunfire. One of the characters shouted for everyone to get down. None of the patients reacted.
“When was the last time you had contact with Sylvia?” Josie asked.
Holmes stopped, shoulders tensing. After a few seconds, he waved them further down the hall. They stood across from a curtained area where a nurse was assessing a patient who had small pieces of glass embedded in her bare knees and her arms. A larger piece protruded from the skin beneath her collarbone. Blood trickled down, staining her yellow tank top.
“I saw Sylvia about a couple of weeks ago. I dropped by her house. We went to the park.”
“Were you and Sylvia old friends?” asked Josie.
“You already know she was my wife’s doula.”
“Did your wife join you when you and Sylvia went for your walk?” asked Gretchen pointedly.
His jaw clenched. “My wife and I divorced last year.”
Across from them, the nurse used tweezers to pull pieces of glass from the woman’s knees, dropping them into a small plastic basin. Characters from the action film spewed expletives at one another.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Josie said. “When did the two of you move to Denton?”
“About seven years ago.”
“Did you know Sylvia was living here?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I’d heard that she moved after she was attacked by that serial killer.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I heard she’d been attacked on the news. They released her name. Then I visited her to see how she was doing. She said she was moving to Denton.”
“You visited her after she was attacked,” Josie echoed. “Did you visit her before her attack?”
“I visited her from time to time,” he hedged.
“Without your wife?” Gretchen goaded.
“What do you want me to say?”
“We want you to be truthful about your relationship with Sylvia West, then and now,” Josie told him.
“There was no relationship,” he insisted.
Understanding dawned. Dr. Holmes was splitting hairs. He had clearly had ongoing contact with Sylvia West long after she left his wife’s employ but in his mind, it hadn’t amounted to anything meaningful.
“You wanted there to be a relationship,” Josie said.
It lined up with her theory about the gentleman caller Arlene Jones had seen one week before Sylvia’s first attack.
