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e right thing. He had drunk nearly the entire Diet Coke and yet his mouth was suddenly dry.
“Cheryl Beth, do you remember the killings in Mount Adams two years ago?”
Chapter Twenty
Cheryl Beth walked down the middle of the busy hallway, dazed, barely acknowledging the nurses and docs that said hello. She had three new consults and half a dozen follow-ups. She wanted to get as many of her patients over from IVs to oral pain drugs as soon as possible. People were hurting: stabbings, shootings, chest tubes, every kind of mayhem in the belly. Will was hurting, the pain etching deep ravines around his eyes. He was a young man, her age. She had to argue with one of the surgeons about continuing to use Demerol—it was a crappy pain drug, even if it gave the patient a buzz. Slow drip Dilaudid, that was a wonderful drug. How many years had she spent teaching them about it? The patients had to be watched closely for side effects or irritation to the vein, but most of the time it was very effective. Then the afternoon would get really busy with new consults, as people came out into the recovery room. Some of them would come out of surgery, wake up, and hurt so much they’d rather be dead. Did some of the anesthesiologists care?
Her feet kept moving, but dizziness was coming in and out, her pager feeling like ten pounds on the drawstring belt of her scrub bottoms. She made a sudden turn, cutting through a throng carrying flowers, and pushed through two double doors. It was the back way into the emergency department.
She cut down a narrow hallway and opened the door into a large supply closet. Her hands found the cool wall and she just stood there, slowing her breathing, trying not to throw up. She had gotten used to every hospital smell: feces, urine, decaying flesh, vomit, the peculiar odor of disinfectant and putrification that attended many cancer patients. She never flinched. Right at that moment, she didn’t trust herself to move. She wasn’t thinking about the probable explosive reaction from Detective Dodds when she showed him the letter. Her hands splayed against the wall, she read the labels on the nearby drawer, silently moving her lips as she had in grade school until her teachers had stopped her.
The Mount Adams Slasher. She wasn’t even sure she had heard everything Will had told her after hearing those words. An avid newspaper reader, Cheryl Beth remembered the crimes vividly. All the nurses had been terrified. One of them lived a block away from one of the killings. Women had bought guns and big dogs. For three months, the city had seemed transformed into a terrifying stranger, familiar on the surface but with a sinister current running beneath it like a poisoned underground river.
Will Borders had worked on that case with Dodds—they were the “primaries,” he said; every profession had its jargon—and now he was telling her that the same killer had murdered Christine Lustig. And he might have seen Cheryl Beth as she walked out of the elevator into the darkened corridor that night. She knew a man had been arrested for the murders, but Will had been adamant. He hadn’t done it. The Slasher was killing again. Now, with the note she picked from Judd Mason’s trash, she knew who might have really done it. Her breathing was so shallow she was barely conscious of it. The nurse in her imagined how little of her lung capacity she was using, even worried she might be on the verge of hyperventilating.
That was when she caught sight of the large black shoes and white pants.
“Sorry,” she started, then raised her head to see that Judd Mason was standing there, just inside the doorway. It had been a long time since she had seen a nurse wearing whites at Memorial. His face showed that he knew she recognized him. “You’re an open book,” her mother had always said, derisively. Her mother didn’t know her.
Cheryl Beth stood straight up and walked toward the doorway but he didn’t move. “Excuse me,” she said. He just stood there. In the bright light of the supply room, she was more aware of the pallor of his skin, with a dark stubborn beard fighting to come out. His hair was nearly black and close-cropped, revealing a wide forehead. He just stared at her, his mouth compact and his lips nearly bloodless. His eyes were small, intense, and blue. She looked again briefly at his large shoes and imagined matching them to the imprints in her flower beds.
“Excuse me.” She said it louder this time, imagining how she might try to kick him in the groin and run past, or at least scream like hell. Inside she was shaking. He raised his right arm and leaned a hand against the doorjamb, further blocking her exit.
“You’re the one who discovered her body.” He looked her over. He displayed no sympathy or even the expression of a man who was attracted to her. His features were flat and immobile. “Had she suffered?”
She spoke quietly. “I’m going to go now.”
“You were spying on my car last night,” he said, his voice even and calm. “At first, I didn’t know who you were.”
“I wasn’t spying on anything,” Cheryl Beth said, using her best tough voice for standing up to a blockheaded doc or nurse. The problem was that she might be standing up to a killer.
“What were you looking for?”
“I wasn’t looking for anything.” She studied his face, reading nothing. “You worked with Dr. Lustig, didn’t you?”
“Are you the police?” The same steady voice, neither angry nor friendly.
She wanted to say, no, but the police will want to see you very soon. That was, if she could get out of this room with the purloined letter that was in the bottom left pocket of her lab coat. She looked past him into the corridor. Deserted. Not a sound. Only fifteen feet away was the busiest trauma center in southwestern Ohio. If only she could walk through walls.
He raised his arm and stepped aside. She walked past him, making herself move at a normal pace.
“You didn’t know her.” She heard his voice behind her. “I did.”
She turned and faced him. He was leaning against the wall, still staring at her.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
His lips turned up. “You were sleeping with her husband, but I guess all’s fair.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Cheryl Beth braced her shoulders as a sudden rage overcame her. No—she made herself cool down. She had the entire hallway behind her now, the entire hospital. He was more than an arm’s length away. She tried to take stock. He had obviously seen her looking into his car. He might even have surmised that she saw the letter—but maybe not. He didn’t realize she had it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We should talk. If you’d write down your number and a good time to call you, we can sort this out.”
“Hmmpf.” He shook his head. “You can find me. I’m in the directory.”
“I hear you used to work in the OR with Christine. What was that like?”
He studied her again. She imagined he was measuring the distance between them, but she refused to move. She folded her arms and stared back.
“You don’t know me. You didn’t know her. Let’s say we saw the world differently and leave it at that. When she was assigned to go to the SoftChartZ project, I wasn’t surprised.”
