“Which looks like Dolly Parton’s…” Dodds stopped himself.
“Oh, please,” Cheryl Beth said. “Everybody calls them the Dolly Parton Towers. Nurses can match cops any day in inappropriate language. We’re as weird as you guys.”
Dodds chuckled.
“If we’re going to have to do this,” he said, “Why don’t you drive over to the Samuel Adams Brewery. While you regale Cheryl Beth with Over-the-Rhine’s beer history, I’ll break in and get us a six pack.”
“This is the heart and soul of the city,” Will said.
“It’s the heart and soul of scumbaggery,” Dodds said.
“Jeez, Dodds, some guy killed five people in a little town in southeast Indiana last month. Crime happens anywhere. The city has to warehouse so many of the poor and uneducated because they’re zoned out of suburbia…”
“Complex socio-economic-cultural drivers behind this.” Dodds face dropped into mock seriousness. Then his teeth gave an 880-key smile. “My travel tour would be to point out every building where we had a dead body. I could put up about a hundred red targets as a tourist attraction. See that intersection? Three homicides in one week a couple of years ago. That building: stinker on the fourth floor, middle of July…”
Cheryl Beth laughed, glad for the release. “If you do that, I’ll tell you really nasty E.R. stories…”
Will drove on slowly. The streets were deserted, a steady rain now coming down. Not even a wino was sleeping inside a doorway.
“He told me he had ‘Kristen’s’ gun,” Will said. “Not the woman I murdered, or the lady cop, or even Kristen Gruber. But ‘Kristen.’ He said it familiarly. He called me ‘Detective Borders,’ like the letter-writer and the voice on the phone. Then he called you ‘Cherry Beth.’ Has anyone called you that?”
“Not since I was teased in fifth grade. It sounds like a soft drink.”
He went on, “You know what else he said to me? He has the gun to the back of my head, he’s making threats, demanding that I give up my weapon, and he says, ‘How does that make you feel, detective?’ Those are the exact words Kenneth Buchanan used the first time I met him and he wanted me to know he’d already leaned on the chief.”
Dodds took it in and said nothing. Cheryl Beth was interested in the dynamic between the two of them, imagined how effective they had been as partners, but she also checked again to see that her door was locked.
“What else did he say about me?” she asked.
Will hesitated. “It wasn’t good. I would never let anything bad happen to you.”
“I know that.” At that moment, she felt strangely unafraid for herself. She was more concerned for Will. “Did he mention your father?”
“No. No, he didn’t.”
“So he doesn’t know you that well,” she said. “Otherwise, he would have used that to get at you.”
“Good point,” Dodds said. “That might mean he’s not law enforcement. I still don’t know why he chose Borders. So how do we get probable cause that will let us really go after Buchanan?”
They passed a marked unit. Two officers were standing on the sidewalk, talking to three young black men. All were soaking wet.
“I’m not sure,” Will said.
“So let’s find something. Screw Fassbinder.”
“I mean, I’m not sure a man Buchanan’s age could have absorbed that punishment from Junior and still outrun him and gotten away. Also, nothing from ViCAP about homicides in the Atlanta area that match the M.O. here.”
Cheryl Beth asked about ViCAP, and Will told her of the FBI database. Buchanan came to Cincinnati from Atlanta when his wife took the job with the symphony.
“Our guy has killed before,” Will said. “He knows the right moves. He’s disciplined. But Buchanan was in Atlanta for thirteen years and nothing. He only decides to start killing now because he’s in Cincinnati? I don’t know…”
“So you’re doubting yourself now?” Dodds sounded annoyed.
Will shook his head. “I’m missing something…”
“Don’t go soft on me, Borders. It’s becoming a bad habit. You don’t believe I caught the cello player’s killer, either.”
“No,” Will said. “I don’t. Your golden gut is lying to you.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“Calm down, boys,” Cheryl Beth said. A dark shape caught her eye: some kind of bundle or bag. “What’s that?”
They were at Fourteenth and Sycamore, back near the diner. Will swung the spotlight toward some bushes at the edge of the Cutter Playground. He pulled across the street and put the car in park. Dodds got out, snapping on gloves.
The intersection was completely empty. A pair of headlights lingered several blocks south, and then turned.
He came back toting a black gym bag and something else.
It was a wig.
He tossed them in the back seat and climbed back in.
“More ammo against Buchanan,” Dodds said, holding out a wig of long, dark-brown hair. “The cure for baldness. Got any large evidence bags?”
Will shook his head.
Cheryl Beth heard a long zipper.
“What have we here,” Dodds said. “Two pairs of handcuffs, his and hers. Two ball gags. Gloves and footies to put over his shoes. He’s very methodical. A folding combat knife that I bet will match the wounds on the four vics. And a bottle of lye.” He carefully placed the items and the wig back in the bag and re-zipped it.
“There won’t be any prints,” Will said.
“You never know,” Dodds said. “I will say you owe Clarence Junior your good word to the D.A. He saved your lives.”
Will was quiet for a long time. The rain was now coming down hard enough that it sounded like small pellets hitting the roof.
Finally, he spoke quietly, all the exuberance of the tour drained from his voice. “We’re not going to get another chance. This was it and we blew it. He won’t be careless enough to come back again.”
“Unless,” Dodds said, “he really has a thing for you.”
Will stared into the wet windshield. Cheryl Beth took his hand and squeezed it. He returned the pressure, but she could tell his mind was elsewhere.
Sunday
Chapter Thirty-one
Cheryl Beth could feel Will’s left leg start to twitch. It was only forty-five minutes after they had gone to bed. He was still asleep despite the movement. The spasticity must have kept him in a state of REM sleep much of the time. She hoped he had nice dreams, at least. With that thought, she gently snuggled against him, pushed aside all that had happened that night, and fell into a deep slumber.
“Oh, hell!”
His words woke her. He was sitting by the bed, shaking his right leg, his face illuminated by the screen of the computer perched on the arm of the chair. She rolled over and checked the clock: five fifteen.
“Are you okay, babe?”
“I’m sorry I woke you.” His voice sounded miles beyond weary.
“Is it your legs?”
“I wish. I had to sit up to calm down my left leg, so I thought I’d go through the photos from Kristen Gruber’s computer, and I found…”
She waited but he didn’t finish the sentence.
She climbed out of bed naked, surprised how comfortable she was with him. Coming behind the chair, she wrapped her arms around him and leaned forward. He rested his head against hers.
“What?” She asked. Then she saw the photo on the screen.
“Oh, Will…”
“There are more.”
“What are you going to do?”
He sighed. “I’m not going to do what Kenneth Buchanan does. I’m through with that. At six, I’m going to call Dodds and the lead detective in Covington.”
Chapter Thirty-two
The interrogation room at Covington was nicer than Will was used to: clean, new, with unmarred furniture, pristine fluorescent lights in the ceiling, and walls that might have graced a modern conference room. The seats hadn’t yet been beaten down by thousands of felonious butts sitting in them. Will sat in the adjacent room, looking through the one-way glass. With him were Dodds, Cheryl Beth, and an assistant prosecutor from the Kenton County Attorney’s Office. He got Cheryl Beth in on the pretext that she was a witness under protection, which was true.