“You’re not from Ohio, not with that accent.”
“Where I come from, it’s not considered an accent.” All those years in Cincinnati and she couldn’t get Kentucky out of her voice.
“So you’re what, an adjunct?”
She nodded. The money wasn’t great, but she had some saved and had welcomed the change of teaching. She could get a new nursing position again any time.
“No tenure,” he sighed. “That’s why they call those jobs, ad-junk.” He didn’t smile. “That was where they had those murders. Cincinnati Memorial, right?”
“That’s right.”
He made more notes.
“Why did Noah Smith call out to you, Ms. Wilson? Do you prefer Ms., Mrs., Miss?”
She was fine with “Cheryl Beth,” but something about Detective Hank Brooks didn’t sit right with her.
“Miss is fine,” she said. “And I have no idea. I was standing there…”
“Why was that?”
“I was going for a morning walk to the Formal Gardens.” She worked to keep the irritation and anxiety out of her voice. “He saw me and recognized me. He asked for my help. He seemed afraid.”
“I might be afraid if I had murdered two girls and was caught napping at the crime scene with blood all over me, Cheryl.” He stared at her and stroked the edge of his moustache with his right index finger. His shoulders were a straight line of tension.
“Is that what happened? You found him there asleep?”
Brooks sat back straight and hesitated. She knew he had told her more than he had intended. But that only made her want to know more.
“The Formal Gardens seem like a pretty public place.” She looked at him evenly and let the silence fall between them.
Finally, “You don’t know the campus very well, do you, Cheryl?”
“My name is Cheryl Beth.”
She didn’t like him well enough to tell the story of how in the first grade, the teacher had been confronted with three girls named Cheryl, so she called them by their first and middle names: Cheryl Ann, Cheryl Sue, and Cheryl Beth, and how the name had stuck and she liked it. If she were back at the hospital, back in her position as pain nurse, she would have added: Are you trying to piss me off?
“Sure, okay, Cheryl Beth,” he said. “There are times of the day when parts of the campus can be very isolated. All the trees and shrubbery and open spaces. Even so more at night and in the early morning.”
“So the girls were killed overnight?”
“I can’t discuss the details,” he said, but she got the point: The killings had not occurred soon before she arrived.
“And Noah fell asleep in the bushes, naked?” she said. She raised her hands to calm him. “I know, you can’t tell me anything.”
“I can’t get over him calling to you and asking for your help.” He leaned forward on his elbows and stared at her. She looked back at him, wearing her pleasant face.
“That’s what happened. Actually, he seemed disoriented. I don’t really get your point, Detective Brooks.”
“This is a small-town department, but we’re not idiots, Cheryl Beth.”
“I didn’t say you were, Hank.”
He flipped back a yellow page of handwriting and studied it.
“I don’t think you told me where you’re from with that accent? Originally.”
“I didn’t tell you. Corbin, Kentucky.”
“Corbin, Kentucky,” he said, neutrally. “Never been there.”
“I haven’t lived there in twenty-five years.” She realized she was nervously playing with her hair. She forced her hands back to the top of the table.
“Noah Smith is from Corbin, Kentucky.”
“What?”
“That’s right, Cheryl Beth. And you’re telling me you don’t know him? Must be a pretty small town.”
Noah had never told her that. His accent was as Midwestern as most of her students.
Brooks persisted. “Want to tell me more, now?”
She took a deep breath but maintained her composure. “There’s nothing to tell, Hank. I don’t live in Corbin. I haven’t lived there in a very long time. I didn’t know he was from there. Lots of people named Smith in every town, probably even Oxford.”
She ran through her mental Rolodex. In fifth grade, she had a crush on Billy Smith. His family moved away. She knew Donna Smith all through school; Donna had brothers but none was named Noah. Joe Smith owned the filling station on Main Street before it was shut down. It was an impossible task.
“You still have family in Corbin?
She hesitated. “Yes, a brother.”
“Noah Smith doesn’t,” he said. “He claims he has no living relatives. Did you know that?”
She told him that she didn’t.
“He was a loner, I guess.” He leaned back and the chair gave a creak that seemed at odds with its newness. He started shaking his right leg.
“Kept to himself in class?”
“No, he was quite outgoing. He seemed normal.” She heard herself talking too fast. She slowed down and added: “I know that’s what people always say.” She smiled, the insincerity of it hurting her facial muscles.
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“He was never disruptive,” she said. “He never missed a class. He was good with his clinical work. Don’t tell me he has a record or something.”
“That doesn’t tell anything,” he said. “Lots of killers have never had a parking ticket.”
He wiggled in his seat, reached into a file, and slid two plastic bags onto the table. Each contained a small card. A driver’s license.
“Do you know these girls?”
The shock radiated down her legs. One license showed Holly Metzger. The other was Lauren Benish. She tried to keep her breathing even.
“Are they the ones who were killed?”
He nodded and stroked his moustache. If it were a little longer, he could play Simon Legree.
“My God.” Her hand went involuntarily to her mouth. “They were in my class.”
“With Noah Smith.”
“Yes.”
He pulled back the licenses and slid them back into the folder.
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
He swung the portfolio closed and slid his pen in his shirt pocket. He stared hard at her. “What I can’t understand is why he was calling for you out there. And you happened to be there.”
She stared back at him until he spoke again.
“The thing is, Cheryl Beth, he’s asking to see you.”
Chapter Six
The quick movement caught Will’s eye as he was crossing the wide expanse of Central Parkway headed into downtown. On the far corner, a man was down on the sidewalk. Another man, twice his size, was kicking him. Will instinctively hit the siren, a quick blurt, called for backup, and parked his unmarked car at the edge of the curb, partly blocking a traffic lane. The bumper was five feet from the fight. He swung himself out, pain and spasms clinching his strong right leg. He raised himself to his full height and used the car door and roof as support.
“Police, step back.”
The assailant was huge, with baggy black jeans and a dirty Reds cap. His pockets, embroidered with what looked like sequins, drooped nearly down to the backs of his knees. He looked over at Will and mouthed a profanity, again swinging his leg hard into the other man’s side. He was in his mid-twenties, wearing heavy black boots, with thick toes and heels, and silver buckles and chains ornamenting the tops. His rap sheet was long.
“I thought you was dead, Borders.”
“You’re going to be if you don’t step back, Junior,” Will said.
“Motherfucka’ owes me money. He gotta pay!”
He said this as if it were a rational justification. Another day at the office. “Ain’t that right, cocksucka’? You give me my money!” He raised the boot to stomp the man’s head.
Before the surgery, Will would already have been out of the car, at the sidewalk, and had Junior, Clarence Kavon James Jr., prone on the pavement. But he couldn’t do that now. And he didn’t have time to pull out his cane and walk with difficulty the short distance to the crime. As if that would allow him to control the suspect. A small crowd was gathering, encouraging the beating.