“Calm down. Don’t open the door yet.” Will pointed to a strip of medical tape across the yellow seal. It had his initials written on it. “That’s me. Nobody’s been inside since.”
“You put that on there?”
Will nodded.
“After you broke the seal to go inside.”
“No. Actually, I followed you inside. You left and I was still in there.”
“Sneaky, fucking, cripple bastard.”
“So when I left I wanted to make sure the chain of custody was clean. So I got the tape, wrote my initials, taped it across where the seal was split. You see it.”
“I’m gonna arrest your ass right now.”
“I’m still a sworn officer.”
“Damn you to hell.” He slit the tape with a pocketknife, fumbled with a key, and swung open the door.
“It’s under the desk drawer, taped there with duct tape.”
Dodds moved to the desk, looking back angrily. “Did you take it out, touch it?”
“Sure. I also wiped it clean of prints.”
“Bastard. Asshole.”
Will thought about what Scaly Mueller had said about two old married people fighting, but it didn’t make him smile. He had a fleeting image of Cindy to add to the constant reminder of her leaving. Somehow he was lousy with partners.
Dodds produced a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket. He felt carefully under the center drawer of the desk. In a moment he pulled out a dark rectangle cradled in the duct tape that had held it to the bottom of the center desk drawer. He put it on top of the desk and carefully unwrapped the knife. Using an evidence envelope from another coat pocket, he meticulously slid the duct tape inside and sealed it. Then he opened the knife. It clicked into place with a sharp metal sound.
Unfolded, it looked like the skeleton of a prehistoric predator. The handle was thick and black. The blade was stainless steel, with a sharp leading edge that turned into a nasty looking saw-like serration as it got closer to the handle. There was a hole in the upper part of the blade, as if in dinosaur days it had been an eye socket.
“That would scare the hell out of anybody who saw it coming.”
“Fuck you.”
“It will also be common enough that we can’t trace, and it won’t have prints.”
“Fuck you.”
Dodds studied it under the light, his mouth turning deeper and deeper into an inverted U. He slid it into another evidence envelope and sealed it. He swung around in the chair and sighed.
“When were you going to tell me about this?”
“I assumed you had found it by now. Anyway, I was going to check on the seal today and if it hadn’t been broken, I was going to call you. I didn’t expect a hero’s welcome for what I was going to tell you.”
“That’s sure as hell right.”
“Let me ask you something. That day when you came down here, when I snuck in behind you. Did you come back in a few minutes and try the door?”
“No.”
“Somebody did.”
“Maybe it was a security guard.”
“This was different. Somebody tried the door several times.”
Dodds murmured something and shook his head. “Well, I guess our shit-stained boy didn’t kill her. That may not work out for your Florence Nightingale.”
“Cheryl Beth?”
“Cheryl Beth Wilson, RN.” He drew out each syllable. “I consider her a person of interest.”
“Come on…”
“She found her, you know.”
Now Will remembered that night, when he had been groggy on drugs, terrified of the late-night trip to the MRI. He had seen her there, outside the office, her white lab coat stained with blood.
Dodds went on. “It gets better. She was banging Lustig’s husband. I call that motive.”
Will was starting to hurt again, but he had to hang on. He had gotten this far. He said, “Yeah, you should have seen how effectively she fought against this guy in the hall. No way. Why aren’t you looking at the husband?”
“Fuck you.”
“Because you know it’s the Slasher. It takes you awhile to come around sometimes, if you didn’t think of something in the first place. But you know, Dodds. You know who did this.”
Will moved his wheelchair closer. “You know why I was in that old atrium today, on my ass, on the floor, when the homeless guy attacked me?”
Dodds opened his hands as if a bird would appear and fly away.
“Bud Chambers dumped me there on the floor. It’s probably a miracle he didn’t do worse.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Will told him about the confrontation. “Thanks for spreading the word about me,” he added.
“It wasn’t me, but believe what you want,” Dodds said. “Look, I get where you’re coming from with Chambers. I didn’t just like him for Theresa, I loved him. But we couldn’t make the case. Remember how much time we spent on him and that skank girlfriend, what the hell was her name?”
“Darlene.”
“We couldn’t build a case. Hunches aren’t evidence. And command didn’t want another scandal. So they eased him out. Okay, they eased him out after you pushed for it. But we never could find a connection between Chambers and the other killings. Then we got Factor. A jury agreed. How the hell do you explain the DNA?”
“That was only on Theresa.”
“So?”
“So, Factor was technically only convicted on that crime. It was just assumed he did the other two. Anyway, you’re the one who always says young detectives depend too much on DNA, that they’ve lost the ability to do old-fashioned police work. We screwed up. He’s killing again. This one,” he indicated the doctor’s office, “has all the marks of the Slasher, right down to the hidden knife. Nobody knew about the hidden knife except us and the killer. He just loves to mind-fuck us.”
“Okay, assuming Bud was good for the three women. And don’t go nuts, because that’s a big leap. I’m not there with you. But assuming… Why would he kill Christine Lustig?”
“I don’t know. Let me see the murder book.”
“You’re unbelievable.” Dodds gave a petulant laugh. “Take my word for it. There was no link. The doctor didn’t know this guy. Why would he come for her? Even if he’s a serial killer, why her?”
“Have you questioned Chambers? Until you do, you won’t know.” Will suddenly felt a crushing exhaustion, as if a wave had hit him. He pushed on. Even the words hurt to say. “Maybe she was his type, the one that makes his fucked-up mind want to kill again. He just sees her once and this nut-job gene goes off in his brain. She looked like Theresa. See if he’s been around the hospital. He knew his way well enough to find me.”
Dodds stared into his lap. “Maybe. But we never heard about hang-up calls with the three.”
“They were dead by the time we could ask, and they were all single women living alone.”
“We ran the LUDs on every one. We only saw Chambers’ number on Theresa’s phone, which is explainable. And we found…”
“I know,” Will interrupted, “what we found. Killers can buy disposable cell phones, use pay phones. Hell, we see that every day with drug dealers. He was a cop, for God’s sake.”
“Maybe.”
“Let me see the murder book.”
“I’ll think about it. In the meantime, you’d better watch your ass. You have a gift for making enemies, and let’s just say you’re not in fighting trim.”
Will wasn’t listening. He was so tired. He managed, “He’s going to kill again. Soon.”
Chapter Fourteen
The guard walked Cheryl Beth to her car that night, as he had since the killing. His name was Don and he was a tall, lanky black man whose stride she had difficulty matching. Still, she had grown to enjoy his company. He talked about his children and his car, comforting subjects. He had never asked her about finding Christine-he seemed like the only person at the hospital who didn’t want to know all the details. Tonight, he was out of character.