“And I remember you as well.” He looked her in the eye.
“Why would that be?”
“Well, don’t be put off by this, but you’re a very attractive woman.”
She laughed and shook her head. He was nearly twenty years younger than she. But there was the irresistible allure of a compliment.
“Ms. Ott is quite the taskmaster,” he said. “The accreditation process has them all jumpy.” His expression was pleasant, but his eyes were deep like a friendly well; something moved far down, but she didn’t know what.
Cheryl Beth leaned back. “So you’re not from around here?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “Silicon Valley. I’m not used to this kind of weather. If you don’t think I’m out of line, could I ask if you were the nurse who found Dr. Lustig?”
Cheryl Beth sighed. “Now tell me how you would know that?” The edge was obvious in her voice.
“I’ve been working here, on a contract. People talk. I’d heard it was you. I was working with Christine.”
“I see.”
“It’s a terrible loss for us,” he said quietly. “And she was a wonderful person. Just a devastating loss.”
“Makes me wonder why the hospital moved her down to that basement office. Do you wonder about that?”
“Well, the office was private, and I imagine she needed the quiet to get the evaluation of the project software done. We were under a very tight deadline to complete it.”
He waited as a crowd of civilians walked past, bearing flowers and boxes in Christmas wrapping. “Did you know Christine, Cheryl Beth?”
She shifted in her seat, suddenly hot in her coat. “I did,” she said, and slipped off the coat. She pulled out two of the new consults and studied them, ignoring him. For a long time she thought he might just stand and leave.
“I know this sounds weird,” he said, a small smile lighting up his face. “But would you have dinner with me? I’ve been cooped up writing computer code for months and haven’t had dinner with a beautiful woman.” His eyes were different now. She had his full attention. “Maybe you’d show me your city. I’m not some weirdo Californian, I promise.”
Cheryl Beth stopped herself from laughing. She was rusty with a gentle brush-off. He was an attractive young man with a sly and sexy smile. But she was not looking, and in any case she liked tall, big men. Maybe when she was feeling better she would tell Lisa this story and chuckle about it. “I can’t,” she said. “But you’re sweet to say that, Josh.”
“I mean it,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. She could see the logo SoftChartZ. Another reach produced a pen and he wrote something on the back of it.
“At least take my card. I put my hotel number on the back. Just in case you change your mind.”
Cheryl Beth pocketed the card and turned away, eager to find Will so she could tell him about her sleuthing in the peds’ records.
Chapter Thirty
Will had watched with apprehension as they neared the hospital, knowing his day out was ending. The hospital tower was illuminated by spotlights and it looked like a building from an old comic book, a perch for a superhero. It was just a box of the sick and dying, a base camp for perilous journeys and ascending prayers, and for now it was his home. He had watched Cheryl Beth walk away, seeing in those well-fitting civilian clothes her confident long-limbed strides, knowing she thought him a fool for giving her the Christmas card. Or she thought worse of him. And as she walked out the door, he felt the almost supernatural buoyancy that had kept him calm and functioning after the tumor was diagnosed, through the first days of dismal prognoses and dire worries, through the surgery and days of pain, through Cindy’s final jettisoning of him, through the murder investigation-he felt it disappear.
He asked the aide to give him his dinner in the large rehab room. He couldn’t bear to take off his suit and get in the cursed bed yet, even though his legs and back ached and he was battered by exhaustion. So he sat alone in the room, feeling the cold seeping through the windows, and surveying the precise little scoop of mashed potatoes, three tablespoons of corn, and two slices of meatloaf. He had enough money to buy a Diet Coke, which he used to take his pain meds. This was his life now. He had lived twenty-five years on the other side of the crime-scene tape and the emergency lights, a quarter century where his badge gave him a pass anywhere in the city. That was gone. Tomorrow or the next day, he would have to endure a visit from his brother and his family, bearing gifts they probably resented giving. He would have nothing to give in return. And the day after that, and every day he was given, he would assess every little pain or change in his body with the knowledge that it might be nothing, or it might be catastrophe. Theresa’s face and then Cheryl Beth’s hovered in front of him, her kiss still warm on his cheek, as he lapsed into sleep.
The next image that broke into his consciousness was J. J. Dodds. Will shook his head to clear away the medicine haze and was fully awake.
“Detective Dodds.”
“Detective Borders.” Dodds sat in a chair turned backward, his blue, polka dot tie hanging over the chair’s back. “I risked my neck on the ice to bring you good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
Will pushed himself up in the wheelchair and said he needed good news.
“Darlene is in protective custody, her kid, too. She gave Chambers up. We’ve reopened the case and we’ve got a warrant for his arrest. I think we can get him for the three women in Mount Adams.”
All this, Will thought, and Dodds was not angrily berating him for interfering.
“So what’s the bad news?”
“He’s gone. We sent a tactical unit to his apartment and he wasn’t there. We’ve got it staked out.”
“Where does he work?”
“He’s some kind of independent security consultant, so he works out of his place. We’re running down family, friends. So far, no Chambers.”
“Hell.” Will’s mind pulled out of its depression and began plotting how they could find him.
“There’s more,” Dodds said. “Darlene said Chambers has a cabin down by Rabbit Hash. We never found it before because it’s in his father’s name. It’s empty right now, but we’ve got Kentucky State Police sitting on it. If he doesn’t show up there in the next day, we’re going to execute a search warrant. What do you want to bet we find some very interesting things hidden down there?”
“That doesn’t sound like bad news.”
Dodds’ mouth turned up in an imitation of a smile. “That’s because there’s more bad news.”
Will pushed away the food tray and waited.
“Your girlfriend’s been lying. I always had this gut feeling about her.”
“What girlfriend? You mean Cheryl Beth?”
“She was with Dr. Lustig the night she was killed.”
“Oh, bullshit.”
“Real shit,” Dodds said. “Dr. Nagle said he saw the two of them talking and drinking at a bar on Main Street the night the doc was murdered…”
“He’s just trying to save his own skin, since he doesn’t have an alibi anymore.”
“Will you let me finish? Thank you. After you so industriously had this girl Amy Morton come back and say she lied about Nagle’s alibi, well, I brought him in for a chat. He’s very full of himself. Know what he calls himself? The Two Million Dollar Man, for all the surgeries he does. But he tells me he was on Main Street that night and saw the two of them together. Unfortunately for your girlfriend…”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Will said through a sour mouth.
“Unfortunately for your girlfriend, I took their pictures to the bar and the bartender and one of the waitresses positively identified them. She was with Lustig that night.”
Will stared into the table, ran his hand lightly back and forth over its smooth surface, and felt himself breathe. His stomach was now the home to a heavy, spiky rock. How could she have lied to him? “So what are you saying?”