The Pain Nurse - страница 12

“I’m not talking about ancient history, Steve. This is an open homicide. It happened right here. We owe it to that doctor and her family to pursue the truth.”

“What are you saying?” Mueller’s voice kicked up a notch. “Do you know what the chief would say if I even raised this? It had to be Factor. What other theory works?”

“Bud Chambers.”

“No, don’t. Don’t you dare.” Mueller backed away a step as if Will had pulled a knife on him.

“Damn it, Steve. Don’t let Dodds piss this away. This homicide is the same MO as Mount Adams. It’s him. Do they have a time of death?”

“No…I don’t know. Look, Will, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re not going to be a cop now. Take the disability. You can get a good partial pension. My gosh, your wife must make a ton with the bank now. You don’t need the money. Quit driving yourself nuts over this. Think of all the Reds games you can go to.”

“You can break that seal and get in that office,” Will said. “I want to look around. And I want to see the murder book. Nothing is right about this case.”

“Stop.”

“Just call security and let’s look inside.”

Mueller smiled and shook his head. “You were a good detective, Will, but never very smart about your career. I was worried about that when you transferred over. Big-time homicide copper having to lower himself to investigate chickenshit complaints against officers. I was afraid you’d always want to go for the big cases, even when you didn’t belong there. You didn’t disappoint me. The Reading incident, remember?”

“The city was in the wrong. I just went where the facts pointed.”

“And you didn’t mind pissing on a city council member to get there.”

“Important people can still be asked questions. A good internal affairs investigator has to be able to do that. And he has to be able to disagree with his superiors.”

“In your world, but it’s not too smart. You can make enemies in high places. Most cases in our division involve pleasing our stakeholders.”

“Our ‘stakeholders,’ as you call them, are the citizens of Cincinnati, not the brass.”

“Sure,” Mueller said. “That’s what I meant. What I mean is you need to be smart this time, stop driving yourself nuts over some case that’s just a lot of smoke.”

“In the middle of the smoke lies the crime.” Will wanted to slap himself. Now he was making up his own Muellerisms.

Mueller took on an uncharacteristically thoughtful expression. “You’re not tracking, Will. I never wanted you on this detail. Homicide guys always think they’re better. Never knew why you left a prestige detail like homicide to come here. But we had a new chief and I did what he told me.”

“Does the chief know you’re trying to retire me?”

Mueller gave an exasperated sigh. “Has the chief been to visit? It’s time to take you back to your room.”

Will felt enveloped in sudden exhaustion and pain. His back muscles rippled with spasms. He stared down the hallway, to where the floor and walls disappeared into the silent gloom. The black void seemed to erase any sense of the busy, noisy hospital above them. He imagined someone emerging from it any second, someone he and Dodds had missed before.

The extra security guards lasted two days, then they were gone. Cheryl Beth was surprised they had lasted that long. The chaos that was Cincinnati Memorial Hospital was always overwhelmed by fresh chaos, fresh crisis, fresh calamity, like rolling waves. Usually she tap-danced her way through it. It was harder in the days after Dr. Christine Lustig’s murder. The extra guards had been replaced, as if by memo, by holiday bunting hanging from the nurses’ stations. Yet shock and dread were as present inside the hospital as the late autumn days outside, the cold December wind that whipped against her coat. The hospital held a memorial service for Christine Lustig in the cafeteria. The newspapers seemed to forget about the killing, too: fresh, terrible trouble in the ghetto just down the hill. Yet beyond that, the city was bundled up happy and waiting for Christmas. There had been no snow and little rain, allowing the magical heartland twilights that Cheryl Beth loved, where the black tree limbs stood out against the infinite cobalt blue horizon. This year she had barely noticed. She had barely slept.