The Pain Nurse - страница 41

Something in the Accord made her look. It was white, on the front passenger seat. An envelope. Then it all happened at once: the name Dr. Christine Lustig written in a neat script in blue ink. Cheryl Beth hadn’t been snooping, she would later tell herself. She just saw the name-she had always had twenty-twenty vision-and at first couldn’t believe it. That made her look closer, until she was leaning against the Honda. The envelope was addressed to Christine. It was on a pile of files and a portfolio sitting in the gray passenger seat. She glanced toward Don and saw that both he and the man in the Reds cap had disappeared. She lingered at the window, knowing she was being nosy, feeling a terrible dread from such an ordinary piece of paper. The envelope addressed to Christine had been opened; the top of it was torn and ragged as if it had been unsealed with fingers, not a letter opener. It was just sitting there. She strained to see the return address, but couldn’t. She pulled out her penlight and shone it inside.

The rest of the car looked neat. The outside had been recently washed and glowed under the lights. The backseat was empty, the front seats clean…no spent Starbucks cups in the cup holders like in her car. Just a pile of files and a portfolio, maybe three inches thick, and on top of it a No. 10 envelope addressed in blue ink to Dr. Christine Lustig. A folded letter was visible at the edge of the serration. It wasn’t addressed to her office at the hospital. Cheryl Beth could make out her home address in Hyde Park. The return address, damn, just too small…

“May I help you?”

She gasped in a second of hysteria, then recovered. She slipped the penlight in her pocket. A man had appeared on the driver’s side of the car. He was wearing green scrubs and had a striking face: pale skin, prominent dark eyebrows, small eyes, intense stare. His dark hair was close-cropped and was creeping well back from his prominent, pasty forehead. She guessed he was in his early thirties. And he was wearing only green scrubs in this cold. His upper arms had sharply defined muscles.

“I…dropped my keys. Oh, here they are.” She bent down and scraped her keychain on the concrete. When she stood again, he was still on the driver’s side, staring at her. She was too overcome at being discovered to feel scared. Anyway, he had a hospital identification clipped to his shirt pocket. It read: Judd Mason, RN. She didn’t know him.

“It’s freezing out here.” She forced a smile. “Aren’t you cold?”

“No.”

“Well, have a nice evening.” She turned, unlocked her car, slid down into the seat, and relocked it. Her hands were shaking as she pushed the key into the ignition. Her breath was already fogging up the windows. She didn’t dare look at the Accord again. She turned the key. The engine started.

As she drove away, she looked in the rearview mirror. He was still standing beside his car, watching her go.

Will watched Cheryl Beth walk through the automatic doors toward the parking garage. He was relieved that she had a guard, even though he thought most security guards would be worthless in a confrontation. Dodds’ talk about her as a person of interest, a potential suspect-he wouldn’t have bought it even if Christine Lustig’s murder didn’t have all the signs of the Slasher. He guessed that Cheryl Beth was about Cindy’s height, five-five, and she had a small-to-medium build: not someone with the strength or reach to kill with a knife with repeated, almost teasing slashes, followed by deeper wounds and a coup de grâce to the throat. The only case he could remember of a woman slashing a person’s throat had been years ago in Price Hill. A drunken husband sleeping it off, he’d beaten his wife once too often. She had taken a kitchen knife and had driven it into the side of his neck. When Will and Dodds had arrived, she was still hysterical about the copious blood from the wound-and she had looked like a tough biker chick. No, Lustig had not been killed by a woman.

Why wasn’t Dodds going after her husband? Will had learned he was a doctor, a surgeon, named Gary Nagle. Neither he nor Dodds had ever been shy about investigating powerful people. A husband playing around had a powerful motive, even if he could hire expensive lawyers or call friends at City Hall. Will knew Dodds didn’t have any real theory of the crime other than the Slasher. Dodds just didn’t want to admit it. If Will had been running the investigation, he would have done anything to get Chambers back in an interrogation room, find probable cause to execute a search warrant. But when Dodds had asked if Will wanted to press charges for the assault, Will had said no. A chickenshit beef where Chambers could make bail, if he were even charged, would just make him more cautious. Or it might make him more dangerous.