The Pain Nurse - [19]

“I say a lot of silly things.” Will smiled and looked down again, studying the bruises on his hands and forearms left by needles from IVs and blood tests. “My roommate needs constant care. Poor guy. They come in every hour to give him treatments. I can’t sleep at night.”

“Honey, I can’t handle you. You can’t even walk.”

“I’m going to walk. I stood up today.”

“That’s wonderful!”

“They rolled me onto this platform with parallel bars, and one physical therapist on each end, and I was actually able to stand. I’d almost forgotten I was tall. I thought about the movie where the mad scientist says, ‘It’s alive!’’” She didn’t laugh.

He sat there remembering the strange triumph, of doing something people do unthinkingly, the feeling of a stranger’s legs lifting him, very tentatively, as if they could change their muscled minds at any moment and return to the stranger, leaving him with the dead weights attached to his torso and the long fall to the floor.

“You’re doing great,” she said, not meeting his eyes. Her smile didn’t seem genuine. He used to kid her and call it her “sales smile” for the bank. Then even the sales smile vanished. “Julius came to see me today. At the bank. He said you’re trying to investigate the murder of that doctor.”

“Did Dodds tell you that he missed the knife that was hidden in her office? Some well-meaning, hospitalized cop guided him to it. He might have found it the first time if he’d looked a little harder.”

She didn’t meet his smile. Only he thought it was amusing that he had beaten the legendary J. J. Dodds at the game, and he was still a patient. He spoke in a serious voice.

“Cindy, the knife matters. That’s the same MO as the Slasher. He would clean the weapon and hide it. We never told the media about that.”

“Will…”

“This guy also cut off her ring finger, just like the Slasher. Nobody knew that but the killer and the cops. Don’t you see, Cindy? It’s the same guy.”

“Will! This is not your problem!” She shouted a whisper, then looked around to see if anyone noticed. They were nearly alone. Across the room an old woman wheeled an old man. He had braces on his legs and looked miserable. He had once been young and virile. He had walked fast and made love to the young girl who was now old, too.

Will looked back over his shoulder at the dense cluster of buildings on Mount Adams, rising just east of downtown. Even from the solarium he could pick out the row house where Theresa Chambers had been slaughtered. When he turned back, Cindy had her arms crossed.

“I used to ask you not to tell me about your job.” Her voice was severe, impersonal, as if she were talking to one of her employees.

“And I didn’t.” Will felt anger replacing his anxious fever to get out. He pushed it down, down into the seat of the cursed wheelchair. “I’m trying to make you understand that I’m not some hotdog trying to do Dodds’ job. I just need him to understand what he’s dealing with.”

“Will, the Mount Adams Slasher died in prison! It makes my skin crawl just to say that name. You and Julius drove up to Lucasville to see the body, God knows why. This terrible thing that happened to this doctor, it can’t be related. It’s just another awful city crime. It’s none of your concern.”

“It’s not that simple, Cindy. I’m the one who screwed up with Craig Factor, me and Dodds. We’ve got to put it right. He’ll kill again. He’s got a taste for it. The next woman was killed just a week after Theresa Chambers. All his victims looked like Theresa, and so did this doctor! Now he’s at work again. Don’t you see? He’s going to kill again.”

“No, no. Will, you’re sick. You’ve been through a lot.”

“I’m still a sworn officer. I have a duty…”

“Now stop.” She shook her head adamantly. “Julius asked me to talk to you. Stop this nonsense. Will, you’re not the same. You’re going to be…handicapped.”

The word fell on him heavily. Handicapped. That wasn’t him. That was the person in the wheelchair on the street corner, pitiful, avert the eyes… Will was still himself inside.

“I know that.”

“Do you?” she asked harshly. “That means you won’t be a policeman anymore.”

“I can use my brain. They need me.”

“Is that what your commander is saying?”

Will didn’t answer, recalling the conversation with Scaly Mueller.

“I didn’t think so. You’re in denial, about a lot of things. That’s understandable, but I am not going to enable it.”

“And I’m not going to argue with your self-help books.”

Her eyes flashed, but then she just shook her head. “Will, Will… I never understood your world. But it seemed to me that within the police department you had a good job as a homicide detective. I never understood why you left it to go to internal affairs. The officers hate internal affairs.”

“The chief asked me to do it.”

“You went to the chief.”

“It was a little bit of both.” His back was starting to throb. “I did it to make a better police department.” He had explained himself so many times.

“You did it,” she said vehemently, “because of what happened between you and Julius, over Bud Chambers.”

“That was part of it.” She was twisting time, twisting what really happened. She seemed so strange to him now, but, in reality, he knew that had been true for years. He fought those feelings. How did two people grow to be at such odds?