Powers of Arrest (6 page)

Chapter Eight

The press conference began at five minutes after four at Cincinnati police headquarters on Ezzard Charles Drive. The city was under a tornado watch. When Will had reached the station two hours earlier to brief the brass, the air was thick with humidity and enormous thunderheads were advancing over the Western Hills. Kristen Gruber’s parents had retired to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and the chief had called them personally, hoping to reach them before they heard about the murder from the media. Now the briefing room was bright with television lights whatever the sky outside had to say. All the local stations were there, plus a crew from Indianapolis and a freelance team. Half the room seemed to be sneezing and sniffling. Sinus Valley.

The chief stood at the center of the podium flanked by the lieutenant colonels that commanded different bureaus in the department. All wore black mourning bands on their badges. All were in full uniform, including the dark dress jacket. This was a good thing in Will’s mind, not only because the white uniform shirts of CPD overly reflected light and drove the television people crazy, but also because they made the cops look like ice-cream men. That, at least, had been Cindy’s joke. Will’s ex-wife had disapproved of his career choice with increasing intensity as their marriage went on.

White shirts and television lights. Will had learned about such arcana when he was sent to a special school for law-enforcement media officers. He had been drilled in how to handle the parry and thrust of difficult press conferences. Still, he felt ill at ease before the cameras, and today especially he was happy to stand off to the side of the brass, the only one in a suit. He gripped the edge of a chair with his right hand, subtly he hoped. His body was exhausted from the day and standing now was taking all his effort. Chest up, shoulders back, lats pulled down, diaphragm tight, all the things he had been taught. Still, his left leg was reliably thumping every eighteen seconds. You could set a stopwatch by it. He desperately wanted to hyper-extend the leg and let all the pent-up energy out, but he had learned the hard way that doing this would cause him to be in danger of falling down from the resulting spasm. So he put weight on it hoping the leg would calm itself.

He badly wanted to sit down.

The chief had served his whole career in the department. Like most officers, Will’s opinion of him was complicated. What was not in question was that he was very much a Cincinnati product: coming from old German stock west of the “Sauerkraut Curtain,” a graduate of Elder High School, and a cop who came up through the ranks. He stuck to his roots by bowling in a league at Heid’s Lanes. His trim figure looked good in a uniform, his sandy hair combed precisely into a style out of the early 1960s, his face still youthful for fifty-eight. Now he faced the cameras and gave a stoic account.

“Officer Kristen Gruber was found dead on a boat tied up on the Licking River this morning. We’re working with our colleagues at the Covington Police Department and the Kenton County Sheriff and treating this as a homicide. I can tell you she died of multiple stab wounds. I’m not going to go into details…”

Will knew the details. He stared into the lights and recalled the photos he had seen in Covington. Kristen had been handcuffed, hands behind her, and placed on a bench in the cabin of the boat. The assailant had used a knife to rape her. The genital mutilation was the worst Will had ever seen. At some point in the attack, the femoral artery in her right leg had been slashed and she had been left to bleed out. It appeared that bleach had been poured around her genital area, perhaps to corrupt DNA testing. Her face was untouched. Had she screamed out there? Would anyone have heard it? The blood volume was so high that it was still pooled when the first cops came aboard.

“…We intend to expend every resource in the department to find the vicious killer of a Cincinnati Police officer…,” the chief went on.

The boat was tied up on a deserted tract of the Covington riverbank. A kayaker had found it early this morning. The time of death was sometime between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning; the medical examiner would narrow it further. The kayaker had been home with his wife during that time. Tracing ownership of the boat was easy: it belonged to Kristen. Other than the blood, the crime scene appeared surprisingly tidy. No bloody footprints or fingerprints were immediately found. Crime-scene techs from both CPD and Covington were still there when Will drove back downtown. The adjacent riverbank showed no recent tracks. Whoever killed her had probably come from the river.

Will heard a thunderclap from outside as the chief kept talking.

“…We will spare nothing to capture the killer or killers. We definitely want them badly…”

No knife was found on the boat. Divers had spent the day searching the river bottom, although Will was not optimistic. The lead diver told him what he’d heard before when evidence was being sought in the Ohio River: You can’t even see your hand in front of you down in that water. A search a mile above and below the crime scene along the riverbank hadn’t turned up anything but garbage, especially beer bottles.

The chief continued: “…I’ll take some questions now, but I’ll warn you that we won’t discuss details or anything that might jeopardize the case. I’ll close with an appeal to anyone who might have been on the Licking River on Saturday night or Sunday morning and might have seen anything suspicious, or seen this boat, to call us at this number on the screen behind me.” He read out the phone number, too.

Will was astonished that the first question was what would happen to the new season of
Lady Cops: Cincinnati
?

After the chief called an end to questions, the reporters obediently filed out one door, the commanders another. Cincinnati was that kind of town. People still played by certain rules. Will finally sat in the blessed chair, careful as always to make sure he was really centered because he couldn’t feel every part of his butt. The light returned to its normal unhealthy fluorescent glow, the four walls containing nothing but silence. His right leg jumped up violently. He forced it down with his hands and shook it, like someone with nervous leg syndrome instead of a spinal cord that had been chewed up by tumors and surgical instruments. He dry-swallowed his five p.m. Baclofen pill, tried to generate some saliva, swallowed again. Within a minute, the right leg settled down.

He felt the hand on his shoulder.

“How you feeling, Will?”

“Good, chief. I’m okay.”

The chief pulled up another chair and sat, an alert posture with his back straight and his hips near the edge of the seat. Will was finally full-back in his chair, grateful for the furniture under him, the weight off his legs, and a stable surface beneath him.

“How are our friends in the Commonwealth treating you?”

“Good. How can you not love a department who has a lieutenant colonel named Spike Jones?” Receiving not even a hint of a smile, he hurried on. “They have six detectives on this, between Covington and the Kenton sheriff. But they understand we’re going to want a big role. The dive team’s been in the river all day. I’ve sent crime-scene over to work with them. We should know more about the boat by tomorrow.”

“Good, good.” He nodded, looking Will in the eye. “You’ll tell me what you need from us? Resources, manpower. I talked to the mayor and city manager, and overtime won’t be a problem.”

Will nodded. He kept his own doubts and fears to himself. He wasn’t in good enough shape to be the lead detective, certainly not on such an important case. But he didn’t dare say no, didn’t dare show weakness. The city was struggling with budget cuts and Will knew he was lucky to have a job. He intended to keep it.

“Gruber was a good cop,” the chief said.

“Yes, sir.”

Will hesitated. “We’re going to need to talk to her boyfriend, if she has one. Ex-husband. The usual. I can coordinate all that. I’ll get a timeline of her past few days, see how often she went out on the boat and with who. But I also want access to her emails, work and home, phone records. She was on national television. She might have had stalkers. The other officers on the show, you might want to give them an extra heads-up. This might be a one-off killing, but you never know.”

The chief nodded. “You follow it wherever it leads, but get this son of a bitch.”

“Yes, sir.” He said the words, but wondered if the commanders really wanted to know wherever the truth might lead. What if Gruber wasn’t a good cop? What if it was a typical sleazy domestic violence or romantic triangle gone wrong? His paranoia kicked in: Why was he sent alone to Covington this morning—why not a real homicide team? Maybe command wanted to keep things discreet; cop gossip traveled fast. Maybe he was being set up.

The chief leaned in an inch. “There’s one more thing. And I know you have a lot on your plate.”

Will waited.

“The D.B. this morning. The one in Over-the-Rhine.”

“The cellist.”

“Exactly. You still have season tickets to the symphony?”

“I do.” Will figured he was the only officer on the force who did.

“That’ll help. The symphony board is climbing down my throat on this one.” He sighed. “As if one headliner isn’t enough right now. Maybe you’d be willing to go over tomorrow, meet with the president, and make sure they know we’re doing all we can? These are some powerful people. You’ll know precisely the right touch in this kind of situation. It’s one skill your friend, Dodds doesn’t have. You know what I mean.”

Will knew.

Chapter Nine

Cheryl Beth was back in Cincinnati by five, curled up on her sofa at the little bungalow she owned in Clifton, which sat at the end of Sauer Avenue on a bluff. In the winter, you could look south out the kitchen window and see Over-the-Rhine and downtown. In spring and summer, it was as if those vistas had never existed. A tree canopy ran from her small backyard into Bellevue Hill Park and all she could see was green. She was on her second glass of wine and she had the band Over the Rhine on the sound system. The songs were as pensive and mournful as her mood. Her mind still back at the jail with Noah Smith. He looked impossibly frightened, alone, and innocent. But was he? Hank Brooks was convinced he was a killer.

It didn’t track for her. How could Noah alone have killed two fit young women?

Then her concern over him switched to guilt: her own. It wasn’t only about Noah. Holly Metzger and Lauren Benish were dead. Two bright young women who would have made fine nurses. Dead.

A too-familiar dread washed over her. The spike of ice grew in her abdomen. She saw the blue tarp again, could only imagine what lay behind it. When the murder happened at the old hospital, she had been followed and spied on by the killer, and this lovely old house, her sanctuary, had become a domicile of fear. She had pulled the curtains tight all those weeks, triple-checked the locks, especially after she had seen the footprints in her flowerbeds. Another policeman had saved her then, a man very different from Hank Brooks. She missed him.

Sitting still and stewing was not an option. She tended to fill any vacuum that appeared. It made her a good nurse. Sometimes it made her supervisors crazy. More than once an evaluation had used the words “bull in a China shop.”

She shut off the music and dug through her class files to find the information cards she asked each student to fill out at the beginning of the semester. They included emergency contacts. She sipped the glass of Chardonnay too fast, carefully studying Holly and Lauren’s cards, putting them on the side table, picking each up in turn. She walked to the kitchen, poured another glass, came back to stretch out on the sofa, and picked up the telephone.

Holly’s mother answered on the eighth ring. Cheryl Beth identified herself and told the woman how sorry she was. Nursing had taught her to be a master of the difficult conversation: the terminal diagnosis, the failed surgery, and the too-many things that went wrong in hospitals. When the doctors had said their lines and left, it was up to the nurses to stay with the patient and the family, pick up the pieces of mortality. Still, this was inexplicably difficult. She told the mother what a good student her daughter was, what a fine person, quick to help her classmates, and to make a joke. By the end, they were both crying.

Lauren’s parents lived in Kettering, a suburb of Dayton. When the phone was picked up, the voice on the other end sounded young and businesslike.

“My name is Cheryl Beth Wilson and I’m calling for Mr. or Mrs. Benish.”

“They’re not available and you news people are horrible for harassing us at a time like this.”

“No, I’m not with the news. I know this is a terrible moment for you all.” She heard her voice lapse into y’all. “I was one of Lauren’s nursing instructors at Miami, and I felt I should call. I wanted to let you know how sorry I am, and ask if there’s anything I can do. Anything.”

After a pause, the woman’s tone softened. “I’m sorry. The TV people have been calling nonstop. I won’t let mom and dad pick up. I’m scared to death they’ll just send a camera crew to our front lawn. Cheryl Beth, my name is April and I’m Lauren’s big sister.” She choked a moment. “Was.”

“April, I am so sorry. Lauren was such a joy to have in class. I wish I would have had a chance to get to know her better.”

“Thank you,” the woman said. “At least they caught the monster who would do such a thing. Thank God.”

“Yes.”

They made small talk for ten minutes. April inevitably asked about the origins of Cheryl Beth’s accent. Then, “I’ve been so afraid something like this might happen. I told myself not to over-react, not to be the overbearing big sister…”

“What do you mean?”

“Lauren thought she was being stalked.”

Cheryl Beth sat upright.

“It started about a month ago. She told me this creep came onto her in a bar and she tried to give him a nice brush-off and he wouldn’t go. She finally ended up leaving, getting in her car, and driving off with the guy standing on the curb watching her. Then she started seeing him on campus. He’d follow her at a distance, but she knew he wasn’t walking there by accident, if you know what I mean. It wasn’t a coincidence. This happened twice.”

“Was he a student?”

“I don’t know. Lauren said he definitely didn’t fit in with the college crowd in the bar. He was older, she said, but he was in good shape. Oh, he was completely bald. She said he looked like Mister Clean, you know?”

That didn’t describe Noah Smith.

April said, “In the bar, he’d been all friendly and funny, but when he wanted to take it further and she said no, he got all weird. Then the stalking.”

Cheryl Beth asked if Lauren had notified the police.

“No,” April said. “She was forever blaming herself for things. She was afraid she’s been too provocative and flirty in the bar. Then she thought maybe she was imagining that he was really following her. But she was afraid. I can tell you that. I was about to come down there and make her go to the campus police when this happened.”

“Did you tell all this to Detective Brooks?”

“I don’t know who that is,” April said. “My parents got a call from the university and had to go down and…” A sniffle broke her control, “…identify Lauren’s body. They didn’t know about this. Lauren wouldn’t tell them. They’re very protective and she wanted to be independent. It makes me want to throw up.”

When the phone rang a little after seven, Cheryl Beth thought it might be April calling her back. She answered on the first ring and could hear the anxiety in her own voice.

No one spoke. She could hear a background of voices and telephones ringing, then a hand muffling the receiver. The peculiar dread of a mysterious call sanded her nerve endings.

Finally: “Cheryl Beth?” A man’s voice. A nice baritone, vaguely familiar.

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“I’m not sure you remember me. My name is Will Borders. I was a patient at Cincinnati General when you were the pain nurse…”

She felt a catch in her throat and hesitated. Then, “Of course I remember you, Will. Tell me how you’re doing?”

“I’m doing well. I’m back at work, on the force.”

“I’ve seen your name in the paper and hoped you were all right.” She could hear more voices and phones in the background. “Where are you?”

“I’m in homicide right now. Detective Dodds sends his best.”

A deeper voice called, “Hello, Cheryl Beth!” and laughed.

“Tell him ‘hi’ back.”

She heard a rustling and Dodds came on. “Are you still as beautiful as the last time I saw you?”

“Hello, Detective Dodds.” She laughed. “The last time you saw me I was beaten up and bloody.”

“You were the most beautiful beaten up and bloody I’ve ever seen. Anyway, I’ll give you back to Mister President.”

“Sorry,” Will said. “He gets very enthusiastic.”

“I can see that. Why does he call you Mister President?”

“Long story.” He paused. “Anyway, I’m walking. I use a cane. But I’m walking.”

“That is so great. I prayed for that, Will.” She blurted that last part out suddenly and then worried if she had gone too far.

After a long pause, Will said, “I hope I’m not calling at a bad time. I’ve wanted to call and check in. There’s no excuse for not doing it sooner.”

She smiled and said nothing.

He said, “I wonder if you’d have a drink with me sometime? It’s okay if you say no. I understand. I know this out of left field…”

“Will,” she interrupted, “I’d love to.”