Powers of Arrest (9 page)

Maybe part of it was the “wow” view. He couldn’t keep his eyes from roaming to the left, into the little jewels of lights on Mount Adams, to Theresa, to her needless death. They had become accidental lovers, yet he wasn’t there to protect her when she needed him most. The weights on his heart that were never gone pulled painfully. Somehow, he let himself think again of Cheryl Beth, without anxiety and regret, and as he did, he fell asleep.

As his legs started quivering, he found himself with his father. They were both in uniform, their shirts incandescently white against the darkness of the narrow alley. Dirty brick walls of tenements hemmed them in. The only light besides their uniform shirts was a yellow streetlight half a block away: it backlit a shadow that approached slowly. Will reached for his service weapon but his holster was empty. He shouted to warn his father, “get down!” “take cover!” but his mouth seemed sewn shut. The words would not come out, instead being half-born primal sounds trapped inside him. The shots came as long fingers of flame from the shadow’s hand. Then the shadow was gone and his father was gone and only John was left standing in the alley, watching him.

When Will’s eyes came open and he was still sitting on the balcony, chilled from the post-midnight air, staring at the skyline, it still took him a full minute to know for certain he was awake.

Tuesday

Chapter Twelve

At a quarter past six that morning, Cheryl Beth stepped off the elevator at The Christ Hospital to begin her clinical day with the nursing students. Fortunately, this was only a few blocks from home. It was probably the best hospital in Cincinnati and it actively recruited her when Memorial Hospital closed. She might still come here permanently, on staff. She was impressed with the people and the facilities, and it always felt good to be back in her soft scrubs with her white lab coat. The rhythms of the hospital morning were in high gear. She was in her element.

The usual routine began: checking the patient census for new patients, surgical schedule, tests scheduled, and discharges. She also did a quick look at the in-service classes scheduled that the students could benefit by attending. Then she had a conversation with the charge nurse, asking a couple of questions to clarify the situation of one patient. The overnight shift was eager to get home. As the clinical instructor, Cheryl Beth reviewed the nurses coming on duty and which students would be working with them. She walked down the hall to find two new patients, introduced herself, and asked if they would be comfortable being treated by student nurses. Some patients would refuse to have a student care for them, not realizing that they would get even better care and more attention from the student considering how stretched the regular R.N. staff could be. Especially if they were treated by
her
students.

Classes had resumed at Miami, so she expected all her students at the hospital for their clinical. And by 6:45, all were there. Cheryl Beth met them at the nurses’ bay. She was proud of her group, having watched them grow in skills and confidence over the semester. Each one was now good enough to care for as many as three patients at once.

Yet now everyone was subdued and the absence of the two girls, even of Noah, was an unspoken weight as they gathered in a semicircle. She thought about leading a prayer, but settled for a moment of silence. It wasn’t much silence, with all the hospital sounds around them, but it would have to do. That only brought her back to her conversation last night with Lauren’s sister: an older bald man was stalking Lauren. The students had been here all semester for their clinical work. Was there any way he had first seen her here?

After the silence, she handed out assignments for the day. Then they listened to report, as the off-going shift briefed the oncoming shift. She tried to concentrate: what went on overnight, what of note occurred the evening shift before, the status of IVs, when the last pain meds were administered, which post-op patients had voided or eaten or been ambulated. The status of wounds. Anything to be expected this shift. She watched the young faces and knew they were struggling to focus, too. She would have to keep a close eye on them today.

She was happy to have heard from Will Borders. That was the best news of the past twenty-four hours. He sounded so shy and tentative, this man who had been so good in the worst situations. It was an attractive feature, considering the usual demeanor of doctors who hit on her and especially of the one she had foolishly had an affair with. Was it an affair? It lacked the fun of a romp. Maybe a fling. Whatever, it had been bad news. With doctors, there was always the undercurrent of power and class when they had relationships with nurses. On the other hand, she knew friends who had dated and married cops. Those hadn’t always worked out happily, either. But this man seemed different. And she realized she was getting way ahead of herself with Will.

She cocked her head at one student to make sure he was listening. They had all heard her lecture. Report was a sacred rite and a critical issue that was too often watered down or violated. When that happened, it was a sure path to get misinformation or no information or to miss vital clues about a patient’s condition. As the quality of care had deteriorated at Memorial, she traced much of it to sloppy report. But she was a stickler.

At Christ, high-caliber report wasn’t a problem. The charge nurse, a stout black woman with very short hair and blowsy purple scrubs, went methodically though each patient’s name, room number, age, reason for hospitalization, current status and vitals, and what was expected for the new shift. IV fluids were done right here. It was always bad karma for the rest of the day to tell the oncoming shift that there were still 200 cc’s in the IV fluid bag, only to have the light come on and the patient say over the intercom that the bag was dry and the machine was beeping.

“You have to run and take care of that and the rest of your planned day goes up in smoke,” Cheryl Beth had lectured her students. They couldn’t count on landing jobs at the best hospitals, but they could improve what they found by giving and insisting on getting a thorough report.

The status of wounds: the term referred to post-op patients, but it made her think of Lauren and Holly. Then she had seen the newspaper that morning, with a page one story about the murder of a Cincinnati policewoman. It said she was the star of a reality television show, but Cheryl Beth had never seen it. She was more attracted to
Masterpiece Theater
kinds of shows,
Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Morse,
plus some gardening and cooking shows. The title of the reality police show sounded demeaning, but the woman herself seemed very accomplished. Found in her boat on the Licking River, dead of multiple knife wounds. Cheryl Beth’s hands had turned cold as she read this. Could there be a connection with what happened in the Formal Gardens or was she reaching? Was Will Borders involved in this case? Unlike the typical crime story, his name wasn’t mentioned.

Focus on report, Cheryl Beth.

Afterward, she huddled with the students once again, being a nag about their nursing care plans.

“NCPs are the work of the devil…” one of the charge nurses said, laughing.

“Don’t listen to her,” Cheryl Beth said in good-natured dudgeon.

Her students chanted in unison: “It is a tool designed to identify the needs of the patient based on a physical assessment, the medical diagnosis, any treatments or surgical interventions past, present or future. Family, social, psychological, and spiritual needs, and the most important, the nursing interventions to meet the needs.”

Cheryl Beth laughed hard for the first time in two days. “I’ll expect them from you at the end of the week. And remember, I want one in-depth NCP on one patient of your choice at the end of semester. That’s coming right up.”

Everyone groaned. As they went off, her smile faded and she thought: what happened in the Formal Gardens is the work of the devil.

She turned to begin her day of perpetual motion when the elevators opened and a familiar figure strode purposefully in her direction. It was one of those out-of-place moments and she didn’t immediately recognize the silhouette, one the shape of a small refrigerator, coming her way.

“Hank?”

“Glad I caught you.” It was indeed Hank Brooks of the Oxford Police Department. “I need to talk to your students.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, talk? To all your students.”

“Well you picked a damned bad time, Hank.”

“You’re pretty when you’re angry.”

“That’s a cliché,” she said, frustrated that it showed. “And you’re an oaf.”

“So others have said. Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Jodie Foster?”

“Only all my life, Hank. I don’t see it.”

“So where are they?”

“Hank, they’re attending to patients, and I need to be checking on them. You can’t barge in here.”

“I can and will.” His nose was three inches away. He really was about her height. “I want to interview each student. Did they know the dead girls? Did they know Noah? Yes. I need their statements.”

“Why?”

“Because this is a homicide investigation.”

Cheryl Beth put her hands on her hips. This was her environment, not his, and in a moment the reality caused him to let out a long sigh.

He steered her to a corner by the code cart. “Cheryl Beth, this guy is a bad dude, get me? He was Army Special Forces, served in Iraq. I suspect one of his specialties was knife combat. We searched his apartment and found two different knives there.”

“So was one of them used in the attack?”

“No.” He stared at his feet like a little boy caught doing something wrong.

Her phone buzzed and she checked it: A text from one of her students: a patient was complaining about his pain meds.

“I’ve got to go, Hank.”

He held her shoulder in a firm grip. “Goddamnit, Cheryl Beth, I’m going to have to kick this guy loose by Thursday morning if I can’t get some evidence. Maybe sooner.”

“What?”

“You heard me. There’s not evidence enough to hold him. I’m going to get my ass handed to me by a public defender, no less.

“I saw the police catch him right there.”

“Yeah, I wish the real world worked like one of those TV shows, but that’s not enough. He claims he was attacked, too. He was a decorated soldier. You very helpfully found that goose egg on the back of his head. We don’t have a weapon. We don’t have a motive. The D.A. won’t file on him. So they’ll probably release him for now. And while we’re trying to make a case, this bad dude is going to be out on the street, maybe coming to a place near you.”

“Maybe he didn’t do it.”

“You know he did!” He whispered it harshly, slapping a fist in the other palm. “Do you know how those girls died? He raped them with a knife. That’s right. He cut them to pieces down there and let them bleed to death.”

Cheryl Beth visibly winced. “But these were two strong young women. I don’t understand. Could there have been more than one attacker?”

“Lauren was also stabbed in the back. My guess is she tried to get away while he was attacking Holly. It’s not unheard of for two women to be raped by one man armed with a knife. They’re both scared. They want to live through it. When Lauren realized what was really happening, she tried to make a break, he ran her down, and stabbed her.”

Now it was her turn to look at the floor. She was hardly a novice to gore, but this…

“You need to know this, too,” Brooks said. “These girls were arranged after he killed them. Like…like some kind of sick artwork. He wanted us to see what he had done. He wanted to make sure, I don’t know, that we understood he was in total control. That they were his toys, his conquest. I’ll tell you something else. I had a talk this morning with a Cincinnati detective. That policewoman who was murdered on the Licking River? The one who’s on TV? She was raped with a knife, too, and handcuffed. Sometime early Sunday morning.” He stared at her with a red face. “I need your help.”

She ran schedules and logistics through her head. “All right, we can set you up, uh, maybe at the café on A, and I’ll bring each one down separately. But you’re going to have to be patient. They’ve got work to do, it’s close to the end of semester, it’s the start of the shift, everybody’s busy.”

“God, you don’t make it easy, woman. Fine. Show me the way.”

“I’ll tell you the way. I’ve got to go down the hall right now.” She gave him directions to the café.

She added: “Did Lauren’s sister call you?”

“What?”

“Her sister, April. I talked to her last night and she said Lauren thought she was being stalked. She described a bald man, older, nothing like Noah.”

“Are you working my case, Cheryl Beth?”

“No, Hank. I told her to call you. Now go down there to the café and I’ll bring you a student when I can break her free, and I’ll give you April’s number. In the meantime, unless you’re an R.N., I’ve got work to do here, and you’re in the way.”

Chapter Thirteen

Will parked beside the imposing Victorian edifice on Elm Street that was Music Hall and limped into the offices of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Music Hall itself looked like a great red-brick cathedral to music with a grand pitched roof and circular window, guarded on either side by sharp-topped towers. It had been built in 1878 on top of a pauper’s graveyard, where the dead had been buried without coffins. The stories went that during construction, onlookers would play around with the disinterred bones before workers could toss them into barrels set aside for that purpose. When a new elevator shaft was built in 1988, more remains were found. Ghost stories were as much a part of the building as great music. The offices, reached by a side entrance, were far plainer. Instead of the staid elegance of the concert hall, they formed a clutter of cubicles and little rooms added over many decades, half renovated, half modern, slightly shabby.

Even so, Will knew that of all the city’s arts organizations, the Cincinnati Symphony was the kingdom and the power and the glory. It was fiercely protective of itself. This would be a difficult meeting.

He showed his badge and was greeted by a wren of a dark-haired woman from the marketing department, looking fine in a navy blue suit with a skirt slightly above the knees. She led him back to the president’s office.

“Forgive me if this is too personal,” she said. “But I hope you’re not in pain.”

The damned cane again.

“Not much,” Will said.

“My husband had an accident on his motorcycle,” she said. “Since then, he’s been in terrible pain, and nobody can really help him. He’s afraid of getting addicted to Oxycontin or something like that. But…”

“If you like, I know someone who might be able to give you a referral. My friend, Cheryl Beth Wilson…”

They were almost there when a tall man threw open the door and nearly slammed it. Will was paying more attention to the wren and the daydream of Cheryl Beth, but the movement ahead caught his attention. The man bent over, tied a shoe, and then fiddled with the back pocket of his baggy jeans, producing a ball cap, which he slapped on. Then he stalked toward them, looking down, and shaking his head. His long-legged stride covered the ten feet that separated them in seconds. Will stopped walking and stood.

“Excuse us,” the wren said.

The man looked up and halted abruptly. He had a face young but rutted with creases, and set off with a wide mouth, and strong jaw. At the moment, it held an indignant expression. He stared Will in the eye. Will was past dancing with anyone who was in his path. He couldn’t move that fast any longer, so he continued to stand there. The man glared harder, then sidestepped, and brusquely walked on. Under his breath: “Get the fuck out of the way.”

Will thought about making something of it, but stopped himself. He wondered if his stepson would act any better in the circumstances. Hell, he remembered his old, impatient self when facing someone with a disability. He wouldn’t have cursed, but he might well have wondered why this person was in his way. He was no better than anybody. In any event, he was on a peace mission from the chief.

“Sorry,” the wren said. “That’s the president’s son. He can be a bit abrupt.”

“Those aren’t the words I’d use.”

She smiled uncomfortably and led him into more spacious digs.

In two more minutes he was sitting in a deep comfortable chair facing the desk of Kathryn S. Buchanan, president of the CSO. He hoped he could get back out of that chair without too much trouble. His legs had awoken him after an hour’s sleep and he was still sitting on the balcony. He had gotten, maybe, four hours of sleep last night, his new normal.

Buchanan was somewhere north of fifty but looked at least ten years younger, with features as delicate and poised as her son’s were large and emphatic. Will guessed her suit and shoes cost as much as a month of his salary. Cindy dressed that way now. He pushed his ex-wife away and tried to sit at attention, properly representing the department. After his back could take it no longer, he sank back into the cushions, and admired the large portraits of famous CSO conductors on her wall: Leopold Stokowski, Thomas Schippers, and Paavo Jervi.

“Your chief tells me you have season tickets to the symphony,” she was saying. “That’s highly unusual for a police officer, if you’ll forgive me seeming to stereotype. But, hey, I’m extremely grateful. And you enjoy the symphony apparently, not only the Pops.”

“You can thank my mother. She started bringing me as a kid. She thought I was a piano prodigy. I wasn’t, and my dad was having none of that anyway. He was a cop and I was no prodigy. But I came away with a love of classical…”

“Men are a difficult demographic, even ones without a blue-collar background, no offense,” she interrupted, already unimpressed with him. “Their wives drag them along.” She had been here only two years, having come from Atlanta. He wasn’t sure she fully understood what classical music meant to Cincinnati, but she had absorbed the subtle Indian Hill snobbishness well. He had no doubt that she had also learned the aggressive defensiveness of all who loved the symphony.

She shrugged and leaned toward him. “Now, to this tragedy. Jeremy Snowden was one of our rising stars, as you probably know. He was pure Cincinnati. Born here. Studied at CCM with Stephanie Foust…” Will also knew Foust was the principal cellist for the orchestra, even knew she held the Linda and David Goodman Endowed Chair, because he read the programs. “…who studied at Julliard. As for Jeremy, the whole world was before him. I could list the prestigious competitions he had won, the orchestras trying to steal him away…oh!” She shook her head and seemed on the verge of tears before quickly composing herself.

“I’m counting on you to understand this, Detective Borders. You know the deep history of this orchestra and what it means to the community. The May Festival is coming right up. And these aren’t easy times for even an orchestra of our caliber.” She held her palms up as if everything should be perfectly obvious.

“How may I help, Ms. Buchanan?”

“That man Dodds. He’s very unpleasant.”

“You’re telling me. He was my partner for eight years.”

Her perfect small mouth didn’t register even a millimeter of amusement. It was as if he had let out a loud, long fart at the Queen City Club.

“He wants to talk to members of the orchestra,” she said. “That’s unacceptable. These are world-class musicians. Their time is simply beyond price. And we’re a family grieving over this tragedy.”

“Detective Dodds is the finest homicide investigator in the state, maybe even the nation,” Will said as calmly as he could. “It’s normal to speak with coworkers. We need to know if Mr. Snowden had enemies…”

“Enemies!” Her calm demeanor vanished and Will saw a bit of that raw anger from her son’s face. “It’s perfectly obvious what this is! Some…some…ghetto youth from the ghetto murdered him. They deal drugs right out in the open, you know, right out in Washington Park. We warn our musicians about this neighborhood. My god, I’m sometimes afraid here in the middle of the day.”

“We can’t be sure of who did it, I’m sorry to say. He wasn’t robbed. His cello was still in the car. The murderer could be anyone. It could be a crime of passion…”

“That’s absurd. He had become engaged to be married only a month ago!”

“It would be the first place I’d look for a suspect. Discreetly, of course.” His brain told him not to say it, but now he was getting pissed. “The cello is a sensuous instrument, played between the legs.” Her eyes shot open and she flushed. Will continued: “It could also be blackmail, or a case of mistaken identity, wrong-place-wrong-time, a kidnapping gone wrong.”

“This is unbelievable.” She shook her head but not a strand of expensively maintained hair moved.

“We’ll still have to talk to the musicians, ma’am.” Will used his best respectful-but-firm voice. Inside he was disgusted with the sense of privilege and haughtiness. It’s never about the victim. It’s always about the reputation of their companies and organizations and rich Cincinnati tribes. He could never get used to it.

“So you’re not going to help.” Her voice was flat and seething.

“I am, ma’am. And you need to do your part, as well.”

“I have friends on city council,” she said, her voice no longer heated but now almost languid. “I have friends beyond that. This is not the end of the matter, Mr. Borders. Now, I have an important meeting.”

He used every trick he had learned in months of physical therapy to stand in one fluid motion. Somehow he did it. “We’ll handle this investigation with tact and confidentiality. But our detectives will talk to your people.”

For several seconds she stared as if her brain had stopped processing. Then her eyes found him again. “Very well. But I expect you to put a stop to the media’s incessant calling.”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. The phone call to the chief about him was coming anyway. “The First Amendment is beyond my control, Ms. Buchanan. Don’t get up. I’ll find my way out.”

The wren in the short skirt was gone, so he wandered through the hallways for a moment. He had actually heard Jeremy Snowden play several times with the whole orchestra, once as a soloist on Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 1. Snowden was indeed very gifted and now the gift was dead, murdered. But he, not Kathryn S. Buchanan or the CSO, was the vic.

A custodian recognized him from the television and offered to give him a tour backstage, even take him into the attics “where the ghosts hang out.” Will regretfully turned him down.

He was back in the car when his phone rang: Dodds.

“Where are you?”

“I’m at Music Hall trying to do damage control because of your winning personality.”

“Ah, fuck ‘em. I got an arrest.”

“Do tell.”

“Black male, twenty-five, tried to rob a motorist with a knife this morning two blocks from where the cello player was killed. Motorist maces him and drives away, dragging the suspect two blocks until he falls off, thanks to the intervention of a mail box.” Dodds was laughing the entire time. “So he’s in custody. And the sweetest little thing of all? We’ve got his fingerprint on the door of the cello player’s Lexus. Case clearance, my brother. So you, PIO, need to put out the news.”

“You get to do that, Dodds. The chief has given me leave while I work Gruber.”

“So I heard.” His voice changed. “I hate talking to the media.”

“Welcome to my world.”

“I can do it, though. Give a handsome African-American face to the department.”

“I’ll tweet it,” Will volunteered.

“Fuck you. Let me give you some friendly intel, partner. Not all the brass was happy when the chief let you come back, and they’re sure as hell not happy now that you’re the lead on Gruber. They don’t know why you didn’t take disability and go away.”

Will had suspected as much, but his stomach churned anyway.

“Fair enough,” he said. “And if I were you, I’d show around some photos of that expensive letter opener. In case your suspect isn’t really a…ghetto youth.”

Dodds was cursing him when the connection ended.