CHAPTER
48
The lady behind the human resources desk was very accommodating. She knew who Detective Ash was. She looked up from her desk and said, "We'll need these forms filled out." She handed Megan two sheets of paper, and then said, "And make sure to include your department of transfer and the Administrative Officer in charge at that location. He or she will have to approve the transfer, along with your Commanding Officer."
Megan stared at the nice lady as if she'd asked her to drop off her firstborn on the way out
.
I have to ask permission?
She was so tired of not being in control. All she wanted to do was move to another part of town and work out of another department. Megan knew that getting Gerald's signature would be next to impossible. Megan thought about arguing the point, but she knew this woman had no say in the matter. She'd worry about that later.
"Thank you,"
Megan said, as she gathered up the paperwork and turned to leave.
"Detective," the lady called out
. Megan turned back.
"Yes?"
"I…I know how hard you're all working these days. I hope you catch him. I mean, I know you're trying, it's just…I have a nine year old daughter."
The lady
realized she was stepping over the line, so to compensate she added, "I'll do all I can for you with the transfer."
Megan nodded, turned
, and walked through the door, leaving behind a scared mother who was probably sleeping in the same bed as her young daughter.
***
Most police and sheriff homicide divisions are the same. There's a limited supply of detectives to work however many homicides cases are running at any given time. The city or county tries to match the amount of personnel with the given homicide rate for the area, but the funds are not always there. Each detective works anywhere from three to six homicides at any one time. The longer it takes to crack a case, the lower the case falls on the leader board, until one day, it's erased from the board and goes to a "cold case" file. By that time, all leads have been exhausted and the lead detective on the case spends little or no time working it. These "cold cases" continue to haunt the investigators who worked them for years to come. Megan had a few such cases, but each one was a single murder, a single victim, if you don't count family and friends of the deceased.
She didn't plan on the
Bedroom Killer case to ever become a cold case. As much as she hated it, as much as she hated working with Bell and the conditions of the case—young girls being strangled in their beds—she would never stop working this case until either she caught the guy or she died. She knew she would never be able to just walk away and move on. Even if she did transfer. She owed it to the girls who died for no reason. She'd imagined the fear in each young girl's mind as she awoke to find a stranger staring down at her and feeling the rope tighten around her throat.
Who is he
?
Why is he doing this
?
Where is Mom
?
Why
? Why? Why?
Megan shook away the thought and pushed through the hallways to find the employee
s' kitchen. The black-and-white checkerboard linoleum floor tiles in the hallway reminded her of an old 1960s CIA movie she'd watched years earlier. They'd had the same black-and-white squares in the government building. She wasn't sure why she'd remembered something like that, but she had, and she figured the design must have been common in the fifties, which was the same time this government building had been built.
Random thoughts in a crazy world.
She grabbed a packet of oatmeal from the box supplied to the staff, and poured it into a Styrofoam coffee cup
. She walked to the coffee machine and pushed the hot water handle. She grabbed a spoon and mashed the oatmeal together, adding a bit more water until she got it to where she wanted it. When she turned around she found Andy standing in the doorway. She froze, a feeling of paranoia coming over her. She couldn't figure out why until she glanced at one of the four lunch tables in the room—and spotted her transfer paperwork. How could she just leave that sitting out in plain site?
Act cool.
Andy walked past Megan, grabbed a cup, and filled it with coffee. "How you feeling today?" he asked.
Andy stepped over to face M
egan and peered down at the papers sitting on the table. The word
Transfer
stuck out like a billboard sign in the title of the document. Megan caught his glance but didn't want to bring attention to that fact, so she went right into her answer.
"I'm fine,"
Megan said. "Just a little hungry. Everything was matched at least to Ms. Sharp and Dr. Randall. I need to call back down there today. I meant to make the call earlier, but I was tied up on other stuff. You would think they would rush something like this, but you know what they always say—'there’s lots of killers out there and yours isn't any more special than all the others.'"
Megan was rambling and she could tell by Andy's expression that he was thinking the same thing
.
"Andy."
Megan and Andy turned to find Gerald staring at them. Immediately, Megan looked down from the corner of her eye at her transfer papers—they were right in front of Gerald, and Andy was between her and her papers. She couldn't just walk over and pick them up because she knew Gerald would follow her every move as he always did, no matter who was in the room or who he was talking to.
"Yeah
," Andy said.
"You talk with that neighbor again
—across the street from Sharp?" Gerald said.
Andy approached his commanding officer and scooped up Megan's paperwork as if they were his and said, "Heading over there right now
," as he walked past Gerald, leaving Megan in a hidden panic.
He took my papers?
But just as quickly Andy popped his head back in and said, "Megan, I'll meet you at the car."
When
Gerald looked back at Andy, Andy said, "The lady seems to have a hard time with men, twice divorced. We figured Megan might charm her into being a bit more forthcoming."
A
ndy lifted his hand clutching the paperwork and, waving it at Megan, and said, "See you at the car." Then turned and walked out. Once Andy was gone, Gerald turned his attention toward Megan. He stared at her without saying a word. The same stare he's given her for so many years, and the one that held a million secrets and threatened her to her core every time she saw it. She could pull her gun on the hardest of criminals and scream at them to drop to their knees, fully ready to pull the trigger if they so much as flinched in the wrong direction, but it only took one stare from Gerald to send her to her own knees, trembling with fear. It was all she could do to keep from screaming as she walked past him and into the hallway. He never moved, never said a word as she passed by. Now she had to find Andy
and get her paperwork back.
CHAPTER 49
"You're not serious?" Danny said.
Danny stared across the sidewalk at John, trying his best to comprehend what John had just admitted to him
. "The detective? The one investigating the murders? That detective?" Danny asked.
"Yes,"
John said.
Danny opened his mouth again but nothing came out
. His eyes scrunched together and he whirled around to stare off into space—the words not coming.
"I know what you're thinking
," John said.
Danny turned back around
. "No, John, I don't think you do. I can't figure out if this is a good thing or not. In any other circumstance, I would be smiling and congratulating you. But she arrested you, John."
"
She
didn't arrest me," John said, correcting Danny.
"You know what I mean
. You were a suspect. You know what would happen if the press got hold of this? She'd lose her job. No doubt," Danny said.
"She's too close to the investigation,"
John said. "They wouldn't get rid of her. She knows too much. She's been on it from day one."
"You really think City Hall will just look the other way or tell the public, hey, we're sorry your kids keep dying but we see no problem with our top investigator shacking up with a former murder suspect?"
"We're not
shacking up
," John said.
"John, you have to break it off
. At least until they catch the guy."
"
That’s just it; I'm helping her catch the guy."
"What do you mean you're
helping
her?"
"We're discussing the case
. I'm reading files, helping run down clues."
Danny's jaw dropped
again.
"You're fucking nuts
. You know that, don't you?" Danny said.
John nodded in agreement.
"I can't explain it, Danny. It just feels like what I have to do right now. I have to be a part of this. I have to help find this guy."
John held his thumb and index finger together so they were almost touching
. "I was this close to him," John said. "He was lying across my car hood staring through my front windshield at me. If I'd known who he was or what he'd just done, I would have taken my gun and shot him myself."
John looked off in the distance, and in
sotto voce
, very softly, said, "But I wasted my only bullet."
Danny watched
John as he stared into space at the thought of being that close.
"Come on," Danny said, "Let's get this done."
They turned in unison and walked down the ramp to the employee entrance of Greenwood Memorial. Danny punched in his key code, the door latch clicked, and they both walked in. John immediately felt a cold shiver run through his body as the distinctive antiseptic smell of the hospital hit his nasal passages. The memories flooded in like a tsunami overtaking a sandy beach.
He was back
.
He hadn't walked through that door since that night just over a year ago.
His last shift.
From
noon to nine in the evening, every other day. He spent most nights tending to sprained ankles, broken arms, lacerations, flu walk-ins, and the occasional car accident victim. They walked past the cafeteria. John could smell the bacon and eggs that he had so loved, always on the menu, no matter what time of day or night. He wondered if he would see anyone he knew. He didn't want to have to talk to anyone. They came to the elevator and Danny punched the
up
button. They stood in silence as they waited. John saw Danny eying him as if trying to get a sense of his emotional state.
The elevator door opened and they stepped in
. Danny stabbed number four and the doors closed. They were lifted to the fourth floor, and then walked down the hall to Dr. Samuelson's office. Danny nodded to the receptionist behind the counter and she pushed a button, which unlocked the door. John and Danny walked inside. They followed a young lady down a short hallway, where she guided them into an empty patient room.
John took his place on the table
, and Danny sat in a corner. He found a
Time
magazine on the rack and tossed it to John. Danny pulled a
People
and flipped through the pages. Danny and John knew each other well enough that they didn't have to fill their time talking. Sometimes they had spent hours just reading at a table or hiking the local trail behind the hospital without saying much more than a few words. They liked it that way. Ten minutes later, Dr. Samuelson knocked and stepped inside.
"
Hello, hello, hello…sorry to keep you waiting, but you both know how it goes, don't you?" He was a thin man, a hundred seventy-five at most, with thinning hair and glasses. John pegged him at about fifty. He felt good that the man had some years and experience behind him.
"Dr. Randall
. Nice to meet you."
"You
, too," John said. "Thanks for seeing me."
"Oh, no problem whatsoever, that's what I do
. So let's take a look. I'm just going to remove the bandage here."
Dr. Samuelson gently pulled at the tape holding the bandage to John's face and soon had it off and was tenderly touching the skin around John's cut.
"Nice stitching. Who did the work?" he asked, turning to look back at Danny.
"Our resident nurse, Carrie
Atwood," Danny said.
The plastic surgeon turned back to examine John's face
. "Tell her she's got a job here anytime she wants one."
"She's not going anywhere, I'm afraid,"
Danny said.
Dr
. Samuelson smiled, pulled open a drawer next to John, and removed a pair of scissors.
"Can't blame me for trying
. Okay, John, just hold still, you'll feel the tugging as I pull these."
Dr. Samuelson went to work cutting the stitches and pulling the thread out one by one until he'd gone through all twenty
-four stitches. He grabbed some tissue and dabbed at the beads of blood that appeared at some of the holes, then once again touched his fingers around the healing scar, noting the reddish tint appear and disappear as he pushed and lifted his fingers.
"This should heal just fine, John
," Dr. Samuelson said. "By the time I'm done, you'll be a new man. You're going to want to come back about a week from now and we'll do the first short procedure. Just some skin abrasion work that helps keep the scar smooth and less bumpy." Dr. Samuelson stepped away from John and looked over at Danny. "Any questions?"
"How many procedures all together
?" John asked.
"Hard to say exactly
. I'd guess at least three, maybe a couple more. We'll know more as we go along."
John stood up and put out his hand
. "Well, no other questions. Thanks for your help." They all shook hands, and John and Danny walked out.