“And you did.”
He nodded.
“I don’t know what it all means.” He sat back up and fanned his coat jacket. “It’s not going to be a problem, right? You’ll test the blade of Lennie’s knife. You’ll find Dr. Lustig’s blood on it. Look, I’ve got a meeting.” He stood. “What I told you was all off the record. I’ll deny it if you try to screw me, and you can just deal with the hospital’s lawyers.”
***
The door closed and Dodds shook his head. “Stan ‘Don’t Call Me David’ Berkowitz. The assholes always land well. It’s a shame he wasn’t good enough to get into homicide. Would have loved to have a homicide cop named after a serial killer.” Dodds folded Lennie’s weapon inside the evidence bag and yawned.
Will said quietly, “That’s not the knife.”
Dodds’ artillery shell of a head swiveled. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s not the knife. Did you really check her office? Like under the desk?”
Dodds stared at him. He’d seen the look before. Then Dodds stood, like a redwood suddenly appearing full-grown, and roughly grabbing the handles of Will’s wheelchair, rushing him out of the room, nearly banging his feet on the doorjamb. They burst into the hallway, nearly T-boning a patient bed being wheeled by, then almost running down two nurses who jumped aside. Dodds pushed the wheelchair fast while he bent down to Will’s ear.
“You fucker, you cocksucker, damn you all to hell, you’d better be pulling my chain. You’d better be in some drug-induced hallucination…”
“You know better. Slow down.”
“God damn you to hell, Borders.”
Dodds flashed his badge at the elevator bank, people cleared out, and they got a down-bound car all to themselves. “I ought to bring you up on charges, if you’ve been meddling in a crime scene. Bastard, bastard, bastard…” The doors opened into the darkness and Dodds sped them toward Lustig’s office, past the single bank of overhead lights. He stopped the wheelchair so hard Will was thrown forward.
“Don’t apply to be an orderly,” he said.
“Fuck you, fuck, fuck you,” Dodds mumbled. “Crime scene seal broken. Son of a bitch. There’s no chain of custody now, whatever the hell we find. This is worse than a rookie mistake. Without the seal on the door, any defense lawyer can say we just planted the evidence. We can’t prove chain of custody. The DA would have our jobs-what the hell am I saying: my job. I ought to use this Ka-Bar on you myself.”
“Calm down. Don’t open the door yet.” Will pointed to a strip of medical tape across the yellow seal. It had his initials written on it. “That’s me. Nobody’s been inside since.”
