“You deserve better,” Will said.
“Oh, god, I don’t know what I deserve. This has gone so bad.”
“So kick him to the curb. If I wasn’t crippled, I’d be chasing you around the room.”
She laughed and put her hand on top of his. “It’s really bad. I’m really afraid.”
After she fell silent for several minutes, he coaxed her. Why was she afraid?
“You’re a cop, right? Police officer, I mean.”
“That’s right.”
“What happens if someone lies to the police?”
His side was killing him from being twisted in her direction. The muscles were twitching like little earthquakes. He didn’t dare move. “It’s not good. It could make someone an accessory to a crime.” It could also be just giving a false statement, but why tell her that? She gave a sharp intake of breath. Her head was down and all he could see of her eyes were long blond lashes.
“He was her husband, you know. The man I’ve been involved with.”
“Whose husband?”
“Dr. Lustig. Gary is her husband. It happened so fast between us. We’ve been seeing each other only about two months. He said they were getting a divorce.”
“It’s okay, Amy. Have you lied to the police?”
She nodded once, half an inch up and down.
“Are you going to have me arrested?”
“No. But you have to make it right.”
“I’m afraid. I could lose my job. He could blackball me.”
“You’re not that way, Amy,” Will said. “I’ve seen the way you work with the quads. You’re no quitter. You won’t let any of us quit. Right?”
The pretty head nodded, more adamantly this time.
“Who asked you to lie to the police?”
“Gary.”
“This was Dr. Lustig’s husband, Gary Nagle?”
“Yes.”
“What did he ask you to tell the police?”
Amy looked him straight on. “He wanted me to say that we were together the night she was murdered.”
Dr. Gary Nagle was a man with a secret and he wanted his girlfriend to lie for him. It didn’t matter much to Will, unless it would help focus Dodds’ mind, get him off his theory that Cheryl Beth had anything to do with the murder. Knowing Dodds, however, he realized this new information might cause him to wonder if Cheryl Beth and Nagle had acted together to eliminate a wife that was in the way. He would have thought the same, if all the evidence hadn’t pointed to the real killer. Nagle’s secret was a distraction. Any other explanation was too fantastic: that Nagle himself was the Slasher. And what? He killed the other women to throw the police off, in preparation for killing Christine Lustig? Will chuckled to himself as he wheeled down the empty hallway, back to another dreary night trapped in neuro-rehab. He didn’t even have a shower to look forward to-that wasn’t until tomorrow night. And he wouldn’t be expecting a morning visit from Cindy, ever again.
