“Why are you in here?” she asked.
“Maybe I should ask you that. Come in here often?”
Cheryl Beth felt instantly defensive. “I’ve never been in here. I knew it was here, but they stopped using it before I was even hired.”
Dodds slid a pair of reading glasses over his nose. He silently paged through the notes. “We’re going to do this again, Ms. Wilson. The night you say you discovered the body of Dr. Lustig. I want to hear your story. All over again, from the top. Then I want you to walk me through it, from where you started down here, to when you claim you found her, to what you did next.” He looked over the glasses at Will. “You can leave.”
Will wheeled himself out the double doors, and Cheryl Beth told her story in a hoarse voice. Then she took him out to the main elevator bank, walking down past the shadows of old carts to Christine’s office, then showing him the path she had taken to the stairwell that brought her back to the first floor to get help. It all looked benignly alien with the full lights on. Will trailed well behind them in his wheelchair, saying nothing. His face was a mask of pain and exhaustion. Dodds ignored him.
“So you get off the elevator, walk down the hall, see the light coming out of her office…”
“That’s right.”
“What else?”
“What do you mean, ‘what else?’ There’s no more else. I walked down the hall…” And she remembered. Dodds could see it in her face but he said nothing.
“I heard a sound. It was like metal on metal. I just remembered…”
“From where?”
She took her time, but she was sure. “From that direction.” She pointed toward the old morgue. Will, who had rolled closer, looked sharply at Dodds.
“What kind of keys do you have to the hospital?” Dodds asked.
“Oh, come on,” Will said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Dodds snarled at him, then turned again, looming over her.
“Keys? I don’t have any keys.”
“Could you get into that morgue? Maybe after you killed the doctor, you ran down here and opened these doors and took the old elevator up and out? It would be a clever way to avoid being seen. Now you don’t have to talk because you have a right to remain silent.”
“Are you crazy?” Cheryl Beth heard her accent become more pronounced. It happened when she was mad. She thrust her keychain out to him. “See this? Car, house, desk, bicycle lock!”
Dodds reached out and delicately took her lanyard. “Tylenol, huh?” He pulled it out from her lab coat and examined it. “Partners Against Pain…NAPI scale…” He let it go and it draped back against her. “That card looks pretty ratty on the edges. Like you used it to pick a lock. Mind if I keep it?”
