“But this was a doctor, at the hospital,” she blurted. “It’s not like some drug killing down in Over-the-Rhine.” She stopped herself with a sharp intake of breath. “Oh, God, that sounded awful. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve heard worse,” Will said. “To be honest, I don’t know why they don’t have somebody in custody.” He was conscious of the alien word they instead of the familiar we. “I know there was another high-profile killing. The city’s on track for a record number of homicides this year. The detail is short-handed. There have been budget cuts.” He shook his head. “Excuses. Bullshit.”
She reached out for his hand. “Do you believe me, as a police officer, when I tell you I had nothing to do with this?”
Her hand felt warm and fragile inside his. He squeezed it. “I do.”
She drew it back and pulled a white envelope from her coat. “I’ve been feeling that if I didn’t try to play amateur detective, they were going to try to make me the bad guy. Maybe I went too far.” She handed him the letter. By habit he took it lightly by the edges, holding it as if between the calipers of his fingers. It was addressed to Christine Lustig and the stamps had been canceled.
“I need latex gloves,” he said.
“Oh, hell, I touched it. I am truly a stupid person.” She buried her head in her hands momentarily, then reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a whitish bundle. He rested the letter on the table and slid his fingers into the gloves, as he had done so many times before. Cheryl Beth quietly cursed as he pulled out a sheet of white stationery and read the neat script in black-ink handwriting:
Chris,
You’ve betrayed me for the last time. I’m going to put a stop to you.
There was no signature. “Where did you get this?” Will asked, and she told him the story of seeing the envelope on the front seat of Judd Mason’s car, and how she fished it out of his trash.
“I was really dumb to do this, wasn’t I?”
Will thought about it, the layers of what had seemed like a simple case getting deeper. “Maybe not. Dodds said he saw you picking in the trash.” He thought it through for a moment as she watched expectantly. “I want you to take this to Dodds. Don’t tell him you showed it to me.”
She nodded, hesitantly. Will could imagine the hell Dodds would raise. He asked, “Who wrote this note?”
Cheryl Beth pursed her lips. “I think Mason did, then tried to get it back after she was killed. Which might mean he killed her. How about this, I can find out where Mason works, get one of his charts, check his handwriting.”
