“Don’t,” Will said, a little too hard. He softened his voice. “Don’t do that. He’s already seen you.”
“So you think he might have…”
They both let it hang between them. Finally, Cheryl Beth said, “She didn’t like to be called Chris. The only other person who did that was Gary, and he did it because he knew it bugged her.”
“Just tell Dodds the truth. Don’t jump to conclusions.” Will studied the letter one more time and then leaned over and slid it into her coat pocket. No Slasher case had involved a threatening letter. Suddenly the pain returned, emerging from his back and wrapping around his ribs in a pincer movement. He couldn’t stop himself from visibly wincing.
“You’re still hurting,” she said. “I’m going to talk to your doctor. And I want you to take what I give you. Don’t worry about becoming a drug addict. That’s not going to happen.”
He smiled in spite of the sharp stabs he was enduring. Finally, he made his face relax, got his breathing down.
“What were you guys doing in the morgue last night?”
He hesitated for only a moment. “I’ll tell you, but don’t tell Dodds. First I need you to answer a few more questions about that night.” He went through it with her and the answers were chillingly reassuring. He had seen it before. The doctor had been on the floor, naked and bloody, knife wounds on her arms and torso-slashes-and the deep cut to her throat. Her ring finger was gone, chopped off. Her clothes had been neatly folded on top of a small filing cabinet, as if she had undressed for a lover. Cheryl Beth began shaking her right leg as she recounted the details. By the end, she was sniffling and teary, reaching for hospital paper napkins to dab her eyes and nose.
“Those might not have even been her real clothes,” Will said. “I found bloody clothes in the old morgue last night and her ID card was pinned to them. Jeans, a blue wool top, a black leather jacket. Would she have worn something like that?”
“Yes…” Cheryl Beth was almost whispering. “If she had come in late, she wouldn’t wear something fancy. She owned a black leather jacket.”
“That means you may have just missed seeing the killer,” Will said. “He killed her, planted the folded clothes, gathered up her real clothes and went down the hallway to the morgue, where he stashed them. Then he took an old elevator up and out.”
“Oh, shit.” She seemed stricken, her body slumping back, seeming to lose five pounds in front of his eyes. This was not the body language of a killer.
