She cut down a narrow hallway and opened the door into a large supply closet. Her hands found the cool wall and she just stood there, slowing her breathing, trying not to throw up. She had gotten used to every hospital smell: feces, urine, decaying flesh, vomit, the peculiar odor of disinfectant and putrification that attended many cancer patients. She never flinched. Right at that moment, she didn’t trust herself to move. She wasn’t thinking about the probable explosive reaction from Detective Dodds when she showed him the letter. Her hands splayed against the wall, she read the labels on the nearby drawer, silently moving her lips as she had in grade school until her teachers had stopped her.
The Mount Adams Slasher. She wasn’t even sure she had heard everything Will had told her after hearing those words. An avid newspaper reader, Cheryl Beth remembered the crimes vividly. All the nurses had been terrified. One of them lived a block away from one of the killings. Women had bought guns and big dogs. For three months, the city had seemed transformed into a terrifying stranger, familiar on the surface but with a sinister current running beneath it like a poisoned underground river.
Will Borders had worked on that case with Dodds-they were the “primaries,” he said; every profession had its jargon-and now he was telling her that the same killer had murdered Christine Lustig. And he might have seen Cheryl Beth as she walked out of the elevator into the darkened corridor that night. She knew a man had been arrested for the murders, but Will had been adamant. He hadn’t done it. The Slasher was killing again. Now, with the note she picked from Judd Mason’s trash, she knew who might have really done it. Her breathing was so shallow she was barely conscious of it. The nurse in her imagined how little of her lung capacity she was using, even worried she might be on the verge of hyperventilating.
That was when she caught sight of the large black shoes and white pants.
“Sorry,” she started, then raised her head to see that Judd Mason was standing there, just inside the doorway. It had been a long time since she had seen a nurse wearing whites at Memorial. His face showed that he knew she recognized him. “You’re an open book,” her mother had always said, derisively. Her mother didn’t know her.
Cheryl Beth stood straight up and walked toward the doorway but he didn’t move. “Excuse me,” she said. He just stood there. In the bright light of the supply room, she was more aware of the pallor of his skin, with a dark stubborn beard fighting to come out. His hair was nearly black and close-cropped, revealing a wide forehead. He just stared at her, his mouth compact and his lips nearly bloodless. His eyes were small, intense, and blue. She looked again briefly at his large shoes and imagined matching them to the imprints in her flower beds.
