The Pain Nurse (3 page)
“You’re a hard man to find.”
Will Borders sat in the wheelchair, against the wall in a hallway behind a cart with red drawers, an EKG machine and menacing-looking defibrillator paddles, and there was Scaly Mueller walking toward him. Captain Steve Mueller was the commander of the Internal Investigations unit.
“But good men are hard to find.”
He talked that way, lapsing into motivational clichés. It was just another Scaly Mueller joke. All the cops made fun of him behind his back. Will said hello, but the unspoken answer to Mueller’s question was that Will’s only peace was anywhere but inside his room. After a week in the neuro-rehab unit, he had barely slept. Moving meant pain. Even raising his arm to dial his cell phone meant excruciating torture. Immobility meant pain to come. Once he was down for the night, he was strapped into what looked like vibrating socks—prevent blood clots, they said. They also killed his ability to sleep. But the biggest problem was three feet away from his bed.
His roommate was a quadriplegic from a car crash. He was trussed up in a contraption of wires and tubes. Every few minutes a nurse or technician would come in with a different, invariably noisy treatment. The commotion and stench made rest impossible. Hospitals were noisy places. When the poor man was conscious, he only wanted to watch back-to-back episodes of
Judge Judy
, with the volume on high. The room itself offered no view. The neuro-rehab unit was located in a first-floor addition that shot off the main part of the hospital. But Will’s window looked back into the old blond-brick building, across a small stretch of hibernating grass. The heliport was located on top of the neuro-rehab wing, and late at night medevac choppers would land, causing the windows to shake as if an earthquake were happening. The night-shift nurses joked darkly with him about the likelihood that one day a helicopter would crash on them. “The first thing you’ll see is the aviation fuel running down the walls, before it ignites and we’re all toast,” one said merrily.
At least he was off the morphine. It had masked the pain but it had brought dreams. Morphine took him to an old amusement park in Newport, Kentucky, right across the river from downtown. He had no memory of such a place ever existing—but it must have, the drug told him so. It was fenced off and deserted, but Will had walked through the gate. It was twilight, the sky on the verge of rain. He was alone, surrounded by rusting kiddie rides. All around was a quadrangle of old wooden buildings, their reddish paint flaking off. He walked inside one and saw straw on the ground, as if it had once been a stable. The morphine told him that children had been killed here, many children, murdered horribly. His dreaming self fought to find a way out, a way to wake up. The souls of the innocent dead followed him until he had crashed back into his broken body, staring at the harsh light over his bed. After that, he was happier to have the pain than the morphine dreams.
As he slowly got better, Will would dress in the bed and call a nurse first thing in the morning to transfer him from the bed into a wheelchair. The wheelchair was comfortable and moved easily. It had the brand name Quickie, which seemed like a sick joke. He might never be able to have a quickie again.
He stayed out as long as they would let him. With difficulty, he began to slide himself from the bed to the wheelchair, wheelchair to toilet and back. He needed a nurse there to help, of course. His right leg seemed unable to bear any weight, although he could move it easily. Will had quickly realized that he was one of the better-off patients. When the nurses weren’t taking care of what everyone called “the quads,” they were writing endless paperwork, as bad as cops, worse even. He called the nurses less often, did things for himself.
“You look good.”
Will knew it was a lie. Mueller started to clap him on the shoulder, then seemed to think better of it. His hand hung between them awkwardly. They awkwardly shook hands. Steve Mueller was around forty, wearing chinos, tie, and wool sport coat. He had a close-cropped halo of blond hair ringing his baldness and the look of a faded high school football player. He had a bristly peach-colored mustache. Growing up on the west side, he had played football for Elder, and had never been farther than Chicago. In other words, he had the resumé of nearly everyone who rose to command in the Cincinnati Police Department. It was one more reason Will would never move ahead. He was Scots-Irish Protestant in a German Catholic town.
“Can I wheel you somewhere, so we can talk? Where’s that pretty wife of yours?”
“She’s working. I can wheel myself.” And Will could, until he started hurting too badly. “There’s a Starbucks down by the lobby.”
“How are you two doing? You and Cindy.”
“We’re okay. We’re good.”
“That’s good.” Mueller sounded skeptical. Then: “Love conquers all, huh?”
After a few minutes, they had navigated the crowded hallways, out of neuro-rehab, down the corridor behind the emergency room and into the bright, glassy expanse of the main concourse.
“So Dodds is working this homicide?” Will asked after they had coffees. He clutched his cup in both hands.
“How you doing?” Mueller countered.
This innocuous question had assumed the complexity of quantum physics. Before the tumor, Will could give the expected answer without a thought. Nobody really wanted more.
Doin’ fine.
Now everything about his life was contained in the unstated. No matter how hard he worked, he could barely move his left leg, his most violent command from the brain translating into a murmur in his toes, like a broken clock pendulum. Vast tracts of his belly, buttocks, and right leg were dead to the touch, as if a deranged dentist armed with Novocain had repeatedly attacked him. He was put in the shower so rarely, and getting in was so painful, that he could smell himself like some street person he used to roust. He was constipated. He hurt for hours. Every movement was difficult. Nobody wanted to hear all that.
He said, “I’m okay. The docs seem pleased. The tumor was not malignant. They think they got it all. I need to get into rehab.” He knew he was lucky or blessed to be alive, that he could have been killed or put into a wheelchair permanently. Yet he felt exhausted. He was working hard to keep it from showing.
Mueller half nodded. Will’s mind went back to the homicide, an easy leap from thinking about pain, a dead leg, and
Judge Judy.
“Dodds needs to follow the MO,” Will said. “This woman was killed…”
“I know. On the surface it appeared similar to the Mount Adams Slasher. Dodds told me he saw you. You know, big guy, I had my appendix taken out last year, and for the first day I hardly knew where I was. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you were probably kind of out of it that night…”
Will put the coffee on a table and shifted in the wheelchair. The maneuver required him to push down with his arms and swivel his hips. Instantly his back flared in agony. He whispered, barely in control, “I know what I saw. If Dodds…”
“I don’t want to hear about you and Dodds. You’re like an old married couple fighting. He feels like you deserted him when you left homicide. Anyway, that detail’s got its hands full right now. Three nights ago a P&G executive was shot and killed on a street in Over-the-Rhine. You know Procter rules this town. Mayor’s going nuts. Dodds’ partner, Linda Hall, she’s off on maternity leave. So he’s working solo. This doctor was probably just a victim of a random crime. I see the street people just wandering through the halls. Gangbangers. Dodds will clear it.” He looked around. “Should you even be out here?”
“Who knows?” Will said, forcing a conversational voice. “Better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.”
“An interesting statement from an Internal Investigations cop.” Mueller didn’t smile. “I talked to your doctors.” He paused as a loud procession of family members went by, bearing stuffed animals, headed to the children’s wing. He nervously scratched the back of his right hand. As a patrolman, Mueller had been nicknamed Scaly, because of some kind of skin ailment that made him itch constantly. Officers complained that the seats and steering wheels of patrol cars inhabited by Mueller on a previous shift always had a dusting of flaked skin. At some point, he had gone to a doctor, but the name had stuck: Scaly Mueller. Now he only scratched when he was in uncomfortable situations.
“I talked to your doctors,” he repeated.
“They say I will walk again.”
Mueller lowered his eyes and sucked in his lips. “Come on, Will,” he said finally, “you’re in a wheelchair. I know that’s hard to accept. I can’t even imagine… Best case, you’ll always use a cane. And that’s okay. My gosh, things could have been so much worse. But you face a tough rehab and you’ll never be able to be…”
“You talked about a desk job,” Will quickly interposed. “Why not? We have wounded officers who are technically disabled, but the department finds a place for them. I can still do internal affairs, white-collar crime. I’m good at what I do.”
“You weren’t wounded,” he said. “Those guys, they have a story to tell, the public loves them and we benefit from their continued service. You know the way of the world. Why are you so fired up to keep mucking out this sewer anyway? Had a deal down in Walnut Hills last night. You see the paper? Dispatch lost contact with two uniforms on a domestic. One of them ends up shot dead. Young guy, twenty-three, one kid. Jeez. Now the hospital killing is yesterday’s news. There’s going to be hell to pay at communications. Chief is already all over my ass for a report. Why would you miss that? Hey, today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
Will said nothing. His life now was lived in front of his face, in the next moment. Get his meds. Follow the rehab group down to the gym. Keep from shitting on himself. The painful process of pulling on socks. Trying to find the humor in the way that the human foot was such a stubborn hook that he fought to get his underwear off it. He didn’t want to think beyond that, yet this killing wouldn’t let him alone. He sipped and put the coffee down again. His hands were shaking. He hadn’t touched caffeine since before surgery. He concealed the shaking by wheeling himself.
“Hey,” Mueller said, following. “Want to go up to the solarium? That would be nice. See downtown probably, all the leaves are off the trees.”
They crowded into an elevator with people in green and purple scrub clothes. They looked comfortable. They could stand. Will was now looking at the world from most people’s belly buttons, something new to a man who stood—
stood!
—six feet, two inches. They rode up two floors and the car emptied out. But when Mueller started to step out, Will stopped him.
“Let’s go to the basement.”
Mueller looked at him oddly and they rode down in silence.
Will led the way when the doors opened.
“What are we doing down here?”
Will ignored the question, hearing Mueller’s shoes click behind him. The hallway was dim and deserted. Only one overhead lighting fixture was illuminated. Taking his bearings, he tried to remember how far the doctor’s office was from the elevator. Every few feet, dark corridors intersected the hallway. The beds and equipment parked against the wall looked ancient.
“It was down here,” Will said.
“What are you doing?”
“Remembering.”
The office was easy to find, about a hundred feet from the elevators and near two fire doors that could be shut, closing off the main corridor. The police seal was still on the door. The fluorescent lights were at least twenty feet away.
“He liked to strike in the dark,” Will said. “He would unscrew porch lights so women couldn’t see who was on the front step. He was thinking tactically.”
“Are you nuts? The Mount Adams Slasher? Craig Factor was convicted righteously.”
“Factor didn’t do it.”
“You and Dodds had him dead to rights. That was a totally clean case.”
Now Mueller was really itching, left hand scratching the back of his right. Will studied the floor, wondering if any bloody footprints had been left. The Slasher had an amazing ability to avoid leaving shoeprints on a bloody crime scene.
“Dodds and the DA pushed the evidence. You know that.”
“You can’t argue with DNA.”
A sudden rattle came from the hallway, as if a stretcher were being moved. Will strained to see, but nothing emerged into his line of sight and soon it was quiet again. He said, “Sure you can.”
Mueller came around to face him, bent to his knees so their faces were on the same level. His cheeks were filling with blood.
“The Mount Adams Slasher terrorized this city for three months. Three women living alone were killed, including a cop’s wife…”
“Ex-wife.”
“There hasn’t been a single case since you and Dodds arrested Factor.”
Will pointed to the door, wincing as the pain coursed from his back to his upper arm. “Until last week.”
Mueller laughed uncomfortably. “Come on, Borders. You want to go back and reopen the Cincinnati Strangler case, too?”
The Cincinnati Strangler had been in the mid-1960s. Homicide detectives still studied the case. Will wondered if Mueller was making fun of him. Mueller, who stood there, effortlessly shifting from one leg to the other in his impatience. Will was trapped in the wheelchair. He stared at his legs, useless in the sweatpants, feeling both heavy and light. He couldn’t even stand. Not even for a moment.
“I’m not talking about ancient history, Steve. This is an open homicide. It happened right here. We owe it to that doctor and her family to pursue the truth.”
“What are you saying?” Mueller’s voice kicked up a notch. “Do you know what the chief would say if I even raised this? It had to be Factor. What other theory works?”
“Bud Chambers.”
“No, don’t. Don’t you dare.” Mueller backed away a step as if Will had pulled a knife on him.
“Damn it, Steve. Don’t let Dodds piss this away. This homicide is the same MO as Mount Adams. It’s him. Do they have a time of death?”
“No…I don’t know. Look, Will, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re not going to be a cop now. Take the disability. You can get a good partial pension. My gosh, your wife must make a ton with the bank now. You don’t need the money. Quit driving yourself nuts over this. Think of all the Reds games you can go to.”
