“Stop that!” The words were out of her mouth before she realized it, and all the tension and anger that she had held inside blew out like a high-pressure oil well. “You are not useless, or done, or a liability! The only one who sees that cane is you. The only one who doesn’t see a tall, handsome, impressive man is you. Do you know how lucky you are, Will Borders? Do you remember all those people in neuro-rehab, the quads who couldn’t move the arms and legs? I see people every day who are sick and dying. You’re alive and strong! You got a second chance that so many people never get!”
She was fighting tears now. She tended to cry when she got mad. But her anger quickly dissipated.
In the silence, he took her hand and held it to his face. She could feel his tears, too. His kissed her palm, whispered, “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”
The car’s layout, with radios and a computer between the seats, made it difficult, but she scrunched over and gave him a long hug. She didn’t care who was watching.
“No displays of affection in an official police vehicle!”
It was Dodds, standing by Will’s door.
“Check this out.” He handed an official-looking piece of paper to Will. The upper part showed a mug shot of a hard face staring at the camera and above it no hair.
“Charles Wayne Whitaker,” Will said. “Registered sex offender. Convicted of raping a woman in Columbus ten years ago.”
“Yep,” Dodds said. “It gets better. Remember Kristen’s fan mail? We took it back from Covington. They didn’t have the manpower. So I had police recruits go through two-hundred letters yesterday. Mister Whitaker wrote to Kristen, telling her all the things he’s like to do to her.”
“No shit? Does Henderson know?”
“I’m going to tell her. Why do all your white psychos have Wayne as a middle name?”
“Yours have De-Wayne,” Will shot back, but she could see his body relax.
Dodds put a hand on Will’s shoulder. “We’re going to get him. All this is going to work out.”
“Chief wants me to take a leave.”
“Oh, bullshit.”
“Yes, sir, Chief Dodds.”
They rode back through Covington’s old streets in silence. From the bridge, she could see the river filled with pleasure craft, as if Kristen Gruber’s murder had never happened.
“Turn here,” she said quietly once they reached the other side.
She gave a couple more directions and he knew where she wanted to go. In five minutes, they slipped out of downtown, around Mount Adams, and into Eden Park. It was the grandest of Cincinnati’s hilltop parks, with its abundance of trees, grass, gardens, and a view into the distant blue-green hills that instantly relaxed her. The flowers were in full bloom, in more colors than she could count or name. He illegally parked where they could look across the shallow reflecting pond of Mirror Lake at the gazebo. Its jet-stream fountain shot six stories in the air. For a long time, they sat and took in the views, the sweet spring air, and the people walking and sitting in a happy normality, where babies didn’t die, men weren’t struck down in their prime, and killers didn’t roam the darkness.