“Think that’s why he did it? To meet women?”
She couldn’t stop herself from making a face. “How about a personals ad in CityBeat? These students who have reached this level have worked very hard and they want to make nursing their career.”
He nodded, leaned forward, and opened a beaten-up brown portfolio. A yellow legal pad was filled with handwriting in blue ink. He flipped the page and began making new notes. Outside the door, she saw police officers walk past but the station seemed oddly quiet.
“What about you?”
She felt the sudden defensiveness of a driver going the speed limit who sees a patrol car behind her. “What about me?”
“You’re new to Miami.”
So he had checked on her. She wondered why.
“I was at Cincinnati Memorial Hospital. When it closed, I decided to try something new.”
“You’re not from Ohio, not with that accent.”
“Where I come from, it’s not considered an accent.” All those years in Cincinnati and she couldn’t get Kentucky out of her voice.
“So you’re what, an adjunct?”
She nodded. The money wasn’t great, but she had some saved and had welcomed the change of teaching. She could get a new nursing position again any time.
“No tenure,” he sighed. “That’s why they call those jobs, ad-junk.” He didn’t smile. “That was where they had those murders. Cincinnati Memorial, right?”
“That’s right.”
He made more notes.
“Why did Noah Smith call out to you, Ms. Wilson? Do you prefer Ms., Mrs., Miss?”
She was fine with “Cheryl Beth,” but something about Detective Hank Brooks didn’t sit right with her.
“Miss is fine,” she said. “And I have no idea. I was standing there…”
“Why was that?”
“I was going for a morning walk to the Formal Gardens.” She worked to keep the irritation and anxiety out of her voice. “He saw me and recognized me. He asked for my help. He seemed afraid.”
“I might be afraid if I had murdered two girls and was caught napping at the crime scene with blood all over me, Cheryl.” He stared at her and stroked the edge of his moustache with his right index finger. His shoulders were a straight line of tension.
“Is that what happened? You found him there asleep?”
Brooks sat back straight and hesitated. She knew he had told her more than he had intended. But that only made her want to know more.
“The Formal Gardens seem like a pretty public place.” She looked at him evenly and let the silence fall between them.
Finally, “You don’t know the campus very well, do you, Cheryl?”
“My name is Cheryl Beth.”
She didn’t like him well enough to tell the story of how in the first grade, the teacher had been confronted with three girls named Cheryl, so she called them by their first and middle names: Cheryl Ann, Cheryl Sue, and Cheryl Beth, and how the name had stuck and she liked it. If she were back at the hospital, back in her position as pain nurse, she would have added: