Jon Talton - The Pain Nurse

She pulled out the card and handed it to Will. “Look at this.”

“Just tell me the truth, Cheryl Beth.” Will spoke for the first time, and his voice was taut with emotion. His face looked troubled and distracted.

She said, “Look at the back of the card, the handwriting. It’s the same handwriting as on the threatening note to Christine. But it wasn’t written by Judd Mason. It was written by the head of SoftChartZ. He made the threat! What if Christine found out something about the project? Something that could get her killed?” Dodds looked through her, bored. She got angry. “You called me down here, so at least listen to what I’m telling you!”

“I did not call you down here,” Dodds said. “But since you’re here… You were with Lustig in a bar on Main Street the night she was murdered.” He went on to give her the very same warning she had heard in a hundred police shows: silent…used against you…lawyer…do you understand?… She wasn’t really listening. Will looked pale.

“This isn’t right,” Will said suddenly. “We need to get out of this basement right now…”

Will’s premonition was instantly telegraphed to Cheryl Beth and she instinctively reached for him, to wheel him out of the room. In that same second the walls shook with the sharp noise of the door slamming shut. They were closed in.

They were not alone.

Bud Chambers leveled the SIG Sauer 228 at them. His hands were encased in latex gloves. The weapon was graphite colored, accurate, and reliable. It could be chambered to nine millimeter or.40 caliber, but what did that matter right then? As Will remembered, it was a favored semiautomatic of the feds and could hold fourteen rounds. Chambers wore green scrubs, a white lab coat, even a hospital ID card clipped to his left pocket. His shoes were covered with the kind of footlets they wore in surgery. The better to avoid tracking blood, perhaps. He had been hiding in the same dead space behind the inward-opening door where Will had stayed that day when he had snuck behind Dodds into the office.

Somehow, deep in the premonitory brain cells that told him something was stalking him long before the tumor came, somehow he always knew it would end this way.

“Ah, ah, ah!” Chambers flexed the semiautomatic at Dodds, holding it in both hands. “Don’t even think about it, fat man. You!” He cocked his head at Cheryl Beth. “Reach in his coat and get his gun, and do it slowly.”

The room was crushed with still silence.

“No,” she said.

“You’d be amazed how soundproof this room is,” Chambers said, pulling his thick eyebrows into a dark overhang above his eyes. “Nobody’s going to hear you. The hospital’s shut down by the ice. Don’t try to be a hero, honey.”

Cheryl Beth spoke in a quavering voice. “Fuck off.”

Chambers took two quick steps and his left hand flashed toward her face, instantly sprawling her over the desk. She let out a cry and Will tried to raise himself out of the chair.

“Sit down, cripple.” He spoke without taking his glance or gun off Dodds. “I’ll take that.” He grabbed Josh Barnett’s card out of Will’s hand, glanced at it, and slid it into his pants pocket. “What a fucking little moron.” His gun arm stiffened and he snarled at Cheryl Beth. “Now get that goddamned gun!”

“Just do what he says,” Dodds said quietly.

She pushed herself up and reached into Dodds holster, pulling out his Smith & Wesson nine. Her left cheek was bright red. “Slow,” Chambers commanded. “Now hold it by the barrel and hand it to me. Thank you.” He stepped back, placing Dodds’ weapon on the bookshelf against the far wall.

“Now get the backup piece on his ankle.”

Will groaned inside. The bastard was too thorough. Cheryl Beth knelt and retrieved the five-round.38 Chief’s Special from the ankle holster on Dodds’ right leg. Chambers repeated his move, placing it on the shelf beside the larger semiauto.

“Stand up. Up!”

Dodds slowly stood. Chambers ordered Cheryl Beth to take the handcuffs from Dodds’ belt and shackle his hands behind him. She did it slowly, glancing at Will. He wished he knew what to telegraph to her. He wished he knew how. The handcuffs clicked into place.

“Back up to me, Dodds.” The big man slowly complied and Chambers used his left hand to ratchet the cuffs tight. Will watched as Dodds’ temples and mouth reacted. “There,” Chambers said, a smile creasing his puffy face. “That’s the way I like ’em with dangerous Negroes, nice and snug. Now go sit again.” Dodds eased into the chair. “Lean back, get your feet off the floor. If your feet touch the floor, I’ll kill you.”

Chambers turned the gun on Will now. He had never been on the receiving end of a gun barrel without having a weapon in his hand. His insides felt as if they were liquefying.

“Now just because I don’t trust the cripple, and he’s so dressed up and all, I want you to open his coat and pull up his pants legs to make sure he’s not packing.” Cheryl Beth complied. Will wished his service weapon hadn’t been locked away. He would have pulled it long before now.

“You’re always in the way, Borders,” Chambers said, gesticulating with his free hand. With the gloves, he looked like a malevolent clown or a cartoon character. “This was going to be a simple plan tonight. Just tie up a few loose ends with Detective Dodds and the pain nurse here, and I’d be gone. Two birds, one stone. Once again, you’ve mucked it up.”

Will’s brain was a riot: every rampaging channel of training, thought, and instinct asking how to get out of this. How to play for time.

“Where were we?” Chambers said. “Oh, yes. You were about to tell these fine ossifers why you lied about being in the bar with Christine.”

Cheryl Beth stared at him, almost in a daze.

“Sit down,” he ordered, and she slid against the wall between Will’s wheelchair and Dodds. He aimed at Dodds. “Keep your feet up!” To Cheryl Beth, “Why were you there?”

“I ran into her!” Cheryl Beth set her jaw and Will could see moisture forming in her eyes. “I didn’t plan it. I got off work and wanted a drink. I went inside and she came up to me. She wanted to talk. So we got a table.”

“What did she want to talk about?” Chambers said, his voice impatient.

“Gary.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Gary and I…”

“I know all about you, Cheryl.” Chambers slid the pistol into his lab coat, its outline falling heavily into the pocket. “I’ve watched you. I’ve been in your house. I’ve been in your fucking underwear drawer. You ought to buy more black. I know you stopped seeing Gary months ago, so she didn’t want you for that. She had plenty of her own distractions. She didn’t give a damn about his.”

“She wanted to know what it was like between us,” Cheryl Beth said. “She wanted graphic details. I thought she was very drunk and very distraught, and I just tried to calm her down.”

“Bullshit!” As he shouted, she jumped.

In a quiet voice, he said, “This is just business. Tell me what I want to know and everybody gets out alive.”

“There’s nothing to tell!” Tears were tracking down her cheeks now and her voice broke. “Christine seemed very upset, but not at me. She was all over the place. I’d never seen her like that.”

“What did she say about the hospital?”

“Nothing.”

He ripped her up from the floor, delivering a brutal open-handed blow to her face. Then he shoved her down to the floor. She rose on her haunches and charged him.

“You son of a bitch!” Her fist connected with his nose before he got hold of her. He pushed her hard into the wall and she slid to the floor.