I wonder if my father was ever in a room like this. Or if they just threw him right in a cell. What is the protocol when you discover a dead body and a chest full of bones in a man’s basement? Maybe I don’t want to know.
“You’re probably wondering why I asked you here,” Barber says to me.
“Yes,” Patricia says, “wearewondering that.”
The detective focuses his attention on me as the crease between his bushy gray eyebrows deepens. “I just wanted to get more of a sense of your relationship with Shelby Gillis.”
I swallow. “She was my patient. What else do you want to know?”
“Did you know her outside of a hospital setting?”
I glance over at Patricia, who nods almost imperceptibly. “I saw her in my outpatient practice. At a postop visit.”
“Anything else?”
I frown. “No…”
“Are you sure?”
Patricia leans forward and says sharply, “She already told you no.”
“Right.” Barber rubs his hands together. “But here’s the thing. We found a cup on the kitchen counter in Shelby Gillis’s house with your fingerprints on it. And one of her neighbors said they saw a green Camry parked outside on the night she disappeared. That’s what you drive, isn’t it, Nora?”
It doesn’t escape me that he called me Nora instead of Dr. Davis. Under ordinary circumstances, I would instruct him otherwise, but I’ve been rendered speechless. A green Camry outside her house is meaningless. There are a million cars like mine out there. But my fingerprintsin her house? How could that have happened?
“So I’m going to ask you again,” he says. “What is your relationship to Shelby Gillis?”
I look over at Patricia for help.
“Even if Dr. Davis was inside the victim’s apartment,” she says, “that does not make her a murder suspect. This is absolutely ridiculous. The only reason you’re targeting her is because of who her father is.”
I want to agree with her, but I’m afraid to speak. I hope that’s all they have on me. A couple of fingerprints on a cup and a green car in the vicinity of Shelby Gillis’s home.
“So tell us if you have something more substantial,” Patricia says, “or are you just wasting my client’s time?”
I watch Barber’s face. I have no idea what they have on me. I flash back to the way Amber Swanson’s mother was glaring at me. She seemed so sure that I had something to do with her daughter’s death. Is it just because of my father?Or is there something more? Does he have a video of me entering Shelby’s house? An eyewitness who saw me hacking off her hands?
What does he have on me?
“That’s all,” he finally says.
Patricia shakes her head in disgust. “In that case, we’ll be leaving now. Dr. Davis, I hope you weren’t too inconvenienced.”
I follow my attorney’s lead and get up out of the folding chair. My legs are still shaky, but better than they were when I came in. The police don’t have anything on me. They’re just fishing around, trying to intimidate me. I have nothing to worry about.
But then I turn around and look at Detective Barber. He might not have any real evidence, but I can see in his eyes that he thinks I killed those girls. And as long as he believes that, he’s going to keep digging until the real killer surfaces.
Chapter 31
I spend the rest of the day in the hospital. I’ve got surgeries scheduled all afternoon, although the trauma pager stays thankfully quiet. Even after my surgeries are over, I have to go off to find a quiet space to dictate the operative reports. It was a busy day—I’m making headway on my competition with Philip.
When I finally finish my work, I start to head out to the hospital parking garage, and then it hits me that my car is still indisposed in the parking lot at my office. How could I have forgotten? I should have called Harper to take care of it. Tomorrow I’ll get it towed. But I can’t deal with it right now.
I end up calling another Uber to get home, then I doze off in the back seat. The driver has to call out my name—possibly repeatedly—to wake me up. It’s been a long day.
When I finally get inside my front door, it feels like it’s been five days since I woke up this morning. I can’t wait to have a nice quiet dinner and crawl into my bed. I flick on the lights and the living room comes into focus. “Honey,I’m home!” I call out.
But instead of the usual silence, my entrance is met with a loud meow.
