“Don’t worry. It’s good you can close your fingers. I have hope there’s no permanent nerve damage. You’ll need to be assessed by a physical therapist after the stitches come out.”
She gave him a baleful stare. “Are you kidding?”
He chuckled. “No. You can’t assess yourself. Never a good idea to self-diagnose.”
She sighed. “When can I go home?”
He squeezed her hand and motioned to Mary Ann. “I want to do another CBC to make sure your platelets are good. And you need to eat some solid food. Assuming everything comes back normal, tomorrow afternoon. Saturday at the latest.”
She nodded. She wanted her own bed. Wanted her dogs. Oh, shit. Her eyes widened and the beeping of the machine next to her increased. “Charlie and Polly?”
Jase rubbed her feet. “They’re fine. They were outside. If you need Polly, Tim can go get her from my house.” She sagged into the mattress.
Knock, knock.Everyone turned as Detective Johnson stepped into the doorway. “Can I join the party?”
“You can have my spot,” Dr. Walsh said. “Bree, I’ll be back to check on you during my normal rounds.” He maneuvered his way around everyone in the room and left.
Detective Johnson took a few steps into the room. “How’re you feeling?”
She quirked her mouth and her eyebrow twitched. “Okay, all things considered.”
His gaze was sympathetic. He looked down at her arm, being rewrapped in clean bandages. “You up for answering some questions?”
“Sure.”
“Not too long,” Mary Ann said. “She needs to rest.” She packed up the remaining supplies on the tray and left with a pointed looked at the detective.
He nodded and took up position next to Jase. Denise sat in one of the chairs by the door, thumbs flying across the face of her phone.
“Walk me through your day on Monday.” He lifted a digital recorder and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged. Pressing a button, he set the device on the tray table next to the bed. “Start from when you realized Cindy wasn’t at work.”
“It was between seven-forty-five and eight, I guess. She’s usually in by seven-thirty.” Detective Johnson stopped her a few times as she recalled the events leading to the confrontation in her house, asking her to backtrack or clarify some part of the timeline.
“She landed on the knife?” Bree asked.
“The medical examiner determined she tried to break her fall, but didn’t let go of it. She was still clutching it in her hand.”
Her eyes and nose stung. She dropped her gaze to her lap to hide her tears. Jase lowered the bedrail and sat next to her hip. He pulled her hand into his lap, careful of the IV taped to the back. His thumb brushed her cheek, catching a tear.
She swallowed hard and looked back at Detective Johnson. “Have you been able to figure out why? She wasn’t making a lot of sense. She rambled more than anything.”
He sighed and grabbed the recorder off the tray. He turned it off and slid it into his coat pocket. “She had several scrapbooks full of news clippings about you. Most of them look like they were downloaded from the internet. Even if the content was the same, if it was from a different site, she saved it.”
“What kind of articles?” Jase asked. His thumb brushed back and forth along the meaty part of her hand.
“They start from the time Bree received her Bronze Star.”
“She mentioned that,” Bree said.
“From there, it was anything and everything she could find,” Detective Johnson said.
“How much is there?” Denise asked.
“Not a lot after the hoopla of her medal died down. A few articles here and there, mostly in conjunction with events her grandmother supported.” He turned to Bree. “There were a lot of pictures after she started working at the hospital with you. Some of them you’re looking at the camera.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “Some were of you at your house or shopping. You seem completely unaware the pictures were being taken.”
Bree suppressed a shudder. Cindy had followed her? Stalked her? Something didn’t fit. “But why did she kill those women? I don’t understand that part.”
He pointed at the vacant chair. “Do you mind?” Bree shook her head. He pulled it closer to the bed and rested one ankle over the other knee. “We have a theory about why she started killing. We found journals she kept, going back about five years.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “They were from around the time her husband left her for another woman.”
