On November 4, 2003, the detectives started scheduling interviews with the Somerset Medical CCU nurses, hoping to find a source of information unfiltered by corporate lawyers. The Somerset Medical Center administration lawyers requested that all interviews be conducted within the hospital, in the presence of Risk Manager Mary Lund. The assistant prosecutor had agreed to the conditions. Both Danny and Tim were furious, Tim going so far as to tell the AP, the prosecutor, and the police chief, too, that the whole interview process was now officially a “crock of shit.” In private, the chief, the detective captain, and the other detectives agreed with Tim1—but they didn’t say it in the meeting, in front of their boss—which, of course, was exactly his point.
Orchestrating that waste of time was Danny’s problem. Danny delegated detectives Russell Colucci and Edward Percell to conduct the interviews.
The daily reports provided an encyclopedia of information about nursing procedures and scheduling and physical layout—all essential groundwork, none of it game changing. Not all of the nurses had worked with Charles Cullen. Those that did used many of the same words to describe him—“quiet,” a “loner,” a little “bizarre” in his personal behavior, but professionally “excellent.” Most showed at least a mild affection for their quiet, quirky coworker, and they were particularly appreciative of his willingness to pick up shifts.2 Reviewing the interviews later, Tim and Danny couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that aside from the murders, Charles Cullen might have been a pretty good nurse.
But what the interviews didn’t reveal was anything of the slightest use to a homicide investigation. The descriptions they gave were brief and sterile. Danny couldn’t be sure if the nurses didn’t know anything, or if they were just being quiet in front of Mary Lund. Each time his detectives asked a question, it seemed like the nurse would reflexively glance over at Lund before speaking. Finally toward the end of November, Danny decided to change tactics. From now on, he’d be doing the interviews himself, and alone. So far, all the detectives had done was ask the nurses to provide information, with an administrator sitting right there. The detectives had been told not to share any of their suspicions with the Somerset Medical Center staff. The nurses were confused by the process, and had little incentive to open up. They didn’t even know exactly what the investigation was about. For all they knew, they were the ones in trouble with the law.
Colucci and Percell had been told to run it that way—Tim and Danny couldn’t risk a leak to Cullen or the newspapers, or even to the Somerset Medical administration. But Danny knew that if they were going to get anywhere, he would have to bend the rules, and take the leap of trusting somebody. Colucci and Percell weren’t in the position to make that call, but Danny was. And so, only three days after storming into Mary Lund’s office to demand the Pyxis information, Danny and Mary were spending five to ten hours a day crammed together in a little room off the Somerset Medical ICU,3 both of them hating every minute of it.
By necessity, the two had reestablished a friendly, if false, work rapport. But Danny noticed that something fundamental had changed in Mary Lund. It was as if the woman was suffering a slow-motion nervous breakdown. Lund was getting it from both sides, the bottleneck between the hospital and the murder investigation. She was the risk manager in a situation of unprecedented consequence in lives and jobs and dollars.
Mary had been losing weight steadily since the investigation started, and it didn’t seem to Danny like the intentional kind—Danny had known women, when they lost a pound or two, to go out and buy something new to show it off. Mary Lund had lost maybe twenty pounds but she was trying to hide it, shrinking inside her pantsuit, nervous as a hare. The presence of Danny Baldwin in the room wasn’t helping her nerves, either.
Amy had been telling her girlfriends for weeks that she was definitely not down with the whole investigation thing.
Waves of paranoia swept the unit. Each secretly feared the police interviews had something to do with her personally, and that it could affect her future. The nurses whispered together in the hallways, forming alliances, choosing sides. Each shift amplified and distorted the rumors from the shift before. Most of the rumors were about Charlie. Two weeks into it, the rumors were about Amy, too.
Everyone knew she was “Charlie’s friend.” They remembered the stink Amy had made about signing for insulin. Apparently, there was a death involved, and both insulin and Charlie were mixed up in it. Some of the nurses now avoided Amy, as if suspicion was contagious. Her friends were worried for her. To tell the truth, Amy was scared for herself.
She always played the tough girl, but inside, she was terrified—freaking out-of-her-mind scared. What had she done? Amy’s heart condition required that she take daily antianxiety medication. Had she taken too much Atavan one night and made a mistake? Were there narcotics missing, was the insulin issue to blame? It could be anything. Amy called to ensure her RN license hadn’t expired, and it hadn’t. So what was it, then? Amy wondered whether she needed a lawyer. Every time the detectives made an appointment Amy would call in sick. After two weeks she could avoid it no longer. Her manager sent her to the room.
Inside, she found Mary Lund and a police detective, a big black guy in a suit and tie. He asked her to have a seat. He called her “Ms. Loughren.” There was a water pitcher and Dixie cups. Amy felt like a criminal. Her heart was going to explode if she held it in, so she let it all out.