Blood Walk Part 8

The horror escalated. A sheet over him blocked the vision of his eyes; temperature had become all one to him, unfelt; and the lack of breath prevented him from smelling anything, but he knew he lay in the morgue. He had heard its cold echoes on arriving, had felt himself slid into a drawer and heard the door close. Now he heard, had lain listening for countless time, the hum of refrigeration units about him while he dreamed nightmares and wished Lane had thrown him in the bay, too. Maybe he would have gone out to sea. Better to be fish food than lie in this hated purgatory of cold and steel. He prayed his parents did not have to see him here.

That was when he thought of the autopsy. One would have to be done. His heart contracted in fear. What would it be like?

How would it feel to lie naked in running water on cold steel, sliced open from neck to hips, sh.e.l.led out like a pea pod . . .

Heart!

He could not cease moving or hold his breath, but his mind paused, waiting. Yes, there it was! Like the distant boom of a drum, his heart sounded in his chest. It squeezed. A slow ripple moved outward from it along his arteries. He felt almost every inch of them. A long pause later, the drum beat again, then again.

He listened in wonder. If his heart beat, he could not be dead. His body lay leaden, held unmoving to the surface beneath him, but a silent cry of joy banished the darkness inside him. Alive!

He drew a breath . . . slow, painfully slow, but a breath nonetheless.

He could have sworn he was not breathing before, nor his heart beating. He had felt-how he had felt!-the silence of his body.

What miracle caused the heart and lungs to resume function? He could not imagine, and at the moment, overjoyed with the sound and feel of them, he did not give a d.a.m.n about the reason.

But he remained in a morgue locker, naked in a refrigerated cabinet. Unless he found a way out, the cold would kill him again.

Could he attract attention by pounding on the locker door?

He tried, but the weakness that had held him motionless the past-how many?-hours persisted. He still could not move.

Could he survive until they came to take him out for the autopsy? He did not feel the cold of the locker right now. Perhaps if he kept alert, he could fight off hypothermia.

He wished, though, that he could change position. His body consisted of one continuous, unrelenting ache, stiff from neck to toes.

By concentrating and straining, he finally managed to move. Like the first heartbeat and the first breath, it came with agonizing slowness. Still, by persisting, he managed to s.h.i.+ft his weight off his b.u.t.tocks and turn on his side. Not that that helped a great deal; he still felt uncomfortable, but at least the position of the aches changed.

He tried again to knock on the locker door, but he moved in slow motion, and the sound he produced was barely audible even to him. He would just have to wait for them to open the door.

He fought his way onto his stomach to change the pressure points once more.

He did not sleep. Certainly he did not rest, but in spite of himself, he must have dozed because the motion of the drawer sliding out startled him. He had not heard the door open. Light flooded him blindingly as the sheet came off.

"What clown put this stiff in on his belly?" a voice demanded irritably.

If he raised upright, would they faint? Garreth wondered. He wished he could find out, but gravity dragged at him, weighting him. He went without resistance as they rolled him onto the stretcher and rearranged the sheet over him.

"Hurry," another voice said. "This one's a cop and Thurlow wants to get him posted as soon as possible."

Garreth worked his hands to the edges of the stretcher and clamped his fingers around the rubber b.u.mper. Even if he could not move fast enough to attract their attention and they missed the faint motion of his chest, they could hardly overlook this.

The stretcher stopped. An attendant pulled off the sheet. Hands took him by the shoulders and legs and pulled . . . but Garreth's grip held him on the stretcher.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on?" snapped the voice of the medical examiner.

"I don't know, Dr. Thurlow. His hands weren't like that when we put him on the gurney."

Now that he had their attention, Garreth forced open his eyes. Half a dozen gasps sounded around him. He focused on Dr.

Edmund Thurlow. "Please." The whisper rasped up out of his throat with a plea from his soul. "Get me out of here."

3

Were the doctors at the far end of the intensivecare unit speaking in unusually loud voices? Garreth wondered. He heard every word clearly.

"I tell you he was dead," Thurlow insisted. "I detected no vital signs, no heartbeat or respiration, and his pupils were fixed and dilated."

"I think it's obvious he couldn't have been dead," another doctor said. "However, that's beside the point now. The question is, can we keep him alive? His blood pressure is nonexistent and we have brady-cardia as well as a reduced temperature and respiration rate."

"Well, he's getting blood just as fast as we can pour it into him. We'll just keep running bloodwork on him and see how he does."

Garreth looked up at the suspended plastic bag with its contents the same dark red as Lane Barber's hair. His eyes followed the tubing down to his arm. The blood made him feel better, but still not good. Exhaustion dragged at him. He desperately wanted to sleep, but he could not find a comfortable position, no matter how he s.h.i.+fted and turned.

"What about the throat injury?" a doctor asked.

"I think the skin sutures we put in will be sufficient," came the reply. "The trauma doesn't appear nearly as severe as what you described, Dr. Thurlow.""We have photographs of what I saw." Thurlow's voice sounded defensive. "Both the left jugular and common carotid suffered multiple lacerations, almost to the point of complete severing. There were also multiple lacerations of the trachea and left sternocleidomastoid muscles."

"And yet just over twelve hours later the vessels and trachea appear intact. The muscle is healing, too. I can't believe that this is a recent injury."

"I don't pretend to understand it; I only know what I found when I examined him in the alley."

They went on talking, but Garreth tried to ignore them. Careful not to move the arm with the needle in it, he s.h.i.+fted position again. The cardiac monitor above his bed registered the effort with an extra bleep. Moving proved pointless, however. Nothing made him comfortable. His bed stood near the window, and the glare of sunlight added to his discomfort.

Footsteps approached. If it was the nurse, he decided, he would beg for something to drug him to sleep. Then he smiled weakly as Harry and Lieutenant Serruto appeared around the curtain.

"Hi," he whispered.

"Mik-san," Harry replied in a husky voice. His hand closed hard over Garreth's.

Serruto said, "They're letting us ask you a few questions."

"Yes. What the h.e.l.l were you doing up there?" Harry demanded. "I'm your partner. Why don't you tell me what you're doing?"

"Easy, Harry," Serruto said.

Garreth did not mind. He heard the frantic worry beneath the anger and knew how he would have felt in Harry's place. "Sorry."

"What happened?" Serruto asked.

Talking hurt. Garreth tried to find a short answer. Reaching up to the heavy collar of bandages around his throat, he managed to whisper, "Lane Barber bit me."

They stared. "Shebit you! Did she overpower you or what?"

How could he explain the loss of will that allowed her to stand him pa.s.sively against a wall and tear his throat out? d.a.m.n, that light hurt. He shut his eyes.

"Please. Close the curtains. Sun's too bright."

"There's no sun," Harry said in a tone of surprise. "We've been socked in with heavy fog since midnight."

Garreth opened his eyes again in astonishment. Noises that sounded overly loud and light that hurt his eyes . . . bleeding to death produced one h.e.l.l of a hangover. But to his relief, Harry closed the curtains. It helped a little.

"Lane bit Mossman and Adair," he said with an effort. "Drank their blood."

"Christ!" Harry shuddered. "The barmaid thought Barber might be kinky, but she's really bent."

Barmaid? Garreth did not ask the question, but he raised his brows in query.

Serruto explained. "We went around to the Barbary Now. Harry thought that you might have been there. The barmaid told us what you two talked about."

If that was so, Harry must have made the same connectionshe had. He looked questioningly at Harry. Harry sighed, shaking his head, indicating to Garreth that they had not arrested Lane.

"She's skipped," Serruto said. "Caught a plane to be at her mother's bedside, she told the manager."

Harry said, "Something spooked her. When she came to work, she told the manager that she might have to leave suddenly.

She'd even arranged for another singer to come in. After her walk with you, she sang a second set, then made a phone call-to her family, she told the manager-and said she had to leave."

Garreth's visit had spooked her. She saw him taking down the license number of the car. "Search her apartment?"

They nodded. "Nothing," Serruto said. "No personal papers in the desk or trash. Some had been burned in the fireplace. The lab is seeing what they can recover from them. Refrigerator and cupboards bare. A closet full of clothes, so she didn't take much with her. The manager has no idea where her mother might live."

A nurse pulled back the bed curtains. "Lieutenant, that's enough for now." When Serruto frowned, she slid between him and the bed and herded both the lieutenant and Harry away.

Harry called back, "Lien sends her love. She'll visit as soon as it's allowed."

When they were gone, the nurse moved around the bed, tucking in sheets. "For someone so weak, you're a restless sleeper."

For the first time in his life. "I'm not comfortable. May I have a sleeping pill?"

"Absolutely not. We can't allow anything that depresses body functions." She leaned across him, pulling up the covers. As she did so, the smell of her filled his nostrils . . . a pleasant mixture of soap and fabric softener and something with an odd but strangely attractive metallic/salty scent. "A bit later I'll send an aide to give you a back rub. That may help."

The aide, when she came, gave a good back rub, but not even that helped. The sheets felt hot and sticky every place they touched him. He twisted in vain looking for a cool spot.

But though he could not make himself comfortable, he felt better with each unit of blood put into him. The dragging weight of his body lightened and he moved with less effort. A thirst that had persisted all day turned into strident hunger and he looked forward eagerly to supper.

An eagerness which suffered sharp disappointment when he saw the broth, gelatin, and tea they allowed him. "I don't get real food?" He thought longingly of fried rice and Lien's sweet-and-sour pork.

"We don't want to strain your circulation by making it work at digestion."

Maybewe did not, buthe would not have minded. Then again, perhaps he would. After eating, his stomach churned uneasily, as though debating whether to keep the offering or not. Garreth lay quiet, willing the nausea away. Could this be part of last night, or was it an aftermath of Chiarelli's punch?

At length, the nausea subsided . . . and Garreth discovered he felt much better. Full of new blood and a symbolic meal, he felt surprisingly normal. Though he still needed sleep, he found some of the aches had subsided. He wished he had a TV to watch.

A doctor appeared later in the evening, introducing himself as Dr. Charles. Garreth recognized one of the voices from the group that morning.

"You're looking much better, Inspector. I'm very pleased with your blood picture. Now, let's check a few things."

He used a stethoscope and rubber hammer and tongue depressor, listening, peering, tapping, probing. While he worked, he hummed. Occasionally the hum changed key, but Garreth could not tell if that had any significance or not. What he did notice was the same metallic/salty odor about the doctor that he had noticed on the nurse, and the aides, too, come to think of it. Did they all wear the same antiperspirant or something?

"Oh, you're doing much better. What you need now is a good night's sleep, and if you're doing this well in the morning, we'll move you out of Intensive Care," the doctor said.

Garreth, however, did not feel the least like sleeping now. He wanted a TV or visitors. Lacking both, he could only lie in bed listening to the heart monitors bleeping in ragged syncopation around the room. He closed his eyes, but opened them again when his mind began replaying the nightmare in the alley. Where had she learned that perversion?

Why did they keep Intensive Care lighted so brightly at night? he also wondered. There was enough light to read by. How could anyone sleep in a glare like this?

He still lay awake when dawn came, and then, astonis.h.i.+ngly, for what must be the first time in his life, the first rays of the sun were followed by an intense desireto sleep. Only he could not. Just as suddenly, he rediscovered all of yesterday's aches. The sheets heated up and Garreth found himself once more in a ceaseless hunt for a comfortable position. Worse, when breakfast came, his stomach voted against it. It came back up almost as soon as it went down.

On his morning rounds, Dr. Charles frowned gravely about that. Garreth told him about Chiarelli.

"We'll schedule for a barium series tomorrow and see about your stomach."

In the meantime, they fed him intravenously. He lay with clear liquid running into one arm and blood-after the morning bloodwork, they decided he needed still more blood-into the other. He would look like a junkie by the time they dismissed him, he reflected.

The air filled with that metallic/salty scent, stronger than ever. Only this time, none of the staff were around him. Sniffing out the source, Garreth discovered that it came from the tube feeding blood into his arm.

The hair on his neck stirred.That was what he was smelling,blood? He smelled the blood in people? Why now, when he never had before? He s.h.i.+vered uneasily. Weird. What was happening to him?

Before he had a chance to answer the questions about himself, Serruto arrived with a stenographer to ask official ones. Those seemed to go on forever, though objectively he knew the lieutenant made it a relatively short statement. After Serruto left, Garreth was moved to a private room and then left to sleep. He wished he could. He felt exhausted, and ready to cry in frustration at being unable to sleep.

Garreth did not even attempt to eat lunch. The mere scent of it set his stomach lurching.

Lien came for a short visit in the afternoon. "You look terrible," she said, "but at least you're alive. I had a frantic call from your mother yesterday morning."

Garreth's stomach tightened. "They'd heard about me on the news?"

"No, it hadn't been broadcast yet. She said your grandmother dreamed you'd been killed, that Satan tore out your throat." Lien paused. "It's uncanny, isn't it?"

But typical of Grandma Doyle.

"Unfortunately, at that time we thought you were dead. The happiest phone call I've ever made was the one later to let her know you were alive after all. She said to tell you they'll be up in a couple of days to visit."

He would like that. Maybe Judith would let them bring Brian, too.

Lien chattered about her job and art cla.s.ses, relieving him of the necessity of saying anything. While she talked, she distracted him from his discomfort, but once she had left, he went back to fighting aches and hot sheets. To make matters worse, his upper gums started to hurt for no reason.

He eyed the cus.h.i.+oned chair by the window. That might be a helpful change; it would be a change anyway. So he threw back the covers and eased over the side of the bed.