Eye of the Nightingale

by R. D. Hunter

  “That’s good.” There was a pause, and I sensed the other shoe was about to drop.

  “Unfortunately, since you’re listed as the last person to administer insulin to Mr.

  Burleson, I’m going to have to suspend you from any and all practice at my facilities until the investigation is complete.”

  There it was. I was out. I knew it was standard procedure pending an inquiry, but it was still a hard pill to swallow.

  I opened and closed my mouth a few times, but no sound came out. Michael, seeing my distress, gently took the phone from my ear and spoke into it. I’m not sure what he said. I wasn’t listening. But I felt the hot flash of anger and disbelief roll off him a second later as King told him the same thing he’d told me.

  “That’s stupid!” he exploded. “After everything Ava’s done for you, for those people, now you’re going to side line her? You just need a scapegoat. Someone to pin this on so you don’t get sued and lose some of your precious money.”

  I don’t know what King said in return, but it didn’t do anything to calm Michael’s temper. “Yeah, right,” he snorted. “And where was that deep caring feeling when Ava was locked in your freezer? Or kidnapped by one of your employee? Or had a deranged lunatic sicced on her by the director at your facility? Don’t try to play me, King.”

  I couldn’t take much more of Michael’s anger. It was hot and righteous and I knew he had my best interests at heart, but I couldn’t take it right now.

  Hunter / Nightingale / 187

  Almost without thinking I laid a hand on him and sent cool, calming vibes his way. It didn’t drown the fire burning in his gut, but it took it down a little.

  “Michael, he’s right,” I said in a low voice. “This has to happen and I can’t be anywhere near it or it’ll contaminate the findings. If I’m not responsible, the best thing I can do is keep my distance.”

  I didn’t say the other part. That if I was unable to complete my clinicals, I wouldn’t be able to graduate. It seemed tactless to be thinking about that now, though. A man had died. I was potentially the cause. My education could wait.

  “Ask King if I can go back there to collect my stuff,” I said. Michael repeated the question into my phone.

  “He says yes, but you’re not to be left alone with any of the staff or patients,” he said, grinding his teeth. He was still chomping at the bit to lay into King, but he was holding it down admirably.

  I nodded. “Fair enough.”

  Gary spoke up. “I’ll head back too. I can start getting all the paper work together and collecting the files they’ll need. The sooner they get it, the sooner this investigation will be done.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He started towards the door, then paused and turned back towards me. “For what it’s worth, you’re a great director and a great nurse. You’ve done more for that place in a week than anyone else has in the past couple of years. You should be proud.”

  I nodded. It was a sweet sentiment. Why did it sound so final?

  Hunter / Nightingale / 188

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Gary took his own car and Michael and I rode to Sunny Pines in silence. There was nothing to say. Every so often I would get a flash of irritation from him and knew he was thinking about what had gone down with King over the phone.

  Gary’s car was already there by the time we arrived. I knew news would have spread about Sam Burleson’s death and my subsequent suspension. There would probably be plenty of people around to offer me support or a shoulder to lean on. All good things. But right now, I just wanted to get in and out and be left alone. I circled around and went in the back entrance while Michael stayed in the car.

  My plan was to sneak to the elevators and go up, grab a few things out of my office and beat a hasty retreat. Anything left behind could be packed up by King and his

  ‘investigators’ and sent to me.

  Maybe I was a little bitter. I knew what had to happen, that this investigation was necessary. But, damn it, didn’t I deserve a little consideration after everything I’d been through? I sure thought so. Michael did too. But King was awful quick to get the ball

  Hunter / Nightingale / 189

  rolling on this investigation. Maybe that was his way of helping out. Who could tell with that guy?

  I passed by the staff locker room on my way to the elevators and stopped.

  Someone was in there. I felt a myriad of emotions coming from the other side of the door, but they were strange. Alien. It was like what a dog might feel the first time he drove a car. Primal, exhilarated and totally out of place.

  I was intrigued and a little bit scared. Whoever this was, it was somebody I had to meet. I pushed open the door and went in.

  The room was pretty basic. Common L shape, with rows of half rusted lockers lining either wall. They were about twenty years old and not in very good shape. I’d been meaning to get them replaced, but hadn’t gotten around to it. Now I supposed I never would.

  One locker in the corner was open and someone was hastily emptying its contents into a brown duffel bag on the floor. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw who it was.

  “Gary? What are you doing in here?” I asked.

  My friend slammed the locker in surprise and looked for all the world like a kid who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Normally so reserved and quiet that I couldn’t pick up anything from him, now his emotions were in turmoil and I had trouble separating them out. One thing was for sure, he wasn’t happy to see me.

  “Oh, hi Ava,” he said, nervously running a hand through his blonde hair. “I was just coming to collect a few things before I started getting those files together.”

  It was a lie. The falseness of his words hit me like a sledgehammer and I was momentarily confused at picking up something so clear from him. What was going on?

  Hunter / Nightingale / 190

  I glanced at the bag on the floor. “What kind of things were you collecting?” Was this somebody else’s locker? Was he a thief using this time of crisis to deepen his own wallet?

  No, that didn’t make any sense. Nobody kept anything really valuable in their locker. Even the females kept their purses locked safely in their car. It was just easier that way. Anyone planning a major heist on the locker room treasures was in for a major disappointment when he got around to counting his loot.

  “Oh, well, you see it’d been a while since I cleaned out my locker and I had a bunch of old weights and stuff in here that I wanted to get rid…hey!”

  I’d had enough of his lies. It’d been a long night and I wasn’t in the mood to play games.

  I deftly stepped around him and plunged my hand into the open bag. Guided by my empathic sense, I felt my fingers clutch around a small black bag and jerked it free, holding it up to the light to examine it. It was a diabetic supply kit, like the kind people afflicted with the disease carry around with them. I knew what was in there without even having to look inside.

  “Gary, what the hell?” I said almost in a whisper. “What did you do?” It was a rhetorical question. I knew what he’d done. What I didn’t know was why.

  “I wish you hadn’t found that, Ava. It would have been a lot better for everyone involved if you hadn’t.” His tone of voice chilled me. It was nothing like the happy-go-lucky guy I’d come to know and respect. It was cold, merciless and almost mechanical in its finality.

  I turned around with a pang of dread and realized for the first time that he was

  Hunter / Nightingale / 191

  standing between me and the only exit in the room. The chaos of his emotions had quieted some and now only a delicious apprehension made itself known to me.

  Apprehension for what?

  Despite this turn of events, I wasn’t ready to get down on my knees and beg for mercy yet. The memory of Sam Burleson was still fresh in my memory and I felt more of a sense of outrage than fear.

  “Answer me,” I said. “What did you do?”

&nb
sp; “I think you know what I did. But if it helps, I’ll come right out and say it; I killed Sam Burleson. I waited until you left his room, then went in right behind you and dosed him with about fifty units of insulin. He never even woke up.” His voice softened a little and my hope grew with it. “There was no pain.”

  “But…why, Gary? Why would you do that? He was a good man who never hurt anybody.”

  He shrugged. “And Ruby was a good woman. It doesn’t matter to me. They all go out the door the same way sooner or later; feet first.”

  My heart almost stopped beating. A cold sneer began playing over Gary’s features and I felt a sudden pain in both my palms. It took a second for me to realize my fingernails were digging into them.

  “You killed Ruby?”

  He shrugged. “She had been on my list for a while. Grabbed my ass one too many times. When she went to visit you in the hospital, I saw my chance. I knew the corrupt staff would get the blame.”

  “It was you I saw wrestling with her that night,” I said, hardly believing my own

  Hunter / Nightingale / 192

  words. “You picked her up and threw her down that hill like she was…like she was nothing.”

  “I knew just how to make her land so her neck would snap. Again, no pain.” He stepped forward while I was too stunned to move and snatched the insulin kit out of my hands. “And it’ll be the same way with you. I promise.” He opened the bag and took out a syringe and a vial of insulin.

  Now, maybe for the first time, I realized the danger I was in. I’d felt murder in Lawson. It was easily recognizable and I never wanted to feel it again. But this time, it was different. There was no malice in Gary. No thirst for revenge. Only a cold calculating purpose with an undercurrent of apprehension.

  “That was you that locked me in the freezer, wasn’t it?” I said. “When you rescued me, you already had a blanket ready. There was no way you could know I’d need it unless you were the one who put me in there.”

  He nodded, still not looking at me. “I’d hoped it would send the right message and you wouldn’t stick around. So much for that plan.”

  “At least tell me why,” I said, trying to stall him for as long as possible. My only hope was Michael. If I took too long, he’d come inside looking for me. Once I sensed his presence, I’d scream bloody murder and he’d charge in here and take this psycho down.

  Gary paused for a second as if to consider my question. “I guess for fun,” he said finally.

  I blinked. That wasn’t the answer I’d expected. “For fun? What do you mean fun?”

  He inserted the syringe in the vial and began pulling some of the liquid. “Imagine

  Hunter / Nightingale / 193

  what it would be like to never feel fun. Never feel anything, actually. How far would you go to get some kind of sensation out of life?”

  “You mean you don’t…feel anything? Nothing at all?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say nothing. I’ve found certain things that give me a rush.” He shot me a nasty grin. “Never twice in one night though.”

  It all clicked into place. Gary was a sociopath. Unable to feel and process emotions the way we do, with a highly skewed view of right and wrong. He didn’t care about money or power or any of the other stuff Lowry and his staff had been about. He’d done it all for the kicks. And now he was about to do it again.

  “Is that the same needle you used on Burleson?” I asked, trying to stifle some of the anger I felt growing inside me.

  He nodded. “I thought it apt. They’ll find you soon, think you offed yourself with the same needle you used to overdose the poor old man. Open and shut, and I’ll be long gone.”

  “You’ve done this before.”

  He laughed. It sounded wrong. “Of course. I find a clinic or a rest home where people are trained to turn a blind eye to things, then set myself up and go to town, picking off the patients one by one. I must admit though,” he pulled out the loaded syringe and tossed the bag on the floor, “no one’s ever caught on to me. At least until now. I’ll have to move on after this. Heat’s getting too hot. But I’m not worried. There are plenty of other places like Sunny Pines. Where death is accepted as an inevitability and no one asks questions when it shows up.” He took a deep breath and his expression became a little more human. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I never meant for you to make my list.”

  Hunter / Nightingale / 194

  He started walking towards me and reached out to grab my arm. I jerked back and made ready to defend myself. He stopped and gave me an exasperated look.

  “Come on, Ava. You know you can’t beat me. Don’t make this more difficult.

  Bruises and cuts will make it harder for people to believe you killed yourself. Do me a solid on this one. Okay?”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. He wanted me to stand still while he killed me, and he made it sound like he was asking me to go pick up his laundry. The anger I’d been feeling flared up again. I thought of Ruby, scared and alone out there in the forest while this monster stalked her. I thought of Sam Burleson, so happy he got his wife’s ring back until this creature in front of me snuck in and cut his life short.

  No, I wouldn’t pull back again. But I wouldn’t just stand still and let him off me. I knew what I had to do.

  I squared my shoulders and looked him in the eye. “You want kicks, you twisted son of a bitch?” I said through gritted teeth. “Try this on for size.”

  There was no pain inside Gary for me to bring to the surface. No anger or hatred for me to overwhelm him with. He just didn’t feel it. It was a foreign concept to him.

  But there was plenty of it around us. Sunny Pines was still a repository for all the gloom and depression it had seen and housed over the years. Since Lowry had been ousted, a thin trickle of hope had begun to take shape in its emotional signature, but it took a while to undo all that hurt and damage. That was what I drew on now.

  Since I’d been spending so much time here, I’d learned how to tone down Sunny Pine’s vibe to a steady background noise. It no longer overwhelmed me the way it did on my first day, mostly because I could ignore it. I didn’t ignore it now. It had my full

  Hunter / Nightingale / 195

  attention.

  I opened myself up to my surroundings like never before. Every defense I had in place came crashing down and I nearly staggered from the weight of all those negative emotions slamming into me at once. I felt the pain and loneliness of being abandoned. I felt the hurt and despair of never being able to leave or see my home again. And I felt the loss of good friends and family as death picked them off one by one. All this, I took in until tears streamed steadily down my face and I felt like I was going to break.

  It was only by my will, by the fury and determination that the man in front of me would never hurt another living soul, that I was able to channel it into the only weapon that would save me. I threw it all at my advancing assailant. This was no push. No slight manipulation of his emotional state. This was a full on assault and I gave it everything I had.

  He stopped in his tracks and a look of surprise crossed his face. This was followed quickly by a grimace of pain as he dropped the syringe he’d been holding and staggered back.

  “What are you…what are you doing?” he stammered, holding the sides of his head. I didn’t bother answering. I didn’t let up. I just poured it on.

  “No! Stop! Please, make it stop. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. Please. I won’t hurt anyone else. I promise. Please. Mama, make it stop!” I wasn’t his Mama, and I didn’t make it stop.

  For the first time ever, Gary was feeling emotional pain. And not just any pain either, like when your child hood sweetheart breaks up with you or you find out Old Yeller dies at the end. No, this was the pent up agony of years of abuse and neglect. It

  Hunter / Nightingale / 196

  was a stark contrast from the constant state of numbness he wandered around in. And it hurt. God, did it hurt.

  He was s
obbing openly now. So was I. I was feeling everything he was feeling.

  My only defense was that I was somewhat used to it. My years as an empath had hardened me against outside emotions, and I clung to that tolerance like a lifeboat of sanity.

  “Gotta stop it,” Gary said. “Gotta end it all.” His eyes fell on the needle between us and he pounced on it. I saw what he was up to and had just enough time to grab his wrist to keep him from plunging the syringe into his neck. We wrestled back and forth for control.

  “No! Don’t you see?” he raged. “I have to die. I can’t go on like this.” He slung me around like a rag doll, his strength amplified by his desperation. I held on out of sheer stubbornness.

  My nose was bleeding from the strain of exerting my empathic abilities so far. My head was ringing from all the pain I’d endured and I was exhausted and terrified from the night’s ordeals. I felt my grip slipping.

  Help me, I sent out a mental call with everything I had left. It wasn’t much.

  Somebody help me.

  “Ava?” I heard a voice from the hallway call my name.

  “Michael, we’re in here,” I yelled. “Help!”

  My boyfriend burst in, took one look at us wrestling for control of a loaded syringe and proceeded to launch a flying tackle that caught Gary around the mid-section.

  I slumped to the floor in relief, my mind and body alike throbbing with pain and fatigue.

  Hunter / Nightingale / 197

  The two men grappled for a second, but Michael had more than enough combat experience and probably twenty pounds on Gary. Besides, Gary wasn’t fighting to win, he was still trying to claw his way to the needle which had landed in the far corner when he went down.

  Michael twisted one arm behind his back at an awkward angle, pulled his cuffs from a small pouch under his jacket and had the sobbing man neatly trussed in less than a minute. He came over to check on me.