The Edge of Death: (Sequel to ADRENALINE)

by John Benedict

  He opened the kitchen cabinet under the sink where his friends hung out. Time to put up or shut up. They stared up at him uneasily. The tequila bottle, who usually took the lead, spoke up: Careful now, pal. You wanna think this through. Sure, you might feel strong now, but who knows what shit’s coming down the pike. You’re a bad luck magnet, you know that. Calamity is just waiting for you around the next corner. And then who’s gonna have your back? Your weasely med school buds? Your new girl pal who already has a boyfriend? Your dad? Right, I didn’t think so.

  Chip steeled his nerve and then poured the contents of each bottle, one after the other, down the sink. They gurgled loudly, protesting as they went, until all six were empty, and the voices fell silent. He chucked the empties into the recycling bin.

  C H A P T E R 4 4

  Sunday, 8:00 p.m.

  Chip checked the rhythm again for 237. No question about it—she was in flutter with the distinctive sawtooth pattern; when he started his shift she had been in Afib. He rubbed his eyes, thankful that his head didn’t hurt with a nasty hangover. He was proud of himself for emptying his stash. He might even be able to concentrate on his work, for a change—except for the fact that he was preoccupied with a certain girl with a long braid, and the strange and gruesome tale she had told him that morning.

  Part of her story didn’t make sense. There was a piece that didn’t fit, and it bothered him. Why had Chandler attacked Kristin in the first place? How did he even know where she lived? Surely it had nothing to do with her photographs, as she thought. Chip gave Kristin a pass on this. After all, she was in a highly emotional state because of the death of Smokey, and undoubtedly wasn’t thinking straight.

  He glanced back at the screen. Now 237’s rhythm looked like a three-to-one block—wait, no, it was four-to-one. Seemed pretty unstable, although that was predictable—the patient was another Mueller special. How weird was that? They’d been having a run of them lately. The difference was that Chip knew this lady. Well, sort of.

  Footsteps approached, interrupting Chip’s thoughts. He looked up in time to see Dr. Landry, who looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. “Hi, Dr. Landry,” he said.

  Landry stopped and eyed Chip, his brow knotted in confusion. “Do I know you?”

  “No, not really,” Chip said. Up close, Landry looked agitated on top of being exhausted. “I listened to your airway lecture the other day,” Chip added.

  “Oh.” Landry sounded wholly disinterested.

  “I’m Chip Allison, the evening shift monitor watcher.” Chip held out his hand.

  “I see.” Doug transferred his coffee cup to his left hand and shook Chip’s hand. “Keep a close eye on 237. That’s my wife in there, and she’s been through hell.”

  “I know. She’s at the top of my list, sir.”

  “Call me Doug.”

  “Okay. She’s in A-flutter, now.” Chip brushed back a lock of his stubborn hair. “Seems very stable.”

  Landry smiled wryly. “Let’s see . . . twelve hours ago, she was on full cardiopulmonary bypass in some basement lab with her body packed in ice. And a blood pressure of zero. She’s been pretty close to death now—several times. So, if you want to call that stable, well . . .”

  Chip cleared his throat, not sure what to say. “I guess she did okay in there—in Mueller’s lab. I mean, she came out.”

  Landry eyed him curiously for several moments.

  “Some don’t,” Chip added sheepishly.

  “Right.” Landry wore a pained expression. “Listen Chip, I’ve had a really bizarre day and I’m still trying to make sense of it all. I should go check on my wife.” Landry turned to leave.

  “Is it true, what they’re saying about Mueller?” Chip blurted.

  Landry stopped and turned his head. “Why, what have you heard?”

  “That he’s dead.”

  Landry grimaced. “Word travels around here fast.”

  Chip shrugged.

  “Yeah, he’s dead all right,” Landry said.

  “They say he died in a lab accident,” Chip continued. “Sounds a bit bogus, but hey, you know—stuff happens.”

  “Lab accident? Huh. I guess you could call it that.”

  “Something else?” Chip prodded.

  Landry looked around, then lowered his voice. “I’m not sure I should be talking to you about this. Can I trust you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You remind me of a med student I knew once, several years ago. Seems like another lifetime.” Landry took a sip of his coffee. “But I guess all this will hit the papers soon enough.”

  “So true.”

  “Well,” Landry said, “I spent the better part of the day trying to convince the Hershey PD that I didn’t kill him.” Landry paused and Chip sensed a reluctance to reveal too much.

  “Why on earth would they suspect you?” Chip asked. “Mueller’s trying to save your wife’s life.”

  “I don’t know—maybe since I found Mueller’s body.”

  “Yikes. Where?”

  “Stuffed in a storage locker in the PML. The police detective kept questioning me over and over about the details of how his body got into the locker—of which I had no idea.”

  “Hmmm . . .” Chip recalled his own ordeal with the Hershey PD. “So, what happened to Mueller, if you don’t mind me asking?” he said, half afraid to hear the answer.

  “His throat had been sliced open.”

  “Yuck.” Chip recoiled at the image. “He was murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “No. But I showed the detective the smeared blood trail left by the killer, leading out of the lab. He wasn’t very impressed.”

  “Do they have any leads on the murderer?”

  “Well, maybe.” Landry shot glances around the room. “I described the guy to, uh . . . Marky or Markel—whatever his name was—”

  “Wait—you saw the guy?” Chip asked, stunned.

  “Yeah. And finally the detective started taking me seriously.”

  “Why?”

  “He said the description fit the guy who killed the ICU nurse last week.”

  “What?” A suffocating dread began to envelop Chip, making it hard to breathe.

  “Some guy named Nick Chandler. Apparently, a former patient of Dr. Mueller. Why?” Landry was now staring at him.

  Chip felt as if he had been sucker punched. He couldn’t respond; all he could do was struggle for air.

  “Are you all right?” Landry asked.

  “Yeah,” Chip spluttered, finally finding his voice. How could this be, Chandler not dead, but still on the loose, killing people?. Waves of nausea and dizziness coursed through him.

  “Do you know this guy?” Landry asked.

  “I was here the night he attacked Heather,” Chip said softly.

  “You were?”

  “Heather was in the same room as your wife,” Chip added.

  Landry digested this. “I read the account of her death in the Patriot News,” he said, “but they were awful scant on details.” An intense look came into his eyes. “So you saw Chandler up close?”

  “Yeah,” Chip said, struggling to regain his composure. “Real close. He tossed me aside like I was a scarecrow.”

  Landry raised his eyebrows. “That’s bizarre, all right, Chip.”

  Chip hesitated; it was now his turn to be reluctant. “That’s not the half of it, Dr. Landry.”

  Landry was alert now, all traces of fatigue gone as he focused on Chip.

  Chip cleared his throat again. “I was over at a friend’s house this morning. She works here as a x-ray tech.”

  “Yeah . . .” Landry coaxed.

  “Chandler attacked her at her apartment.”

  “What! Are you kidding?” Landry looked incredulous. “Why would he attack your girlfriend?”

  “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s a friend who’s a girl.”

  “Okay—but why?”

  “I don’t know. S
he was here the night he killed Heather, too.” Chip decided to leave the talk of Kirlian photography and auras out of his rendition.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Just yesterday. Afternoon.”

  “Jesus—that’s amazing. What happened?”

  “Well, he attacked her in her basement—”

  “Do the police know about this?” Landry began to pace back and forth, running his fingers through his hair.

  “Yes, they were at her apartment investigating—Markel was in on this, as well.”

  “Is your friend okay?”

  “Yeah, she’s fine. But only because her dog fought him off.”

  Landry froze in his tracks. “Did you say dog?” he said, his voice urgent.

  “Yes.”

  Landry reached out and gripped Chip’s shoulder. “Chip, by chance, did she mention where her dog bit him?”

  “Yeah. According to Kristin, he bit him real good in the neck. But Chandler got away. She thinks he climbed out the basement window, but I’m not sure that’s possible.” Chip paused as Landry’s words sank in. “How did you know about the dog?”

  Landry didn’t answer, instead staring off into space.

  “Her dog died in the fight,” Chip continued.

  “That’s incredible.” Landry ran his hand through his thoroughly mussed up hair and resumed pacing. Finally, he took Chip by the elbow and led him around the corner, out of earshot of the nurse’s station. In a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “Chip, I have to tell you what else happened in the PML this morning. You’re not going to believe it.”

  Chip listened with horrid fascination as Landry recounted his fight with Chandler. He spilled it all out in rapid fashion and Chip didn’t interrupt him; he could see the fierce emotion playing across Landry’s face as he relived the encounter. Finally, Landry came to the end of his tale, and took several deep breaths.

  “That’s crazy, all right,” Chip said. “What do you think Chandler was doing at the med center in the first place? He knows the police are hunting him. And why go to the PML?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” Landry said. “He must’ve gone to see Mueller. Perhaps to question him. He couldn’t possibly have known that Laura or I would be there.”

  “Why would he kill Mueller, the man who saved his life?”

  “I don’t know. Same reason, I guess, that he killed that nurse, and was trying to kill your friend. They got in his way, or were witnesses. Lucky she had a dog to fight him off.”

  “The way Kristin talked, her dog practically took his head off.”

  “She wasn’t exaggerating, Chip. I saw his neck wound up close—it was severe. I’m afraid I didn’t help matters, either.” Landry’s hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically as he said this. “He probably crawled off somewhere to die. Good riddance.”

  “That’s what we thought, too. Yesterday.” Chip recalled Kristin’s creepy feeling about Chandler. “But I’m thinking this guy doesn’t die so easily,” he added.

  C H A P T E R 4 5

  Monday, 8:00 a.m.

  Chip made his way out of the med center and stepped into a thick fog that blanketed the landscape, clinging to everything. Visibility was reduced to about ten feet or less. The pale ghostly disc of the sun appeared oddly disjointed, suspended low in the eastern sky. The only other thing he could make out were the tall xenon lights struggling to illuminate the parking lot, about a hundred yards distant. Even though he figured the fog would burn off soon, it was downright spooky-looking right now, and it wasn’t even Halloween yet. Of course, everything seemed spookier with that monster Chandler roaming around.

  Chip quickened his pace, anxious to get to the relative safety of his car. His legs protested slightly; they were still sore from his treadmill workout yesterday. His mind, however, was going a mile a minute; the conversation with Dr. Landry had been a real shocker. Especially on top of Kristin’s horrifying tale. Something Landry had said kept replaying in his mind: “Chandler sliced Mueller’s throat open with a scalpel blade.“ Could any of this Chandler stuff be real? Where is that bastard now? Has he bled to death somewhere?

  He heard heavy footsteps approaching him on the walkway, echoing strangely in the dense air. He slowed almost to a stop and strained to see, but couldn’t make out anything through the impenetrable mist. The footsteps got louder. Involuntarily, he tensed; his heart started to pound. Finally the white coat of a med student materialized out of the fog, not five feet in front of him. The student passed by and quickly faded into oblivion behind him. Chip resumed breathing.

  Eventually he found his car through the fog—the Camry’s faded, dull gray paint made it all the more difficult to see. He hopped into the beat-up ’98 Toyota and pulled the door shut with more force than usual. After punching the automatic lock switch, he fired up the reliable four-cylinder and gripped the steering wheel hard, trying to collect his thoughts.

  Let’s see—Chandler has now killed two people and a dog, and tried to kill two more. He’s still on the loose. How is that possible? Why can’t the police catch this guy? Chip pictured Markel and Hershey’s finest and figured he had answered his own question. He approached the med center main entrance. At the last minute, he swung the Camry out of the left turn lane and went straight, in the opposite direction from his apartment.

  Chip executed a slow drive-by, rolling down the window, trying to see through the blasted fog. Kristin’s apartment building looked deserted—no lights on, no cars out front. He parked in front of a neighbor’s house and sat there for a few minutes, trying to come up with a better plan than “investigate further.”

  Yellow crime scene tape was strung all over the relatively narrow space, twenty feet at most, between the two buildings. Briefly debating his course of action, he exited his car and quickly ducked under the tape. He scrambled over to the side of her apartment building and crouched down to catch his breath. Still no sign of anyone around.

  Sparse forsythia shrubs lined the wall every four feet or so. He wasn’t really sure what he was looking for or what he hoped to accomplish here, but then he caught sight of the basement transom window behind one of the bushes. He crawled over to his left, toward the window, and promptly cut the palm of his hand on a piece of broken glass. Damn!

  Chip pulled his hand back and carefully brushed away several glass fragments. The little window was shattered, all right, and slivers of glass were strewn all over the place, indicating it had been broken from the inside, just as Kristin had said. There was blood, too. And not just a little bit. There were gobs of congealed blood, coating the dirt and nearby grass. Holy shit! Someone—make that Chandler—had bled profusely here. It looked like a fatal amount. Kristin had been right—again.

  What else had she said that he had dismissed as crazy talk? “It was like he saw my intentions.”

  Chip followed the blood trail; it looked like it led out to the street. There was something strange about the trail, though. The gobs weren’t spaced at regular intervals; they were spreading out as he neared the street. That meant that either Chandler’s blood flow was decreasing as he went, or he was picking up speed—probably running.

  At the street, the blood trail disappeared altogether. Did this mean Chandler had a car?

  A police cruiser pulled up to the curb, startling Chip. Double shit! He quickly ran back and ducked behind one of the forsythia plants. The little shrub didn’t provide much cover, but hopefully the fog would do the rest. He held his breath.

  The car door opened and out stepped a familiar figure. Chip recognized the beer gut instantly—Detective Markel. Markel ambled onto the porch, out of Chip’s line of sight.

  Chip considered making a run for it. He could probably make it, concealed by the fog. He stood up, but before he could run, another car pulled up. Two people, a guy and a girl, got out and walked up onto the front porch. Chip didn’t think he recognized either of them, but it was hard to tell for sure through the fog. Flattened against the
wall behind the forsythia, he inched his way to the front corner of the building and peeked around, trying to get a better look.

  “Thanks for meeting us here,” the guy said. He was tall and muscular—looked like a college football player or something.

  “I’m Detective Markel. Hershey PD.” Markel shook the guy’s hand, then launched into a gruff warning. “Get your stuff out of the apartment. Don’t touch anything else in the place—remember, this is a crime scene. Hi-tech forensics—CSI stuff going on here. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir,” the guy said. “Again, we appreciate your time, officer.”

  “Sure,” Markel said. “To protect and serve the community.”

  Slowly it dawned on Chip—the guy must be Kristin’s roommate, Chris. A polite fucker, to boot. He still had no idea who the girl was.

  Markel whipped out his notebook, pulled out a form, and addressed the girl. “Miss, if you don’t mind, I need a little more info for my report.”

  “Okay,” she said. She pulled out some keys and turned to the guy. “I just need the hanging stuff out of my closet in the bedroom. Do you mind?”

  “No problem,” the guy said, taking the keys. He walked to the far edge of the porch and unlocked the door to the second floor apartment. Soon his boots could be heard clunking up the wooden stairs to the second floor.

  “Now, Miss Buchannon,” Markel said, licking the tip of his pen. “How do you spell your first name? With a C or a K?”

  “C. C-H-R-I-S,” she spelled.

  Chip was dumbfounded. What the hell! he mouthed to himself.

  “Do you live alone?” Markel asked, staring at her.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And your male friend?” Markel nodded toward the second floor stairs.

  “That’s Josh—Josh Cole. He’s my boyfriend. He visits from time to time.”

  “I see,” Markel said, scribbling some notes. “Now, what about the occupants of this domicile?” He tapped on the frame of the screened-in front door with his pen.