Fatal Complications

by John Benedict

  Gwen settled down in her seat and imagined hugging and kissing Rob again. Having him stroke her hair and tell her how beautiful she was always made her feel better. She sat there for several minutes, immersed in her musings, before she sighed and sat up straight. A disturbing thought had brought the pleasant daydream to an abrupt end. Rob would never really leave his wife, would he? Sure, she knew he was smitten with her—you only had to see the way he stared at her with that childish grin plastered all over his face. That much she had no doubt about. He was hopelessly obsessed with her and had entered this out of control, reckless phase. She didn’t mind—in fact, she loved having this power over a man. The funny part was, truth be told, she was slightly out of control, too. That lunch at the Golden Sheaf was ample proof of that. This part was new—never before had she fallen so deeply under someone else’s spell.

  But still, none of this meant he would leave his wife, the mother of his children. Her friends had all warned Gwen that they never do. It wasn’t fair, though. Rob belonged to her.

  Just then the lights went out in the office. She realized Rob wasn’t going to get free this morning. Her thoughts quickly gave way to disappointment. No Rob. Time to go to work.

  Not fifty feet away, the door to the Medical Arts Building opened, and out came two men in scrubs wheeling a stretcher between them. She could hear the wheels squeaking on the rough concrete. They were headed to the hospital via a short roofed-in walkway. She craned her neck to get a better view—but then she felt her paranoia return, in spades. This was definitely strange. The cleaning crew didn’t push litters around. What was going on?

  When she heard moaning from their direction and a muffled, “Noo…” she realized with a start that someone was on that litter. There were no patient rooms in the Medical Arts Building—it was strictly doctor’s offices and business offices. This was highly unusual.

  More moaning. She huddled down in the front seat, hoping to become invisible. They were coming her way and soon would pass within thirty feet of her. One man had his back to her, so she couldn’t make out his face, although there was something about him that looked very familiar. Could it be Dr. Katz, her boss? The other, facing her, seemed to look right at her. A chill went up her spine when she recognized the man. He was a hospital orderly, but she couldn’t recall his name. She felt a second chill, much stronger, as she feared she had been seen.

  The litter quickly passed by her and vanished behind the opaque side panels of the walkway. Moments later she heard the hospital door slide open, then close, swallowing the squeaky wheels and the moaning.

  What should she do? Her instinct said to follow them, but this was way too scary. Best not to get involved. Something very unusual was going on and it looked bad. Maybe she should call Rob? Suddenly, surprising herself, Gwen got a burst of courage. Desperate times called for desperate measures, right? She opened her door, hopped out of the vehicle, and quickly slipped her high heels off. She ran silently toward the hospital door where the two men and the litter with the groaning body had disappeared.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 6:30 A.M.

  Nikolai always hated being in the basement of the hospital—it was poorly lit, poorly ventilated, and just plain spooky. It was also uncomfortably warm. In fact, he could feel the temperature rising as he pushed the stretcher down the long, windowless corridor. Katz was at the other end, pulling vigorously. Nikolai started to sweat—he had never really made the transition from the cooler Moscow clime to central Pennsylvania. Or was it just his nerves?

  Nikolai figured out where they were going and didn’t like it one bit. But he also knew arguing with Katz was a bad idea. For starters, he worked for the guy and Katz paid him generously. Of course, he also supplied Nikolai with the fentanyl he was so fond of—all right, addicted to. But it was more than that. Nikolai didn’t like to admit that he was scared of anybody—growing up in the street gangs of Moscow, where violence was the rule, had toughened him up plenty. But Katz was one of those guys you didn’t cross—you never knew whether he’d laugh and pound you on the back for some slight offense or just as easily slit your throat.

  They passed the huge laundry complex on their left, with its large wheeled laundry carts lined up in the hallway. Several of his aunts and uncles worked there. They were happy to have “real jobs in America.” Nikolai could not believe that working in this subterranean sweatshop for meager pay signified success. Never a big fan of honest work himself, Nikolai had been determined to find something better when he arrived in the land of opportunity two years ago. But with no education to speak of, and his only skills being good in a knife fight and a pretty fair marksman with his trusty Makarov 9 mm pistol, he found himself working as a hospital orderly for minimum wage.

  As luck would have it, after only six months, opportunity knocked. He had been playing around with his switchblade in the doctors’ locker room early one morning, showing it off to one of the nightshift cleaning personnel, when several of the surgeons walked in on him and seemed pretty bent out of shape about the whole thing. But Dr. Katz had arrived just in time to smooth things over. Ever since that day, Katz had taken him under his wing. They established a business relationship of sorts: Katz supplied him with fentanyl and Nikolai pretty much did whatever was asked of him—like dealing with snooping federal agents.

  Nikolai could just make out the little sign above the door up ahead: INCINERATOR. The door was a substantial metal affair, complete with bolted-on, heavy-duty hinges that extended halfway across the door for reinforcement. A small, thick-glassed window recessed into the upper part was so grimy, its usefulness was doubtful. He could, however, make out a streaky orange glow emanating from behind the door.

  Katz opened the door and the noise level increased dramatically, riding out on a rush of hot air to assault them. An unmistakable burnt smell pinched at his nostrils. Katz held the heavy, spring-hinged door open with some effort and motioned Nikolai inward. Nikolai pushed the litter through the door, its wheels bumping over the uneven concrete floor. The kid groaned, barely audible above the incinerator’s roar. Nikolai, who had avoided looking at the kid so far, glanced down in time to see him grimace and move slightly. Clearly, whatever Katz had injected him with hadn’t killed him.

  Katz entered the cramped room and the door slammed shut behind them. The heat and noise level intensified even further. The burnt smell became acrid and the hot air seemed to clog Nikolai’s nostrils and burn in his lungs. There was only one bare bulb in a steel wire cage mounted on the ceiling. Although the bulb was not very bright, the eerie glow from the incinerator illuminated the room.

  The small room was decidedly messy. The concrete floor was very dusty and littered with footprints. You could even see the tracks the small wheels of the stretcher were making. Flattened cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes were strewn about. Some had even made it into makeshift piles. A big steel cart with wheels and a handle, loaded down with more boxes, was parked against one wall. The litter and the two men barely fit inside the room. The incinerator was a gargantuan furnace that took up half the room. A large steel grate covered the opening, but flames were visible through vertical slits in the grate.

  “Open it,” Katz yelled above the roar, motioning to the grate.

  Nikolai walked over to the grate. The heat was frightening. The grate handle was a spiral of thick metal wire designed to dissipate the heat. Nikolai grabbed the handle and instantly snatched his hand back. “Shit—that fucker’s hot.” Shaking a hand that still smarted from the burn, he looked around the piles of junk for a rag or towel to wrap around the handle.

  Katz walked up to the door and grabbed the door handle without any hesitation. Nikolai watched with fascination, marveling that Katz’s hand didn’t seem to feel the burn. But then bits of an old conversation came back to him, after Nikolai had walked in on Katz in his office while he was chanting or praying in some unknown language—definitely not the stuff of Christianity.

  �
��Sorry, Dr. Katz,” Nikolai said that day. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you—whatever you were doing.”

  Katz was kneeling behind his desk with a black cloth draped around his head, his hands clasped together. Candles burned on the desk, flickering haphazardly in the air currents. Looking a bit startled, Katz quickly rose, composing himself. He removed the black head cloth and pocketed it. “No problem. I was just, uh…praying.”

  Nikolai stood frozen in the doorway, unsure whether to enter or leave. Katz came over and put his hand on Nikolai’s shoulder, as a father would to his son, and led him into the room. “Belief is a powerful ally, Nikolai,” Katz continued in a kindly tone. “You must master it someday.”

  “Yes, Dr. Katz.”

  “Have you heard of the mighty firewalkers of India? Enlightened, spiritual men who can walk a hundred feet across a bed of coals in their bare feet and not get burned?” He swept out one hand to indicate the length of the coals as he said this.

  “No,” Nikolai conceded.

  “Well, it’s true—I’ve seen them. Their strong belief makes them impervious to the flames.” Katz paused to study him. “What do you believe in, Nikolai? Tell me.”

  “Nothing, really,” Nikolai replied quickly. However, after noting his boss’s scowl of disapproval, Nikolai amended his answer. “Well, I do believe in the gods of money and fentanyl,” he said, unable to keep a smirk from sneaking across his face.

  Katz’s scowl deepened and he dismissed Nikolai’s answer with a wave of his hand. “You will remain weak without true belief.” But then, as his eyes bored deep into Nikolai’s, his tone became deadly serious. “Even the demons believe,” he said, enunciating each word with finality, as if he had just shared the very secret of the universe.

  Nikolai just nodded, and finally succeeded in putting a serious look on his face. He had heard Katz utter this particular saying before; he knew it was one of his favorites. Nikolai never really believed any of this. What Nikolai did believe was that Katz had been driven insane by the death of his son—Nikolai had heard all the stories but knew better than to openly discuss it. Truly, Dr. Katz was a man of strange beliefs—

  Katz pulled on the handle and the cast iron door creaked open on its massive hinges, wrenching Nikolai back to the present. The interior of the furnace was a large circular affair, perhaps ten feet in diameter. Flames were present only in the center, dissipating to nothing around the outer half. Katz glanced inside, then at the outer housing of the furnace, searching for something. Finding a round control knob behind the door, he dialed it up from LOW to HIGH. Flames now erupted from the entire base of the furnace and the roar became deafening; the air being sucked in made strange noises, almost like howling.

  Nikolai was now drenched in sweat—the temperature in the room seemed to have jacked up ten more degrees. Katz stared straight at Nikolai and nodded to the kid, then to the flames. He grabbed the kid under the shoulders. Nikolai latched onto the kid’s ankles and the two men hoisted him up off the litter. Nikolai could feel the kid’s legs squirm weakly in his hands, and he suffered a moment of indecision. Although he had little conscience when it came to robbing people or beating them up, even killing, if need be, this somehow seemed different. The kid was so young and defenseless.

  Katz suddenly became motionless, the boy in his arms, staring at the flames. He stood there transfixed, eyes not really seeing, a strange look—a grimace, even—playing across his face. Maybe he was having second thoughts, after hearing the kid moan and feeling him squirm? He was only a kid, after all—couldn’t be more than twenty. Nikolai realized this was probably wishful thinking on his part. Katz didn’t really look as if he was hesitating—he looked like he was in a fuckin’ trance.

  “Dr. Katz, you okay?” Nikolai shouted. No response. Nikolai was breathing heavily, sucking red-hot air into his lungs that singed his air passages on the way down. Stinging sweat dripped into his eyes. The kid was getting heavy. If they were going to do it, they should just hurry the fuck up and do it. The kid was, after all, working with the FBI. “What you are waiting for?” Nikolai yelled.

  Something got through to Katz. He ripped the kid from Nikolai’s grasp and single-handedly, with almost superhuman strength, tossed the body directly into the center of the roaring furnace. Nikolai couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw the boy’s eyes open just as the flames engulfed him. It looked as if he also tried to scream. Nikolai looked away.

  Katz’s face took on an extraordinary shade of dull red that was no doubt due to the exertion and from being half burnt, as well. He didn’t back away from the opening. He was truly a scary sight: veins bulging out in his neck and forehead; face glistening with sweat, bathed in the flickering red-orange light. Dark shadows danced across his face, making him look otherworldly. He reminded Nikolai of a gargoyle standing there, like the ones sculpted on the roofline of the big cathedrals his mother used to take him to visit as a little boy in Leningrad. He remembered staring at those awful statues, wanting to look away but afraid to, lest they fly down and eat him. Nikolai’s eyes were drawn back to the fire. He stood there, once again unable to turn his eyes away, watching with horrid fascination as the flames devoured the boy’s writhing flesh.

  It didn’t take long for the flames to complete their work. “C’mon, let’s go!” Nikolai yelled in Katz’s ear.

  Katz stood his ground, the grimace returning to his face. With arms outstretched toward the flames, he cried out in a voice full of anguish, “David, I’m coming. I’m coming, son.”

  Nikolai grabbed him, but immediately sensed the immovable nature of his body and realized the futility of manhandling him. Nikolai shouted louder, “We must leave—someone will come!”

  Finally the glaze evaporated from Katz’s eyes and his arms dropped uselessly to his sides. “Let’s go,” Katz said. “We must leave before we’re seen.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 6:45 A.M.

  Gwen turned away in horror from the little window. She slid down against the wall, stomach churning, and began to gag. She couldn’t believe they had actually thrown that body into the furnace. Even though she couldn’t see clearly through the soot-streaked window, she would’ve sworn the body had moved slightly. That person had been alive, she was sure. She tried to listen, but couldn’t hear anything above the roar of the furnace. Summoning her courage, she stood up and peeked back in. Eerily, after they threw the body in, the two men just stood there, motionless. Then one of them started yelling at the other.

  Gwen shuddered and started to breathe again. She had seen quite enough—she needed to get away from these evil men. She ran back down the hallway, almost tripping over her own feet as she looked over her shoulder. She ducked down a side hall to the laundry and quickly hid between two full laundry carts when she heard the incinerator door open. She began shaking all over. The furnace roared momentarily, then the door slammed shut, muffling it. Heavy, determined footsteps echoed off the cement floor. They were heading directly toward her. She held her breath. The two men walked by, not slowing at all.

  Ten minutes later, Gwen swiped her card to unlock the billing office door, her hand shaking so badly that it took her several tries. Closing the door behind her, she flipped on the lights and put one hand on the wall to steady herself. She was still trembling badly and her stomach was doing backward somersaults. Inhaling several deep breaths, she attempted to calm herself.

  Feeling her heartbeat slow, Gwen turned and surveyed the room. Everything looked perfectly normal, no sign of a struggle. What should she do? Should she call Rob? She knew she should call the police—she could identify the hospital orderly. Could the other really have been Dr. Katz? She sat in the desk chair, eyed the phone, and took several more deep breaths. Then she snatched up the phone and punched in 911.

  “Derry Township Police Department. How can I help you?”

  Just then the office door opened and in walked Dr. Katz. Startled, Gwen slammed the phone down. Adrenaline raced throu
gh her, bringing back the shakes. She couldn’t help but stare at him.

  “What are you doing here so early, Gwen?” he asked.

  “Just trying to get caught up from yesterday. We were so busy.” Her voice sounded way too shrill. She manufactured a smile and tried to look relaxed, even though her heart was pounding and her palms felt clammy.

  Katz went directly to the billing computer, ignoring her. He hit the power button and frowned. “What the hell!” he blurted. “Did you have any trouble with this blasted computer yesterday?”

  “No, Dr. Katz, everything worked fine.”

  Katz knelt down under the desk. “Damn cleaning people—must’ve unplugged the damn thing.” He grunted as he plugged several cables into the computer. “Don’t worry, Gwen, I’ll be out of your hair in a minute. I have to hurry and get to the OR.” He played around with the computer for a short while longer, then printed something out. Finally he left, and Gwen breathed a sigh of relief.

  She sat down in the swivel chair and ran her fingers through her hair. Dr. Katz seemed perfectly normal, obsessed as usual with the number of cases and up-to-the-minute billing information—he frequently liked to check their daily balance to insure the money was flowing in properly. Not at all like someone who had just committed cold-blooded murder.

  Gwen reasoned that if she were wrong about Katz and called the police, she would certainly lose her job. She needed to think this through a bit more. Maybe it would be best to talk to Rob—he’d know what to do. Best also to go about her normal routine, not arouse any suspicion that she had been witness to a horrific murder.

  As Gwen mulled over her course of action, her eyes fell on a folded newspaper sticking out of the nearby trashcan—a trash-can that should be empty, if the cleaning crew had done their job. Curious, Gwen fished the paper out and looked at it. It was open to the horoscope page, Word Jumble, and her personal favorite, the daily Sudoku puzzle. Someone had been working on the Sudoku, although they hadn’t gotten very far. Gwen was about to toss it back in the can—she didn’t have time for this—but something about the puzzle caught her attention. She had never seen such strange numbers in a Sudoku before.