by Jaime Maddox
Even though Jess was in good shape, Hawk was too much for her. But something else seemed odd. Her body was betraying her, refusing to fight, and even as her mind yelled, “kick, buck, thrash,” she seemed to just melt into the floor and collapse.
As he sensed this, his hold on her eased, except for the hand across her mouth, which held tight. His rapid breaths against her neck made her sick, but not so sick as the sound of his voice or the content of his message.
“It was sux in that syringe, Jess. An elephant dose. I can leave you on this floor to die and then come back later for your body, or I can breathe for you now if you promise to cooperate. I’m going to take my hand from your mouth. If you scream, I’ll let you die. Now, do you want to live, or not?”
Hawk eased his hand from Jess’s mouth, and she tried to suck in air, but she had no strength behind her effort. “No,” she managed to choke out and thought for sure it was over.
He abruptly stood, opened the door a fraction, and peeked outside. He walked through it and she began counting as it closed behind him, wondering how high she could go before she lost consciousness. The sux itself wouldn’t knock her out, but after a minute or so, her brain would begin to malfunction.
One. Where the fuck did he go? Two. What the fuck is he going to do with me? Three. I’m going to die! Four. How could I have been so stupid? Five. Fucking stupid! Six. Ward. I’ve been so rotten to her. Seven. Calm down. Eight, nine, ten…she pictured a clear blue sky and a still lake as she counted. If her last thought went with her to the next life, she vowed it to be a happy one.
She was at fifty, going on fifty-one when the door opened. Even if he planned to kill her, Jess had never been happier to see anyone. The fact that he held an ambu bag in his hand made her even happier. He quickly knelt beside her and placed a mask over her face. Then he connected it to the football and began squeezing, and suddenly he was helping her to breathe. He gently laid her onto the office floor and tilted her head back, pulled up her chin, and squeezed the bag. Jess couldn’t feel the air rushing into her lungs, but she could hear the sound of the bag as it squeaked to herald the breath.
He’d paralyzed her with sux, and now he was breathing for her, keeping her alive! Why? The needle in her thigh confirmed her suspicions about Hawk. He was a murderer. Why wasn’t she already dead? What did he want from her? She couldn’t move, not even to blink, yet she was trembling with fear. She wished he’d let her die the easy way. She was too much of a coward to take torture.
She couldn’t feel anything. Her hearing seemed hypersensitive, and she listened intently for sounds from the hallway, the sounds of someone who might be coming to save her. She heard nothing, though, except the rhythmic whistle of the bag as he squeezed it, maintaining her life, at least until he decided not to.
Suddenly he dropped the bag and stood, then took a few steps toward her computer screen and scrolled down. “I knew you figured it out. How?”
Jess couldn’t answer him; she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even stare him down; her eyes wouldn’t move. She was aware of him at the corners of her vision, but he was just a blur, a form in an impressionist painting, vaguely resembling a man. Her fear level mounted with each second that passed, each second without the breaths that would deliver oxygen to her brain. The edges of her awareness grew fuzzy as Hawk scrolled through her computer files. When he dropped to the floor beside her, she was on the edge of consciousness.
He began bagging her again, staring into her eyes as he did so. He waited a moment before speaking. “So, Dr. Benson, this is how it’s going to happen. I’m going to breathe for you until you can do it on your own. It will probably take twenty minutes for your muscles to recover. Then, I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them. I’ll tell you them now, so you have a few minutes to contemplate your answers. Then, I’m going back out there and finish my shift, and we’re going to pretend this never happened. Because if you were ever to say anything about this, I’d have a lot more work to do. Kill your dad. Kill your little coroner friend. Kill some more people in Garden. So, really, all of their fates will be up to you. If you tell me what I need to know, your friends and family will live, and I’ll move on. If not, they all die. And you do, too. Understand?” Hawk laughed. “Of course you can’t answer. I’ll assume you understand.”
Hawk stood and opened the door, scanning the hallway. Before he knocked on Jess’s door, he’d bent the clamp on the security camera. It was now pointing straight down. No one was in sight. How long had he been gone, though? What if someone came looking for him? He needed another fifteen minutes with Jess before she started breathing on her own. If he left her early, she’d die. He didn’t particularly care if she did, but he hadn’t planned for that, and it would be difficult to explain her body here in the hospital.
Could he really let her go when he was done? Fuck! He knew he couldn’t. He had to kill her, but how?
Closing the door, he knelt beside her on the floor. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, and he squeezed the bag rapidly a few times, trying to build up the oxygen level in her blood. “I’m going to hyperventilate you and run out to check on things. I’ll only be gone a few minutes.”
Hawk squeezed the bag rapidly a dozen times, grabbed Jess’s keys, and once again scanned the hallway. When he ascertained it was clear, he opened the ER doors using the wall button, then walked back into the ER.
“I’m not sure about Chinese food,” he informed his coworkers. “My stomach is a mess.”
“Well, we just called it in. Should we cancel?” Betty asked.
Betty was about ninety years old and a hillbilly, and probably the smartest nurse Hawk had ever worked with.
“I guess I’ll risk it,” he said. “Gotta run,” he said, and scampered back toward Jess’s office.
Checking the camera, he quickly opened the office door. “Miss me?”
Jess could go a few minutes without oxygen, and he figured he’d been gone only ninety seconds, but her eyes looked a little foggy. Unfocused. He hyperventilated her again and saw her come around.
“Okay, here are my questions, Jessica. First, what do you know? I know you’re on to me, but what do you think I did, and what can you prove I did? Second, how did you figure it out? Did someone see something, or notice something, or did you figure it out yourself? Third, do you have any proof? Fourth, who did you share your information with? Fifth, how do you think I can prevent this from happening in the future? I like killing and don’t want to stop, so if you can help me, I’d appreciate that.”
Hawk stopped squeezing the bag keeping Jess alive, stood, and checked the hallway. Nothing. He knelt and resumed bagging, quiet as his mind raced. He had a huge problem to solve, and it would require some thought. He definitely had to kill Jess. But how? Could he murder her here without casting some suspicion on himself? He was in the building, after all, and that was bound to cause some troubles for everyone working tonight. If Jess didn’t show up for her shift, someone would check her office, so he couldn’t just leave the body here. He could always hide it somewhere in the hospital, but it would eventually be found. That meant he had to kill her in a way that suggested natural causes. Not an easy task for a healthy woman of her age.
No, that wouldn’t work. He had to get her out of the hospital and dispose of the body so no one would discover it. At least for a long time, allowing decomposition to destroy any information about the manner and cause of death. How to get her out, though? He couldn’t very well carry her. He’d figure out what to do with her later. He’d have the next three days off, plenty of time.
The ringing phone startled him, and he nearly panicked as he considered the possibility that someone in the hallway would hear it. Fumbling with the zipper, he tore open Jess’s backpack to find the phone. The stern face of the county coroner greeted him.
Edward knew Jess was dating the coroner. That could be a problem. She’d start looking for Jess. And Jess’s father was the fucking sheriff. He’d look for
her, too. He didn’t have much time to come up with his plan.
Unless—oh, wow. Maybe he could enlist the coroner’s help! His brilliance sometimes amazed him, and now was one such occasion. He could call the coroner to take Jess’s body out of the hospital, and then he’d steal it from the funeral home. It was the perfect solution.
No, he thought. The perfect solution was to remove all suspicion from him—to make it look as if the coroner had killed Jess. A deadly lovers’ quarrel. That was perfect. It was his first murder all over again. Helise’s boyfriend had gone to jail for murdering her, and no one had ever suspected him. If he could pin Jess’s death on the coroner, he’d be safe.
Hawk heard noise in the hallway and stood to listen at the door. Voices, and then a rattling stretcher being maneuvered outside the door. The sound of the doors opening. An ambulance had arrived with a patient. Fuck. He was running out of time.
Lifting the bag from Jess’s face, he watched her. “Try to breathe,” he commanded. Jess didn’t move.
“Dr. Hawk to the ER,” the operator’s voice cried out over the intercom. “Dr. Hawk to the ER.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he murmured to himself. Then to Jessica, “Give me a minute.”
He opened the office door and surveyed the hallway. Empty. Three giant steps to the other side and he was through the door to the staff lounge a second later. The phone on the wall speed-dialed the ER. “It’s Hawk, what’s up?”
“We have a patient with chest pain.”
“Oh, wow. I’m having trouble getting out of the bathroom,” he said, trying hard to add the agony he felt to his voice. “But I’ll be right there.”
The hallway was clear and he was beside Jess a minute later. “Let’s try the breathing thing again.”
He watched her still chest, then picked up an arm and watched it drop limply to the floor. “I’m needed in the ER. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Hawk bagged Jess for a minute and then practically ran to the ER. He found the patient looking pink and comfortable in the resuscitation room. An EKG was sitting on the machine. He saw changes but no MI in progress. Under other circumstances, this seventy-year-old woman might have been a fun patient to play with, but not today. “Are you having any pain now?” he asked.
“No. That pill under the tongue took it away,” she said.
“Chest-pain protocol, okay? I’m so sorry,” he whispered to the nurse. “I gotta go.”
Hawk ran back to Jess’s office. Her eyes were still open, but she wasn’t breathing. He squeezed the bag and then checked the muscle tone in her arms. To his delight, it seemed to be returning. “Thank God,” he sighed, then chuckled. “Remind me not to do this again!”
After another minute, he stopped bagging Jess. “Breathe,” he ordered her. It might have been just a twitch, but Hawk was elated. She’d be breathing on her own soon, which meant he could go back to the ER and take care of his patients, so the staff wouldn’t come looking for him.
Hefting Jess up to her office chair, Hawk noted her improved tone. She’d be strong enough to kick and fight and scream in just a few minutes. He had to act quickly.
He opened the office door and quickly closed it. A Chinese man carrying a brown bag was walking in his direction. When he passed through the doors into the department and they closed behind him, Hawk sprang into action.
Holding the door open with his foot, he pushed the chair and Jessica through it, then jogged down the hallway, guiding the wheeled chair before him. At the end of the sixty-foot-long corridor, he turned left. This was the ground floor, and the loading dock for the morgue was in that direction, near the lab. While the lab was open around the clock, few staff members were here at this time. Edward had watched the autopsy on one of his patients and retraced his steps through the department. Thankfully, it was deserted—and unlocked. He wheeled Jess through a series of outer rooms, through the autopsy suite, and into the closet.
Utilizing the materials at hand—gowns, masks, and tape, Hawk restrained her, covering her mouth with tape and tying her to the chair and the wall. By the time he was finished, she’d regained enough strength to fight him.
“I’ll be back for our little chat in just a little while. Be a good girl while I’m gone.”
*
Fear coated Jess in a blanket of sweat. She’d never been so scared, and the muscles that had so recently been limp now trembled uncontrollably.
Why hadn’t she listened to Ward? When Ward had told her about Hawk, she’d reacted to Ward rather than her news. It wasn’t exactly a case of shooting the messenger, but she’d allowed her mixed feelings about Ward to cloud her judgment. That might prove to be a fatal error.
And the pain she was in was agony. One of the side effects of succinylcholine is severe muscle pain, and if anyone ever debated that, Jess would be willing to offer testimony. Every movable muscle in her body was cramping, a tight pinching that wouldn’t release. Perhaps if she could change position, or walk it out, stretch a little. Those weren’t options, though, and as the tears flowed freely down her face, she pondered her fate.
What was she going to do? Hawk would kill her. He had no choice, really. After what he’d done to her, he’d have to kill her to stay out of jail. If he didn’t want information from her, she’d probably already be dead. He could have let the sux do its job and she would have suffocated, leaving only a body to dispose of. Maybe not even that. He might have just taken his chances. Who could have proved it was him who’d stabbed her with a syringe full of poison?
He needed something though, and perhaps if Jess denied him the answers he sought, he’d keep her alive long enough for someone to come to her aid. Wendy would miss her. And her dad. They’d both start looking. It was only a couple of hours until she was due for her night shift. If she didn’t show up then, the hospital would probably call the state police out to investigate. All she needed was a little time. If she could stay alive for a few hours, she just might survive.
She squirmed a little, trying to find a weakness in the bonds that held her fast to the chair. Nothing, except a little rocking of the chair. The tape cutting into her mouth was effectively cutting off her voice. Attempts at calling out were muffled and seemed to crawl back into her mouth in fear.
Looking up, she studied the shelves of supplies. A box of scalpels was promising. If she could reach the fourth shelf while bound with her hands behind her back, then open the box and the plastic sealed pouch, she might be able to saw her way through the bindings. Not.
She couldn’t escape this mess. She just had to wait it out, hold on to the information that would be her death sentence, and hope for a miracle.
For the first time in twenty years, she began to pray.
*
What an ordeal! The ER exploded after that first patient, and then, to the surprise of everyone on staff at Garden Memorial Hospital except Edward, Dr. Jessica Benson failed to show up for work. He’d dutifully stayed late, seeing patients without complaint, offering the appropriate words of concern for his missing boss. At ten o’clock, after one of the other staff doctors came in to spell him, he was finally free to take care of Jess.
Between casting a fracture and draining an abscess and taking care of a few other minor emergencies, he’d come up with a plan.
Back in Jess’s office, he straightened up its appearance a bit. Her chair was missing, so he swiped one from the staff lounge. It wasn’t a desk chair, but hopefully no one would notice. He ignored the computer. If he shut it down, someone would be able to use metadata to track it, putting Jess in her office just as he was leaving the hospital. The fact that she’d logged on at five that afternoon placed her at the hospital, and he couldn’t do anything about it, but why give the police more information?
He picked up Jess’s phone and dialed Wendy’s number, immediately disconnecting the call. That would give the police the idea that Jess had called Wendy. Picking up Jess’s office phone, he immediately dialed Wendy from that line.
; “Garden Funeral Services, this is Wendy, how may I help you?” she answered in a professional and comforting voice.
It was time to put his plan in motion.
“This is Edward, from Garden Memorial Hospital. We have a patient, I mean, body. The family has requested your services.”
“Okay, Edward, I can help you. I just need some information.”
After Edward supplied the vital statistics, he asked about the protocol. “I’m new, and it’s my first time dealing with a corpse.”
“No worries. I’ll be over in a few minutes. I’ll ring the buzzer at the morgue door, and the hospital operator will call you. What extension are you at? It didn’t come up on my phone.”
Edward was happy about the new privacy feature on the phones. It didn’t give the extension, just the hospital switchboard number. “Oh, I’m in the morgue now. I’ll just wait for you.”
Wendy laughed. “Okay, then. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
In spite of all the murders he’d committed, Hawk had yet to meet the county coroner. He wasn’t worried that she’d recognize him.
He made his way to the lab and into the garage bay with the double, oversized hanging door. Pressing the wall plate, he opened the door and sat, waiting.
Edward figured his easiest option was to murder Wendy first and then steal her hearse. But he might need her alive, to motivate Jess to talk. Instead, he’d give her the same treatment he’d given Jess. When he had what he needed, he’d kill them both.
