Twice Dying

by Neil Mcmahon

  “I gave him both, Narrcan and Romazicon,” Vernon said. “He’s still out hard.”

  Monks leaned over Jephson, thinking, What the hell? But the answer was already coming: something Monks had not seen in more than ten years—probably chosen by someone who knew that this type of O.D. could not be brought back to consciousness for hours.

  Monks said, “Barbiturates.” A once popular choice for suicide. Except suicides did not typically lock themselves in car trunks.

  Jephson’s pulse was normal, his breathing labored but steady. A dose just short of lethal—probably deliberately, so that Monks would be forced to finish this.

  He stepped outside again, motioning Vernon to follow.

  “Patient was stable when you released him into my care.”

  “Released him?”

  “This is what I asked you.”

  Doubt came into Vernon’s eyes, but again, he nodded.

  “He’s mine now,” Monks said. “You’re no longer in any way responsible.”

  He walked to the ER desk. The day Charge Nurse, Helen Toner, watched his approach with guarded astonishment. He remembered that he was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and had not shaved.

  “Mrs. Toner, please admit the patient in Cubicle Four to my service on Six-North. Single room. Probable overdose, rule out coronary or stroke.”

  “Dr. Monks, I thought—you’d made a scheduling mistake. That is, you’re not really on duty. Are you?”

  “This is a slightly irregular situation. I found the man, I began his care. I’m considering myself responsible.” Monks laid Jephson’s wallet on the desk. “You’ll find enough information here for preliminary paperwork. We’ll worry about notifying relatives when he’s settled.”

  “I’ll see if they have a room.”

  There were personnel and patients just on the other side of the door to the waiting room. Monks leaned close and dropped his voice.

  “Helen. Find a room. And rush the paperwork.” In a normal tone, he said, “I’ll take the patient up myself.”

  She stared. Then leaned back in her chair and said, “Yes, Doctor.”

  Monks pushed the gurney loaded with monitor, IV paraphernalia, and Francis Jephson, along the hall at a brisk but untroubled pace. He passed several familiar faces, maintenance workers and personnel. Others, strangers, might have been visitors or staff from another unit.

  Or Naia herself.

  Twenty yards behind him, Larrabee, wearing a janitor’s coat, pushed a cart stacked with cleaning supplies. He paused and began dust-mopping while Monks waited for the elevator.

  There were no other passengers. Monks unloaded the gurney on Six-North, a general unit for those not well enough to go home, but not requiring intensive care. Things were quiet, most patients sedated or asleep, a few chatting with visitors or watching television. He started down the hall, pausing to study his clipboard until a second elevator with Larrabee arrived.

  The Nurses’ Station was in an alcove midway, presided over by a pleasantly worn-looking nurse named Rose Olsen. She glanced up at his approach and blinked. It was not common to see a senior physician pushing a gurney.

  Monks returned her greeting blandly and handed her the check-in forms from his clipboard.

  “That’s 624, Dr. Monks. It’s ready. I’ll help you move him.”

  “Rose, I’m going to leave him on the gurney a few minutes. The monitor started jumping on the way up here. I’ll call you when I need you.”

  Monks pushed the gurney into the room and closed the door. From under the blanket he took out an evidence camera he had borrowed from the ER and positioned it on the windowsill. He took a sterile, plastic-wrapped syringe and the vial of potassium chloride from his pocket. He inserted the needle into the vial and drew liquid into the syringe, balancing both in one hand and snapping a photo at each step. He inserted the needle into the injection part of the tubing.

  Then he looked down into the face of the man who had started this engine of misery.

  Aloud, Monks said, “I can see why you covered up for little Robby Vandenard, way back when. Money. Status. Rubbing shoulders with the aristocracy.

  “But why did you keep setting up the NGIs? The vicious thrill, like watching that video? Getting off on what Naia did, that you were too cowardly to do yourself?”

  Monks held the camera against his chest with his right hand. He placed his left thumb on the syringe’s plunger and snapped a photo. He snapped three more as he pushed the plunger home.

  He put the syringe back in his pocket and replugged the IV. He pulled the monitor sensor away from the skin of Jephson’s chest and retaped it to the gurney’s pad. The waves on the screen became a jumpy line of static. Monks took more photos.

  Then he jerked open the door and called sharply, “Nurse! This patient’s having PVCs.”

  He watched her stand in alarm and start toward him, but he stopped her with outstretched palm, already pulling the gurney from the room.

  “I’d bener get him to the ICU. He can’t stay here until his rhythm is stable.”

  He pushed the gurney past her, clandestinely wiggling the monitor cable to mimic the jumpy lines of premature ventricular contractions. Larrabee stepped aside, gaze deferentially low.

  The elevator doors closed. Monks rode down, past the ICU, to the basement.

  The basement corridor was empty. It was not an area that got much traffic. Except for building maintenance and supply, there was only the morgue. Monks walked slowly, until another elevator opened and Larrabee came out pushing the cart. He disappeared into the fire stairwell. Its windowed door would give a view of both sections of the L-shaped hall.

  Inside the morgue, Roman was waiting, gloved, wearing smock and cap. They worked quickly, lifting Jephson onto one of the stainless steel autopsy tables, then covering him with a plasticized sheet folded down from the waist.

  Roman positioned a cart with autopsy instruments—knives, bone saws, specimen jars, stainless steel bowls, and a scale—then stepped to the microwave. He took out a Tupperwarelike container and emptied its contents carefully into one of the bowls: a human heart, swimming in darkish blood. He splashed fingerfuls of blood on Jephson’s chest, dabbing it around, then surrounded the area with blood-soaked towels.

  Monks stood back with the camera and snapped several photos. The entire procedure had taken perhaps three minutes.

  He stepped into Roman’s office, picked up the house phone, and called the extension for the Emergency Room.

  “Mrs. Toner, I have some terrible news. My patient, Francis Jephson, suffered what appears to be a massive coronary and died in return from the floor to the ICU. I pronounced him at 12:11 P.M. Dr. Kasmarek is performing the autopsy. Please call Admitting and see to it the death is entered on the computer bank immediately.”

  Silence.

  Monks said, “Mrs. Toner? Was that clear?”

  The faint reply came: “Right away, Doctor.”

  He nodded to Roman to come inside the office, and closed the door.

  Roman said quietly, “How long’s he out for?”

  “A few more hours.”

  “You want me to hit him with something if he comes up?”

  “If you haven’t heard from me by then, get him to the police.”

  Monks took out the cell phone and once more called the now-familiar number that was his link to Naia.

  When the tone came, he said, “It’s done. The autopsy has started. I have photos, and the hospital’s data bank will confirm it. Tell me where we make the exchange.”

  He clicked it off and waited.

  Two minutes passed. Three.

  The phone’s chirping ring sounded. When he raised it to his ear, his palm was slippery with sweat.

  “This is Monks.”

  “Where the fuck are you?” It was Larrabee’s voice, a tense whisper.

  Startled, Monks said, “In the morgue.”

  “You haven’t left?”

  “No.”

  “Somebody j
ust went into the machine room. I thought it was you. I’m going to check it out.”

  Monks turned to Roman, gesturing to him to stay put, and strode down the hall. He looked cautiously around the corner. An empty gurney was pushed against the wall outside the door to the machine room. He trotted there on his toes, moving as quietly as he could, his hand on the pistol’s butt.

  The physical plant was huge, a labyrinth of pipes and machinery strung along narrow corridors to allow human passage. It was dimly lit, hot and loud with the throbbing growl of the building’s pulse being pumped out through ceilings and walls. He moved a step at a time, the pistol in both sweating hands, his head turning back and forth to peer through the gloomy maze.

  He inhaled, then stepped around a corner, gun ready. Several yards ahead, a man was lying on the floor facedown, his feet toward Monks.

  Larrabee.

  Monks turned in a circle, teeth bared. His heart was slamming with rage and fear. There was no one, no sound. Blood streamed from a gash across Larrabee’s temple. Monks knelt, fingers going to a wrist. The pulse was fast but strong. Monks’s hand searched for other wounds and found something protruding from the back between the shoulders.

  A dart, a hypodermic syringe, the type shot from a gun.

  “It’s okay, buddy, we’ll get you upstairs,” Monks whispered. He got one arm around the torso and was rising with the weight when the edge of his vision caught the moving shadow. He started to turn, raising the pistol, but a hard crack came down on his wrist, knocking the gun from his grip, sending pain flaring through him.

  Then came a whump and a stinging impact in his neck.

  A man stepped into sight, moving fast. He was wearing a white lab coat. Monks tried to grapple, but the man shoved him aside with startling strength. Monks lurched against a wall, with a first wave of dizziness washing through him.

  The man stepped over Larrabee, raising a heavy pipe wrench.

  Monks lunged. His head butted into the man’s abdomen and his flailing arms encircled the torso. They struggled backwards, crashing into the machinery that lined the walls. The weakness surged in Monks again. His grip loosened. He went down to a knee, then both knees, weaving and gasping for breath. The man leaned down and gripped him by the collar.

  Monks looked up into a face with a thick arched nose, pitted cheeks, wiry black hair.

  His own face.

  He clawed at it, and felt his fingers sink into softness that was not flesh: putty or wax and thick greasy makeup.

  A man disguised as Monks, but with something wrong about the eyes.

  His hand was gripped with savage strength and twisted until he collapsed on the floor. He felt himself lifted easily and carried to che gurney in the hall. It was pushed with quick strides to the morgue and through the door.

  Roman said, “Christ, Carroll, another one?”

  The man with Monks’s face raised a pistol. The wbump sounded again. Roman staggered back. The man stepped forward and swung the barrel viciously across his face, knocking him sprawling. Then he pulled open a cadaver drawer, dumped Roman inside, and slammed it shut.

  He paused at the autopsy cart with its gleaming array of surgical instruments.

  Then he leaned over Monks, with a large scalpel held between their faces.

  “‘Emergency, huh?’” he whispered in an exaggerated twang. “‘Must take good nerves.’”

  The drawling voice and words touched a memory, but it was the eyes that triggered Monks’s realization of where he had seen that face.

  The caretaker at the Vandenards’ Napa estate: an image that became superimposed in Monks’s mind with another, a news photo of a man being led away in handcuffs, a much younger man, but with the same old, knowing eyes.

  Monks said, pronouncing the words with great effort, “You picked Tommy Springkell for the program. Because he fit. Used him like a suit of clothes.”

  Through blurred, dimming vision, Monks watched Robby Vandenard lean over Jephson’s body with busy hands, then lift out the still beating bloody heart and place it beside the decoy in a second stainless steel bowl.

  Chapter 16

  Monks awoke with a cold gritty weight against his cheek. For a confused interval his brain tried to return to the safety of sleep, but his head was throbbing and his body ached. His left wrist felt sprained. Abruptly he remembered the blow he had taken there. Images flashed with quickening intensity through his brain: Larrabee, unconscious and bleeding; Roman in a cadaver drawer.

  Both assaulted by a man disguised as himself.

  He opened his eves. He was in a room with rough stone walls, wet in patches from seeping water, that curved up to form a high-ceilinged vault. A dim even light came from wall-mounted lamps. A draft brought traces of musty, earthy scent. The cold against his cheek was the floor he lay on; the grit was sharp and unyielding, like tiny shards of glass.

  Diatomaceous earth.

  He struggled to sit up, fighting dizziness, and gasped at a yank around his neck. It was a leather strap, knotted to an iron rack. A horizontal row of chalk-white plaster masks was mounted along it: a fresco of men with shadowy agonized faces, held in this dark damp purgatory. A severed tether trailed beneath each. This was the place he had seen in the video of Caymas Schultz, and now he understood where he was: inside the wine cave where Katherine Vandenard had been murdered. Where Monks himself had stood outside only days before and talked to the man who had done it.

  At his own place, a white mound of plaster was heaped on a board.

  Monks did not need to touch it to know that it was still wet.

  “You have only yourself to blame for this, Dr. Monks. If you hadn’t interfered, there’d be no need for haste.”

  This voice was a man’s, natural, without any forced high pitch or intonation now. A pale oval was moving toward Monks from the darkness, a smooth androgynous face with hairless head: the undisguised face of Robby Vandenard. The body beneath was of medium height, lithe, clothed in tight-fitting black.

  “I’m going to give you something not everyone gets. A second chance. Do what I ask, and I’ll let you go. You’ll never hear from me again. Only—this time, I’ll be here to see to it that there’s no cheating.”

  Robby moved closer as he talked, spiraling in, with the gliding steps of a dancer or martial artist. He was holding his right hand behind his thigh, hiding what it held. Monks turned clumsily on his knees to keep him in sight, fighting his body’s urge to run.

  He said hoarsely, “What’s the price this time? Another murder?”

  Robby leaped forward, the hidden hand slashing down in a blur of speed. Monks threw himself back. The hand whispered past his ear. There was a yank at his neck. Then he was free.

  Robby was smiling. He held up a knife with a wooden shaft and hooked blade. A grape-picker’s knife.

  “You’re probably feeling a little shaky,” he said. “I have a selection of stimulants and narcotics. Or perhaps you’d prefer a drink. I laid in some Finlandia vodka, especially for this occasion. A classic, isn’t it? The doctor who needs a stiff shot to steady his hand?”

  Monks shook his head warily.

  “Take your time, then. But not too much time. Katherine and I have places to go and people to see.”

  Monks said, “Katherine?”

  Robby’s face receded back into the cave’s darkness. Another light came on, in a smaller chamber that opened off the main one. This was decorated like the room of a teenaged girl, with pastel walls and furnishings. The bed in the center held several stuffed animals and dolls.

  Among them lay Alison Chapley, wearing a young girl’s nightgown.

  Monks stood, lurching, and made his way to her. Her eyes were open, but she did not move or speak: an affect that suggested sodium pentothal or Versed. Her hair had been dyed auburn and fell straight, parted in the middle. Her eyes were lined heavily with kohl, her lipstick pale pink.

  Monks’s gaze rose to a photograph on a shelf, a dated professional portrait in an ornate gilt fram
e. Two children stood side by side. The older was a girl already taking on a woman’s beauty. Long straight auburn hair, parted in the middle. Dark-lined eyes and pale lipstick.

  Katherine Vandenard.

  Not just the makeup, but the facial structure—eyes that sloed toward the exotic, strong cheekbones, wide mouth—made her resemblance to Alison startling.

  The other child in the photo was a boy of perhaps ten, dressed in suit and tie, his fair hair curled to give an angelic appearance.

  But even then, the eyes gave a hint of something much older.

  “We need your help, Dr. Monks.” Robby’s voice came from behind him. “I was going to use Jephson, but his hands shook like leaves. He whined that he hadn’t touched an instrument in thirty years. Pitiful. I suppose it didn’t help any, putting him in the car trunk with Garlick. Garlick was a mess by then.

  “I considered doing it myself. It’s a very simple procedure. But I just don’t have that touch, the years of experience.

  “Then you called. I thought, those steely Emergency Room nerves. Just what we need.”

  Robby stepped into sight again, holding a plastic, life-sized medical model of a human head. Skin and skull were transparent, revealing the convoluted sections of the brain.

  “We’ll use the trans-orbital method. Tried and true. It only takes a few minutes. They used to do them one right after the other, dozens in an afternoon. Insertion of a probe through the eyelids—”

  He shifted the head to hold it with one hand, while the other introduced a surgical knife with a long, thin blade above the eyeball, piercing up into the central forebrain.

  “Followed by severing the connection between the thalamus and frontal lobe. A twist of the wrist.”

  The probe slashed across.

  “The vessel is cleansed, and ready for its new owner.”

  Robby swung the probe to point at the photograph of Katherine.

  Monks stared, beginning to comprehend what Robby Vandenard intended:

  A frontal lobotomy to empty the “vessel,” Alison. Eliminate her personality, in the belief that he could bring back the sister he had murdered out of jealous love, almost thirty years ago.