by JA Schneider
“Did Erik commit those murders?”
“What are you talking about? Murder is a mortal sin! A mortal sin! A mortal…”
He was still hollering and for the psych residents it was upping the Thorazine as David moved away and got out his phone.
He’d already seen Jill’s text about Burrell coming right after lunch. He speed-dialed, and when she answered he asked, “Burrell arrived?”
“Yes,” she said low, her free hand checking a sleeping patient’s chart. “Dara fell asleep so I sent him down to the coffee shop.”
“Okay, so who’s Erik?”
“Erik?” Jill frowned. “Wait.”
Out in the hall she said low, “That’s a new one.”
He told her fast about Nash’s ranting. “Said someone named Erik told him God posted that text on his site while he was sleeping. He woke to find it there, sounds like he’d presumed Erik a friend, co-believer.” A pause. “Was Burrell carrying anything?”
“Yes. Flowers and a bowling bag …” Something horrible dawned. Jill stared wildly up at the ceiling, as if she could see through it to David and the psych floor he was on.
“Bowling balls are made of thick layers of plastic, hard resin,” David said. “Glass and plastic, polymers, sniffer dogs can’t detect through them. Think Erik’s anyone we know?”
“Oh God. I’ll check.”
Officer Terry Smith in his size fourteen boots crashed his battering ram through the door. As it splintered open, the smell knocked them all back, with groans of “Oh shit,” and “Jeez I hate this.”
But in they went to Brian Walsh’s apartment, gloved and grimacing, stepping carefully around the entrance perimeter and neat living room.
No sign of forced entry or violence. Walsh had admitted his visitor. Knew him.
In the little kitchen, in a thick pool of clotted blood, they found Walsh’s body. It had been stabbed in the back and its throat was slit, with a long, dead black snake tied tightly around it. Smeary red trails ran this way and that. There were live snakes there too, writhing, their bloody tracks left under chair legs, the table, the little counter. More groaning, swearing, hollering for Animal Control.
Someone had sneaked past the cop cars guarding that church. It had been a dark, cold night. Maybe that someone had been watching, saw his chance when reinforcements were handing out fresh coffee?
“You need fuckin’ boots!” someone yelled at the CSU bunch just arriving. Minutes later Joe Miranda, who headed the unit, looked grimly up from the body and estimated the time of death at least sixteen hours ago.
Before the attack on the victim’s wife.
“That rules him out for that one,” Miranda said into his phone. “Maybe for the others too? We got snakes here. Lotsa snakes. He got past the cars watching. Left bloody footprints too. First time he’s left evidence. That’s it, he’s outta control. Gonna hit again faster.”
He listened, nodded, hung up and got back to work. Outside, the medical examiner’s morgue van had just arrived.
Gregory Pappas called David, told him fast about Walsh.
Then David told him about Nash. “Just now,” he said, breathing hard. “Ranting about someone named Erik who filled in that website while Ralph was asleep. Told him God wrote the text.”
“An insider,” Pappas said tightly.
“Named Erik. Think Rick could be a nickname?”
“Yeah. We gotta find Burrell.”
“He’s in the hospital now.”
Seconds later David was pounding down the stairwell.
“It got confusing,” Sister Meg said. “You see, Eric – that’s spelled with a ‘c’ – is really Greg’s first name, and the patients got it mixed up with Rick’s name, which is Erik spelled with a ‘k,’ so we decided to use Eric Gregory Clark’s middle name, which made it easier. Greg actually prefers his middle name.”
“So Rick’s first name is really Erik?” Jill’s voice was shaking.
“Yes,” Sister Meg said. “By the way, I’m just so bewildered by him. He just…left this morning, sometime after ten it must have been. No explanation, no request for permission, he just rushed out and left Greg and me terribly short-handed. I’ve tried to be patient, but he’s been…different, sometimes erratic since his mother’s death.”
“When was that?”
“Last March. She was just eighteen when she had him, and his childhood was awful, off and on in foster homes…oh, I really should stop there. Luckily, Doctor Sweet showed up today – they have no schedule, these volunteer doctors - so thank goodness God sent him and he stayed on to help.”
“That’s wonderful. I have to hang up now, Sister. Thanks for clearing up my confusion.”
“You’re most welcome. Any way I can help, just call, dear.”
It was twenty-five past one.
Adrenaline surged. Barely using the crutch, Jill raced into Dara’s room and saw…Dara’s face. It was blue. Jill’s heart dropped. On leaden feet she moved closer, felt Dara’s carotid out of habit.
Nothing.
Dara was dead. No pulse. No heartbeat. Nothing.
A sound startled her, and she wheeled.
Burrell stood there, his back to the door he’d slipped closed.
“I pillowed her face and turned off her monitor,” he said, smiling. “Couldn’t have the code going off, could I?”
39
Between his feet was his bowling bag, as if he were protecting it.
In a sickening flash it all fit. He killed Dara, so it had to be him who’d stabbed her too and unwittingly left explosive particles on her wound. That affable act of his. How well he’d played it.
Dynamite in the bowling balls. Layers and layers of plastic and resin. Oh God…
“W-why’d you kill her?” Jill’s voice shook uncontrollably. She should have screamed, but she wanted to know if he’d acted alone. She backed away from him, around the foot of the bed.
He left his bag by the door and stepped closer. His eyes burned. “Brian and Dara started guessing what I was really doing with their lists, and it wasn’t urging and counseling, ha. They got scared. Wanted to run to a priest.”
She’d reached the other side of the bed. He followed, eyeing her with his hands clenched. Jill’s eyes darted and she froze. He’d exposed the medallion when he placed his flowers.
Why hadn’t she thought of that? But where else could she have told him to put them?
“Surrogates are worse than prostitutes.” His stare was pure venom. His voice was creepy-quiet, but spittle formed at the corners of his mouth. “My mother was a prostitute who I hated – even after death - until I was saved, discovering Ralph’s obsession, discovering there were even worse women who birth monsters with no souls.”
He sneered. “Oh stop looking at me like I’m crazy. I’ve been on Haldol since I was seventeen. It has worked fine, no one knows about my past, juvie records closed.”
He laughed.
“Haldol? You’re schiz too?” She blurted it unintentionally, backing closer to the bed table.
“Only intermittently,” he leered. “My doctor says there’s a broad spectrum of schizophrenia. My secret doc, he knows nothing about the real me. And I’m nothing like poor Ralph, so easy to manipulate, make him think that was God in his transistor instead of me. I rigged his clunker like a walkie-talkie.” Another ugly laugh. “And wasn’t I smart to get Dara back into the hospital? So I’d have an excuse to visit? I even played coy with you too. Oh so reluctant-”
He saw her throw the briefest, urgent glance back at the medallion, and his face froze.
“That’s what you wore yesterday with the cops.” His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Lying whore bitch, is that-”
She swung the heavy end of her crutch at his head. Crack! But not hard enough because he grabbed it, yanked her to him before she could let go, and threw her to the floor. Stomped hard where her head had been a millisecond before, but she’d slid under the bed.
From there she saw his feet rus
h around the bed. He seized his bowling bag, and opened the door.
They’d heard in the van. Had cops converging on the room from which “bowling bag” had never been mentioned. Even passed a bored-looking guy pulling such a bag and reassuring the cop outside that that thump was just him dropping the darn thing. He sauntered away as they burst into the room.
Jill was sliding out from under the bed. He’d thrown her down but her hip hurt less than she’d feared.
“You okay?” the first arriving cop said, helping her up. Then David burst in and she fell into his arms.
“It’s Burrell, he killed Dara,” she gasped to him, and looked at the others. “That guy who just left. That bag he’s pulling is a bomb.”
David’s eyes turned frantic. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
He pulled her out with him behind the running cops, who covered just sixty feet of hall and then stopped short.
There was Burrell, just yards away, looking casual, even. Busy before the long glass looking into the newborn nursery, removing his jacket, kneeling and fiddling with his open bowling bag. Around him, pressed close to the glass, were the babies’ thrilled parents and relatives, talking joyously to each other. “Oh, she’s beautiful! ... What a big boy!”
Burrell stood. Smiled at a woman holding a pink-ribboned, gift-wrapped present.
“Pretty!” he said loudly, his back to the glass. “Is your precious newcomer one of those little IVF monsters?”
The crowd around him recoiled, their eyes wide with shock. Several started to move away.
Then Burrell saw cops moving toward him. Looked the other way down the hall and saw more cops, closing in. All had their guns drawn. Dogs pulled at their leashes, barking, going crazy.
Insanely, he ignored them.
A grandmotherly-looking woman screamed. “It’s him! He’s the one!”
Chaos, terror as he grabbed the woman and yanked her to him. “Yes!” he yelled happily. “I’m the one! And you’re all going to burn in hell for condoning” – his free hand holding something indicated the glass – “what’s going on in there.”
A woman fainted. Her husband and others bent to her.
“I just opened my two bowling balls,” Burrell said triumphantly, his arm squeezing the older woman’s neck. “When I press this” - his free hand held up his cell phone - “the dynamite in them will blow up this whole floor, including delivery rooms, patient rooms, probably the floor above too.” He glanced up beatifically and said, “Do you see what I’m doing for you, God? Make the fires spread. Destroy this whole Devil’s Workshop.”
Cops circled closer through more cries and dogs barking and people clutching at each other. A second woman sank to the floor, and another screamed, “Please, my baby!”
“Shut up, whore!” Burrell yelled, flinging the grandmother to the floor. She lay there whimpering, her head bleeding. Someone reached to her and pulled her away. The crowd was paralyzed with terror.
Near doors opened. Women in pastel robes looked out, horror-struck.
“There’s a bomb!” one told the other, and both started to scream. More doors opened. More cries. Keri Blasco and Alex Brand were there, trying to calm, getting the women back into their rooms.
“Please,” Keri was saying. “Let the police do their job.” Jill, seeing them, realized that if she’d screamed in Dara’s room Burrell would have triggered his bomb there. She fought nausea, looked frantically around. Pappas was loudly on his phone with the SWAT team.
And David, squinting by Jill, saw that Burrell’s hands looked darkened. From the explosives he’d been handling? He saw Burrell wipe his free hand on his shirt, which looked darkened, too.
“Stay,” he whispered to Jill, starting to move forward through the cops. She shook her head no and followed him. Around her police radios crackled quick, urgent exchanges. Her eyes darted through the newborn window. Nurses were in there, frantically evacuating babies, starting with the ones closest to the glass. The PA above them must be issuing soft, controlled directions. A first nurse hustled infants, one in each arm, to the exit, and from there, Jill knew, down the stairwell.
Her wildly trembling hands got out her phone and checked Jesse. He was crying and alone, still in his isolette at the rear. No!
She couldn’t move. Saw Burrell ranting to the crowd and waving his cell phone. “Do not move or I’ll blow you up this instant!”
Then Jill’s heart leaped. Others were arriving behind the glass to help the nurses. Tricia! Gary! Holloway, Mackey and pediatric residents! Running in from the other exit to help.
Risking their lives.
Burrell didn’t see the evacuation. His back was turned to the glass, furiously scolding.
“I don’t see one of you condemning that devil child in there! Or the arrogance of taking the place of the Creator! Or the evil of women prostituting themselves to bear the child of a man not their husband’s. You condone violating the sanctity of marriage? Of flaunting God’s will?”
His hand swept over faces crying, pleading. “That makes you all sinners. Doomed to die in eternal hellfire! Get on your knees.”
Most were already on knees that had buckled. Burrell’s head swiveled to uniforms, and he raised his phone higher. “You too, cops. On your knees!”
They knelt, quieted their dogs. Make the psycho feel important: training had taught them that. Hunched, it also allowed hands to ready weapons.
David had moved in a crouch to the front. A cop behind him slid a gun to him. They all knew he could shoot.
He shouted, “Why did you kill Dara Walsh?”
The hand holding the cell phone stilled, came down a bit, its owner confronted with his own mortal sin.
“Had to, both of them,” Burrell whined. “They might have…told! I would have been lost, and I’m the chosen one!”
Burrell’s mouth twitched. He liked bragging to the Devil’s Workshop doc in his white jacket. “It was all so perfect until” – his glare went to Jill – “that one wrecked my plan to make Nash look like the killer! Oh look, a sniper!”
He’d spotted a SWAT-garbed officer, crouched low, his finger squeezing his trigger – and the cell phone flew up again. “THAT’S IT! PREPARE TO-”
David raised his gun and fired once.
Shot the phone out of Burrell’s hand, sent it clattering to the floor. Screams and wails, people fell on each other. Burrell was screaming too, hugging his hand spurting blood. A near cop grabbed his phone and quick-turned it off. Other cops rushed Burrell – too late. He’d grabbed a young woman with his other arm holding a glass shard to her throat.
David’s bullet had gone high through the nursery window, shattering it. Burrell had grabbed a hanging splinter and was already cutting the woman. Cutting his second hand too. He seemed unaware.
“Get away!” he shrieked, dragging her.
The police drew back, their faces stricken. The woman was whimpering in terror, half-strangled under Burrell’s arm. Blood from where he’d cut her neck was trickling onto her white sweater. More blood pooled where he’d been. In it lay his shot-off, bloody thumb.
He pulled her down the hall, yelling, “Stay away or I cut her throat!”
The cops followed, trying to get a bead on him as he wove and ducked behind his hostage.
Jill wept, remembering Nash dragging her. The hostage had to move her feet or die.
With her heart rocketing, Jill threaded through people sprawled, clinging to each other and crying, into the nursery. Got to Jesse. Grabbed him and another squalling infant and got both babies out the exit. Almost ran into Gary and Tricia, coming back. Tricia cried out at seeing her; quick-hugged her around both infants.
“No more bomb,” Jill gasped to them.
They heard the soft, controlled announcement over the PA. “Bomb alert is over. Repeat, bomb alert is over.”
But the nursery was a mess. Shattered glass near the front. Wires pulled, monitors stilled, babies screaming. Gary and Tricia went in.
Praying desperately for the woman Burrell held, Jill hurried in a semi-lurch down the stairwell with Jesse and the other infant in her arms.
Ran into Sam and Ramu, just coming up.
“We’re getting the rest out,” MacIntyre said, his breath heaving. “Woody’s helping the evacuation downstairs. Other hospitals are sending ambulances.”
40
Burrell had gotten the bathroom door open and yanked her in. Bullets had missed his head by inches; he’d held his hostage too close.
The bathroom?
“What’s in there?” a cop asked David, running to it.
“Nothing.” David caught up to the first cops pushing at the door. They were having trouble getting it open.
And then they did, pushing at something heavy. David’s heart sank. He guessed what…
Her white sweater was drenched red. She lay in a pool of blood…but she was still breathing.
“Bastard’s berserk, missed her carotid,” David said, kneeling to her, flinging off his white jacket to staunch the flow. The gun he’d put in its pocket skidded away. Two cops took his place with the woman as another called for help.
And another cop saw the ceiling vent out of place above one of the toilets. It was a wheelchair-sized toilet, with blood smeared on the wall, the toilet, and the vent.
“He’s up there!” The cop who’d found the vent slid it away and tried to heft himself up. He couldn’t. He was too heavy.
“I’ll go.” David climbed onto the toilet and hauled himself up through the opening. A thinner man in uniform followed him, and then another.
The three looked around.
It was the generator floor.
The smell of diesel exhaust hit them along with roaring, other-worldly shapes of electrical engines, noise mufflers, dial monitors, and fuel lines.
The first cop to follow David turned and craned. “Where-?”
A crack sounded as an iron rod came down on his head. He fell. The other two spun, ducking, as the maniac swung his rod wildly at them, just missing wires, pumps, machinery.
David crouched, missed a swing, then rose and smashed Burrell hard in the face.
