by Tim Downs
“Mama …”
“Nicky is blind,” she said, ignoring him. “The glasses—did you notice? A small thing. But let me tell you, under those glasses is a very handsome man. You stay for tea.”
“What? Oh. I would love to, Mrs. Polchak, but I have a very busy day.”
“Always a busy day,” Mrs. Polchak scolded. “Too busy, maybe. Too busy to have a cup of tea with a lonely old woman?”
Nick rolled his eyes. “You should go into real estate, Mama. You could make a fortune.”
Mrs. Polchak glared at him. “Why should I work? I have a rich doctor for a son! But no, you have to be a doctor for dead people—a doctor who makes no money. I ask you, what kind of person wants to be a doctor for dead people?”
“Ask her,” Nick said. “I’m a bug man myself.”
Mrs. Polchak looked at Riley in silence.
“I’m a forensic pathologist,” Riley explained. “Just a fellow, actually.”
Mrs. Polchak did a double take. “No man worth a zloty would call you a ‘fellow.’ Nicky, I ask you—is this a fellow?”
Nick looked her up and down. “Looks like a fellow to me.”
“This is why I have no grandchild,” Mrs. Polchak said. She turned and headed back across the yard toward the house.
Riley looked at Nick. “You live with your mother?”
“I’m just visiting,” Nick replied. “Honest. I have my own car and everything.”
“We’ll have tea another time,” Mrs. Polchak called back from the house.
“Another time, Mrs. Polchak. Thank you.”
“Promise me. Promise me another time.”
“I promise,” Riley said, smiling at Nick. “I have so many questions.”
Cruz Santangelo crawled on his belly across the damp limestone surface. He reached forward with both arms and then pulled, pushing forward at the same time with his toes, propelling himself slowly forward like a swimmer. A hundred and fifty feet above him, rainwater trickled down through cracks and fissures, leeching carbonic acid from the soil, dissolving layers of calcium from the limestone, leaving behind foot-high fissures and cracks that run three miles long and four hundred feet deep through the Pennsylvania hills.
Santangelo watched the green reflective strips on the soles of three other cavers ahead of him. Suddenly the light on his helmet blinked off; he raised his head slightly and tapped his helmet against the rock only inches above. The light flashed on again, and the long shadows reappeared on the rolling ceiling and floor that undulated together like two stone blankets.
“What’s the problem back there?” one of the forward cavers called back, his voice thin and strained.
“No problem,” Santangelo said quietly.
“Well, keep that thing on! We’re in a hurry here—you know the weather forecast!”
Santangelo shook his head. They should be back with the women in the Tour Cave, standing erect on the nice wooden boardwalk, oohing and aahing over theatrically lit stalactites and flowstone and soda-straws. They had no business tackling a virgin crawlway; they had no business caving with him. But he had been forced to suffer their presence all day long, a safety requirement of the Laurel Cavern authorities: caving in groups only.
One of the men wore nothing but a simple pair of blue jeans and a thin flannel shirt. Another actually wore shorts—shorts! The fool had no idea that despite the summer temperatures above, fifty feet below ground the cave would stay an even fifty-two degrees year-round. Less than fifteen minutes after their original descent the man had begun to grumble about the penetrating cold and dampness, and he had been whining and complaining ever since.
All three men wore ordinary tennis shoes—not a decent pair of climbing soles among them—and none of them thought to bring a watch. Santangelo never did; but then, he was a veteran caver, and he knew how to compensate for the time-distorting effects of utter darkness—that is, except when he was distracted by the constant chatter of three anxious neophytes. Now none of them knew how much time had elapsed, and they were hurrying back toward the cave entrance just as fast as the unyielding stone would allow.
“Can you believe this?” one of the men laughed nervously. “We sure know how to spend a Saturday!”
“I tell you one thing, you’re buying tonight!” said the man to his right.
“You’re on!” his friend shot back.
“You guys can do what you want,” the third man shivered. “I just want to get warm. I swear, I’m numb from the waist down!”
Their voices crackled like electrical wires; they spoke with ever-increasing energy and volume. They were venting fear, Santangelo knew, bouncing their voices off the stone the way bats do. But the stone gave nothing in return, and the absolute stillness—the absence of even the tiniest echo—was shredding the nerves of all three of them. Santangelo despised them; their incessant blabbering violated the perfect blackness like arrogant tourists shouting across the aisles of a great cathedral. They’re whistling past the graveyard, he thought, and if you’re not at home in a graveyard you have no business being down here.
“Quiet,” Santangelo whispered.
“What? Who said that?”
“I did. Listen.”
From the darkness beyond the narrow cone of their lights came a soft, shuffling sound. It was a kissing sound, a rubbery sound, like the sound of wet soles on a hardwood floor. It grew no louder, but it came steadily closer.
“Hey!” One man arched up suddenly, forgetting his narrow confinement; there was the dull crack of plastic on stone, and his light disappeared. “Something ran across my hand!”
“What was it?”
“I see it! There’s another one!”
Santangelo tipped his headlight down at the limestone floor. A small, greenish gray form wriggled past his left hand. He watched it pass; it had four fingers on each foreleg, each ending in a tiny suction cup. Its body was slender and tapered, and mucouscovered skin stretched smoothly over the head where eyes would ordinarily be.
“Lizards!” one of the men shouted. “There must be a hundred of ’em!”
“They’re cave salamanders,” Santangelo said quietly. He reached forward with both arms, compressing his shoulders as tightly as possible, and began to roll onto his left side; his shoulders wedged between the ceiling and floor. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, relaxing, elongating his body. He felt his right deltoid scrape past the coarse stone ceiling, and he rolled over onto his back.
“They’re everywhere! Where are they coming from?”
“Rocks. Cracks. They don’t like to be seen.” Santangelo slowly rotated his helmet from side to side, studying the rippling ceiling. Ten feet to his left the stone rose abruptly and then descended again, forming a sort of bubble six inches higher than the ceiling directly in front of his face. He began to work his body toward it.
“Why are they running toward us?” a panicky voice shouted back.
Centered under the bubble now, Santangelo pulled both heels under him, wedging his knees tightly between the ceiling and floor—then he reached up and switched off his lamp. “They’re not running toward you,” he said. “They’re running away.”
An instant later the wall of water hit them. The water itself reached them almost before the sound, and the flood caught the three men before their minds even had time to comprehend the nature of their impending deaths. Santangelo heard a half-scream, a muffled shout, and then the cavern was silent again.
The water hit Santangelo’s helmet hard and cold. His knees scraped across the stone ceiling, but the force only wedged his legs tighter, and his position held. He arched his back and let the force of the water lift him up toward the bubble. He lay perfectly still, the water caressing his back in pulsing gushes, his arms waving at his sides like drifting seaweed.
He felt his right arm brush against denim, and then a series of kicks and jabs from a pair of flailing legs; seconds later they passed. He saw quick beams of light sweep across the ceiling like searchlights, an
d then disappear into the darkness. Suddenly he felt the full weight of a body jam against his back, forcing him even tighter up into the air pocket above. The body was rigid and desperate—kicking, groping, clawing—and then just as suddenly the current pushed the body off to the left and away. But as it washed past, one frantic hand caught his left forearm and held on, clutching at the last remnant of life in the subterranean graveyard. The hand jerked hard twice, and Santangelo imagined a voice saying, “Can’t you help? Are you just going to let us all die?”
He felt the grip slowly release, and then all was still and quiet again.
He pursed his lips and breathed slowly into the air pocket, in through his nose and out through his mouth. He floated in the dark water, feeling gusts of current and bits of debris wash over his back, grateful that the blackness had at last swept through the cathedral and washed its sacred floors clean.
It was more than an hour before the water subsided, draining silently away into even deeper and darker recesses of the earth. Santangelo lay motionless, slowing his pulse and controlling his breathing just as he had done a thousand times on the firing range, waiting for the telltale pause between heartbeats before squeezing off a round at a silhouette of a man’s head three hundred yards away. When the receding waters at last lowered him gently back to the stone floor, he switched on his light and swept the crawlspace from side to side. It was completely empty. He rolled onto his stomach and began to work his way back toward the cave entrance.
An hour later, Cruz Santangelo stood by the cavern opening, unzipping his sodden coveralls and peeling them down to his waist. He removed the ascenders from his nylon line and dropped them into a duffel bag. He took out a towel and began to blot at his wrinkled skin. He looked into the sky; to the south, lumbering gray thunderheads rolled off toward the West Virginia border.
Behind him, a mud-splattered SUV crunched to a stop. Windows rolled down, and three anxious faces peered out.
“We’re looking for three men,” the women said. “Have you seen them? Can you help us?”
“We went down together,” Santangelo shrugged. “Last I saw them, they were headed the opposite direction.”
The car slowly rolled away.
There was a beeping sound from the duffel bag. He pulled out his pager and checked his text messages. The single memo read: ZOHAR: MANDATORY: THURSDAY 2300: FOX CHAPEL YACHT CLUB.
Dr. Jack Kaplan sat slumped behind the wheel of his Porsche 911 Turbo, drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel in time to the thundering pulses of two fifteen-inch subwoofers. Half a block ahead he watched two squad cars, lights flashing, a thin band of yellow tape fluttering in the breeze between them. One officer restrained a weeping mother and daughter; another knelt beside a reclining body, while a third reached through the window of his black-and-white cruiser.
It was almost 2:00 a.m.; Kaplan’s shift at the UPMC Trauma Center had ended at midnight, and adrenaline still coursed through his veins like jet fuel. He had spent the last two hours slowly cruising the city, listening to his police scanner, hoping for some medical emergency that might keep him from having to return home to yet another sleepless night.
He looked impatiently at the two officers; they seemed to take forever. “C’mon, boys,” Kaplan grumbled. “It’s the Golden Hour.”
At last, he heard his police scanner crackle.
“Scene secured. Med One can approach.”
A block and a half ahead, a pair of headlights blinked on, and an orange and white EMS rig began to roll slowly toward the scene. Kaplan revved his own engine, shoved the stick into gear, and pulled away from the curb. His silver Porsche and the cube-shaped EMS truck arrived simultaneously.
A paramedic and two EMTs scurried over the rig, gathering equipment from a series of side compartments: a bright orange backboard with nylon restraining belts, a torpedo-like oxygen tank, a trauma kit, a Kevlar med bag, and Advanced Life Support equipment.
Kaplan approached the scene at a jog, neatly scissors-kicking the yellow barrier tape, holding his credentials in front of him like a shield.
“Dr. Jack Kaplan,” he said to the kneeling officer. “I’m a trauma surgeon at UPMC Presbyterian. What have you got?”
The officer reached up, steadied the credentials, then nodded to Jack. “Male, Caucasian, twenty-eight,” he began. “He’s a local resident—”
“I don’t need his life story,” Kaplan said. “I want to know why he’s lying here in a pool of blood.”
“Multiple stab wounds to the chest.”
“Pulse?” Jack opened his medical bag and began to pull on a pair of greenish blue latex gloves.
“Yes—at least, I think so.”
“You think so. That’s kind of important.”
Kaplan ripped open the shirt. He wiped a sterile pad once across the bloody chest and watched; three small scarlet fountains reemerged through horizontal slits just below the rib cage.
“The attacker was a big man,” Kaplan said. “See the angle of the wounds? That’s a thrusting stroke. If he came at him overhead, the ribs would have stopped at least one of them.”
The EMS team approached now; the officer rose and stepped back away from the body.
“Do you mind?” the paramedic said to Kaplan. “We got a job to do here.”
“Your job is to assist me—I’m signing off on this one.”
“And just who exactly are—”
“Ask him.” Kaplan nodded to the officer. “We’re old pals. Now, backboard this guy, block him, whatever you’ve got to do to get him on the truck—but get a cuff on him and get me a pulse fast.”
The EMS crew went to work. Within a minute the body was restrained, lifted to a stretcher, and headed for the truck.
“We’ve got an erratic pulse,” the paramedic said, “and his BP is dropping off the charts.”
“Keep the straps clear of the chest area,” Kaplan said. “On the truck I want you to tube him, and I want two IV lines. You’ve got ALS equipment? Good—get a heart monitor on him right away.”
The stretcher rolled in head-forward and locked into place. The paramedic turned for the driver’s door—Kaplan stopped him.
“Uh-uh. You’re in the back with me.”
“Wait a minute, this is my rig—”
“And you’ve got the most medical training. You’re in the back.” He turned to the two EMTs. “Who’s the third man here?” he said. They glanced at one another, and the man on the left sheepishly raised his hand. “You’re out,” Kaplan said. “You bring my car—I’m not leaving it in this dump. The keys are in it. Touch the radio and I’ll remove your spleen—scratch it and I’ll use a chain saw.” Kaplan turned to the remaining EMT. “You do know how to drive?” The man nodded. “Then do it. UPMC Presbyterian,” he called back to the officer. “Let the family know.”
“Hold it,” the paramedic broke in. “Presby is ten minutes farther away.”
“Keep talking and it’ll be fifteen minutes. Get in the truck.”
The doors closed solidly like the doors of a meat locker; bright overhead lights flickered on, and the siren started its keening wail. The truck rolled slowly forward and then rapidly accelerated. The paramedic slid down the long vinyl bench on the right, connecting and adjusting the heart monitor; it was on less than five seconds before emitting a high, even tone.
“Cardiac arrest!” the paramedic shouted. “I’m going to defib!”
“No you’re not,” Kaplan said. “Not with a penetrating injury. Betadine the chest area—all of it, from the clavicle down.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
“A thoracotomy.”
“A what?”
“I need you to switch places with me—now!”
The paramedic worked his way around the head of the stretcher. “What’s a thoracotomy?”
“I’m going to make an incision right here,” he said, drawing a line with his finger between two ribs. “I’m going to spread the ribs, open the pericardium, and repair any dam
age to the heart and coronary vessels. I’m going to clamp off the descending aorta to redirect blood flow to the lungs and brain, and then I’m going to reach in and massage the heart by hand until we get to UPMC.”
The paramedic swallowed hard. “Have you done this before?”
“Nope. Always wanted to try it, though.”
“Dr. Kaplan, we’re not set up for that kind of surgery—our job is to stabilize and transport. We’ve got no instruments—one little tracheotomy scalpel, that’s all, and maybe a forceps.”
“Get them out. I need your trauma shears, too, and anything we can use for suction. I’ve got most of what I need with me—for the rest, we’ll improvise.”
“Will this work?”
“The survival rate is somewhere between 0 and 4 percent.”
“Dr. Kaplan, we’re two minutes from Allegheny General.”
“I need more than two minutes. Don’t you guys have a radio? Hey, driver! Give me something to work by back here.”
“Allegheny General is set up for this kind of thing. Please—don’t do this.”
Kaplan said nothing. He placed the gleaming point of the scalpel near the sternum in the fifth intercostal space and drew it firmly down.
“You’re killing him,” the paramedic said.
“He’s dead now,” Kaplan shrugged.
Eight minutes later the twin doors of UPMC Presbyterian Trauma Center burst open, and the stretcher raced in. The paramedic was at the head, pushing and guiding, while an EMT hurried along at his side, steadying the IV bag and line. On the opposite side, Jack Kaplan walked quickly and evenly, with both hands extending into a gaping scarlet hole.
A tall, thin woman in a white lab coat swept in behind them. “Jack, don’t you ever go home? Isn’t a twelve-hour shift long enough for you?”
“I was gone for two hours,” he said. “I got bored.”
“What did you do?” she said, staring into the wound.
“A resuscitative thoracotomy.”
