Torn (Second Sight)

by Hunter, Hazel

  Dixon had been rifling through the files in front of him but stopped.

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “Because the doctor knows about all the operations,” Mac said. “Including the one on Esme.”

  “I don’t understand,” Isabelle said.

  “It’s also known as dissociative identity disorder,” Mac said. “The personalities alternate control. One identity doesn’t have the memories of the other.”

  “The doctor knew about multiple other victims,” said Dixon.

  “It never made sense to me that he’d have multiple personality disorder,” Mac said. “The odds were always against it.” Mac leaned forward in his seat. “No, he’s a chameleon, taking on a new persona with each kidnapping.”

  “But the torture remains the same,” Dixon said.

  “It has to,” Mac said. “It’s sexually motivated in some way. It’s what drives him in the first place.”

  “The knee?” Isabelle asked.

  “Not just the knee,” Mac said, tracing the line on his own leg. “It starts at the knee and then moves up the thigh.”

  “Even so,” Dixon said. “It’s a far cry from–”

  “We’ll find a wound on him that’s the same,” Mac said, sitting back, almost stunned at his own conclusion. “Something that, to him, is associated with sex. Something that happened during sex.” He looked from Dixon to Isabelle. “And now he’s recreating it.”

  There was no proof but it made sense. The Chameleon’s ideal victim type was young, pretty, and petite–and always a brunette with long hair. Mac glanced at Isabelle, her dark hair swept behind her shoulders but its gentle curves framing her beautiful face. Though she smiled at him, Mac felt a knot in the pit of his stomach.

  “We need to search hospital records for a man with that type of wound,” Mac said.

  “He might not be from Los Angeles,” Dixon said. “Or he might have sustained the wound years ago before emergency rooms were computerized.”

  “Or he might never have gone to a hospital,” Isabelle added.

  “But we’ve got to check,” Mac said. “With so little else to go on, we have no choice.”

  Unlike the case with Esme, no witnesses had come forward. Nor had Isabelle been permitted to read anything of Angela’s.

  Dixon’s phone rang.

  “Dixon,” he said, answering it. He listened for a few moments and his dark eyes immediately focused on Mac, who felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “We’ll be right there,” Dixon said, slamming the phone down as he stood.

  Mac jumped to his feet, his muscles coiled for action, as Isabelle stoop up as well.

  “The hospital found something on the security video,” Dixon said. “It’s Angela.”

  • • • • •

  Prentiss placed the earphones of the brand new stethoscope around Angela’s neck. Though she was still strapped to the operating table, there was hardly any need. Like his previous…patients…dehydration and exhaustion were running their course.

  He threw the glass of water in her face and watched her react with a quick inhale as her eyes fluttered open. Slowly, she tried to lick her lips and save whatever moisture was left there.

  “Look at me,” he ordered. Lethargically, her eyes began to close. Prentiss bent lower and slapped the side of her face, twice in quick succession. “Look at me!” he yelled.

  Her eyes snapped open and tried to focus on him. He backed up slightly, took the lighter from his pants pocket, and lit it–no easy trick with the latex gloves. Gingerly, he picked up the end of the stethoscope by the black rubber tube, just above the circular steel disc, and put the flame to it. Then he looked into Angela’s eyes.

  “Hello, Isabelle,” he said smiling.

  Angela’s eyebrows knit together.

  “Just a little message from me,” he said, drawing closer to Angela’s face, “to you.” His smile abruptly vanished. “I don’t appreciate how you spoiled my time with Esme,” he growled. “But, no worries. You’ll have a chance to make up for it.” Heat from the metal of the stethoscope radiated up to his fingers. “And I’ll tell you exactly how,” he said, drawing back. “Next time,” he paused for dramatic effect. “I’m coming for you.” With that, he tossed the lighter to the floor and picked up Angela’s hand. The belts on the operating table clanked and tightened as she squirmed, but it was pointless.

  “No!” she screamed.

  Before the stethoscope could cool off, he quickly pressed the diaphragm into her upturned palm. Flesh sizzled as Angela’s wild shriek echoed all around him.

  “Next time, Isabelle,” he yelled, pressing the metal down harder. “It’ll be you!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “There,” Mac said, pointing at the video. “That’s her.” He stood just behind Officer Dadashian, seated at the computer terminal. Mac hunched lower and closer. “It looks like she’s unconscious.”

  Dixon and Isabelle leaned closer as well.

  “From this angle,” Dixon said. “It’s hard to tell.”

  At the exit from the hospital to the parking structure, the camera looked down from the ceiling.

  “Watch what happens,” Dadashian said as the video continued to roll.

  In silence, the four of them watched the sketchy black and white image. The Chameleon was dressed in a white lab coat over slacks and a shirt and tie. His hair was grey, as was his mustache and beard, and he wore thick rimmed glasses.

  As he wheeled Angela up against a white van, turned her around and locked the wheels, it was clear she was unconscious, her head strapped to the headrest of the wheelchair. The Chameleon checked his surroundings, opened the sliding door of the vehicle, and then undid Angela’s belt and head strap. Quickly, he rolled her forward and used her momentum to tumble her inside the door and apparently onto the floor of the van.

  “License plates?” Mac asked.

  “Already running them,” said Dixon.

  Unless he was mistaken, Mac already knew that the vehicle had been a rental, paid for in cash, a false ID given.

  “He can’t get the wheelchair,” Isabelle said quietly.

  They all watched as the Chameleon struggled to lift the wheelchair into the van with Angela in the way.

  “He didn’t think far enough ahead,” Mac said.

  And his plan was more bold.

  “That’s a transport wheelchair,” Dadashian said. “They’re a little more rugged and they have the headrest. Most wheelchairs in the hospital aren’t that type.”

  Suddenly, the Chameleon stood up straight and, at the bottom right hand corner of the computer screen, another car pulled in and parked next to the driver’s side of the van. The Chameleon quickly closed the door and moved the wheelchair to the front of his parking space.

  “He’s abandoned his plan,” Mac said, feeling the tide start to turn. “It was too elaborate this time.” The Chameleon quickly got behind the wheel and backed out, exiting the viewing angle of the camera. “Good work,” Mac said, clapping his hand down on Dadashian’s shoulder. He turned quickly to Dixon. “We need to find that wheelchair,” Mac said. “I want everyone on it right now.”

  Dixon quickly stepped away from them as he took out his cell phone. Dadashian picked up the handset on the desk. Mac turned to Isabelle and lowered his voice.

  “Then we need to get you and that wheelchair together.”

  • • • • •

  Prentiss felt a bit of empathy for Angela. He’d never studied so hard in his life as when he’d pored over the anatomy information he’d found online. Angela must have studied the same thing at some point. And that had just been for the knee.

  He rolled the tray of surgical instruments next to the table. Laid out on the white cloth that covered the metal tray, they rattled and glittered under the bright overhead lights of the operating room. He had a surgical mask on but he still wore the mustache and goatee to stay in character. And of course the gloves. Always the gloves.

  Angela’s ski
n seemed a pasty white under the glaring light and her mouth hung open a bit, as she breathed shallowly and rapidly. Her eyes were closed, as they almost always were for patients at this point. No doubt she’d screamed for help–at first. He’d stayed with the first two women and then realized that gagging and binding them was safe enough. With Angela, though, the staging had been perfect. Remote, isolated, abandoned–she could scream for help all she wanted. Prentiss gave her the reassuring smile of a surgeon with excellent bedside manner, making sure to smile with his eyes because of the mask. Angela, of course, took no notice but that was no reason not to perform to the best of his ability. She would play her part soon enough.

  As though he were examining someone else’s work, he inspected the instruments: clamps, forceps, scalpels, a retractor, even the syringe he’d originally used to subdue her. Of course, drugging her was no longer a concern.

  “No more sedation,” Prentiss announced, his voice firm and authoritative, echoing slightly in the empty room.

  Though many of the tiles in the floor were shattered and missing, most of the walls were intact. A metal panel with spigots was mounted about head level on the far wall and there were several electrical outlets as well. But the real reason he’d picked the room were the long fluorescent bulbs overhead. Unlike virtually everything else at Linda Vista, they worked. There had to have been a film crew here recently. He wondered for a moment which part of the hospital had been used for the pilot of ER. It might have been this very room.

  Delicately, he picked up the scalpel in the middle of the tray.

  “Okay, people,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

  A surgeon never worked alone.

  • • • • •

  Isabelle tugged on the index finger of her glove. The wheelchair had turned up quickly. Just as Dadashian had noted, it wasn’t a common piece of equipment and it hadn’t wandered far from where the Chameleon had left it. Someone had moved it just inside the entrance.

  “Are you sure about this?” Mac said quietly.

  They’d immediately dusted for fingerprints but only found a smudged palm print on one of the textured handles at the back of the chair and a partial thumb print on the other. In the video they’d seen the Chameleon wearing gloves. More than likely, it was the print of someone who’d moved the wheelchair into the building, probably a guard.

  Mac had arranged for them to be alone in a nearby waiting room. Dixon stood at the entrance so they wouldn’t be disturbed. He glanced back over his shoulder at them.

  “Yes,” Isabelle said, tugging the remaining fingers of the glove off.

  Mac stood next to her, close, his hand on the small of her back as they looked down at the worn and dented wheelchair. An object like this had to bring pain and they both knew it. His hand was warm, his touch soft. As the last of the glove came off, he slipped his arm around her waist. She glanced at his hand on her hip and her own bare hand just inches from his.

  It would be so easy to read him. It would only take a second. Dixon shifted at the entrance and glanced up and down the hallway. Stop it, Isabelle told herself. You’re not here to read Mac. Concentrate.

  With a deep, quick breath–she touched the armrest of the wheelchair.

  A bored security guard pushed the chair through the automatic door. Bright lights made her eyes hurt and she winced. Someone yelled ‘action!’ A dozen faces flashed by. People were making speeches. A strong, young Latino man popped a wheelie in the chair and then sped down a wide corridor. Something wasn’t right. Nothing felt real. Isabelle didn’t recognize anything, only the automatic door. More faces–smiling, nervous, crying–popped in and out in rapid succession. What is going on? The outside of the hospital was lit at nighttime. A small, stenciled sign read Linda Vista Hospital. Isabelle let go of the armrest and stepped back, directly into Mac’s arms.

  “I’ve got you,” he said from behind.

  His arms closed around her midriff and she instinctively closed her arms around his, hanging on as the grey vision of the reading gradually cleared. The images in her mind started to slot into place. Quickly, she turned to Mac, her hands finding his shoulders, her eyes straining to see him through the fading grey.

  “Linda Vista Hospital,” she exhaled breathlessly. As Mac’s face slowly swam into view, his deeply green-blue eyes stared into hers. “That’s where this wheelchair is from.”

  “Linda Vista?” Dixon asked.

  “Do you know it?” Mac said, jerking his gaze away.

  “Well, sure,” Dixon said. “But it’s not a hospital. Not anymore.” Isabelle took her eyes off Mac’s puzzled face to look at Dixon as well. “It’s abandoned. They use it for film shoots now.”

  • • • • •

  It turned out that the kneecap was full of arteries. Esme had survived–as he had long ago–but that never needed to happen again, now that he was a surgeon.

  Live and learn, Prentiss thought. Though he’d started to shrug, he stayed in character and kept his shoulders rigid. A surgeon wouldn’t approach the operating table with a shrug. With the rubber of the latex glove nearly sticking to the steel handle of the scalpel, he gripped it like a pencil and pointed it at Angela’s kneecap.

  The enormous femoral artery that dived down between the hip and the groin and then into the thigh eventually branched and had to pass through the knee. It was beautiful really–the way everything seemed as though it were meant to be. In his mind’s eye he pictured the jpeg from Grey’s Anatomy. Though the anterior tibial artery was at the back of the knee, he would begin at the front as he always did. It was tradition.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mac felt it in his bones. The Chameleon would be here.

  The dark SUVs and black and whites screamed into the parking lot, sirens blaring, lights flashing in the growing darkness of evening. The vacant hospital was a lot of territory to cover. With a strange sense of déjà vu, Mac jumped out of the passenger door before the vehicle had come to a full stop. Without missing a step, he checked the helicopter overhead and keyed the mic on his walkie-talkie.

  “All right, everybody,” he said. “You know the drill.”

  They had to know it. This was the third time this week.

  “Hostage Rescue Team first,” he said, turning slowly in a circle to look at the gathered agents and police officers that surrounded him. “Target the operating rooms identified on the floorplans first. Then work your way up.”

  Although the owners of Linda Vista had immediately complied with the building plans, always handy for film crews, they knew facility by heart. The operating rooms were all located in the level below ground.

  Mac saw Isabelle standing next to Dixon, both them wearing bullet proof vests like himself.

  “LAPD secure a perimeter around this facility. No one in or out. Let’s find her!”

  Bodies ran in every direction and the squad cars took off as well. Mac waved Sergeant Dixon and Isabelle over. As with Esme, there was a chance that a reading might provide them an important clue about the Chameleon.

  “Keep Isabelle behind you,” Mac said to the sergeant. “We’ll follow the HRT.”

  It had to be an operating room.

  He took a moment to meet Isabelle’s gaze. Her amber eyes were clear, focused, and staring intently into his. With a quick nod, he turned and jogged after the HRT.

  • • • • •

  Linda Vista could have been the setting for a horror movie, thought Isabelle as she trailed behind Sergeant Dixon. Mac was up ahead, barreling down the dark corridor. The shouts of the Hostage Rescue Team echoed from the dirty and broken tiles. She could hear radios squawking and the pounding of boots. The beams of flashlights flitted wildly as though a hundred tiny trains had derailed and were charging forward.

  Though she wanted to be closer and see what was going on, Dixon kept his long arm in front of her.

  “This distance is good,” he said. “We’ll know as soon as they do.”

  The small radio clipped to his belt was full of
terse staccato reports in partial sentences, mostly composed of numbers and letters.

  Suddenly, up ahead, the lights disappeared, moving as a group to the left. A cacophony of raised voices echoed though Isabelle couldn’t make out what they were saying. And then, even as she and Sergeant Dixon closed the distance, an eerie silence followed. Their own footsteps sounded around them, her heels clattering in the empty hallway, the only light that of the sergeant’s flashlight. They were approaching a large doorway that looked as though it once might have held two swinging doors. But just as they arrived, the hostage rescue team exited. Though they turned and continued their progress up the corridor, something in the way they moved was different. They were hunkered lower, not bunched so tightly together, assault rifles held at the ready. And though they moved with purpose, Isabelle realized as they retreated further into the darkness of the long hallway, that they weren’t running. They weren’t in a hurry.

  “No,” she muttered.

  Mac’s voice came from the sergeant’s radio just as they reached the wide doorway.

  “We’ve found her. All teams, we’ve found her,” he said. “The victim is dead.”

  No sooner had the words registered than the scene in the operating room assaulted her. An incredibly bright lantern rested on a metal tray, casting a harsh light throughout the large room.

  “Goddamn it,” Dixon swore aloud.

  “Forensics,” Mac’s voice said in stereo, compounded by Dixon’s radio. “Operating Room Number Seven. Now.”

  Isabelle stifled a scream by clamping both hands over her mouth. Angela’s eyes were open as was her mouth. Her face, pasty white, seemed nearly to glow and her lips were equally pale. Though Isabelle wanted to run, be as far away from this place as possible, she couldn’t even turn away. Instead, her staring eyes were drawn as though by a magnet down to Angela’s knee.