The Professional Corpse (The Departed Book 1)

by Sean Arthur Cox

  With one deft injection, the tall man took away my will to fight. Sedatives of the kind he hit me with were always a strange sort of thing to me. I couldn’t tell if I just didn’t feel like moving my arms and legs or if I no longer could and had convinced myself I just didn’t want to as a matter of pride. I would have worried about it, but I didn’t care. The nice tall man was going to take me away, and that was nice of him. What a great guy.

  “You’re a good guy,” I said, not caring that I spoke clearly, or probably clearly, even though I was supposed to have a broken jaw. What’s the worst they could do? Kill me? Good luck with that.

  The doctor didn’t seem to care either, as involved as he was in prepping to move me. He did give me a half-hearted, “Shhh… no talking,” but that was it. Then he began the long, squeaky, one-wheel-veers-to-the-left journey to radiology and all the dangers that would come with it.

  The journey stopped short at the door, where a mob of photographers and reporters clustered around the overwhelmed security guards stationed at either side. The tall man took exception to this, what with it being a hospital and a place for healing and not a place for “worthless vultures to circle, picking the meat off people who weren’t even dead yet.” He slapped at them with his clipboard, told them to get lost, and then gave the security guards a good tearing into as well for doing absolutely nothing that resembled security.

  “What the hell is wrong with you two?” he shouted. “You have a crowd of all sorts of people on the floor, not relatives, not nothing, and you’re letting them hang out in the halls harassing patients? Get them out of the hospital, or at least get them out into the waiting room! Don’t let them block the halls snapping pictures! Geez! What if this had been an emergency?”

  The security guards mumbled awkwardly, then shooed the reporters away. Good for the tall man, doing his job and making sure the other doctors could do theirs.

  He moved me down the now vacant halls past the nurse’s station, where he flashed the charts and said “radiology.” They gave him a nod and he pushed me to the elevator, giving them a friendly wave as the door shut.

  Alone with the tall man, I began to babble because sedatives make me stupid. “Look,” I think I said, “I understand you’re just doing your medicine thing, but when you’re cutting me open later, I don’t want you to do that, but I know I can’t stop you, but just so you know, I don’t want to be cut open again.”

  “I have no intention of cutting you open,” the tall man said. “Now be quiet. We don’t want to attract any attention to ourselves.”

  “Yeah, secret torture science is secret. I get it.”

  He just shook his head, pulled a bit of gauze from my arm and wrapped it tightly over my mouth. I mumbled. It did no good, but I did it anyway because sedatives make me stupid.

  I babbled unintelligibly as he wheeled me down the hall, and he gave me a friendly bedside manner, “that’s right” or “yeah.” He waved casually to those we passed but did not stop for conversation. Mostly, he kept his attentions, his gaze, his words on me. Pulling me into a side room, he slid me into a wheelchair that made no sense being in that room. I didn’t know what the room was, just that the wheelchair looked out of place. He popped the wheelchair open and shuffled me into it before I’d even realized he had started moving me. He posed me like a child’s toy, adjusting my limbs to make me look comfortable. The monitors he had so carefully secured to move with us were disconnected one by one and cast aside. Then, pulling a blanket from somewhere I couldn’t quite see, he covered the worst of my bandages. By the time he finished with me, I looked less like a man suffering from catastrophic injuries and more like a guy who had too many beers and said, “Hey guys, watch this.”

  It wasn’t until we got to the parking garage that I put together he was the Marquis’s contact. Clearly whatever drug he carried around in his pocket, it was the good stuff. Opening the rear door to the car, he hoisted me into the back seat but didn’t worry about buckling me in. I couldn’t blame him. I barely fit, and I imagine the kind of people who did discreet rescues drove carefully. When he had finally managed to get me tucked comfortably into the back seat, he stuffed the wheelchair in the trunk, got in the driver’s seat and cranked the engine.

  “And that,” he said, “is what we call a successful extraction.”

  Without another word, he pulled out of the parking garage and into the streets of Omaha. I didn’t know where he was taking me. Maybe back to my place, but Baltimore was a long way off, so I doubted that. More likely, the Marquis had arranged for some safe house where I would lay low until we could develop some plan for what to do about Bill.

  The tall man kept glancing back at me in the rearview, I presume to make sure I was still alive and alert. I don’t know how much detail the Marquis went into when explaining my condition. My guess was he said no more than he had to, so the tall man probably thought at least most of these injuries were legitimate.

  “We’re being followed,” he said after some time. “A car’s been tailing us for the past little while now.”

  I guess it wasn’t me he’d been looking at in the mirror. I began to panic again, mumbling something about the killer coming back to finish the job.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, trying to placate me. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ll lose him.”

  We merged and swerved through traffic trying to shake my assassin. He deftly maneuvered the car like a tailor threading a needle, but our pursuer seemed to know his way around a car chase as well. We broke from the surface streets to the interstate, hoping to use speed where maneuverability failed.

  I would guess we were easily doing ninety miles per hour. We flew past commuters in a dizzying blur and I thanked my lucky stars that the freeways weren’t as crowded as usual and that the tall man seemed to possess absolute confidence in what he was doing. Even so, just because I couldn’t stay dead didn’t mean I liked dying. I clung tightly to the “oh shit” handles above the door, thankful that my left arm wasn’t broken and that my right arm just had a forearm cast. We carved our way through mid-morning traffic like a daredevil or NASCAR racer, moving so quickly even I could barely keep track of where we were, and still, glancing back over my shoulder, I could see my killer hot on our tail.

  “I’m going to try to lose ‘em in the stack,” said the tall man as he took an exit for the I-80/I-480/US 75 Interchange. I’m not too proud to admit that I literally pissed myself when he took the exit at eighty-seven miles an hour and dodged minivans all the while.

  Peering out the window, I watched in fear as the car climbed higher and higher in the interchange. I wasn’t afraid of heights, necessarily. As far as ways to die are concerned, it’s one of the better ones. You get to experience the magic weightlessness of free fall for a few seconds and then it’s over instantly and painlessly presuming you fell from high enough. We were high enough. A lethal fall took a long while to recover from, but that didn’t bother me so much. I was dead for the time anyway, and I barely remembered the fires of Hell afterward. Unfortunately, as often as I have died, the biological fear response is a hard one to overcome, especially where death is involved. It did not matter that I had fallen to my death many times before. All my body cared about was “Oh shit, oh shit! So high up! Please don’t die!”

  I laid down in the back seat and curled up into a terrified ball, preferring not to look. I would just have to trust the driver unreservedly. The Marquis did not keep company with unexceptional people, and that the tall man had the Marquis’s endorsement gave me comfort.

  With my head down, I could no longer see the long way down or even the cars we passed, except for the occasional semi-truck, which being taller, could not be hidden from me. Something else I couldn’t see? Any overpasses. We had reached the top of the interchange, and fear gripped my guts hard. I could hear the banshee screams of rubber against pavement as the tall man swerved and braked and accelerated his way through the cars which blurred by, and it assaulted my nerves worse tha
n fingernails on a chalkboard.

  “We haven’t lost him yet,” said the tall man, “but I’ve at least been able to put a few cars between us. If I can keep us out of sight a little bit longer, I can-”

  Then there was a loud popping sound like a gunshot or…

  Or a tire blowout.

  Accidents like this are over in seconds to the external observer, but I’ve found over the course of my life that adrenalin carries within it a sort of time magic, forming a bubble around you, accelerating the senses and slowing down all time in the immediate area to a crawl.

  “Oh…,” said the tall man as the car slumped low in the rear passenger side, the sound of metal rims grinding against concrete a hundred feet in the air. The back of the car began to fishtail, swinging wildly away, the whole car pivoting on the driver and colliding hard with the stony sides of the overpass.

  “…shit…”

  The car closed in at my feet, crushing toward me and sending a sharp explosion of pain up my body as the splint on my leg cracked apart and the bones shattered deep within my calf. Ricocheting off the side wall, we began to spin back into traffic. I could feel the rear of the car begin to rise up with the beginnings of a roll.

  “…the…”

  A jarring crunch as the trunk of the car came rushing toward me. I thanked my lucky stars I hadn’t been buckled in or I would have been cut in half by the seat belt. Instead I was jolted into the air, my body contorting, flying from the back seat toward the ceiling of the car as it dipped forward.

  “…tire…”

  Sailing through the air, broken glass slicing at my face and blurring my vision, I saw the front end of an eighteen-wheeler pushing at the driver’s side rear of the car, crumpling the ton of metal and glass like so much tissue paper as it came. I twisted like a ragdoll as my back slammed against the headrest of the passenger seat.

  “…oh…”

  The whole car rebounded off the truck, which had also begun to swerve, and our car began to flip end over end. Spiraling back down into the cramped right-side floorboard, I slammed hard against the broken window, the jagged glass biting into my arm, severing at least one major artery. My blood shot out in jets, painting the side walls of the overpass a bright crimson, like Jackson Pollack had taken up graffiti.

  “…fuck…”

  The roof of the car slammed down against the pavement, closing me in tighter. I couldn’t see much, but I could make out massive tires spinning wildly as they rolled over the driver’s side of the car. The shriek of brakes, of metal twisting as the semi tried to stop. The groan of the trailer giving way and tearing free from the out of control semi, unable to take the sudden turn.

  “…o-”

  The spray of blood as the tall man found himself pressed between the weight of the semi’s wheels, the various bits of car that surrounded him, and the overpass. The big rig’s latest impact took not only the tall man’s life but also my right arm, which had snapped off mid-bicep when the car collided with the wall again, the rough gravel texture of the side wall sanding away the limb.

  “…fuck…”

  I screamed, finishing the tall man’s final thought. The air filled with the burning scent of gasoline as the semi spat the mangled wreckage of our getaway car from underneath its wheel wells. I barely noticed that I had gone numb from the waist down as the trailer gave the car a shove, accelerating our flip and sending the battered vehicle tumbling over the side of the overpass.

  I lost myself in near darkness as the car flew through space, only slivers of light coming through the cracks where the roof had not collapsed completely. I floated weightless for a moment, slamming around in my tiny sardine can. The car must have hit another overpass as I went down, because there was a loud crunch, and everything lurched violently in a new direction. Some new jagged bit of metal pierced my abdomen and I could no longer scream, only cough up pools of blood. The impact with the ground far below broke my remaining arm and crushed my ribs as inertia pressed the rest of the car’s weight down on me. I lay paralyzed, gasoline burning my glass-filled wounds. Soon, I would be dead. That’s when the flames came. Not the familiar fires of death, but the kind that reeked of melting rubber and vinyl upholstery. The kind that lit the car from the inside and filled my already blood-soaked lungs with smoke. The kind that made my last few seconds total agony.

  I welcomed death with my only surviving arm wide open.

  Chapter 11

  OLIVIA

  WHEN YOU FELL, I FELL AS WELL

  “Holy fucking shit,” I say as I watch the accident unfold through the scope of Bonnie Prince Charlie. The cars continue to pile up, one on top of another like a kid hastily putting away his Hot Wheels into too small a shoebox. So many innocent people dead. Plan J is not as perfect as I thought. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.”

  All my plans rush through my mind as a I scramble to follow the many threads of chance that led to this catastrophe. This is not how it was supposed to go.

  I was supposed to give Bill a heart attack during a shift change. That was Plan A. But he wasn’t there. So much for Plans B through G. The hospital staff were a regular beehive of activity trying to find out where he disappeared to by the time I arrived. Someone had come from radiology to scan him for swelling, but he was gone, the nurse’s station reporting that a taller guy had already beat me to it. Damn it. I had hoped to be that someone.

  I had been too sloppy. I failed to kill him twice, and each time I had to gloat, had to let him know it was me who did it. He had probably used his rich people contacts to get himself whisked away to some safe and secure private facility that has no doubt been set up in the back room of his mansion or something.

  While everyone else ran around checking signatures and asking who saw what trying to find the missing tycoon, I checked with hospital security. If you speak with enough authority and call enough people stupid and they will assume you are their boss somewhere along the chain.

  “How the hell do you guys let a patient disappear like that?” I had demanded, slamming the door closed behind me. “Didn’t you incompetent fuckwits have guards at his door?”

  They exchanged glances and began to stammer excuses. “Well, the thing is…”

  “The thing is with two of you standing at his room at all times, someone still managed to slip him by you! Weren’t you checking badges?”

  “Well, with all the press there…”

  “Have you even gone over the tapes to see where he might be?”

  More looks.

  “I swear, you worthless fucks couldn’t find your own dicks if I drew you a map. Pull up the feed. I want to see everyone who has been in and out of that room for the past two hours!”

  I watched as they played the tapes back. A few nurses came and went, all of whom wore their badges in place. A little before ten, a tall man in scrubs wheeled Bill Thompson out of the room.

  “You didn’t think to follow him?”

  “Well, the nurse told us right before he showed up that someone was coming to take him to radiology. That guy said he was taking him to radiology. We checked his badge and everything.”

  “So, follow him through the halls. Track him through the building, morons. Run those tapes.”

  They did. “Hey, radiology isn’t on that floor,” said one guard.

  “It isn’t?” I asked, hoping he could taste the sarcasm so intensely it would flavor his coffee in the morning.

  They followed the tall man through the halls until he disappeared off camera.

  “Where did he go?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Into a blind spot.”

  “You have blind spots in your security here?” I asked, incredulous, then I caught myself. “In our security? In my hospital?”

  “Well, they aren’t near any drug storage areas. They aren’t near any vital rooms or exits or anything.”

  “And yet, someone used one to kidnap a patient!” I said, slamming my fist into the desk. “These camera feeds, do they record on tap
es or are backups digital?”

  “Digital,” said one of the guards.

  “Good,” I said, and turned to the first guard. “I want you to scan the footage for all exits for our tall man, and I want your friend here to work backward. Back to the tall man entering Bill Thompson’s room. Then following him back through the hospital to see when and how he came in. We’ll find him.”

  After about five minutes looking, they did, and though he had already left, they were able to get a good look at the car they had slipped out in, including its license plate. It was a white Subaru with Oklahoma tags.

  “Well, he got away, no thanks to you, but at least it’s a start.”

  I stormed out of the office then slipped away to the nearest payphone. Putting on my best old lady voice, I called the police and reported some man driving recklessly near the hospital, complaining that he almost hit me as I tried to cross the street and mentioned that he may have been drinking. I gave dispatch the car’s description and tag number and thanked them for their service.

  Then I fumbled around in my pocket and pulled out the reporter’s number.

  “Steve Daggett,” he answered.

  “Hey, Steve. It’s me. The nurse you gave that card to. Listen, you didn’t hear it from me, but I saw Bill Thompson moved into a white Subaru, tag number LHC 985. The hospital notified the police, so you might be able to track it using a police scanner. Maybe you could send a photographer to get a shot of him making his getaway. I imagine your boss would love something like that, just like I would love another present like you gave me with your business card.”

  “Lady,” he said all smarm and smiles, “if this tip turns out good, you can expect several presents like that.”

  I smiled and made my way to the parking garage. Inside my car, I turned on my police scanner and drove out into the streets circling the area until someone spotted him. Not long after, a cop came over the squawk saying he had eyes on a car matching the description, but that the driver was obeying all traffic laws. He followed for a while, then pulled off, convinced the old woman had overreacted.