Critical Condition

by Peter Clement

  "You really believe that?"

  "No."

  "What about Blaine or Downs?"

  "My men have orders to pick up Downs and bring her here. We'll see how she reacts to seeing lover boy here, then I'll question her myself. With what's happened, the gloves are off—"

  "And Blaine."

  "You and I go see her once we're finished with Downs."

  "I don't want Kathleen over there now—"

  "Hey, wherever you decide she goes, we'll protect her."

  If she'll listen, thought Richard, feeling no more sure about his influence over Kathleen than he did the detective's ability to keep her safe.

  "One thing going for us as of this morning," McKnight continued, "we got lucky in pinning down the creep's identity. All those composite drawings finally got a hit. His former landlord recognized him. Called us to report the guy's been renting a room on Canal Street, but hasn't been seen there since Wednesday morning when neighbors noticed him loading his computer into a truck. We figure he took off between attacking you in the hospital and setting the bomb in your house."

  "So he's gone."

  "But we got prints. Complete ones, better than that partial we lifted because of the torn glove. And when we contacted the FBI, their files have a match."

  Richard's hopes ticked up a notch. "Really?"

  "Yeah. They're identical to a set they found in a hotel room at Rochester a few years ago where some hood held off the local police, then killed himself. It was around the time that a gynecologist there got shot, the one I told you whose murder we thought the Legion of the Lord had a hand in. Except they never established a clear link between this guy and that shooting. However, they did figure someone else was with him, because of the second set of prints, and they're real interested in talking to our boy."

  "Do you have a name?"

  "He called himself Rob Lowe to the landlord." Richard snickered.

  "This is the good part. The guy who of fed himself in Rochester was a wife-beating scumbag named Bobby Nappin with a lifetime achievement award in domestic violence— his old lady went into hiding a decade ago. But he had a son whom the neighbors said he was raising to be a chip off the old block. The FBI wondered if the second man might have been him."

  "Holy shit!"

  "There's more. We ran the name Lowe through the personnel list here at the hospital and got nothing. But when we tried Nappin, we found a close match. According to hospital employment records, a Robert Nape used to work in pathology as an autopsy assistant, then a few years ago went on to do a stint as an orderly in the Department of Reproductive Medicine. He received an official reprimand after he started passing out Right to Life pamphlets and harassing patients about not destroying their unused embryos. One night a few weeks later he was found trying to get at the frozen specimens themselves and Edwards fired him outright. People around here remembered him, but recalled he had long hair and a beard. When our sketch artist added them to the composite Dr. Sullivan gave us, we had Robert Nape." He walked to the vehicle, removed the ambulance attendant's jacket he'd stolen, retrieved the folded wheelchair that he'd secured against the wall behind the driver's seat, and pushed it back into the rehab center. If somebody had looked closely they'd have seen the pipes taped to the chrome frame on the underside, but he knew it was highly unlikely that anyone would give it a second glance, especially in a place like this.

  Certainly none of the patients paid him the slightest attention as he passed through the sitting area. He avoided Admitting entirely by heading directly to where the signs read ADMINISTRATION.

  "Can I help you, sir?" a secretary asked. Black curls piled up on her head and a glistening red mouth made him think of Cher.

  "Is Dr. Blaine in her office?"

  "Yes, but she's expecting a patient."

  "Robert Nappin, the second?" He'd phoned for the appointment himself not more than an hour ago. A quick visit, he'd said, just to discuss a million-dollar endowment Mr. Nappin wished to bequeath to Dr. Blaine. But Mr. Nappin was in a rush, leaving for the Bahamas, and always did his charity on impulse. Her pretty face reflected surprise. "Why, yes, but—"

  "I'm his driver. Mr. Nappin's very proud, and wanted to come in under his own steam. His nurse is back there, escorting him, but he'll need his chair once he arrives, and sent me ahead with it. Can I place it in Dr. Blaine's office? He's fiercely eccentric about how he presents himself and insists on walking right up to greet her."

  "Why, I guess it's okay. Just let me check with Dr. Blaine." She got up and, knocking first, poked her head inside her boss's office. "Mr. Nappin's driver is here, and would like to leave the man's wheelchair in your office. Mr. Nappin himself wants to meet you standing up."

  He couldn't see Blaine, but heard her throaty chuckle. "Honey, for a million dollars, I don't care if he hops in on one leg."

  He relinquished the chair to the young woman, and turned to leave. Over his shoulder he watched until she'd taken it through the door. He quickened his pace, reaching inside his pocket and fingering the remote. As soon as he was safely out in the hallway he pushed the button.

  The blast made a giant wump, similar to the sound a kerosene-soaked rag makes when it ignites. The force of the explosion, even though he was buffered from it by two rooms, threw him to the floor amidst a shower of ceiling tiles and light fixtures. As he got to his knees, he reached up to brush debris from his head, careful not to disturb his wig. Then he saw that his palm was smeared with blood. Within seconds people were running by him toward where they'd heard the detonation. Someone stopped and tried to help him to his feet. She was saying things to him, but the concussion had sealed his ears, and her words sounded like distant shouts.

  He signaled that he was okay, and stumbled in the direction of the admitting area. His deafness immediately started to clear, and behind him, despite ringing in his head, he heard screams. It must be the ones who found the bodies, he thought. The two women couldn't have survived.

  Up ahead the policewoman stood between him and Sullivan's stretcher, back to her charge, hand on her gun, confusion on her face.

  But there was nothing vague about Kathleen Sullivan's stare. Her green eyes were locked on him like a pair of cruise missiles, one hand starting to flap as she tried to get the officer's attention, the other leaping to her throat so she could speak.

  She knows, he thought. "Quick, ma'am, they need a cop in there," he screamed at the officer.

  "But I shouldn't leave Dr. Sullivan," she said, shouting above all the noise, oblivious to Sullivan's gesturing and attempts to make herself heard. "What's happened?"

  "I think it's a gas explosion. Everyone's panicking. They need you to take charge." He took her by the elbow and urged her on her way. "And don't worry. I'll get Dr. Sullivan to safety."

  She looked at his head. "You're bleeding."

  "I'm fine. Just go."

  She started to run back the way he'd come. "Then I'll meet you at the ambulance," she called over her shoulder, "as soon as help arrives. Make sure someone's called 911."

  He turned to look at Sullivan. She started to rock and slap the side rails, continuing to try and call out, but her breathy voice hadn't a prayer of making itself heard over the commotion.

  He stepped up to the head of the stretcher and quickly started pushing toward the exit. Her legs bent and lifted, her arms flailed at him, and he marveled at how much movement she'd regained in a matter of days. But her fingers brushed helplessly off him, weak as blades of grass. None of the people heading out of the building alongside them, some on crutches, others in wheelchairs, paid her any mind. She couldn't even attract the attention of a half dozen uniformed policeman pushing their way in.

  As soon as he had her in the back of the ambulance, he brought out the syringe he'd been carrying in his breast pocket, plunged it into the side portal of her IV, and slowly injected the contents until her eyes closed and her limbs fell listless at her sides. But this was midazolan, not potassium, and he stopped short of
giving enough to kill her. He needed her alive for the grand finale, as bait to lure in Steele.

  Switching on his siren with the flashers, he had no trouble threading through the swarm of white-and-blue NYPD cars amassing in front of the institute. On East End Avenue, he headed south, past a string of oncoming fire trucks, sirens screaming. Minutes later he pulled into a line of ambulances parked outside Mount Steven's Hospital near Seventy-seventh and Lexington. None of the other drivers leaning on their vehicles and drinking coffee as they waited for an assignment paid any attention to him when he got out and opened the rear of his vehicle.

  "Boy, she's out of it," said one of the men who helped him unload, looking a little too carefully at Sullivan's motionless figure as they extended the wheel carriage on the stretcher.

  "A transfer from NYCH with one of them resistant pneumonias, so don't get so close."

  "Jesus," he said, recoiling from her. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "You didn't ask," he called back, already pushing her in the front door.

  He followed the ground-floor corridors through a series of zigs and zags that took him back out the Seventy-sixth Street entrance. He saw the truck that he'd been told to look for. As he approached, the driver got out.

  It wasn't the person he expected. But it made sense. A whole lot of sense.

  They loaded her into the back and drove off.

  Sirens from all over the city seemed to be converging on the upper East Side.

  Jo O'Brien barged into his office without knocking. "Richard, we just got an alert. They're sending a nail bomb victim from Adele Blaine's institute."

  "What!" His heart jackknifed into his mouth. "It's not Dr. Sullivan. But Blaine herself is dead, and we're getting her secretary. She apparently had a pulse and not much else when the medics got to her."

  "Jesus Christ! What about Kathleen?" He leapt out of his chair and rushed for the door. "I've got to find her."

  "No other casualties they told me," she said, laying a restraining hand on his shoulder as he pushed by her. "Besides, she's probably already on her way back. The institute's returning patients to their referring hospitals all over the city. Better you stay put, Chief, and help the woman who took the blast. The ambulance guys said they were bypassing closer hospitals to bring her here."

  That meant they thought she was dead unless they got her to the best trauma team in the city.

  But he had to know Kathleen was safe. "Call McKnight. Have him radio that policewoman who's with Kathleen and verify all's well." He turned toward the resus room, the strains of a siren wailing in the distance, forlorn as a moan bowed on a violin string.

  Richard looked down at the shredded face impaled with nails and wondered what the young woman once looked like. From her forehead to her chest the spikes had torn her skin and left it in strips. But her cheeks and eyes had taken the brunt. He couldn't even say what color the irises had been. She must have been bending over to examine the bomb when it went off, not realizing what it was. Her lower body, while singed and bloodied, remained remarkably intact. Even her hair, luxuriously black and cascading onto the pillow appeared almost normal, until he touched it and felt it crumble to fine cinders between his gloved fingers. And nothing could mask the stench of burnt flesh that she gave off.

  She'd had a pulse, just as Jo said, but it was still too late. Despite his team further skewering her with central lines, chest tubes, various catheters, and an airway, her heart beat its last the moment she arrived. Even that organ they violated trying to save her, a grinning gash curving below her left breast marking where he opened the ribs and tried to coax her back to life with his hand.

  Now he was waiting for her parents.

  Normally he'd spend these minutes cutting off the various tubes close to the skin, leaving them in place for the autopsy, yet removing enough of the projecting bits that a sheet could be laid over the body. "To make it presentable for viewing," the textbooks said. What the hell was presentable about a dead loved one? he thought, so angry he was trembling. It's obscene. Vile. Putrid. Worse for being the deliberate work of a ghoul in the name of a cause." Dr. Steele, they're here," said Jo O'Brien, sticking her head into the resuscitation room.

  He didn't move. "I can't do this another time, Jo. I can't."

  "You must, and you will. I put them in your office."

  "Did you reach McKnight?"

  "Yes. He was already on the way to the institute. Assured me the officials there were saying only the two injured and all the patients were out, just like I said. But he'll make the call to his office."

  After taking a final look at the body, Richard started down the hallway and began to prepare what he would say to the mother and father. He took a breath, and once more submerged his soul in ice, knowing one of these times he wouldn't get it back. Because he'd seen it happen. There was a limit to shedding all feeling the way a snake slips from its skin. Sooner or later some part of the person stops caring. Whether the change is called depression or burnout, no one's entirely ever the same afterward, even when they appear to recover. The aftermath is a thing spouses or lovers and children notice, an empty stare, a silence, a being pulled away from the sunlight into a darkness beneath the moment. When he'd gotten lost in it himself through grief, he ultimately broke free, his own lapses remaining relatively rare. But he doubted he'd be so lucky when he succumbed to the sum of all the horrors he'd seen in ER. Moments like this, he knew, brought that reckoning closer.

  A half hour later he emerged from his office and relinquished the grieving couple to Jo's encompassing arms. He leaned against the door frame, watching them shuffle toward the exit, their lives irreparably broken, and once more felt grateful, God help him, that he'd never had to face that loss.

  When he turned, he saw McKnight standing off to one side in the corridor, studying him. His heart sank at the dread in the detective's eyes, and nearly stopped altogether when he heard the man say, "I think you better sit down."

  Chapter 19

  She awoke in stages.

  All of them painful.

  First the familiar cold ache from the tranquilizer filled her head.

  Then she felt burning numbness in her limbs.

  I've had another stroke. Oh, my God, I can't move.

  She opened her eyes to complete darkness.

  And felt a small sense of relief. She wasn't paralyzed. She was tied up, but not any longer in the ambulance. Yet she was still in a vehicle of some kind, lurching this way and that as they turned, slowed, and accelerated. Along with the sounds of traffic outside, she judged they were still in the city.

  Behind her head she could hear two men talking, her hearing as hyperacute as ever. She strained, but couldn't make out what they were saying. She could distinguish the higher pitch of her attacker's voice from a second voice that was lower and had a familiar halting quality to its rhythm. Whoever it was spoke in short segments, almost the way she did.

  All at once they came to a stop. She felt a slight weight shift and heard the slam of the passenger side door. Someone had gotten out. Then the vehicle took off again.

  Why didn't they just kill her outright?

  God, not fun and games like with Lockman. Please not that. A clean shot, an injection— anything but cutting me to pieces.

  If this guy was as big a control freak with women as his brothers in the Legion of the Lord, she knew her chances weren't good.

  Or maybe she could use his hatred. Grovel, beg, plead that he kill her. Convince him his ultimate power trip lay in taking her life while she was fully aware, not half out of her head with pain.

  Some option.

  The vehicle— a truck— slowed, then came to a stop.

  He stayed in the cab. Outside she could hear kids laughing, and conversations came and went as pedestrians strolled by not three feet from where she lay.

  The only call she could make was her pathetic wheeze.

  "You've killed her, you assholes! You fucking, incompetent assholes! You let that monste
r take her from under your noses, and that means you killed her."

  "Richard, please," McKnight said, "this isn't helping—"

  "Do you want to see what he's capable of? Come on. Let's go next door. I'll show you his latest work." Richard was reeling in circles, raging and careening off the walls of his office.

  The detective simply stood in front of the door and remained silent.

  Richard came to a stop directly in front of him. "Say something, damn you! Or is barring my way out of here all you're good for? What are you afraid of? That I might go running off looking for her myself? Well, get out of my way. I'll do a better job—"

  "Her photo has been dispatched by computer to every patrol car in the city. The entire force has been put on an alert to try and spot her. TV and radio stations are issuing bulletins as we speak, listing the stolen ambulance's markings and plate numbers, instructing listeners to call 911 if they see anyone moving a woman matching Dr. Sullivan's description—"

  "Have you picked up Downs?"

  McKnight hesitated, and tried to swallow. It seemed to take a lot of effort, as if he had no spit. "Not exactly."

  "Not exactly? But she's probably our only link to this guy."

  "We can't find her. The super at her apartment building said he saw her leave early this morning with a suitcase."

  Richard felt he was about to suffocate. "Let me by, you bastard," he said, lunging at the man, "I've got to get outside."

  The detective's big hands encircled his upper arms and caught him in what felt like a vise. "Doc, you've got to stay put in case he calls."

  "I've got my cellular."#

  "There's nothing else you can do."

  "The hell there isn't."

  "Like what?"

  Get away from McKnight, was what he thought. So when the killer did call, Richard could go to him alone. Him in exchange for her. No cops around to screw it up. Instead he said, "I don't know what. It's just staying cooped up in here is driving me crazy. I've got to take a walk. Clear my head, alone. Now release me and step aside."