Sandman

by Sean Costello

  At 0945 the second tonsillectomy of a scheduled nine was parked next to Brad, who still slept soundly and still had his airway in place. The nurse had become concerned about Brad, and asked Dr. Fallon to have a look at him. Jack examined him briefly and reassured her that all was well. He explained that he was trying a new technique involving the nebulization of local anesthetic into the raw tonsil beds. This, he told her, provided enough analgesia to account for the child’s prolonged restful state. Relieved, the nurse turned her attention to Timmy McNamara, the five-year-old whose bed had been across from Todd’s.

  The next patient, a six-year-old girl named Jessie Nolan, came in at 1015. She’d had an adenoidectomy, a much quicker procedure, and should have come around almost immediately. Of even greater concern was the fact that Brad was still out cold, and Timmy, who’d been there thirty minutes, was still also unconscious. Though reluctant to bother Dr. Fallon again, the attending nurse mentioned it to him as he left the unit and he gave her the same explanation, verbatim.

  After another ten minutes had passed and not one of her pediatric patients showed even a hint of waking up, the nurse took her concerns to her supervisor.

  * * *

  “Todd? Todd, honey, we’re going to move you onto the operating table now.”

  “What, Mom?” Todd said, opening his eyes.

  “You’ll see your mommy later,” the nurse said.

  No I won’t, Todd thought miserably, the dream fading.

  They lifted him onto the OR table and paged Dr. Fallon to the room.

  * * *

  The nursing supervisor examined Brad first. She started by speaking his name, first in a normal voice, then more loudly and directly into his ear. When there was no response she grasped the trapezius muscle at the base of his neck and squeezed, gradually increasing the pressure until she could squeeze no harder. Brad didn’t even flinch.

  “How long has he been in the unit?” she asked the nurse.

  “An hour and a half.”

  “Did you report his condition to Dr. Fallon?”

  “Twice.”

  The supervisor examined the other two children in the same fashion, obtaining the same result.

  “Dear, God,” she said as she looked into Jessie Nolan’s pale blue eye. The pupil was a huge black drowning pool, unresponsive to the light. “Have they started another case?”

  “Yes, I think so.” The nurse consulted her list. “They’re doing Todd Brubaker now. The boy who was delayed this morning. They just brought him in.”

  The supervisor bolted out of the unit.

  * * *

  That look was back in the doctor’s eyes. He didn’t speak to Todd this time, just picked up the syringe and stuck the needle into the injection port.

  Mommy, Todd thought, tears shimmering in his eyes. Daddy. I love you...

  The door behind Todd crashed open and the supervisor bounded in. She saw Jack’s thumb on the syringe and grabbed the IV tubing, yanking with all her might. The tape came away from Todd’s skin with a wrench that made him cry out in surprise.

  Jack turned on the nurse in a rage. “Are you out of your mind?”

  The supervisor hunched over Todd, taking his face in her hands. “Todd, honey, are you all right? Are you all right, son?”

  “Yeah,” Todd said, a little dazed. “I’m fine. Does this mean I don’t have to get my tonsils out?”

  The supervisor chuckled nervously and started to answer, but Jack grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away.

  “What has gotten into you?”

  “Your patients,” the supervisor said. “In recovery. Something’s very wrong.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She noticed Todd’s eyes on her and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think they’re brain dead,” she said.

  * * *

  A recovery room nurse by the name of Bette Monroe circled close to the action surrounding the stricken patients. After Dr. Fallon examined them, a neurologist went over them in minute detail, his demeanor growing increasingly more grim as he moved from stretcher to stretcher. When the specialist was done he conferred with Dr. Fallon, and Bette did her best to listen in. She didn’t hear all of it, but what she did hear was enough. She waited until her break, then went to the lobby and sat in a phone booth. She closed the door and dialed from memory. The line was picked up on the first ring.

  “Rob Smith, Citizen hotline.”

  “Rob, it’s Bette.”

  “Oh, hi, cuz. What’s shakin’?”

  “It’s happening again. Kids this time.”

  “Kids?”

  “Yeah. Three of them. Five and six years old. It’s terrible. They’re all vegetables.”

  * * *

  Chaos reigned during the remainder of that day.

  All cases not underway were canceled, and the OR suites were locked and guarded. Chartrand convened another emergency meeting, but little was said or resolved, the members spending the bulk of the hour staring mutely at their hands. Those hardest hit were the parents of the murdered children. Chartrand met them with tears in his eyes, wishing he’d never been born. Fransen was called in and systematically grilled everyone who’d had access to the kids, starting with the staff in the admitting department and finishing with Dr. Fallon. What he saw in Jack was a man overcome with horror and disbelief. He watched Jack confer with the parents in individual pairs, watched him spill tears and embrace mothers and beg forgiveness. He watched him move those same parents to comfort him in return. And, God help him, he couldn’t tell whether what he was witnessing was genuine or the most phenomenal display of theatrical skill he’d ever seen.

  The children were transferred to the ICU and over the course of the afternoon deteriorated rapidly. Despite heroic measures, all three were pronounced dead within minutes of one another. Stat autopsies were ordered and the drug vials Jack had drawn from were bagged and sent to forensics. The ENT suite fell under the microscopic eye of an investigative team and Chartrand called an urgent press conference.

  Chaos reigned.

  * * *

  At six-thirty that evening Jack rode the escalator down to the hospital lobby. The press mobbed him on sight. Jack fielded their questions with patient grace, expressing sympathy for the victims’ parents and vowing to dedicate as much of his time and energy as the investigation demanded. Yes, he told them, the ORs were closed, this time even for emergencies. The other area hospitals had been alerted and would be absorbing the overload until such time as an arrest could be made. He also expressed his hope that, in light of these tragic events, the good name of his colleague and friend, Dr. Armstrong, would be cleared posthumously.

  The crowd swelled as the interview wore on. Among those who joined the throng was Paul Daw, who’d just finished admitting a paranoid schizophrenic. He’d been on his way to the cafeteria when he heard the commotion in the lobby and decided to investigate. The patient he’d admitted was floridly delusional and Paul had spent most of the afternoon with him, using him as a teaching tool for a group of residents. As a result, he had not yet heard about the new deaths in the OR.

  He began working his way through the crowd, trying to see who was being interviewed. Then he heard a familiar voice and something clenched inside him.

  “This may sound harsh,” Jack was saying into a cluster of microphones, “but whoever did this, whoever murdered these children, deserves to die. Deserves to die horribly.”

  Then Jack’s head was turning, and when his eyes found Paul’s a grin danced in their depths, as if the two men shared some delicious secret. Paul cut his eyes away, unable to bear the antic intensity of that gaze.

  When he looked up again Jack was pressing his way through the crowd, the interview finished. In the same moment one of the victim’s parents came down the escalator and the crowd surged toward them. Paul saw Jack slip through the main entrance and vanish.

  Paul’s body began to shake. What was right and proper shrilled at him to be done, but fear paralyzed
him even now. Always the fear. His broken fingers throbbed inside their splints and he squeezed them brutally, punishing the coward inside him.

  I’ve got to do something.

  As in a dream, Paul made his way across the crowded lobby and rode an elevator to the sub-basement, marching to his right along a tunnel lined with insulated pipes, until he came to the morgue. Once inside he paused, listening. There were muffled voices, obviously distraught, coming from behind a closed office door, but there was no one in sight.

  Less boldly now, Paul proceeded to the inner vault. Here, arrayed on consecutive slabs, lay the bodies of Brad West, Timmy McNamara and Jessie Nolan. Paul circled them one by one, touching each face with a reluctant finger. Translucent in death, eerily statuesque, all three had cooled to room temperature. Loathing churned in Paul’s guts.

  Outside the vault a woman’s voice rose to a wail and Paul covered his ears, thinking that he could not bear to see that woman come through those doors and throw herself on one of these ruined children. But the voice receded into the tunnel and soon Paul could hear it no more.

  “All right, Jack,” he said aloud. “You’re fucking dead.”

  He went out to the nearest phone and called the police, asking for Detective Fransen. They told him Fransen was already at the hospital and gave him the extension. It was Peter Chartrand’s office. Paul punched in the numbers with a steady finger. Fransen came on the line and grunted an impatient hello.

  “Detective Fransen,” Paul said. “My name is...” He closed his eyes and saw Jack grinning at him in the lobby. That cocky, daring grin. “I’m an employee of the hospital, and I was just wondering. If I had some evidence—”

  “What kind of evidence?”

  “A tape,” Paul said. “An audio tape.”

  “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  “If I had evidence that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt who’s been doing these killings, and if I were to get that evidence to you, would I have to be involved?”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid so. Who is this?”

  “Paul Daw,” Paul said, steadily enough. “We met—”

  “Right,” Fransen said, “I thought I might be hearing from you. So what’s on this tape?”

  “Can you meet me in my office?”

  “Five minutes,” the detective said.

  * * *

  Fransen said, “Is that all of it?”

  Paul nodded. He’d just played the tape for the detective. “Is it enough?”

  “Enough to make an arrest,” Fransen said.

  “I mean, is it enough to keep me out of it?”

  “It’s like I told you over the phone, Doctor. You’re already in it.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Then we’ll subpoena you. But you needn’t worry. You’ll be protected.”

  “You don’t know Jack.”

  “So tell me about him.”

  “He’s...cold. I’m a psychiatrist, Detective, and I’ve never met anyone so cold. He’s got guns, and he’s a martial artist. He—”

  “Listen, Doctor Daw. You’ve done the right thing coming to me.” He put a fatherly hand on Paul’s shoulder. “We’ll arrest Fallon tonight and throw him in jail. The only time you’ll have to see him again will be at his trial. You’re a hero, Doctor. And you really had no other choice. Certainly not one you could hope to live with.”

  Paul nodded half-heartedly, wondering if it was a choice Jack would let him live with.

  22

  JACK DROVE HOME IN PEACH-colored twilight. There was something quickening inside him, some dark force, and he held himself open to it. He could feel it massing in his chest, slowly, almost tauntingly, like thunderheads that loiter on the horizon before spawning a tornado.

  He pulled into the driveway and parked in front of the garage. As he got out of the car a man wearing dark blue coveralls and a matching ball cap stepped around the edge of the garage and aimed an assault rifle at his chest. In the same instant a green van with a twisting red beacon on the dash jounced into the driveway and came to an angled stop behind the Mercedes. Two men dressed identically to the first dropped to the lock stones, positioned themselves behind the open van doors and trained their weapons on Jack.

  “Police,” the first man said. “Don’t move.”

  Jack froze.

  “Hands over your head. Show me the palms.” Jack complied. “Now step to your left, away from the car.”

  Jack hesitated, his lips curling into something halfway between a grin and a snarl. He took a quick step toward the cop and the cop’s upper body jerked forward, the rifle bore aimed at Jack’s heart.

  “I said step to your left, away from the vehicle.”

  Jack obeyed, moving to the edge of the lawn. As he did a fourth man rose to his feet on the garage roof, a Heckler & Koch assault rifle aimed at Jack’s head.

  “Drop to your knees.” The command came from behind him this time, from the van. “Now down on your face. Keep your arms out in front of you. Do it now.”

  Then there was a knee between his shoulder blades and a handcuff tight on his left wrist and his arm was being twisted behind him. “Bring your other arm around.” Jack did and then he was cuffed, face down on the lock stones. He saw two other cops appear out of the cedar hedge that bordered the property.

  “All this for me,” he said. “I’m flattered.”

  “Shut your face,” the officer said. He tried to drive Jack’s head into the lock stones, but Jack’s neck tensed and the cop’s hand skidded away. Then he was pulling Jack’s hair, wrenching his head back, digging the muzzle of his sidearm into Jack’s flank. “Fuck with me, baby-killer, I’ll put a hole in your liver.”

  “Easy, Tom,” came a hoarse voice from behind them. Fransen touched the younger cop’s shoulder. “Just read the man his rights.”

  * * *

  “Jen. Jenny, wake up.”

  Jenny flinched and opened her eyes.

  Richard said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I knocked, but...”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nine P.M.”

  Jenny whipped off the covers and sat up. “Did the hospital call?”

  “No, but I called them about an hour ago. She’s...the same.” He sat beside her on the bed. “I don’t quite know how to tell you this. It’s about you husband. He’s been arrested.”

  “Arrested? What are you talking about?”

  “Come on,” Richard said, standing. “Best if I show you. It was just on the news. I taped it for you.”

  He led her to the living room, set up the tape and joined her on the couch. There was a blurt of static and Jenny saw a man being led by two policemen into the sally port of the city jail. She caught only a glimpse, angled and jittery in the jostle of news people, but there was no mistaking who it was. The anchor woman’s voice was keen with excitement.

  “There he is now, the man police believe responsible for the Med Center slayings, Dr. Jack Fallon, arrested today outside his Glebe area home following the deaths of three Med Center patients under his care, all of them children, ages five and six...”

  Jenny said, “Oh, Jesus.”

  The report continued: brief interviews with police; heart wrenching sessions with the families of the victims—smiling photos of the children, toys looking inert and pointless in rooms that would never again be inhabited, angry fathers, tearful mothers; reporters swarming taciturn hospital brass; speculation regarding the body count, now thought by one unnamed pathologist in the hospital’s employ to number in the dozens, all of it strung together into one horrific pastiche by numerous replays of that brief, skewed footage of Jack being led into jail.

  Richard switched the TV off and knelt before her, clutching her hands. “Jen, you’re lucky to be alive.”

  Jenny gazed at him with dull eyes, her capacity for shock utterly spent.

  “Would you mind driving me to my house?” she said. “I’d like to pick up my cat.” She stood, staggering slightly, and Richard took h
er arm. “Would it bother you? A cat prowling around, I mean? She’s really very good.” She uttered a short, hysterical chuckle. Richard could see she was right on the edge. “God, listen to me. Inviting myself and my fat old cat. Can you believe this? I...”

  Richard gathered her into his arms and Jenny began to weep, huge, gut-wrenching sobs. “There’s plenty of room here, Jen,” he said, “and I’d be glad to have you. You and your cat and anything else you care to bring along.”

  He held her for a while, then Jenny pulled away, heading for the bathroom down the hall. She returned a few minutes later, dry eyed, steadier.

  “I’m ready now,” she said. “If you don’t mind, we’ll stop by the hospital first.”

  “That’d be fine,” Richard said, and led her out to his 4-Runner.

  * * *

  The sight of Jenny’s daughter—her deathlike stillness amidst such a daunting array of life-support systems—unnerved Richard, giving face to the pain he’d witnessed in Jenny. He stood by with her awhile, watching her hold the child’s slack hand and murmur to her, then excused himself, telling Jenny to take her time, he’d wait in the lobby.

  Jenny came down a half hour later and they drove to her house in silence. The place was locked up tight, but Jenny retrieved a spare key from its hiding place under the porch and let them inside.

  Her things were still stacked by the garage exit. Jenny picked up Peach’s cage and asked Richard to load the rest into the truck. Then, cage in hand, she went from room to room, calling Peach’s name. In the living room she saw the urine stain on the couch and shuddered.

  In Kim’s room she paused to scan the bookshelves, pulling out a stack of worn paperbacks by C. S. Lewis, the Narnia books, which she stuffed into Kim’s tote bag. Then she completed her rounds of the house.