by Mark Murphy
"I can't take this. It's a family heirloom, and I'm . . ."
Billy came in close to Malcolm's face. He closed Malcolm's fist around the talisman. His breath smelled faintly of cloves and cinnamon.
"You are my brother, Malcolm King, as much as Jimbo ever was. And I want you to have this as a symbol of that brotherhood. Take it. You've earned it."
Malcolm nodded. He took the necklace from Billy and put it around his neck.
"I'll wear this with pride, Billy Littlebear," Malcolm said.
Billy stood up tall, ramrod straight, and turned to leave. His silhouette was angular, cut out of the sky with a razor blade. His boots crunched the asphalt as he walked.
But then Billy turned back.
"I stopped smoking," Billy said, scratching his head.
"Good for you," Malcolm said.
"You've got my cell number, right?"
"In speed dial."
"Don't be a stranger," Billy said. "You, too."
Malcolm gave Billy one final salute as the EMTs came to load his stretcher into the ambulance. Billy saluted back, eyes straight ahead and laser sharp.
Malcolm brushed away a tear.
"Ready to go?" the EMT asked. He looked like a model, like a cover shot for People magazine. Malcolm thought it was ironic that his nametag read Ken.
Malcolm nodded, feeling a tinge of sadness. Porky Pig and the Buzzard had departed with the Shadow Man, leaving him with Ken.
Where's Barbie? Malcolm thought.
He missed old Porky.
The half-empty bag of Ringer's lactate dangled limply from the IV pole like a beached jellyfish. The ambulance, all stainless steel and white plastic inside, was permeated by the Tang-like aroma of orange disinfectant.
"Comfy?" Ken said. His perfect teeth gleamed. He strapped Malcolm in and locked the gurney's wheels.
"As much as I can be in this thing."
"Won't be a long ride. Jimmy's the fastest driver this side of Daytona. I suspect we'll be at Memorial Hospital in twenty minutes or so."
Ken expertly placed the chest leads over Malcolm's precordium. The ECG tracing was normal sinus rhythm at sixty-six beats per minute. It was as steady as a rock. After the chest leads were on, he wrapped the oxygen tubing around Malcolm's head, placing the nasal cannula into Malcolm's nostrils.
"The O2 smells like plastic," Malcolm said, wrinkling his nose.
"Welcome to the front lines, Dr. King!" said Ken.
He slammed down the safety latch on the back door with a well-sculpted forearm, then pounded his palm twice on the back of the cab.
"Let's roll!" he said to the Jimmy. The ambulance's engine rumbled to life.
As the ambulance jounced across the debris-strewn expanse of Chatham Avenue, Malcolm stared out of the back window. A single huge raven, its black beak polished to an obsidian sheen, sailed in through the mist, alighting atop a nearby police cruiser. The bird stared at him with a pair of tiny beadlike eyes, unblinking and silent. Malcolm watched as the blackbird receded into the distance, becoming first a tiny speck, and then nothing at all.
Malcolm closed his eyes and listened to the siren as it wailed, letting the sound wash over him and through him. Fixating on the siren's mesmerizing song, he let himself relax at last. Someplace deep in the darkest recesses of his brain, he hoped that it had all simply been a very bad dream.
42
Tina Baker was happy.
It wasn't as though she did not know that feeling anymore. She could be happy with a particular broadcast or her hairstyle or her cat's appetite, but this was different. This happiness was pervasive, all-encompassing, filling her up from the top of her noggin to the tips of her toes. And it had been a long, long time since she had felt that way.
Since sometime before the divorce, in fact. She didn't really remember when.
The setting sun glowered at her across the marsh. She flipped the sun visor down. A rabble of receipts, freed from incarceration, fluttered down around her feet like paper butterflies.
"Dammit!" she said.
"Glad to see you keep this van spic-and-span," said Sam.
"I'm not usually driving this thing. I sent my idiot cameraman home because he was smoking pot on the job. This is his seat. I'm usually where you are."
Sam smiled.
"I'm just giving you a hard time," he said.
She glanced over at him and smiled.
"I feel like I'm on a first date," she said.
"That's good, right? I mean, unless it's a bad first date."
Tina put on her blinker and changed lanes as they came onto the bridge.
"No, it's good," she said.
"What happened to us, Tina? I mean, things seem so right all of a sudden, like they were supposed to be. And then I think back to the divorce proceedings and it just seems like that was a different us. An alternate reality. So what has happened here?"
Tina bit her lip.
"Ah, I know that look. That's the 'I don't know how to say this' expression. Go ahead. Spit it out. I'm pretty damn mellow right now," Sam said.
Tina felt a surge of bile come up into her throat.
Ah, there it is, she thought.
Sam's head did not look quite so asteroid-like anymore, but there was that too-familiar knife's edge of recrimination in his voice. It was as bitter as wormwood—unspoken, and yet palpable, a subtle hierarchy of worthiness. As if he was giving her permission to express her opinion.
But she still loved him.
She could at least admit that now. It was a start. And if there was ever a time to be honest, this was it.
"Sam, you know what was different about today? You gave me credit for doing a good job. Before, I always got the sense that you thought your work was important and that mine was fluff. And yet you resented the fact that I was well-known, that people recognized me and talked to me at restaurants and in the mall. It made you angry. And that anger festered, mushrooming into something far uglier. It destroyed us, Sam."
Sam stared straight ahead, eyebrows furrowed.
Tina knew the look. It was the way he looked before the storm broke—before he said the spiteful, venomous things he always tried to take back later. But by then they were out there for everyone to see, ugly and horrid, rotting in the naked sunlight. By then he couldn't take them back. And they had poisoned their marriage, ruining everything.
Everything.
Tina felt queasy. She was trapped in the WKKR van with her ex-husband, and the spite was coming.
When Sam spoke, it was almost in a whisper.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"What?"
"I'm sorry. I screwed it all up. And you're right—I did resent your celebrity. I resented the fact that I was taking down drug dealers and handcuffing thieves and yet you were the one everyone knew. Everyone loves you, you know that? You're everybody's sweetheart in this town, and I couldn't compete. I was losing my hair and saw these wrinkles creeping across my face and there you were, all perky and beautiful, and I was certain people saw us together and thought I was your father or your brother or something. I mean, why would Tina Baker want to be with a troll like me? I knew the answer to that: she wouldn't. So I made it easy for us to end it. I put on a hat to cover my balding head and became an asshole, steeped so deeply in my own self-pity that I failed to recognize what a great thing we had. And then you were gone, and it was too late."
Sam's eyes were filling up with tears. He wiped his face with his sleeve.
Jeez, he's crying, she thought.
She'd never seen Sam do that, not once. Not even when his mother died. Not even after the miscarriage—although she thought he had been close then.
"I'm sorry, Tina. Really. I want you back."
Tina did not have to think about it, not even for a minute. Her love for Sam had always been there, dormant but simmering beneath the surface, like a steaming fumarole waiting to erupt into a full-blown volcano.
"Let's have a baby," she said, bright-eyed and beaming.
"What? You mean that?"
Tina nodded. Her thick hair bounced up and down.
"So I guess that means we're back together," he said.
"I was always yours, Sammy. You just had to come back to me."
He leaned over and kissed her. His fingers slid up her thigh and beneath her dress.
"Sam Baker, I'm driving! You're going to make me have a wreck!" Tina said, slapping at his hand.
Sam smiled at her, patting her thigh with his rough palm.
"I'm going to make you have a baby," he said.
They took the Truman Parkway from Victory Drive and it ended all too soon. The exit to DeRenne Avenue came up in an eyeblink. Tina wanted to keep driving, right into the brilliant future that had suddenly dropped full-blown into her lap. Babies and diapers and homework and school plays, things so alien to her when her friends who had children talked about them, now seemed to materialize out of thin air. She could see them, could see the smiling faces of the kids she and Sam would make together, and she couldn't wait to get started.
This is it, she thought. The rest of my life.
Sam had come up with a plan to deal with the Shadow Man's arrival at the hospital. Fearful that a media onslaught could provide a venue for chaos, and mindful that chaos could allow things to go wrong, Sam had sent the Shadow Man to Candler Hospital and diverted all other ambulance traffic to the other two Savannah hospitals, St. Joseph's and Memorial. He wanted his killer in a controlled environment. There was no need to take any chances. He did not want any crazy Lee Harvey Oswald/ Jack Ruby situations. One ambulance meant one perp to track, with fewer chances of confusion.
As the WKKR news van pulled up to the Candler ER loading dock area, Sam congratulated himself on the logic of his plan.
The two black-and-white police car escorts were there, lights flashing. They flanked the single ambulance that had brought the Shadow Man to the hospital. The area appeared secure. There were no other ambulances.
But then Sam saw something that made his cheeks burn.
Two of the cops were sitting outside, leaning against their vehicles. One of them was smoking a cigarette.
"Pull in behind them," Sam said.
Tina parked the van along a cinderblock wall in the loading dock area, just behind the police cruisers.
"Wait here," Sam said. "The patrolmen should have gone inside with the EMTs. I'm not sure what they're thinking."
"Is everything okay?" Tina said.
Sam was scowling. His face had a hard edge to it, like he'd been chiseled out of rock. It sent a little chill down her back.
"I don't know. The ambulance's engine is still running. That doesn't make sense. And these bozos were supposed to stay with the suspect at all times, but they had to stay outside and smoke."
Sam opened the door, then turned back to Tina.
"Stay in the van, okay? No matter what happens, stay in the van."
"Sammy?"
"I'll be back in a minute. Stay here."
Sammy walked briskly up to the two uniformed policemen. He flashed his badge and stood, hands on his hips, as he listened to what they had to say.
Tina rolled down the window of the van. She still couldn't hear them.
Scrambling into the back of the van, Tina grabbed the parabolic microphone she had used on the beach and then returned to her seat, turning it on.
One of the patrolmen was talking. The noise from the ambulance engine was drowning him out. Tina flipped a filter switch and could hear him, clear as day.
". . . and one of the EMTs went in with him," the patrolman was saying.
Tina noticed that the young policeman Sam was talking to was just a kid, no more than twenty-three or twenty-four years old. Red hair, freckles, crew cut. Probably had been an MP in the military.
"The perp was unconscious, detective. Out cold. That EMT didn't look like he needed help from us. Frankly, as bad as that killer guy looked, I'd be surprised if he survives the night. He was as pale as a ghost," the young cop said.
"He's an albino, you idiot," Tina said out loud.
"The EMT?" Sam said. "There was just one?"
"Yes, sir."
"Not two?"
"No. sir."
"Shit!"
Sam walked two steps toward the ambulance, then whirled back to face the two patrolmen.
"What color hair did the guy in the stretcher have?" he asked.
"Hair?"
"What color was the victim's hair? The guy the lone EMT wheeled in while you bozos were sitting out here jawing."
The patrolman stared off into space for a moment. "Brown, I think. Dark brown."
"Brown? Not white?"
The patrolman shook his head.
"Definitely not white."
"Dammit!"
Tina grabbed the video camera from the back of the van and turned it on. A wave of nausea crashed over her.
Sam opened the back of the ambulance.
A bloody corpse—a fat young man with a cherubic face, in white scrubs stained with broad swaths of maroon—tumbled face-first onto the asphalt.
"He killed them, you idiots! He killed both EMTs and wheeled one of them in on the gurney! Our murderer was the guy pushing the stretcher! Now get your sorry asses in there and find him!"
The smoking cop dropped his cigarette. It tumbled to the ground, still smoking. The squad car doors opened and all four patrolmen ran up the concrete steps to the ER loading dock.
"That sonofabitch is a cold-blooded killer, gentlemen!" Sam yelled after them. "Stay in pairs! Do not underestimate him! You dumbasses either bring him back to me or kill him, but do not let him get away. Got it?"
"Yes, sir!"
Tina filmed this whole exchange, keeping the camera steady by bracing it against her shoulder, but her hands were shaking.
Sam was walking back over to her, hands stuffed into his overcoat. He looked like he was about to explode. She kept the lens trained on him.
It happened so fast that Tina did not even realize what she was seeing. One minute Sam was there and then he was gone. It was as though aliens had snatched him up into the mothership. He simply vanished.
It was only when she put the camera down that she realized that Sam was on the ground.
Sam was, in fact, lying on his back. Blood pooled around the area of his head.
He was not moving.
"Sammy!" she screamed.
She opened the door and leapt out, running to him. A thousand dreams hung in the balance.
His eyes were open. He was still breathing. But blood poured from his scalp, and there seemed to be something missing.
She felt around the back of his head with her fingertips. Her fingers crossed a jagged border she knew should not be there, and then they were in soft, yielding tissue that she knew was wrong, just wrong.
She gasped, jerking her hand back.
Her fingers had been in Sam's brain.
His breathing was ragged, eyes wide. He could not speak at first.
"Sammy?"
He mouthed some words. She could not hear him.
"What? Sammy, hold on. We're at the hospital. I'll get someone!"
She was blinded by tears, her heart racing a thousand miles an hour. Her chest ached. She knew Sam was dying. She wanted to get him help, but he was beyond help. Half his brain was gone. He couldn't survive that, could he? He'd be a vegetable if he did.
Oh, Sammy, she thought, rubbing his forehead and kissing him, again and again.
He tried to speak again. She put her ear to his mouth. His words were shuddering and unintelligible, a garbled mishmash. But she knew what he was trying to say.
"I love you, too, baby," she said, her voice breaking.
He shook his head, grabbed her shirt and pulled her close to him, pupils dilated, eyes wide.
"Behindyou," he said.
Tina turned around.
She knew who was behind her.
"Miz Baker, I presume?"
She had not seen him
up close, but now, in person, she realized that the horror of the Shadow Man was not in his alabaster skin or snow-blizzard hair, nor was it in his red-tinted eyes that hinted of the surging blood underneath.
No, it was much deeper than that. It was what lurked behind those eyes that froze her marrow. Or rather, it was what was not in them.
"My God," she said.
For there was no human compassion in his eyes. None at all.
She was certain, right then, that the Shadow Man had no soul.
"Why did you kill Sam?"
"Why not? You heard him. He told those cops to kill me. Turnabout is fair play, don't you think?"
She glanced back down at Sam. He had stopped breathing. He lay on his back, eyes open and unseeing, the blood pooling around him almost black.
"A pity. I saw you two together at the crash scene. A touching reunion. Sad for both of you that it had to end this way," the Shadow Man said.
Tina got up and tried to run. Her legs felt like jelly, like they might collapse at any moment. But running was pointless. The biggest part of her had died already and was soaking the tarmac, seeping deep into the darkness of the asphalt.
With Sam dead, Tina just didn't care anymore.
The Shadow Man caught her before she could go anywhere. He grabbed her by the shoulders and whirled her around to face him. His face was right up against hers, his eyes like coals, hot breath in her nostrils.
His breath smelled like vomit.
"You're a pretty little thing, Miz Baker. Sorry I don't have time to play."
He placed a silenced 9mm Ruger against her temple and leered at her.
"Nighty-night, Miz Baker. Sleep tight."
She closed her eyes, thinking of her lost future, of Sam and the children they would never have. How perfect they would have been! She could almost see them laughing, gazing at her with their trusting eyes. She held them close in her dreams, their little rabbit hearts beating fiercely against her chest.
At that moment, the lights all went out.
43
For the second time that week, Malcolm dreamt of his mother.