Embryo 3: Raney & Levine

by JA Schneider

“Mine too,” he told her gently. “I took a lot of pictures.”

  Squad cars lined the curb. Against the back of one parked twenty yards away, Jill leaned and watched with the two detectives.

  “Come back with us in one of these,” Alex said to her. He was taping the rally with his phone. Had made a call, and had other plainclothes people taping too. Every angle counted.

  “Thanks,” Jill said, studying faces in the crowd, the rally, absently fingering her medallion. “Is this still working?”

  “Yep, I’ve got it turned down. Don’t take it off yet.”

  “Okay.” Her breath caught. “Yeow, look who’s there.”

  Just rounding the long, oval circle demonstrating were Brian and Dara Walsh.

  Alex nodded without surprise. “I had Dara followed. She joined this group as it formed behind the demolished rectory.”

  Keri said, “Hubby must have been waiting. Huh? They didn’t seem to like each other.”

  “So they’ve got this in common.”

  Both Walshes carried placards. Dara’s read GREED - Jill pictured her stealing Splenda packets – and Brian’s read DON’T DEMOLISH GOD! They were chanting with the others, “Join us! Join us! Save our history!”

  “Nash must have known them,” Keri whispered fiercely. “Burrell said there were emails going back and forth, meetings even – Nash had broken his window lock-”

  Her phone rang. She answered, and stiffened. “Sister Meg,” she whispered, holding the phone so Alex and Jill could hear. Through the noise, high, thin crying at the other end.

  “…bashed Greg with his crucifix….then took his…and stabbed him!”

  Jill’s phone vibrated a second later. She reached for it, and running sounded behind her. Too late, they saw her head yanked back and two white-shirted arms pulling her backward, one practically strangling her, the other holding something glinting at her throat.

  Bandage scissors. Opened, curved bandage scissors, the sharper blade over Jill’s carotid.

  Both cops froze. Jill’s eyes were squeezed tight; she looked like she’d stopped breathing, hadn’t even screamed.

  “My transistor!” Nash’s dark eyes raged. “Give me back my transistor!”

  “Okay,” Alex said placatingly, stepping closer. Keri reached for her gun. Nash saw and yanked Jill further back, her feet dragging, her body too close to his.

  She got off a thin cry; rammed an elbow to his solar plexus, raised her knee and stomp-kicked hard his foot with her man boot. Nash screamed and his knees buckled.

  “Did I break a metatarsal or two?” she yelled at him, jerking away, seeing stunned faces in the crowd as she lost her balance, fell and rolled away; saw both Walshes worriedly watching Nash. Alex lunged, punched him and grabbed for the scissors, but Nash’s arm swung wildly, slashing Alex’s temple. Keri kicked out Nash’s feet; he fell, scrabbled wildly and grabbed Jill again, got his scissors back to her throat, got them both back up.

  Uniformed cops were holding people back; others had come running, weapons drawn, but Nash was lurching backward fast on one foot, dragging Jill into the near alley. “I’ll cut her!” he screamed, craning his head right and left. “SHE is responsible for that devil child! Approach and her blood will spill AS IT SHOULD!”

  Jill whimpered and struggled. Keri went to Alex, slumped, as uniforms barked into their shoulder phones, “…side alley! Circle building and approach from rear!”

  Nash had Jill hard, crushing her throat. Her heart rocketed as she felt herself dragged, her feet having to help or the crushing got worse. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t pull in air; slid down and heard him scream at her, saw the scissors threatening her face and got going again, her feet struggling.

  Then he stopped, dropped her. She heard a heavy, rusty scrape of metal; tried to get up and run but he grabbed her again.

  Cops cutting at the alley’s rear iron gate burst it open, ran toward her as Nash dragged her through a door into chill dimness. EXIT, she saw in blurred red letters above her.

  The heavy door clanged shut and Nash, limping and groaning with superhuman, drug-fighting strength, bolted it and overturned a heavy chest to block it.

  They were in the darkened sanctuary. Overturned, cobwebby pews, a toppled pulpit, strewn prayer books, more pews piled on top of each other. Nash dragged Jill, cursing her, dropping his scissors with a ping. Overhead, a gaping, torn-up roof, a vault of darkening sky. Jill’s heart banged too hard; she struggled to inhale. Beneath her, moist, rotting floorboards from months of a rainy summer.

  Nash crouched down and leered at her. “Wasn’t I smart to leave my church’s door unbolted? So I could come and go as I pleased?”

  Heavy, rhythmic whamming from where they’d come. Cops using their battering ram to get in. More wailing sirens arriving outside.

  Nash glared fearfully back at the pounding. His adrenalin had dropped; his pain was really hitting now. He seemed not to know what to do.

  Through Jill’s haze and her own pain she managed, “They’ll…give you your transistor.” How ridiculous that sounded. But it’s what he’d demanded.

  Breathing hard, whispery, he brought his face close again. “No they won’t. They’re the devil’s police. Why should they give me God?”

  Tell a paranoid schiz he’s wrong? Forget it.

  Jill’s terrified eyes darted up through the torn roof to the first stars. Faint moonlight lit ghostly forms. Her hand found a short, rotted plank. She summoned her last strength.

  “They’ll give it to you because they want me. Make a…deal.”

  “I don’t deal with the devil!”

  Whamming, wood-splitting sounds from outside. The cops were almost in.

  Nash knew he was done. His coarse hands clamped down and started to strangle Jill. “Devil spy!” he screamed, as she twisted and raised her plank two-handed and slammed his head.

  He tumbled backward, screaming; hit a hulking stack of pews piled on top of each other. In pain and gibbering to himself, he grabbed the bottom pew and then the one above it, and tried to raise himself up.

  The pile of heavy old wood creaked and tottered, then fell crashing to the floor.

  Bang! The cops were in! Footsteps pounded the short corridor-

  But the floor was moving. Caving in under Jill. The silhouetted piled pews looked like a ship going down, heavier end first.

  Jill screamed. It seemed like slow motion, falling through behind the pews in their plunge. She heard them crash to the basement floor below. Couldn’t see them through the blackness but her scrabbling, struggling hands found cables, then rusty-feeling pipes, which held her for moments, then bent slowly down because of her weight. Crying, she fell the rest of the way.

  Onto something that tipped, and slid her skidding to the floor. A dark, cold, wet floor; wet cracking asphalt. She lay crumpled on her side, her heart leaping out of her chest. She tasted blood. Wiped her stinging brow and lip; felt stickiness. Moving a little, she inventoried her body: pain in her hip and shoulder, but no broken bones.

  Through blackness, she reached past the edge of what felt like linoleum to see what had broken her fall. Found tubular legs, like for an aluminum table, the folding kind. She yanked hard at it, heard other tables teeter. A line of them? Set up like a food kitchen?

  Then came the real shock. Slithering, long writhing things crawling over her arm, her leg, her shoulder near her face. Snakes! Omigod, snakes in a rotting, cold black basement and she was in a nest of them; could hear others snapping, whipping in the dark.

  Sobbing hysterically, she scrabbled through a shallow puddle. No words to describe this nightmare, nothing to do but scream and thrash in horror-

  And suddenly she saw them, hideous knots of them, black and writhing by her head as light beams shown down and shouts called out: “Christ! Snakes!”….“We’re coming, hang on!”…”Basement stairs! Where the hell are the stairs?”…”Need more light here!”

  Footsteps pounding down someplace. Sweeping flashlight beams and mo
re shouts: “Fuckin’ snakes, oh Jesus!” Feet kicking and stomping the writhing things away as hands bent to get her onto a stretcher, tried to get her into a neck brace. Jill moved her head for them. “Don’t need the brace,” she shuddered, shivering wet, opening her squeezed-shut eyes.

  Then shutting them again, the glaring penlight beam too strong for her. Someone’s gentle thumb pulled up her right lid, moved the beam back and forth, then checked her left eye.

  “Pupils normal,” a man’s voice said, relieved. Yards away another voice said, “Found Nash. Alive. Looks a little broken.”

  “Aw, leave him here,” someone snarled. It was the last thing Jill heard as she passed out.

  32

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “In Aruba, sipping a margarita.”

  “Don’t be a wise guy.” David’s voice, sounding choked. “Okay, who’s the president?”

  “Herbert Hoover. Nothing but prosperity ahead.”

  She heard Tricia half laugh and half stifle a sob. Squinted her eyes open in the light of the examining lamp. Dimly saw David’s gloved hand set the curved suture needle on a sterile towel, then pick up a cotton swab dipped in merthiolate. She was lying on her back with her hands gripping the edge of the exam table.

  “Five sutures,” David groaned softly. Finished applying a gauze dressing to the laceration on her brow, then regarded Jill, brooding. He felt helpless and guilty, painfully guilty. Dammit, he should have been there! Not pacing and sweating a whole ten minutes for the ambulance to pull up.

  Four of them had cut off her wet clothes and gotten her into scrubs, but there were new bloodstains on her scrub top, and her face was terribly pallid.

  “Gee,” David said quietly. “This is the second time in three months I’ve stitched you up.”

  “Three and a half,” Jill said defensively, more than passing their Mental Status test. “Argh, stop it, Woody.”

  She yanked her foot back, and at the end of the table Woody held up his gloved hands. “I surrender! Don’t kick!” He’d just run his thumb up the sole of her foot from her heel to her big toe. “Bubinsky’s really normal,” he announced.

  Tricia was muttering, “Pupillary reflexes and eye movements normal, neck supple, not stiff” - she squeezed Jill’s arm - and Jim Holloway said, “Yay, leg muscles normal.” He swung around the rubber hammer he’d been using to bang Jill’s knee reflexes.

  It bothered Jill that they were talking to each other. And she was the patient. The top of the sterile table next to David was littered with an empty Procaine syringe, used mosquito clamps, and a pile of bloody cotton swabs.

  Her blood. She took a shuddering breath.

  Here she was, flat on her back again, on an exam table in an ER cubicle.

  David pulled up a stool and sank down on it, staring in disbelief at the dressing on her brow. “You look like you fell through a floor.”

  Her expression mirrored his. “You look like you lost your puppy.” She felt so bad at putting him through this again.

  But it came out funny. The other three gave in to smiles. Then light, relieved laughter. She was okay. Safe. “Praise the Lord!” Tricia said, raising both hands and doing a little boogie. Tension went out of them and they sank onto other stools and a chair pulled closer.

  Jill smiled at the relieved three. What a blessing, to be safe, have friends who loved you and worried about you.

  She blinked, and her eyes went back to David. “How’s Alex Brand? Nash slashed him with scissors.”

  “He’s okay. Bandaged and coming with Pappas in a few minutes.”

  “And Nash’s nurse Greg Clark? Nash stabbed him too.”

  “Just a flesh wound and a head bashed by a crucifix. Neither serious. Probably giving his statement to the cops as we speak.”

  Outside the cubicle, Charlie and Ramu were heard calming a babble of worried voices. “She’s okay. Thanks, we’ll tell her. Yeah, we saw it on TV too.”

  Jill’s head cleared further and anxiety pricked. “Where’s Nash now?”

  “Here,” David said. “Strapped to his bedrails in Psych with a cop keeping him company. There’s already so many cops here, Pappas figured this was the best place to have him.” David shook his head. “The creep’s practically uninjured.”

  “Except,” Tricia said, grinning, squeezing Jill’s hand, “for one broken metatarsal we hear you administered above ground.”

  David added, “He fell first onto an unplugged water heater, then onto a pile of cot mattresses. The basement had been a homeless shelter.”

  Jill tried to move. She hurt all over. “I saw the tables. It’s like the place had been ready and suddenly abandoned.”

  Holloway said, “Code violations shut it down, it’s been on the news. You’re on the news again.”

  “Oh joy. I’ve so missed reporters.”

  “They’re outside now, taping.” Woody made a leering grimace. “They’re baaaack.”

  The nylon curtains parted, and Charlie Ortega stuck his head in. “MacIntyre called again. Checking on Jill’s status.”

  “I told him she was okay,” David said, sounding drained.

  Ramu looked in too. “He’s got a woman dilated to seven centimeters. Mackey’s got one ready to pop.”

  “You should go up,” David told them. “Thanks. Where’s Phipps?”

  “Already with Mackey. Sends his love.”

  Jill tried to pull herself up and sent them a little wave. Her hip ached as if she’d been hit by a truck.

  “Oww.” She dropped her head back on the pillow.

  “Your hip?” Holloway rose and palpated the area.

  Jill groaned.

  “I saw this. You’re all black and blue there. Strained muscles,” he said, poking.

  “Stop that or die,” Jill hissed.

  Holloway grinned. The others cracked smiles too.

  Tricia asked, “Did you grow a new sense of humor?”

  Jill locked eyes with her. “Something like that basement? You either learn to laugh like a loon or go stark raving.”

  Holloway’s cell phone buzzed. Another woman was just brought in in premature labor, try to stop it. He, Woody, and Trish had to go.

  Hugs that hurt. Jill reached her hand out, and Trish squeezed it hard. Woody did too, and Holloway gave her a gentle shoulder punch.

  The curtains had barely closed behind them when they swished open again.

  Pappas, Alex, and Keri came in.

  “Oh, pale!” Keri said, coming to Jill’s side.

  Alex came up on Jill’s other side, smiled fondly at her, and compared head bandages with her. David didn’t look thrilled with that fond smile. He felt worse than he had minutes ago. Gave Pappas his seat and stood with his arms folded, back to the wall and the unused IV.

  Pappas patted Jill’s arm. “Déjà vu all over again, huh? Three months.”

  “Three and a half.”

  “Okay, okay.” He looked tired and frustrated as he got out his notes. Then met Jill’s eyes. “We’ve gone over the recordings from your medallion, and one thing stands out.”

  He inhaled. “In the church Nash thought he really had you. Was ready to kill you, strangle you, but first he wanted to brag. And what did he say?”

  Pappas glanced at his notes, then read. “’Wasn’t I smart to leave my church’s door unbolted? So I could come and go as I pleased?’”

  The detective looked up, his expression more frustrated. “Nothing about having murdered those women. Women he told you in his room that he scorned and considered hell-bound. Which is especially significant since he revealed outside, dragging you, that he had indeed recognized you.”

  Pappas looked down and read Nash’s first utterance: “’I’ll cut her. SHE is responsible for that devil child! Approach and her blood will spill AS IT SHOULD!’”

  Brand stood unhappily with his arms folded. Keri, on a stool, stared grimly at Jill’s bloody cotton swabs.

  Hearing Nash’s words repeated, Jill’s mind flare
d it all back again, the nightmare kaleidoscope. David saw her expression change and stepped closer to her, gripped her hand. It was cold.

  “So!” Pappas said, startling Jill back. “Do we have a confession? Nash wanted wildly to brag - and ‘I left the door unbolted’ was the most he came up with?”

  “We’re still nowhere,” Brand said gloomily. “No bragged admission when the" – he paused – “presumed killer thought he was safe. And every crime scene gave us nothing. No prints, DNA, evidence…and nothing sexual.”

  Pappas looked from Jill to David. “Especially frustrating because, thanks to you two, we’ve got both Walshes’ prints, Dara’s DNA from her sweating hands on the sweetener bowl, plus brother Brian’s jacket fibers that showed no evidence of having been in that alley - also no help legally because he could claim he visited Jenna on another occasion. She’s not alive to say otherwise. And what she told the Sutters is hearsay.”

  Jill stared at nothing, looking disappointed.

  “Now we even have Ralph Nash’s DNA,” Keri said. “He was bleeding from lacerations when they brought him here. We arrested him, read him his rights, he had no problem with our getting a blood sample, but we have nothing to match it to. He’s not in the system.”

  Jill groaned, looking so discouraged that Pappas held up a hand.

  “Wait,” he said, looking intently at her. “Thanks to your visit down there we’ve got Nash’s computer, his emails. There were lots between him and both Walshes.” The detective’s gaze sharpened. “Dara also forwarded to Ralph the two emails you sent her. You signed yours ‘Desperate?’ Ralph might have noticed that your Christine-signed emails to him had the same address.”

  “Duh,” Jill grimaced.

  “How could you have known?” Alex consoled. “And Nash’s emails are a bonanza. They prove that all three knew each other, shared the same hatred of surrogates, and were members of that church campaign.”

  David frowned at Pappas. “And shared the same list of women? You got that photo of Jill’s I sent you of Dara showing up for her SurroMom appointment?”

  The detective nodded. “Shared the lists, yes. They were finding their victims on that web site.” He shook his head again. “So who did the killing? Doesn’t sound like it was Nash, but we have no solid proof of that either.”