by Chris Carter
One of the agents broke off from the four-strong group and approached the right-side back window, his powerful flashlight illuminating the car’s interior. Nothing on the backseat, nothing on the floor. ‘Backseat is clear.’
‘Show me your hands,’ Tim shouted, his machine gun pointed directly at the driver’s head.
No movement.
Tim tried again, his words coming out slower this time. ‘Can you hear me? Show me your hands.’
No movement.
‘He looks dead, Tim,’ another agent offered.
Tim approached the driver’s door while the other agents kept their aim locked on the man at the wheel. Tim cautiously dropped down to his knees and checked underneath the car – no explosives, no wires. It all looked clear. He got up and slowly reached for the handle.
Still no movement from the driver.
Tim could feel the sweat rolling down his forehead. He took a deep breath to steady his hands. He knew what he needed to do. In one clean movement he pulled the door open. A split second later he had his MP5 aimed back at the driver’s head.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he gasped, turning his face away from the car before taking a step back and quickly lifting his left hand to protect his nose.
‘Talk to me, Tim, what’s wrong?’ Troy, the second in command, shouted, approaching the passenger’s door.
‘The smell goddammit, it’s like putrid meat.’ Tim paused for a moment fighting nausea, coughing violently. The warm, fetid breath that shot out of the car quickly intoxicated the air. It took Tim several seconds to collect himself. He needed to check for the victim’s vital signs.
Hunter, Garcia, Captain Bolter and Doctor Winston were avidly observing the action from the perimeter mark. Their standard-issue headset allowed them to listen in as the STU communicated with each other. Standing just behind them were an ambulance and a paramedic team.
Tim had another look at the victim. His hands had been tied to the steering wheel and the only piece of clothing he had on was a pair of pin-striped boxer shorts saturated in blood. His entire body was covered in large, dark, boil-like blisters and a sunburn-type rash. Some of the blisters had burst open, secreting thick, yellow mucus.
‘Is that pus?’ Troy asked, standing by the passenger’s door. The comment brought a worried look to Doctor Winston’s face.
‘How the hell would I know? I’m not a doctor,’ Tim fired back, and with shaky hands reached for the victim’s neck feeling for the carotid artery.
‘I’ve got no pulse,’ he shouted after a few seconds.
Cough . . . Without warning, the victim’s head jolted forward, spitting blood onto the steering wheel, dashboard and windscreen. Tim stumbled back in a hurry falling to the ground after losing his balance.
‘Holy shit! He’s alive.’ His voice filled with horror.
Troy, who had come close to shooting the driver after his sudden burst of life, rushed to the driver’s side. ‘Medic!’
A shocked look came over everyone’s faces. Hunter and Garcia dashed towards the car, closely followed by Captain Bolter and Doctor Winston.
‘We need that ambulance in here now.’ Tim was back on his feet and had joined Troy by the driver’s door, his breathing still emphatic.
‘We need to cut him loose,’ Tim said, pulling his MOD knife from his belt.
‘Sir, can you hear me?’ he called but the car occupant had already lost consciousness once again.
‘Don’t move, I’m gonna free your hands from the wheel and we’re gonna get you to a hospital, you’ll be OK, stay with me, pal.’
Tim carefully sliced through the bloody rope that kept the victim’s left hand tied to the wheel and it slumped down lifelessly to his lap. Tim moved to the next hand and repeated the procedure. Seconds later the driver was free.
Troy searched for the paramedic team who still hadn’t reached the car. Unexpectedly, the victim coughed once again spitting out more blood, this time onto Tim’s STU uniform.
‘Where the fuck is the ambulance?’ Tim shouted in an angry voice.
‘We’re here,’ one of the paramedics said, pushing his way through to reach the driver’s door. Within a few seconds the rest of the ambulance team had reached the car.
Hunter, Garcia, Captain Bolter and Doctor Winston all watched in silence as the team carefully moved the victim from the driver’s seat to the stretcher and into the ambulance. The smell causing a group gagging frenzy as they came closer to the car.
‘Where’s he being taken to?’ Hunter asked the paramedic nearest to him.
‘The Good Samaritan Hospital. It’s the closest one with an emergency ward.’
‘The victim’s alive . . .?’ Captain Bolter asked in a skeptical voice. ‘First he plays games with us and then he gives us a live victim? What the hell is he up to? Is he getting sloppy?’
Hunter shook his head. ‘I don’t know, but I’m sure he’s not getting sloppy. This could be part of his game.’
‘Do you think the killer was interrupted? Surprised by a member of the public or something?’ the captain asked, looking around as if searching for something, or someone.
‘No,’ Hunter replied firmly. ‘The killer wouldn’t have called if this wasn’t exactly what he wanted us to find. He made no mistake here.’
‘Don’t tell me you think he’s having guilt trips and decided to let this one live after that whole drama yesterday.’
‘I don’t know, Captain,’ Hunter shot back with irritation. ‘But we’ll find out soon enough.’ He turned and faced Garcia. ‘What do we have on the car?’
‘It belongs to a . . . George Slater, thirty-three years old, attorney at law with Tale & Josh, a law firm in central Los Angeles,’ Garcia read from a faxed report. ‘He’s been reported missing by his wife, Catherine Slater. Apparently he never came home from his weekly Tuesday-night poker game.’
‘Do we have a photo?’
‘Yes, the one his wife used when reporting him as missing.’ Garcia produced a black and white printout.
‘Let me see that.’
The man in the photograph was dressed in an expensive-looking suit with his hair slickly combed back. It wasn’t hard to see the resemblance between the man in the printout and the half-dead body they saw being dragged from the car a few minutes ago. ‘It’s him,’ Hunter said after analyzing the photo for a few seconds. ‘The facial features are all there.’
‘I think so too,’ Garcia agreed.
‘I’ll follow the ambulance back to the hospital. If there’s any chance this guy can survive, I wanna be there.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ Garcia said.
‘I’ll get the forensic team to start here, though after the events of the last five minutes, this whole scene has been contaminated to high heaven,’ Doctor Winston said worryingly. ‘And judging by the vegetation surrounding the car, this could take a hell of a long time,’ he said and pointed to the thick shrubs and high grass.
‘Just ask them to do their best,’ Hunter said, looking around the area.
‘Don’t they always?’
They all walked away as the forensic team moved in.
Twenty-Seven
The Good Samaritan Hospital building stands imposingly on Wilshire Boulevard, in downtown LA. Its main entrance is through a circular driveway on the east side of Witmer Street. On a normal day, the trip from Griffith Park would’ve taken Hunter around thirty minutes; this time he made it in less than twenty, almost giving Garcia a heart attack in the process.
They rushed through the spotlessly clean glass doors of the entrance lobby, towards the admissions desk. Two middle-aged nurses were busy shuffling through piles of paper, answering telephones and dealing with the demanding crowd of patients surrounding the desk. Hunter disregarded the line of people and pushed his way to the front.
‘Where’s your emergency ward?’ he asked with his badge in hand.
One of the nurses looked up from her computer screen through the top of the thick-rimmed pair of glasses
she had balancing on the tip of her nose and merely studied the two men in front of her. ‘Are you two blind? There’s a line of people in front of you.’ Her voice was calm as if she had all the time in the world.
‘Yeah, that’s right, we’re all waiting here, get in line,’ came a protest from an elderly man with his arm in a cast, igniting shouts from the other patients.
‘This is official business sir!’ Hunter said. ‘The emergency ward, where is it?’ The urgency in his voice made the nurse look up again. This time she checked both of their badges.
‘Through there, take a left at the end,’ she said reluctantly, pointing to the hall on her right.
‘Damn cops, not even a thank you,’ she murmured as Hunter and Garcia disappeared down the corridor.
The emergency ward was a busy shuffle of doctors, nurses, orderlies and patients all running around as if the end of the world was about to take place. The area was large, but with the chaotic movement of people and wheel stretchers it appeared crowded.
‘How can anyone work in a place like this? It’s like Carnival in Brazil,’ Garcia said, looking around with a worried expression.
Hunter surveyed the messy scene looking for someone who could offer them any information. He spotted a small, semi-circular counter against the north wall. A sole nurse sat behind it, her face flushed. They wasted no time in getting to her.
‘An emergency patient came in about five or ten minutes ago. We need to know where he’s been taken to,’ Hunter said in a frustrated tone of voice as he approached the large woman.
‘This is the emergency ward, sweetie, all the patients that come through here are emergency patients,’ she said in a tender voice with a very strong southern accent.
‘A crime victim, Griffith Park, about thirty-something years of age, completely covered in blisters,’ Hunter shot back impatiently.
She pulled a brand-new Kleenex tissue from a super-sized box on the counter and wiped the sweat from her forehead, finally gazing at the detectives with her black pearl eyes. Realizing the urgency in Hunter’s voice, she quickly checked a few documents behind the counter.
‘Yeah, I remember him being brought in not that long ago’ – she paused to take a deep breath – ‘if I remember correctly . . . he was DOA.’
‘What?’
‘Dead on arrival,’ she explained.
‘We know what it means. Are you sure?’ Garcia asked.
‘Not one hundred percent, but Doctor Phillips admitted the patient. He’ll be able to confirm it.’
‘And where can we find him?’
She stood up to survey the room. ‘Right over there . . . Doctor Phillips,’ she called waving her hand.
A short, bald-headed man turned, his stethoscope swinging around his neck; his white overall looked old and wrinkly, and judging by the dark circles under his eyes, he hadn’t had any sleep in at least thirty-six hours. He was busy in conversation with another man who Hunter immediately recognized as one of the paramedics who had pushed his way through to get to the victim’s car in Griffith Park.
Both detectives went over to the two men before they had a chance to come to the small counter. They quickly went through the customary introductions.
‘The victim from the park, where’s he? What happened?’ Hunter asked.
The paramedic’s eyes avoided Hunter’s, using the floor as refuge. The short doctor shifted his stare from Hunter to Garcia a couple of times. ‘He didn’t make it. They had to turn off the sirens five minutes away from the hospital. He was DOA – dead on arrival.’
‘We know what it means.’ Hunter sounded annoyed.
The short silence that followed was broken by Garcia. ‘Shit! I knew it was too good to be true.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the paramedic said with a distressed look. ‘We tried everything we could. He couldn’t breathe. He was choking on his own blood. We were about to perform an emergency tracheotomy, but before we had the chance . . .’ his voice trailed off as Doctor Phillips took over.
‘By the time the ambulance reached the hospital there was nothing more anyone could do. He was pronounced dead at three-eighteen this afternoon.’
‘What was the cause of death?’
Doctor Phillips gave Hunter a quick nervous laugh. ‘The body just came in, but take your pick, suffocation, cardiac arrest, general organ failure, internal hemorrhage, your guess is as good as mine. You’ll have to wait for the official autopsy report to find out.’
An announcement came through the loudspeakers and Doctor Phillips paused and waited for it to be over. ‘At the moment the body is isolated.’
‘Isolated? Why?’ Garcia sounded concerned.
‘Have you seen the body? It’s covered in blisters and sores.’
‘Yes, we’ve seen it. We thought they were burn marks or something like that.’
Doctor Phillips shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you what they are without a biopsy, but they certainly aren’t burn marks.’
‘Definitely not,’ the paramedic agreed.
‘Viral?’ Hunter asked.
Doctor Phillips looked at him intrigued. ‘At first glance, yes. Like a disease.’
‘A disease?’ The astonished question came from Garcia. ‘There must be some kind of mistake, doc, he’s a murder victim.’
‘Murder?’ Doctor Phillips looked perplexed. ‘Those blisters weren’t inflicted on him by anyone. His own body produced them as a reaction to something, like an illness or an allergy. Trust me, what killed that man was some sort of terrible disease.’
Hunter had already figured out what the killer had done.
He’d infected the victim with some sort of deadly virus. But it had only been a day since the dog race – how could the reaction have come so quickly? What disease could kill a man in a day? Once again he would depend on Doctor Winston’s autopsy examination to give him any sort of clue to what had happened.
‘We need to determine what this disease is, if it is indeed a disease, and if it’s contagious or not.’ The doctor’s eyes wandered over to the paramedic. ‘That’s what we were talking about, first-hand contact with the patient. Have any of you two . . .’
‘No,’ the answer came in unison.
‘Do you know of anyone who did come in contact with him?’
‘Two agents from the Special Tactics Unit,’ Hunter snapped back.
‘They’ll probably have to come in for some tests, depending on the biopsy result.’
‘And when are you expecting the results?’
‘As I’ve said, the body just came in. I’m gonna send a tissue sample to the lab as soon as possible with an urgent request. If we’re lucky we might get a result sometime today.’
‘How about the body and the autopsy?’
‘The body will be sent to the Department of Coroner today, but its condition and the fact that it has to be kept in isolation make things more difficult, so I can’t tell you exactly when. Look, detective, I’m not gonna lie to you, I’m very concerned about this. Whatever killed that man did it very fast and in a very painful manner. If it’s some sort of contagious disease, judging solely by his state when he came in, we could be facing some very horrific epidemic here. The whole city could be in danger.’
Twenty-Eight
The rest of the day passed in a state of limbo. There was very little Hunter or Garcia could do but wait. Wait for the forensic team to finish processing the crime scene, wait for the biopsy result to come through, wait for the body to be sent to Doctor Winston and wait for his autopsy report.
Both detectives went back to Griffith Park just before darkness set in. If the crime lab team came across anything, no matter how small, they wanted to know, but the search was laborious and slow. The high grass, heat and humidity made things even more difficult, and by one in the morning the team had found nothing.
The loneliness of Hunter’s apartment was overwhelming. As he opened the door and turned on the lights he wondered what it would be like to be coming home to someone who care
d, someone that could give him some hope that the world wasn’t on the road to hell.
He tried to fight the destructive guilt that had gradually crept in since the dog race, but even his experience and knowledge couldn’t keep his mind from wondering. If only I’d picked dog number two. At this point in time the killer was also winning the psychological battle.
He poured himself a double dose from the twelve-year-old bottle of Laphroaig, dropped in his usual single cube, dimmed the lights and collapsed onto his old, stiff sofa. He felt physically and mentally exhausted, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. His mind kept playing back everything that had happened in the past few hours and it intensified his pounding headache.
‘Why couldn’t I have chosen a simple profession, why couldn’t I have been a chef or a carpenter?’ he thought out loud. The reason was simple. Cliché or not, he wanted to make a difference, and every time his investigations and hard work caught a killer, he knew he’d made that difference. It was a high unlike any other – the self gratification, the exhilaration, knowing how many lives he saved by following the evidence, staying calm and piecing together a scene that seemed lost and diluted in time. Hunter was good at what he did and he knew it.
He had another sip of his single malt and swirled it around in his mouth before swallowing it down and welcoming the burning sensation. He closed his eyes and dropped his head back, trying his best to clear his mind of all the day’s events, but they were hammering his memory with a thunderous force.
The message alert from his cell phone made him jump. He felt his pockets for it but found they were empty.
‘Shit!’
The phone was on the small glass bar. He’d left it there together with his wallet and keys.
Placing his glass on the floor Hunter slowly stood up and glanced at his watch.
‘Who the hell would be sending me a message at this godforsaken hour anyway?’ He checked the phone.
I hope you are OK. It was very nice seeing you again this afternoon, even if it was just for a few minutes – Isabella.