by John A. Daly
The further he walked without finding anything resembling a building, the stronger the nagging feeling stewed in his gut that Martinez had steered him wrong. He prayed that what the intern had told him wasn’t simply part of another game, another deception. When Lumbergh finally heard the eerie groans of metal swaying in the wind, his doubts subsided.
There was a wide sign mounted to a tall pole eight feet high just a few yards away from him, wobbling from the weather. It was worn down and some of its panes had fallen or been blown off. He struggled to read it without any light. The only word he could make out with any confidence was “Grill.”
It appeared to belong to a restaurant. He shuffled passed it, raising his shotgun and cringing when his tender arm felt the weight of the forestock. He told himself that he was a fool for proceeding on his own, especially in the shape he was in, but he was convinced that he couldn’t afford to relinquish command of the situation to Redick. The stakes were too high.
He heard the wind whipping up against a solid object somewhere in front of him, and mere seconds later, the outline of a large building presented itself. It was a long, single-story building. He jogged to the side of it, ducking. When he reached what he believed to be the front of the building, he pressed his back to the wall. As far as he could tell, the windows had all been boarded up, as were the doors a little further down. The doors appeared to be the main entrance to the building. There had to be another way inside.
He was about to swing around to the back when he noticed what appeared to be a faint light spread out across the east end of the building. He carefully made his way along the front side, keeping low and trying to listen for movement or voices inside the building—an impossible task with the rough wind.
The closer he got, the more it became apparent that the light was from an open garage or service door. By the time he reached the spot, his heart was pounding through his chest.
The light exposed a driveway that led up to the open garage. The snow along the driveway showed signs of a lot of activity; multiple trails of footprints spread out into the night. Among them were what appeared to be snowmobile tracks.
Lumbergh wondered if whoever was inside had somehow seen him coming and had taken off. He deemed that unlikely. When his eyes found crimson-colored splatter in the snow, he swallowed hard. Whatever lingering doubts he’d had about being in the right place quickly scurried off in the wind.
He clenched his teeth and swung inside the garage with his shotgun pointing in front of him. He held it close to eye level, controlling his breathing while he cased the inside of the room. He saw a Chevy Cavalier parked inside and a bare area where the snowmobile had likely been parked under a tarp (now wadded up in a heap to the side). The light from above was coming from an automatic door opener. That meant either the door had just been opened or that someone had very recently tripped the sensor line along its base.
He spotted a door at the back of the garage and made his way to it. He twisted the knob and found it unlocked. Cautiously, he pressed open the door and slid inside.
He found himself in a small landing area where the fluctuating sound of running water came from behind a near corner. He moved forward, twisting himself around the corner with his finger hugging the shotgun trigger.
Water poured from a faucet into a large, unattended sink. Lumbergh negotiated his way around it, his adrenaline pumping. When he reached the end of a bright hallway, the frantic sound of a woman screaming suddenly echoed through the interior of the building. It came from very close by.
“I’m sorry!” the woman wailed repeatedly, amidst what sounded like a child crying.
The urgency in the woman’s voice and the subsequent sound of a man moaning brought Lumbergh down the hallway quickly. Could the man be Sean? He glanced back over his shoulder twice as he made his way toward an open door where all of the action seemed to be coming. Anxiety tore through his veins at the sight of the many doors that lined the hallway of the unfamiliar building. There were lots of hiding spots for someone to get the jump on him. He was a sitting duck.
When the painfully loud creak of a floorboard gave away his presence, he bit his lip.
“Adam!” the woman’s voice called out. “Did you find Phillip?”
Lumbergh darted forward and swung inside the entryway of the room with his gun drawn. He was greeted by an unexpected blast of wind that tore through the room from a large shattered window at the opposite end.
The first person he saw under the light of a single table lamp on a small nightstand was a young girl. She was huddled in a corner of the room in a nightgown, her hands pressed against her ears, and she had no hair. Her wet eyes met Lumbergh’s, then the gun in his hands. She screamed in horror.
His eye caught movement at the other end of the small room, and he immediately swung his gun toward it. There he saw a woman with long red hair that twisted in the wind.
The red fox.
She knelt on the floor beside an overturned rocking chair. She spun to meet his unexpected glare and the barrels of his shotgun, and shrieked.
“Police! Let me see your hands!” Lumbergh yelled.
With her eyes already red and filled with tears, she quickly whipped her hands into the air. The blood that laced them was nearly as bright as her hair.
He gasped. His gaze dropped to a man’s pair of legs that sprouted out from behind the toppled chair.
Lumbergh felt the floor beneath him bend and twist. Lightheadedness sank in and his stomach dropped to his ankles. The shotgun nearly fell from his trembling hand.
“Sean,” he whispered, fearing he had arrived too late.
Just as a building rage began to boil from under his skin, the woman’s voice pierced through it.
“Let me keep helping him!” she pled with desperation in her voice. “I have a medical background, and he’s in bad shape!”
He was still alive.
Lumbergh lunged forward. He kicked the fallen chair and a smashed floor lamp out of the way before dropping to his knees, letting his gun fall beside him. He reached for the bloodied man whose shirt was partially peeled from his chest. The frightened, conquered eyes that he found staring up at him took Lumbergh’s breath away, but they didn’t belong to his brother-in-law.
Lumbergh glanced at the blood that streamed from a hole in the man’s neck just above his left trapezius. Some had pooled beside him on the floor. He then looked up at the woman before him. The two acknowledged a mutual understanding with their eyes, and Lumbergh instructed her to continue helping the man.
Lumbergh edged backwards on his knees, pulling the shotgun along the floor with him. Broken glass crackled below his body.
The woman pressed a bloody, wadded up towel against the wound and held it firmly in place.
“The bullet’s still in there,” she said.
“You’re Jessica, aren’t you?” he asked, his voice shaky.
Though she kept her focus on her work, the increased tension in her body signaled to him that she was stunned that he knew who she was. She nodded.
“Who else is here inside the building?” he asked, pulling his radio from his side. “Who’s Adam? Who’s Phillip?”
Before she could answer, the man on the floor spoke. Lumbergh was unsure until that moment that he even could, due to his injury.
“They went after Sean,” he weakly gurgled out. His mouth was the only part of his body that moved. “They’re going to kill him.”
“What?” Lumbergh barked, sitting up on his knees.
“They’re not!” lashed out Jessica, keeping her eyes focused on her work. “I let Adam out to stop Phillip. To bring him back here. He’s a doctor; a surgeon. He can better help you, Andy.”
Lumbergh squinted at the sound of the name. He traced the contour of the wounded man’s face. His eyes widened upon recognition. “Are you Andrew Carson?”
“Yes,” Jessica answered before Carson could.
“Listen to me,” muttered Carson, his eyes floating in disarray. “Phillip’s going to kill Sean. He tried to kill me.”
“No,” she moaned, shaking her head in denial. “He shot you by accident.” Her defensiveness suggested she was trying unsuccessfully to convince herself that what she was saying was true.
“No accident,” muttered Carson, a tear rolling down his cheek. “He set his sight on me right after he shot at Sean. No accident. Sean was right. Two liabilities. Flies in the ointment.”
Jessica didn’t react to his words, seemingly fighting back her emotions from spinning further out of control.
“Which direction did they head in?” asked Lumbergh.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“Please,” groaned Carson. “Don’t leave me alone with her.”
Jessica lifted her confused eyes to meet his.
“I don’t trust her anymore,” he said as more tears poured from his eyes.
Hearing those words, Jessica pursed her lips and her own tears began sliding like rivers down each side of her face. She kept the pressure on his neck and begged understanding from Carson with her dreary gaze. He looked away from her.
Lumbergh couldn’t possibly conceive what kind of bond the two had seemingly formed while Carson was a captive, but it was clear whatever foundation it had been built upon had just come crumbling to the ground. It was also apparent, to the chief ’s immense frustration, that he couldn’t take off after Sean. Not now. He couldn’t leave a direly wounded Andrew Carson—who was asking for his help—alone at the hands of one of the people who had abducted him.
Lumbergh cursed and pulled his radio to his mouth. He got Redick back on the air and told him to call for an ambulance. Redick pushed back, demanding more details.
“A man’s been shot, Redick! Now get me that ambulance and get your fat ass out here! I need you to take my place!”
As the lawmen argued back and forth over the radio, Lumbergh’s eyes drifted to the gaze of the little girl who sat in the corner of the room. She was sitting perfectly still, clearly too frightened to do much else. She took shallow, labored breaths. The purity and innocence in her face provided a surreal contrast to the chaos that was ensuing around her.
He could only imagine the emotional damage the scene being played out caused her, adding to whatever ailment she was dealing with physically.
“Anna,” said Jessica. “If you need your oxygen, it’s under your bed, okay, Peanut?”
The girl shook her head.
“Sir,” Jessica said to Lumbergh. “Can you put something under his feet? They need to be raised up again.”
Lumbergh waded up some small blankets and used them to elevate Carson’s legs. It was then that he noticed for the first time that Carson had been treated for an older injury. He had large bandages and gauze wrapped across his stomach. They were poking out from under what was left of his shirt.
“Are you touching me?” Carson unexpectedly asked. “My legs?”
Lumbergh nodded through narrow eyes.
Carson’s eyes drifted up to the ceiling. He looked utterly defeated. “I can’t feel them,” he stuttered. “I can’t feel my legs. Not again.”
Lumbergh and Jessica exchanged sober glares.
When Jessica turned her head to Carson, her eyes bulged and she screamed out, “Oh, Jesus!”
Carson’s eyes were rolled up into his head and his body began to seize.
“What’s happening?” Lumbergh shouted.
Chapter 32
Sean couldn’t believe he had fallen for the doctor’s stunt with the snowmobile. It was a common ploy used in countless television programs and movies in the 1980s, and thus he should have known better.
Lock the accelerator down and let the vehicle drive on its own. Misdirection 101.
“We’ve never been properly introduced, mate,” said the doctor with some gruff in his voice.
Both men stood facing each other inside the small shed as the weather wailed outside. The doctor was a small man, much smaller than he had looked from the road. His back was to the door. Sean’s arms were raised. The flashlight beam trained on his face by the doctor kept him partially blind while the red laser light pasted to his chest kept him still. Sean could barely make out the features of the doctor’s face and he couldn’t see the gun well. All he knew was that it was definitely a handgun, not a rifle. The sound of the snowmobile’s engine buzzed steadily, somewhere in the background. The vehicle was probably pinned up against a tree, still in gear.
Sean said quickly, “You’re Dr. Phillip Robinson, Australian asshole.”
The doctor said nothing for a moment. Sean’s brazen words seemed to leave him stunned. He finally let out a snort and a snicker. A wide grin formed on his face from behind the glare of the flashlight.
“Well, they told you who I am, did they?” he said.
“They told me enough. They think you’re some kind of hero. An angel sent from above to save a little girl’s life.”
The doctor nodded. “But you don’t think so?”
“No. I think you’re the first doctor I’ve met who doesn’t care about life at all.”
The doctor’s body tensed and he angrily snapped the laser beam from Sean’s chest to his forehead. Sean fought back the urge to turn away. If he was going to die, he was going to go out with dignity. He glared forward, nostrils flaring.
“You ignorant bastard!” the doctor growled. “What I’m doing, I’m doing to save many lives!”
“Bullshit!” Sean fired back. “Someone smart enough to have come up with a cure for cancer wouldn’t have to treat a patient in some backwoods, boarded-up restaurant.”
The doctor’s body shook in rage. Sean expected his finger to pull the trigger at any second.
“She doesn’t have cancer, you bloody toad!” he screamed out.
“What the hell does she have then?”
“It’s called amyloidosis. I wouldn’t expect you to have heard of it!”
The term was completely foreign to Sean, but he recognized that the doctor’s contemptuous need to validate his actions might buy him some time. He half wondered if that was all that had kept him from getting shot outside.
“What is it?” he asked, remembering the wrench wedged in the back of his pants. His shirt was pulled down over it, so the d
octor hadn’t seen it when they were outside.
The doctor scoffed. “I’m not going to waste my time explaining concepts like amyloid protein, blood marrow, and platelets to a man of your limited intellect, Mr. Coleman. Not to some mall cop.”
“I ain’t a mall cop, asshole.”
“Whatever. In commoner terms, let’s just say that it’s a rare disease that leads to a person’s organs shutting down. Most people who have it are much older than Anna, but that’s what the girl has nonetheless.”
“Why is she bald if she doesn’t have cancer?” Sean asked.
“Oh Christ, you imbecile,” the doctor sneered in condescension. “Chemotherapy isn’t just used for cancer patients.” He was about to continue when Sean interrupted him.
“So you think you can take whatever’s in Norman Booth’s blood plasma and use it to cure amy-loid-whatever it is?”
“Amyloidosis,” the doctor pronounced in irritation. “No. I don’t think I can cure it. I know I can.”
“And you’re going to do it here? Instead of in a hospital?”
The doctor’s shoulders lowered. “My methods are considered too controversial for the medical community; not just in the States, but also in my country.”
“Is there any country in which kidnapping someone, strapping them to a bed, and sucking their insides out wouldn’t be controversial?”
The doctor cackled and shook his head. “You narrow-minded buffoon. You and the rest of the reactionary sheep. . . You never think about the big picture. You never think outside of the box, as they say. Every genius of his time was considered too unorthodox—too abstract for what society was comfortable with. Darwin. Tesla. . .”