He got no answer as the two men shuffled out of the lounge. The younger man paused a half beat, then threw Carter a look over his shoulder. He gave his hair a tug, scissored it with his fingers just behind the ear, then smoothed it down and put on his hat. Carter watched them disappear down the corridor.
Mr. Blue liked to take souvenirs. He put his coffee cup down and stared into the murk. When he’d drunk as much as he wanted, and the rest had gotten cold, he decided to go see if he could find the domestic, maybe talk to the woman.
The long, cold room tilted. She could see shapes running toward her and then across the room. Her heart pounded in her chest. Everything looked strange and indistinct. Nothing was familiar. Where was she!
McKenzie dropped back onto the bed, shaking. Her teeth rattled in her jaw. She could not stop shaking. Darkness closed in on her like a tunnel swallowing her whole. Her vision went. Her hearing roared, muffled, sensing a drama somewhere beyond her. In the distance, forms bobbed and weaved in a dance she could barely see or hear, but one which sent a chill down her back.
“Clear! Four, three, two, one, Hit! Okay, that’s it. Sinus rhythm is back. Change that IV tubing. We nearly had an embolism there—pull the curtains round him and leave him here, they’re making room in ICU—”
“What about Sleeping Beauty?”
Ghostly forms seemed to turn and consider her. Mac’s head felt as though it were bursting.
“She coldcocked Zucker. She’ll be all right. Move her up to Third when you’ve got a chance. And watch out for that right hook.”
They stood in a crimson pool. It splashed across their whites, up to their knees, dripped down from the gurney they had been attending, shed by the gray-haired black man they’d been working to save. It flowed from him, life itself, expiring. She had to tell them, warn them. Someone had been here. Someone would be returning.
Her voice caught on the raw edges of her throat. Her arms and legs had lost all strength in the joints. She could move nothing.
She had to tell them what she saw. Bloody hands, coming for her. Handprints on the old man. Evidence. Someone had been there, killing.
She could not breathe properly. Or think.
Mac gave in.
Sharp pain hammered through dully throbbing pain. McKenzie lay very still. If she could become flat enough, the agony lightning its way through her head would miss her. She held her breath, pressing down into the bedding. Lying still did help, some. But then she realized she was in a bed, cool sheets tucked in around her, and she struggled to open her eyes. Her lids wouldn’t cooperate. Something heavy sat on her hands, refusing to let them go free. Panic sliced through her. Tied down. She was tied down. Did they doubt her sanity?
Her throat constricted as she tried to cry out, and nothing issued forth. Like a nightmare, she could not call for help or run. She could do nothing but lie passively while the evil thing approached. McKenzie thrashed. The cords on her neck pulsed with her silent scream. Pain answered, stabbing through her with such intensity that she saw flashing stars through her darkened lids, just before she sank back into oblivion.
She took shreds of consciousness with her this time, dreaming. She was wiping up the kitchen floor, crying, her tears washing across her face like a curtain of rain. She’d wrapped Cody in his blanket, his body cold and stiff, her first realization that there was no hope for him. She couldn’t carry him into the backyard, she had to drag him on the blanket, then stand in the mist of early evening with rain just beginning to gather like a breath of heavy fog, and dig a hole for him.
When she was done, she stood over the hole and gazed down at the still form. He seemed so alone and abandoned, like some poor animal thrown by the side of the road, not a pet who’d been loved and cherished. Not someone who’d slept on her sneakered feet while she read or did homework. Not a creature that had ever romped and chased Frisbees or the neighboring cats. Not a companion that had ever been warm and golden and vital.
Now he was something dead. Alone.
Cody had always hated being alone. She stood in the drizzle, thinking it would soon be raining in earnest. She stripped off her T-shirt, spattered with blood and soaked with her sweat, and dropped it into the hole with him. Like the time she’d had to board him for a weekend while she took a trip with Jack, and the vet had had her bring a worn shirt, so the pup would have her smell to comfort him. It was all she could give him now, and it wasn’t nearly enough.
The shirt drifted down to settle over the corpse and then, suddenly, it billowed up. Up and up and out of the hole and about her face so that she couldn’t see. Couldn’t see and she dropped the spade handle and clawed at it as it wrapped itself tightly about her head and face—she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe!
Her scream tore her free.
Cold air. It whisked over her. McKenzie felt it rousing her. She put a hand out, felt a metal railing, but could move her arm little beyond that. A soft, cotton tentacle wrapped her wrist. The other arm was shackled by a like tentacle and an IV rigging. Mac made herself lie very still, fighting the panic of being tied down.
The privacy curtains surrounding her bed were a faded buttercup yellow. She pried her eyes open as they wavered, and a fresh draft of air came between them. She saw a man standing there, quietly, watching her.
She thought she should have been afraid of him, but she wasn’t. Perhaps she had become so afraid that she had moved beyond it into a kind of numbness. There was something about the way he stood that made her think he didn’t know she was awake, and didn’t want to disturb her. McKenzie struggled to sit up in the bed. Her hair trailed across her forehead and she found it difficult to focus.
He noticed her then. Softly, he asked, “Would you like a drink of water?”
Her voice, so dry. It rasped out of her throat. Water sounded heavenly. She must have said so, because he was there, holding a cup with a bent straw for her. He brushed the hair from her face. The water, tepid and too little of it, slid down her throat.
She lay back. “Thank you.” The image of him split apart, slid back together, split apart fuzzily again. She closed her eyes as the effort to keep him in focus made her ill.
She opened her eyes. The man stood there, patiently, understanding in his soft brown gaze.
“Can you tell me what happened? Who did this to you?”
Her mouth twisted. “Where am I?”
“You’re at Mount Mercy.”
The neighborhood hospital. It had withstood both the 1933 and 1994 earthquakes. The psychiatric ward here was infamous. Was that where she was? “Mount Mercy?” she repeated.
“That’s right. You were hurt this evening. Actually, it’s almost closer to say yesterday.” His brown eyes watched her, coaxing. Warm eyes, like melting caramels.
“My father....” McKenzie felt herself drift. She caught hold of the sound of her words. She had forgotten. Guilt stabbed at her, sharpening her wits. “Where is he?”
“He’s in ICU. He’s going to be okay, they told me.”
Intensive care. Her father was in intensive care. Why didn’t they have them together so she could see what was happening to him?
Her mind stumbled. It throbbed with flashes of memory, incomplete, strained. Another elderly gentleman on a gurney, a man of color. Jack’s foot upon her throat. His boot pinioning her hand to the floor. His anger. No, not anger, rage. Raw, unadulterated rage. Bloodied hands.
She wasn’t safe. Jack would come. She flexed her wrists. “Don’t leave me like this. I’m not safe here.”
“Can you tell me what happened?” her visitor asked gently.
“Sometimes that helps.”
He waited patiently, almost religiously, for her reply. She wondered if he was one of the chaplains on staff. At one time, the entire staff of the hospital had been clergy. She knew that number had tailed off, over the years. She remembered visiting her friend Kim from the fourth grade after a tonsillectomy. Her visitor now had the same quiet mannerisms as the padre who’d com
e in while they were giggling. He’d waited solemnly to inquire how the patient was doing, and then given all the girls popsicles in celebration.
Her throat ached abominably, as though in sympathy for that long ago operation. What she wouldn’t give for a popsicle now. A popsicle, far, far from here.
Urgent to make him understand her danger, she licked her lips, her throat still parched. “I left my husband in Seattle. He came after me.” Her throat closed. She made a noise. He reacted as though knowing she was about to break down, putting a tissue in her hand. He folded her fingers about it. It was useless with the restraints. She sniffled unsuccessfully. “You’ve got to let me go! I can’t stay here! I haven’t done anything. Please let me go.”
“You’re not going anywhere like that,” he answered. He reached out, touched her scalp. “Who did this to you?”
“Jack.” She crumpled the tissue into a tight, damp wad. Her breath knotted in her chest. “He said he’d never let me leave.”
An expression of profound disappointment swept the man’s face. “He attacked you at your father’s house?”
“Yes. We tried ... we tried to stop him ...” Her father, moving in concert, trying to shield her as he’d never done in their past. She squeezed shut her eyelids.
As if sensing her extreme emotion, he put a hand on her shoulder. The hospital gown slid a little under his grip and she could feel his fingers on the curve of her neck. Warm, solid, reassuring. Her initial reaction to flinch away from his touch calmed. He radiated reassurance.
“You’re safe. There are security guards in the hallways. You’ll be fine.”
“But if he comes back—”
“He won’t. Not here. It’ll be all right.”
In shame, Mac turned her face away. If she said anything else, tried to explain the cold intuition which racked her, he would think her crazy. If he did not already. If that was not why they had tied her down. She had not let the sleeping dog lie. She had awakened the furies. “I tried everything,” she found herself saying. “Nothing was good enough.”
He squeezed her shoulder. “It wasn’t you. Now rest.” He left, the lingering warmth of his touch still upon her shoulder long after the curtains had fallen into place behind him. She closed her eyes again. She fell into an uneasy sleep, a dream like an old Star Wars clip, where everyone but her wore shielded helmets, their faces blank reflectors, nothing of humanity about them. They stared at her.
Chapter 8
It was clearly past dawn when he returned from his nocturnal wanderings and slipped into bed. He had nowhere else to go, in the mornings, but home. Watching the steady stream of traffic with sly amusement, like ants pouring out of a mound, the stalker took side streets and alleys. The paper was waiting on the porch stoop when he locked the car at the curb. He picked it up to bring in with him. It was a personal triumph that, as the houses in this bedroom neighborhood began to empty, like bowels in the morning, he got to come home.
He did not awaken his bedmate, but he knew she would rouse shortly anyway, for she had a work schedule to keep. He did not mind that she lived different hours than he did, and that all they had were fleeting moments now and again. It was better that way. He lay quietly upon his pillow, watching her face in repose, thinking that was how dead people looked, once the eyes were closed. He did not want to do her, for sex between them was a difficult and ponderous thing—not for her, for she seemed to enjoy any contact with him, but for him. His satiation lay elsewhere, in the night.
Also, he was afraid that, if he touched her, she would know of his terrible struggles, of his fear of the sleeping man. She would be contemptuous of him. He could face almost anything but her contempt.
Her eyelids began to flicker as if she knew someone watched and subconsciously began to rouse. Her hair had been artificially curled, and sleep frizzed it a little. It would carry more sheen and beauty when she combed it later. It hung almost all the way to her shoulders, casually chic, its color natural and lustrous. Her hair was probably her best feature, although her breasts weren’t bad. She’d never had children, so the wear and tear had not stretched and sagged them.
She was already more than half-awake when the alarm went off. She put out a lily-white hand to slap it quiet. Girlishly, she scrubbed her face into her pillow, then looked at him.
“Dudley. Just get in?”
He hated the sound of his name except when she said it. Even inside his brain, it rattled around like a dead thing, beslimed and stupid as only the grave could make it. But she said it, and the name changed. From the Ugly Duckling which had plagued him all his life from kindergarten through high school, it became a swan. He wondered how she did it.
He caught up her hand as she extended it, trying to snake it about him, and held it still. He did not feel particularly like being touched. The scene of the attack, and the later scene at the hospital, still filled his senses. He did not want them dulled or marred by the mundane. He smiled as her fingers went still in his hand, acquiescent. She knew him well.
“You know I worked late.” He kissed the tips, where her acrylic nails crowned them, and she smiled back.
“Kiss me.”
She startled him. “Why?”
“Because.” Her full lips stretched wider. “I like the way your lips taste after you’ve killed someone.”
Because it was an order, not a request, she snapped her hand free from his, grabbed at his hair, and pulled his face across to hers. Her lips were pillowy warm and sensuous, and her tongue tickled inside his mouth, teasingly. He felt the pain of her nails raking across his scalp at the same time their lips met.
It was like an electrical shock, hurtful and intriguing at the same time. He found something awakening in his groin, and before the kiss was finished, he flung his leg over her and pulled her toward him, their thighs meshing, his cock growing harder.
She made a sound of amusement and desire, and pushed against him. She did not ask if he thought of his prey as his hands began to tear her nightgown from her shoulders, and she would not have cared if he told her the girl from the hospital was in his mind’s eye, in the heat of his blood, the stirring of his manhood. He grew unbearably hard with the fire in his blood. Ta-rah-rah-BOOM-ti-ay....
She would not have cared at all.
McKenzie woke up choking as panic surged through her. Blindness drowned her, suffocated her. It had to be an attack. Something covered her head, her face. McKenzie clawed at her head. She couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. “Get it off, get it off!” Her choking voice sounded muffled, as though she had already drowned, and the weight of the ocean lay over her.
“Whoa, whoa! You’re going to rip out your IV!” A squeaky voice sawed at her, scarcely louder than her own, but almost more frightened. Cold, dry hands on her. She could feel them touching her, patting her, helping her sit. The restraints were gone. That fact sank in. She put her hands up, felt something hard and slick covering her face.
“Okay, okay. Sit up slowly. Take a deep breath. It’s over your head, but your nose and mouth are clear. It’s just a helmet. Here now ... take a breath.”
“Who are you? What are you doing?” She still couldn’t see. She started to put a hand back up, and had it caught up, and gently put back at her side.
“Wait a minute. I’ve got to secure the IV.” Noise of something ripping, and then a pressure across her left forearm. “I’m a tech.” It was both cool and sticky. Tape, she realized.
She touched it, felt the lumpy plastic body of the IV shunt inside her elbow, and tubing, now covered with tape. McKenzie struggled to orient herself, to remember, to see. “What are you doing to me?”
“Boy, you had me fooled. You must have been out before.” A male voice, light in its youth, stammering with nervousness. “Okay. Don’t panic. You’re at Mount Mercy. You can’t see because you’re wearing a helmet device for testing, but you will in a minute when I start the program. I told you this before, thought you were talking to me. I thought you were wide awake.” A
boyish voice. Flat tones despite the worry she thought must be genuine. “First time this has ever happened to me. I thought the other techs were kidding when they said it had happened to them. You must have been unconscious. I’m supposed to be testing you.”
McKenzie repeated. “I’m still in the hospital.”
“Yeah. Concussion, probably. I’m going to run a little program. It’ll be projected inside the gear you’re wearing. I’ve got to put some gloves on you first—”
He caught up her hands. She fought the impulse to pull back. Material tugged across her knuckles, fit bulkily about her fingers. Gloves, just as he’d said. She thought she could feel cables trailing from them, but that just might be the IV tubing against her skin. McKenzie cleared her throat. It hurt. Her breath rattled and rasped around inside of her. She coughed, once, harshly, and her windpipe felt raw.
Death Watch Page 9