The Empty (13 page)

Donald offered a barely perceptible grin. “We know precisely what horrors the castaway faced, don’t we, Arec?”

A grunt. A tug. No verbal response.

Donald slid another page onto the end table and savored his tea. This story from the late seventeen hundreds was intriguing. The sole survivor of a shipwrecked crew on an uncharted isle in the Indian Ocean, Gavin Madigan had been emaciated, weighing fewer than ninety pounds at the time of his rescue. His hair had fallen out and most of his finger and toenails had detached from his digits. According to the report, his eyes had been sunken and hollow, the dark circles beneath a stark contrast to the pale blue tint of his skin. The man had strange scars over most of his body. It had taken nearly two months for Madigan to offer coherent speech, and even then, the tale he told was quite suspect.

“Do you feel no pity for this man, Arec? Do you not recognize the great wrong visited upon him and his companions?”

There was a guttural rumble. “Your stories are monotonous, Dolnaraq.”

Donald shrugged.

Arec responded with a snarl and a curse. “My father will kill you for this.” There was venom in the voice, a cool, seething hatred.

Donald sipped off the remainder of his Earl Gray, placed the last few pages of the report face up on the end table, and rose with a subtle moan. He was feeling depleted but shrugged it off. Crossing the small but elegant living room, he stared out through the eastern window toward the tree line that edged his property. The sun was yet in hiding, but the first hint of a morning glowed tentatively, inching over the vast green expanse. Donald bent slightly, releasing the latch, and then gave a subtle tug. The window slid open with a whispered creak. The morning air danced over his features as he cocked his head back and inhaled deeply. He loved the smell of the morning dew on the New England breeze. He could smell the faint wisp of salt water on the air. Perhaps after he’d concluded the day’s lectures he’d find his way down to the beach.

Turning only slightly, he inclined his head toward Arec. “It was your father that contacted me. This process, this detention is at his request.”

There was a curse, a roar of protest, a violent tugging at the leather restraints. “Liar! My father is like me.”

“Yes, but he is also intelligent and understands the realities of this modern world. He recognizes the need for change.”

Arec cursed and spit.

Donald admired the creeping light upon the treetops. There was a subtle buzz at his hip and he slid his slender hand into his front pocket to withdraw his BlackBerry. “Good morning. Donald Baker here.”

The voice was youthful but dry. “Dr. Baker, it’s Shane Daws.”

“Shane Daws?” The name was familiar, but Donald couldn’t quite place the voice.

“Yeah, Doc. Paris three summers ago. There were…issues. An apartment building, some deaths.”

Donald nodded. Of course. Gisele’s young man. The affair had ended horribly, tragically even, as nearly all such affairs should. But the seemingly flighty young Daws had shown a peculiar maturity through it all. At the time it had seemed the young man might one day prove useful, though now, Donald couldn’t quite fathom why he had thought this. “Yes, I remember. Mr. Daws, you do realize it’s not yet dawn.”

“Yeah, Doc. I’m in Vegas. It’s not three a.m. here. But you’ll want to hear this.”

Donald’s wife Elena entered the room, tying her blue bathrobe as she glanced at Arec, who sat tethered to a heavy wooden chair—thick, weighty, tall-backed, the finish worn thin in many spots. Arec grunted and growled, his ears lying back against his skull with a subtle twitch.

Donald held up one finger, indicating Elena should wait before asking who had called. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked into the phone.

“It looks like we have a rogue in Vegas.”

“How can you be certain?” Donald moved across the room to his roll-top desk where a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen sat neatly beside one another on the otherwise bare surface.

“By my count, there’ve been three deaths. The cops haven’t put anything together, but they don’t know what I know.”

Donald allowed a low rumble to escape his lips. These people—the groupies, the hangers-on—they always thought they knew so much. But they tended to jumble fantasy with reality. They made wild suppositions, conceived theories and radical assumptions. It often took hours to get to the truth of a matter. “Details, Mr. Daws, details. Everything you know. No guesswork. Simply report what has happened.”

Over the next thirty minutes Donald grilled Shane Daws, asking and then restating each question, rewording the responses, looking for anything that would prove the young man wrong—anything that could point to another possibility. But Shane’s information was solid, his conclusions sound.

“There’s one more thing,” said Shane. “The rogue was admitted into the hospital tonight.”

“The reyaqc, what is his condition?” Donald glanced to Elena who now sat on the deep leather couch, her eyes narrow, the corners of her mouth down-turned.

“He was brought into the UMC ER, I don’t know, maybe a couple of hours ago. He attacked an attending EMT, infused from him, and then fled the hospital naked.”

“How many witnesses to the attack?”

“Hospital staff. I don’t think anyone has a clue what really happened.”

“Was the reyaqc empty?”

“I don’t think so. The only unusual characteristics reported were the eyes and the palms.”

“Was he a molt?”

“I don’t know, Doc.”

Donald marched toward the window, gazing out over the now sunbathed tree line. “And the EMT? His condition?”

“In and out of a coma. They haven’t figured out if he’s going to make it.”

Donald inhaled deeply of the morning air, closed his eyes, and then turned to face his wife. “I suppose I’ll be on my way.”

Donald sensed a slight pause before Shane Daws spoke. “Listen, Doc. You’re in Boston, three time zones away. I’ll follow up on things out here and keep you in the loop.”

Donald snorted. “I’ll call you with my flight plan. Meet me at the hospital emergency room one hour after my arrival.”

“Um…okay, Doc. I didn’t mean to…”

Donald disconnected before Shane could finish his sentence. He found Elena staring at him, her brown eyes contemplative, sad. She glanced at the still-struggling Arec and then back to her husband. “You can’t save them all, honey. No matter how you try.”

Donald grunted as he moved toward the bedroom. “Book me on the first available flight to Las Vegas. I may be several days. Arrange for three to attend me. Call the university. Inform them that I’ll be out for the remainder of the week, possibly beyond.” He paused, glancing at his still-struggling captive. “Olcott should tend to this one in my absence.”

Elena stared at her husband’s narrow back and sagging shoulders as he disappeared into their bedroom.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Dr. Julia Chambers cursed the man she’d married, shoved the still vibrating
iPhone
into her lab coat pocket, and gazed into the detective’s pale eyes. It would have been nice if someone had the decency to tell her she was entering the worst week of her life.

Julia wouldn’t have thought the man a detective. He just didn’t fit the well-established pop cultural mold. Steve Glenn was neither noir rustic nor Hollywood handsome. If anything, his most defining characteristic was that he was amazingly nondescript. His was the face that one could see in a cafeteria or pass in the hallway on a daily basis and yet never remember from one encounter to the next. His hair was a business cut. His build was average, not thin, but no paunch. His lips were narrow, his face unlined. His sun-deprived skin seemed stark in comparison to Julia’s rich dark chocolate variety. How could even a Caucasian live in the desert and remain that pale? Even the tie he wore over his white business shirt—ironed but not so crisp as to draw attention—was an uninspired solid navy.

“Do you need to take that call?” he asked while jotting a note in his small spiral-bound notebook.

Julia fingered the phone in her pocket. “No, um, it was just my husband.”

“It’s very late. If he’s calling at this time, it might be important. I can wait if you need to take the call.”

Julia shook her head. “Trust me. Anything he has to say can’t be important.”

Detective Glenn nodded his understanding. The truth was, he didn’t understand. No one did—least of all Julia. “I’m told you know the victim personally. Something about Monopoly.”

Julia allowed a micro-smile. “Monopoly Mondays. We have a weekly game.”

“He’s an Emergency Medical Technician. Is it common for physicians to become friends with EMTs?”

What an asinine question.

“Jimmy’s a friend of the family. We’ve known each other for years.”

Glenn scribbled something on his little green pad and then flipped over to the next page. “The man who attacked Mr. Harrison, he was a patient?”

“Yes, a John Doe found lying in the middle of the street. Jimmy and his partner brought him in.”

“His condition at the time?”

Julia closed her eyes, attempted to focus. The events of the past day—Charles, Jimmy, this pandemonium. She forced herself to remain calm, unemotional. She was a professional. This was important. There’d be time for a mildly cataclysmic meltdown later. “He was a male, mid-twenties. Found unconscious. Vitals, all over the board. We had trouble getting accurate readings. His B.P. was erratic. Temperature, only 95.2. The patient experienced ventricular fibrillation. Pupils fixed, but not dilated. No color at all to the eyes. Just white. Almost as if he had no irises.”

* * * *

Those eyes.

White, milky, soapy eyes.

Pin-prick pupils.

Staring. Staring.

* * * *

“Anything else you can remember about the man?”

“Um, yes. He was naked. They found him naked.”

“I’m told you pronounced him dead.”

* * * *

Julia tilts the man’s head, checks the airway, puts her ear to beside his mouth checking for effective breathing. There is no tidal volume. Arms locked, hands overlaid, she presses on the man’s chest again and then again. The patient’s skin has a strange rubbery feel to it. The temperature is wrong, far too cold for someone who’d been breathing only seconds before.

And those eyes.

She can’t escape those strange pasty eyes, staring sightlessly into her face. Locked. Unmoving. Empty.

* * * *

“Yes, dead. He flat-lined only two or three minutes after arrival.” Julia crossed her arms. Why were her hands shaking? She could handle this. She dealt with life and death situations every waking day.

Glenn flipped another page, scratched his nose, and licked the tip of his ballpoint. “You attempted to revive him.”

* * * *

The minutes click by, time simultaneously becoming no time and all time. It is a non-entity.

Julia’s arms ache, sweat emerges on her brow. She blinks the moisture from her eyes. A nurse, she doesn’t notice which one, dabs the perspiration from her forehead.

Press. Press.

Still the heart monitor offers only a single level tone. The soulless melody of the dead.

Press. Press.

Julia can’t give up. Not yet.

Press. Press.

Those eyes.

Press. Press.

Staring.

Press. Press.

The gray-white of soapy water. No irises. Only the tiniest of pupils.

Press. Press.

Unresponsive. Dead.

Over twenty minutes, now. No response.

* * * *

“Yes, I tried to revive him. We worked on the patient for over twenty minutes, maybe longer.”

“And you were unsuccessful.”

Julia’s phone buzzed. She ignored it. “I pronounced him dead at 12:47 a.m.”

“Do you need to take that call?”

“I’ll worry about the damn phone. You just worry about the investigation.”

Glenn raised his eyebrows at the overly-terse response, a near miss at allowing character to invade his uninspired features. “All right. Next question then. How is it that a man pronounced dead was able to leap from the gurney, attack a healthy EMT, fend off other hospital personnel, and flee the scene without capture?”

* * * *

Julia gazes into the deceased man. She studies the now-lulling lips, the strange eyes, still open, but vacant. Her eyes narrow. The man’s right hand lays face up on the gurney. What is that on the palm, that strange texturing?

Jimmy Harrison moves closer, noticing Julia’s furrowed brow.

Julia runs her fingertips across the palm. Even through her rubber gloves, she can feel a strange uneven quality. She presses, only slightly. There’s something just beneath the surface of the skin. It almost seems prickly.

Jimmy leans closer, his lips curling into a curious twist.

Without warning, the dead man’s arm shoots up, his hand pressing into Jimmy Harrison’s neck. There’s a moist popping sound, almost like that of a pin penetrating a rubber balloon. The startled EMT releases a gurgling croak as his eyes roll back and his tongue extends. The naked man rises, still cradling Jimmy by the back of the neck, his pale, nearly translucent skin gleaming in the harsh lights, his strange eyes focused intently on the struggling man.

Julia lunges forward, grabs the naked man’s arm and pulls. But the man is fierce and quick. Julia is thrown backward, colliding with a nurse, Lisa. They both fall to the floor; the instruments that Lisa carries skitter across the tile.

Shouting for security, Julia scrambles to her feet. Jimmy Harrison flops about the floor as if in seizure. Shedding his I.V. and other apparatus in a flurry of jerks and grunts, the naked man races through the nearest doorway and down the adjacent corridor.

Gone.

* * * *

Inhaling deeply, Julia brushed her short bangs back with both palms. “I don’t know how he did it. Medically, it makes no sense.”