The Jigsaw Man (13 page)

prey ready to tuck their wings and swoop in for the

kill.

Fuck, Fuck, FUCK!
N o w what was I supposed to do?

"Fire? Hey, what are you guys talkin' about?"

It was Red Beard butting into the conversation, tak¬

ing a break from cramming whole sausages into his cav¬

ernous mouth, unknowingly saving my ass with his

question. He gave me an excuse to break eye contact

with Drake and forced Dr. Marshall to answer him.

I was so relieved I could have kissed him. Instead, I

reached for the pancakes and syrup again, staring back

down at my plate while Dr. Marshall explained to the

table how there'd been a minor electrical glitch this

m o r n i n g that had triggered a fire warning sensor on

their security panel. Drake had investigated, naturally,

but there'd been no cause for alarm. I risked a quick

glance around, and only Red Beard and Wheels looked

surprised by the news. Obviously only Bill's room and

mine had been checked.

"Wow," Red Beard gasped. "Good t h i n g it was only a

false alarm. A fire in a j o i n t like this could do millions

of dollars' worth of damage. Trust me, when I was in

the department, we used to see a lot of nasty ones. A

fire here would put up a hell of a fight."

Red's admission that he used to be a fireman was

enough of a revelation to everyone present, and the focus

of the conversation was turned away from me and onto

Red Beard, who thoroughly enjoyed the attention. He

explained how he'd been a full-time firefighter in N i a g

ara Falls, N Y , for thirteen years before he'd lost his leg in

a warehouse fire. The roof had collapsed, crushing his

left leg beneath a steel girder and tons of flaming rubble.

'You weren't
really
a fireman, were you?" Drake asked,

sounding positively shocked.

I almost burst out laughing, hearing the skepticism

in the head of security's voice. He was making the same

stupid prejudiced assumption nearly everyone makes

about the homeless. Drake simply couldn't picture it in

his thick head that Red had ever been anything other

than the desperate loser sitting in front of him today.

He thought—and trust me, he wasn't alone—all home¬

less people were lifelong drunks and fools. Sure, those

types of bunis were around, people so messed up on booze

and drugs they'd paved their own way onto the street,

but in my experience, those types of people were the

minority. Most street folk, like Red Beard, Blue J, and

I, were normal, ordinary, hard-working, productive

members of society before our worlds crashed down on

top of us. Don't get me wrong. We were far from in¬

nocent victims—we all make our own beds—but peo¬

ple like Drake would never understand that
people like

us
were exactly the same
as people like him.

"Sure I was," Red Beard shot back, his angry tone

making it clear he was frustrated by the same tired

prejudices I'd j u s t been t h i n k i n g about. "I can prove it,

too. H e r e , take a look at t h i s — "

Red pulled up his left sleeve and showed us a large

colorful tattoo that was inked onto his bicep muscle.

His arm was covered with tattoos but this particular

one was of a bright red fireman's helmet, with a yellow

ladder and an axe crisscrossing in front of it. The words

N . F .
S T A T I O N # 5
were boldly written below.

"She's a beauty, huh, Drake?" Red Beard taunted,

pride evident in his defiant voice. "Our whole shift went

out, got right shit-faced, and decided to get these.

Never regretted it for a minute."

Drake glared at the tattoo for a few seconds, then got

up and left the table without saying a word. Contented

smiles spread across all our faces, and Red Beard winked

at me as if to say, That'll teach the bastard to have a

little respect.

Right on, brother,
I winked back.
Right on!

The rest of the day was a breeze compared to the "un¬

der the microscope" treatment I'd suffered through at

breakfast. Our surgeries were all scheduled for tomor¬

row m o r n i n g — m i n e was penciled in for 10:00
A . M .
in

operating room #2—but before we could go under the

knife, we had to pass our pre-op physicals. Records

were made of our blood type, heart rate, blood pres¬

sure, and temperature. They collected blood, urine, and

stool samples, checked our vision, took X-rays, and

brought out another stack of forms that needed to be

filled out in triplicate, again. They asked about aller¬

gies, childhood illnesses, sexual diseases, and any other

relevant health issues—past or present—that Dr. Mar¬

shall needed to know about. It was all bullshit, really.

They'd done their background checks on all four of us,

and I was willing to bet they already knew the answer

to every single question they asked before we'd even been

approached. Still, I guess it didn't hurt to double check

to make sure their records were up to date and correct.

All the running around managed to take up the entire

morning, and we didn't sit down to lunch until 1:15
P.M.

Thankfully, Drake and Dr. Marshall didn't join us so it

was nice and peaceful. After we'd eaten, we had the rest

of the afternoon to ourselves. The other guys took ad¬

vantage of the break to catch up on a little shut-eye. Not

wanting to look out of place, and still trying to avoid

Drake, I also went to my room and hid until supper.

Even supper was rolling along without incident, ev¬

eryone making small talk and stuffing their faces until

Bill Smith silenced the room by asking, "So, any chance

we can pop up and visit your son tonight, Doc?"

The surgeon froze in place with his fork halfway to

his mouth, and Drake nearly swallowed his, he was so

caught off guard. Wheels and Red Beard thought Bill's

idea was marvelous, so I quickly chimed in my two cents'

worth of approval, too. They were serious, but I j u s t

wanted to see how Dr. Marshall was going to get him¬

self out of this predicament.

"There's a small problem, I'm afraid," he began. "To

night's not a good night to visit Andrew. I was up seeing

him earlier, and he isn't feeling very well. He might j u s t

be nervous about tomorrow, but let's give him the beneft of the doubt. Let's get through our surgeries, guys,

and then you'll all have time to get to know Andrew.

Fair enough?"

Small problem, my ass. Not a good night to visit him, on

account he doesn't even exist!

Still, I had to admit that Dr. Marshall sounded sin¬

cere. He either believed what he was saying, or he was

an incredible liar. No one at the table doubted his sin¬

cerity. Even I did a double take when I saw the pain on

his face when he'd said Andrew wasn't feeling well. Maybe

it was
me
that was crazy here. Maybe, somehow, I had

this all twisted around and was mistaken about the

doctor. Man, I was confused.

Then confront him. Do know, Mike. Stop fucking around

playing secret agent and just flat out ask him about what you

saw.

I was tempted to do j u s t that, and I think I would

have if I hadn't noticed the way Dr. Marshall and Drake

kept giving poor Bill Smith death stares. They'd glare

over at him, then nod slightly to each other as if shar¬

ing some secret message. They thought they had their

man. Bill had inadvertently asked about meeting An¬

drew and the chief of security was on him like a blood¬

hound on a fresh scent. To Drake, Bill's harmless remark

was the slip of the tongue he'd been waiting for all day.

Dr. Marshall remained civil but Drake was practi¬

cally drooling beside him, grinning like the village id¬

iot, t h i n k i n g he'd discovered the nighttime wanderer.

Seeing that deranged look on his face was more than

enough" to make me thank my lucky stars I'd kept my

big mouth shut.

C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N

We went to bed early, all of us needing to rest up for

our operations in the morning. Unfortunately, resting

was a luxury I couldn't afford. Sprawled on my t o o comfortable bed, I tossed and turned until after mid¬

night, trying to decide if I should bolt for h o m e or not.

Something deep inside me was whispering I should

run before it was too late, but t h i n k i n g about that big

chunk of cash kept giving me a reason to stay. Two

million reasons, actually, and as weird as things seemed

around here at times, I didn't really have any concrete

evidence Dr. Marshall was up to anything nefarious.

Truth be told, he'd treated me with n o t h i n g but kind¬

ness and respect since I'd arrived. Could I be overre¬

acting?

It was a fair question, one I didn't have an answer

for—and never would if I j u s t lay here in bed doing

nothing. Time was running out. They were going to cut

my arm off in less than ten hours. I had to do
something,

for Christ's sake!

I shot out of bed and put my clothes back on. Rea¬

sonably sure the majority of people here at the medical

center were in their beds, I was going out on the prowl

again. I had no idea where to look, or even what I should

look for, but one way or another I was determined to

find out exactly what Dr. Marshall was up to.

Find bis office, that's the place to start.

My hand was reaching for the doorknob when I heard

a noise outside in the hallway. I froze. There it was again,

and this time I recognized it for what it was—a cough.

N o t a big hacking cough, j u s t someone clearing their

throat, but it was enough to send a chill down my

spine.

There wasn't one of those tiny glass peepholes in my

door, so as quietly as I could, I knelt down on all fours

and pressed the right side of my face against the floor.

Sure enough, just on the other side of my door, I could

see two thick black rubber soles, and a large shadow on

the hall carpet.

That bastard!

Drake had placed a guard outside my room. I was

sure he thought it had been Bill Smith messing around

in room 3 0 1 , but obviously he wasn't taking any chances.

There would be a guard outside of Bill's room, t o o . Drake

was making sure no one was going anywhere tonight. I

had to give him credit. He was smarter than he looked.

W h a t was I going to do now?

The window?

It was the only other exit from the room, and al¬

though I knew I was on the third floor of the building,

I walked over to check it anyway. The moon was out t o

night, but most of it was hidden behind a bank of dark

clouds. It was too dark for me to see much of anything

beyond the glass, save for my shadowy reflection star¬

ing back at m e , but I didn't need to see to know the

ground was way too far below me to consider climbing

or j u m p i n g down. I was trapped in this room, whether

I liked it or not.

The window itself was made up of three separate

pieces of glass, with the biggest pane in the center and

two smaller sections on either side that could be

cranked out to let in some air.

Feeling slightly claustrophobic all of a sudden, I did

j u s t that, spinning the little brass hand crank clock¬

wise to open up the left-hand panel. I took several deep

breaths of the cool night air to calm down, and was about

to close the window when I spotted something clinging

to the outside of the wall a few feet over to my left. I

cranked the window fully open, quietly removed the

bug screen, and stuck my head outside to get a better

look.

A surge of adrenaline shot through me when I real¬

ized it was a trellis covered in thick green foliage. I

might be able to use this to climb down to the ground,

and make my escape. Or up, to climb onto t h e —

Roof,
Fd been thinking, but my thought process was

permanently interrupted when I tilted my head to gaze

skyward. The side panel of the window in the room di¬

rectly above my head was cranked open j u s t as mine

was. If I wanted to, I could climb the trellis, re-enter

the medical center one floor u p , and carry on with my

plans to search around this castle of secrets.

W h a t had Dr. Marshall said was on the fourth floor?

Nothing but storage space and room for future expansion.

That meant no one would be up there. I could hit any

of the stairwells, search anywhere I wanted as long as I

was quiet and extra careful, then retrace my steps back

into my room, hopefully without anyone knowing I'd

ever left.

Would the trellis hold me? I could picture myself

reaching out, hearing it crack and break apart in my

h a n d s , then taking the slow-motion drop to land on my

back on some sharp unseen rock far below. N o t a nice

thought. Maybe I should j u s t go back to bed and get