Resuscitation (3 page)

“I don’t have a choice, Genevieve.”

“You…
do
have a choice. You can cut these damned straps…give me my clothes…and let me go.”

“I’m afraid we’re beyond the point of no return.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“The wheels of fate are already in motion.”

This was now a game of riddles. “What did you do to me…while I was unconscious?”

“I undressed you and covered you with a sheet.”

“You raped me, didn’t you? Videotaped yourself…fucking me.”

“I’m not a rapist.”

“Then why am I naked?”

“It’s complicated.”

“You’re a fucking liar!”

“If I
had
raped you, you’d know it. Wouldn’t you sense that your body was violated?”

“I can’t even see straight. How would I know if you—?”

“Your anger is only going to make it more difficult.”

Genevieve began to sob. “
Please
…don’t hurt me.
Please
let me go.”

He stood up and walked to the corner of the room. Several minutes later, Julian returned to her bedside wheeling an LCD screen mounted on a steel pole with tripod legs and squeaky wheels.

“Is that a…heart monitor?” she asked.

He sat on the corner of the bed and gently stroked her arm. “Have you ever heard the quote, ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’?”

She shook her head.

“Spock said that in one of the
Star Trek
movies. But he plagiarized. Aristotle, in a much more complex and philosophical way, said basically the same thing thousands of years ago.”

“What does Spock’s quote have to do with anything?”

“Unfortunately, Genevieve, you represent the few.”

Sami Rizzo raised her wine glass and motioned toward Alberto Diaz. “To you, my dear.”

He returned the gesture and gently clicked his glass of non-alcoholic beer against Sami’s glass of Merlot. “I can’t believe we’ve been a couple for two years.”

She reached across the table and laid her hand on top of his. “Any regrets?”

“Only that I should have fessed up a long time ago. We should be celebrating our fourth year together.”

“It’s all about timing. And yours was perfect. Any sooner and I wouldn’t have been ready for more than friendship.”

“I do wish I could toast you with a glass of wine,” he said.

“I’m afraid that you and alcohol will never be friends again.”

“Booze and I never
were
friends.”

Considering what he was about to tell her, Al wished he had a stiff drink in front of him. Since Sami’s brush with death at the hands of Simon, the serial killer who held her hostage in his Room of Redemption with the intention of crucifying her like he’d done to four other women, Al and she had agreed never to speak of Simon again.

But in spite of their efforts to manage the residual shockwaves, Sami still suffered from violent nightmares. Although the frequency of these graphic and terrifying dreams had decreased considerably—thanks to a solid year of intense therapy—not a week passed without Sami bolting upright in the middle of the night, dripping cold sweat, and shaking uncontrollably. She had shared these episodes with Al many times. The memory of the breathlessness she felt as she hung on that cross, and how it made her heart pound out of her chest. Al wondered how many times she had felt the cold steel piercing her wrists. How often were her dreams so real that she was sure someone was driving spikes into her feet? After over one hundred sessions of therapy, she still had a long way to go.

For several days now, Al felt that he should break their pact and ask Sami if she’d heard the news. It was all over the newspapers and on every TV station, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about it. It
was
possible that her crazy schedule shielded her from current events. She
was
taking four difficult classes at San Diego University, tending to her daughter, and spending some time with her mother, who of late had not been feeling well. But this was a news item that would most certainly interest Sami.

“Have you been watching the news lately?” Al asked.

“And when would I find time to do that? I barely have time to pee. No one knows that more than my terribly neglected lover.”

He didn’t need to be reminded. They hadn’t had sex in…what was it now, a month, six weeks? And as much as Al loved Sami, adored her, this platonic aspect of their relationship was starting to take its toll. Angelina was sound asleep, rarely known to awaken in the middle of the night, and considering that today they celebrated their second anniversary, he hoped the evening would end with some quality lovemaking.

“Simon refused an appeal,” Al blurted. “Some nonsense about wanting to appeal to a higher power.”

Sami fixed her stare on Al but didn’t say a word.

“It usually takes years to execute a murderer, but once Simon refused an appeal, Judge Carter, a woman with bigger balls than a gorilla, had no problem pushing the law to its limits. No mercy from her.”

“Death by lethal injection?” Sami asked.

Al nodded.

She processed his announcement for a few minutes. “That’s too damned merciful. I wanted the bastard to rot in jail for the rest of his perverted life.”

“It might take awhile before they do him in.”

“One can only hope.”

“Sorry I broke our agreement, but—”

“I’m glad you told me.”

Sami excused herself, went into the kitchen, returned with two steaming hot dinner plates, and set them on the table.

“Looks wonderful,” he said. He tasted a forkful of the sea bass and made a yummy sound. “You kept your promise.”

“What promise is that?”

“In two short years you’ve gone from frozen pizzas and Chinese takeout to wonderful home-cooked meals. I can’t imagine how you manage things with such a crazy schedule.”

“Love can make a woman do a lot of things she didn’t think she could do.”

“You’re going to make me blush.”

“You’re blushing because I love my daughter?” Sami could barely suppress her laugh.

He laughed. “I’m glad your workload hasn’t diluted your sense of humor.”

“Hey, if I lost my sense of humor, you’d be in a heap of shit.”

They ate dinner, sipped their drinks, and engaged in small talk. Sami served dessert—New York–style cheesecake with fresh strawberries.

“Do you miss detective work?” he asked.

The question caught her off guard. “I get my fix through you.”

“Is a fix enough? What I mean is, now that you’ve been away from homicide for a couple of years, do you still feel as strongly about becoming a social worker?”

“My view of social work has been somewhat tainted. There’s quite a difference between my idealistic image and the real world. Two of my professors have been more than blunt about some of the challenges social workers face. And to be honest, I’m not totally positive I can deal with the political BS.”

“Just to be the devil’s advocate,” he said, “don’t you have to deal with politics no matter where you work?”

“True, but I paid my dues as a detective and learned how to work the system. With social work, it’s uncharted water.”

Al helped Sami clean the table and load the dishes in the dishwasher. When they finished, he pulled her toward him and gave her a firm hug. “This is a bit cliché, but you really light up my life.”

“Don’t ever apologize for saying something sweet.”

He kissed her softly on the lips and handed her a beautifully wrapped present. “Happy anniversary, Sweetheart.”

She looked at it for a moment and slowly peeled the paper away. Inside the velvet box she found a diamond-studded heart on a gold chain. “It’s beautiful. Thank you so much.” She looked at the floor and shook her head. “Um, I didn’t get you—”

“Let’s go to bed and make love all night long.”

“That’s a wonderful idea.”

Genevieve watched Julian adjust the IV, increasing its flow. She tried desperately to fight, but with her arms and legs securely bound to the bed, there was little she could do. Moments after her fruitless struggle, she felt dizzy and nauseous. Her body and mind seemed suspended in a barely conscious twilight state. Julian carefully placed the heart monitor electrodes, ironically, at places that might be a lover’s point of caress, four on her bare chest, one on each wrist, one on each shoulder, and one on each ankle. He turned on the heart monitor, and Genevieve, eyes fighting to stay open, could see the rhythm of her heart displayed across the LCD screen. She wasn’t sure what a normal rhythm looked like, but she could barely see that her pulse rate was ninety-seven beats a minute.

Dressed in green hospital scrubs, Julian turned on the video camera and stood at the edge of the bed beside a small table crowded with various surgical instruments. He treasured these brilliantly crafted tools. To some, they were merely cold steel. But to a surgeon, they had sacred meaning. He examined each one, making certain he had everything he needed. He checked Genevieve to be sure that the anesthesia rendered her completely unconscious. Once that was confirmed, he selected a scalpel and stood frozen for a moment over her naked body, poised to make the critical first incision.

He realized that he faced certain limitations. If he were in a hospital surgery room, he’d be working with other surgeons, an anesthesiologist, several nurses, and a surgical technician. But he stood alone. And his loft, of course, was not a sterile environment. On the other hand, infection was not an issue he needed to be concerned about because none of his subjects would survive the experiments.

From this moment forward, everything Julian held sacred about his life, career, his relationship with family and friends, and his conception of the Hippocratic Oath would forever change. Once he found the courage to press the scalpel against her sternum, he could never go back.

He forced himself to focus on the most important goal of the research: global recognition. He longed to be validated as a pioneer among surgeons.

Looking at her exquisitely proportioned body, its total vulnerability, the soft curves from shoulder to breasts to hips, her perfectly manicured Brazilian wax, he retracted the scalpel. As much as it violated every ounce of reason remaining in his conflicted mind, he wanted her. Oh, how he wanted her. If he took her, he had only his conscience to deal with.

He hadn’t noticed the resemblance until now, but Genevieve reminded him of a girl he had dated in college. Well, it could hardly be called “dating.” She had been a senior and he a sophomore. Eva something or other. A foreign student from Iceland. He could never pronounce her last name. In fact, no one could pronounce it. It was as long as a city block.

Until he had met Eva, a wild-eyed party girl with natural platinum hair and the shapeliest ass he had ever seen, Julian never realized that he could derive so much pleasure from bondage. Before Eva, he’d had a dim view of anything kinky, particularly bondage, and felt that anyone who found twisted sex enjoyable should be locked in a padded cell.

One day, Eva changed all of that when he went to her apartment and found her lying in bed with both wrists tied to the brass headboard, securely held by satin strips of fabric. To this day, he had no idea how she had bound herself without assistance. He never asked. She never told.

“Fuck me,” she had said. “Fuck me hard.”

Her invitation, so simple yet so direct, sent his desire to levels he’d never thought possible. Even now, those words were like a magical symphony playing in his head. He could never remember feeling so aroused. It was as if he overdosed on some exotic aphrodisiac. Excited beyond anything he had ever experienced, Julian ravaged her and savored every exquisite minute of it. And Eva, moaning like a wounded cat, must have loved it as well. So pleasurable was the experience, the mere thought that he could take her any way he wanted, that he had complete control over her, that he could be totally selfish and pleasure only himself if he chose, evoked a fear that he might never truly enjoy traditional sex again.

But there was more to the story. The whole time he penetrated her, with each thrust, he spoke these words in his mind: “This-is-for-you-Rebecca. This-is-for-you-Marianne.” It was like a silent triumph, as if he were getting even.

Forcing his thoughts to the present, Julian somehow found the strength to overcome temptation. He pressed the scalpel against Genevieve’s breastbone and made the incision. Then, he reached for the circular saw as he had so many times in his career while performing legitimate surgery. Halfway through her sternum, he had to set down the saw. Overwhelmed with nausea, he tried to make it to the bathroom but threw up all over the floor. He hadn’t expected such a reaction. It was as if he were a surgical intern witnessing his first open heart procedure. How many chests had he cut open? More than he could remember. How many hearts had he held in his hand? But this was different. Concerned that she could bleed to death, he found the strength to rush back to the bed.

This is more difficult than I thought
.

He finished cutting through her sternum, carefully placed the rib spreaders into her chest, and cranked her ribcage open. Julian then cut her femoral vein high on her thigh, and inserted a catheter into the vessel. Then, he gently inched it forward to her heart. When he positioned it properly, he injected a mixture of epinephrine and potassium chloride into the IV and introduced a high-frequency electrical impulse through the catheter. After several minutes, her heart went into a sporadic arrhythmia, and shortly afterwards, she converted to full atrial fibrillation.