Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle (23 page)

He's attractive, isn't he?
Dr. Benedetti's words kept buzzing in her face like an annoying gnat. She kept trying to focus on her professional relationship with Nick, but she found it difficult to do. They had never been anything more than colleagues, except for once—their third deployment. She still remembered the day; she remembered preparing her office for his arrival, placing their chairs a little closer together than usual but not admitting to herself why. She remembered sitting across from him, looking into those soft brown eyes floating like chestnuts behind his glasses; and she remembered the exact moment when he began to lean toward her—and then he kissed her, and she was surprised to learn that she was not surprised at all. To this very day, whenever Nick sat across from her or stood a little too close, she found herself tensing slightly—anticipating the moment when he might lean toward her again. Every time she felt that way her face grew hot and she hoped he would never notice—but not much got past Nick.

Their relationship lasted only a few days, and then Nick suddenly changed; he never mentioned their relationship again—as though it never happened. It left her feeling confused and frustrated. Most of the time, she wished it had never happened; sometimes she wished it would happen again. Now it was the elephant in the room, the thing from the past that was never really over, the words left unspoken between them that at times they could almost hear.

“It's his eyes,” Benedetti had said. “You have to see them without those glasses.” The words made her angry, and that made her angrier still. Just when she thought she was back in control again, something like this happened—and she felt like a stupid schoolgirl about to lose her seat on the bus.
You can have him,
she thought.
I'm done with bugs
.

Why had she ever let herself get involved with a patient? She told herself that they were only colleagues—that's what made it all right. But as a psychiatrist she should have known better. She had interviewed him for hours; she knew about his drivenness, and his authority issues, and his sense of alienation from the whole human race—but she let her heart go anyway. She should have known better, but at least she knew better now—or did she? Then what was she doing in Baton Rouge? Knowing Nick's past—knowing
their
past—why in the world would she even consider helping him now? She didn't have an answer—at least not one she was willing to admit.

At the DPMU she pulled up to the gate and flashed her credentials at the guard, who waved her past. She headed directly for her office and checked her phone messages; she found one from the Department of Social Services in Baton Rouge.

She dialed the number.

21

“I don't smell anything,” the nurse said. “Stop complaining—you'd think you're the only patient in the hospital.”

“You can't smell it from over there. Come over here, by the window.”

The nurse walked to the window and drew a deep breath through her nose. “I don't smell anything,” she said again.

But she did.

“I'm telling you, something's dead—and I want outta here.”

“Just where do you think you'll go? You know all of Charity's surrounded by water, right up to the second floor. They said they'll come for us—now you just stay put.”

“When? When will they come for us?”

“As soon as they can, that's when. You've been asking me that for three days.”

“They're not coming, are they? That's what I'm smelling—people are dying.”

She stepped closer to his bed. “You lower your voice now—the other patients will hear you. You know what's going on here, Mr. LaFourche; the whole city is flooded, and Charity Hospital is just one little part of it. There are five hundred people here at Charity, and a thousand more at Tulane across the street. They said they'll evacuate all of us, but it takes time.”

“I hear gunshots at night.”

“Did anybody shoot you?”

He didn't answer.

“Then hold your voice down. We don't have enough doctors, and we don't have enough nurses—we're having to make do. We're doing all right here; you'll be fine. I'll be back to look in on you as soon as I can.”

“Somebody's not ‘fine,'” he grumbled. “I can smell it.”

The nurse worked her way down the impossibly crowded hallway; the corridors were jammed with beds and supplies that had been evacuated from the second floor. In twenty years she had never seen the hospital in this condition. The hospital's main power grid had shut down the night of the storm, automatically switching over to emergency generators—but the generators were only enough to maintain emergency lighting and life-support systems, not to power the enormous air-conditioning system. In the afternoons the temperature in the hospital was well over ninety degrees, adding an enormous burden to the weaker patients. Soon the water also overwhelmed the generators, throwing them into complete darkness—and worse, shutting down respirators and infusion pumps. Three patients had already died, and their bodies had to be deposited in a stairwell for later removal.

City officials had promised that they would be evacuated as soon as was humanly possible, but people were losing hope. It was true, what she told Mr. LaFourche—they were just one building in a whole sea of troubles, and there was no telling when rescuers would get around to them. It was still too dangerous for a full evacuation; just the other day, a nurse had tried to leave the hospital and was held up at gunpoint. No wonder no one was coming to help; in the city of New Orleans, it was just not a good time to get shot.

And even when the streets were safe again, where would Charity fall in the pecking order? Tulane would come first, she was sure of that. They had more people to evacuate—and besides, it was a private hospital. That's the way it always was; in this world, people who can't afford to pay just have to wait their turn.

But people were tired of waiting. They were running out of food, water, and medical supplies; infusion pumps were being operated by hand; patients were helping other patients; the scant handful of doctors and nurses were on their last legs; the oppressive heat was sapping them all.

And then there was the smell. With the windows open, when the wind blew the wrong way—

She passed a room and spotted a doctor making a notation on a patient's chart; she waved him out into the hallway.

“Have you smelled it yet?” she asked.

“Of course I have.”

“I think it's coming up from below.”

“So do I.”

“Patients are starting to panic—they think other patients are dying.”

“Tell them it's coming up from the morgue—the morgue's in the basement, and the coolers shut down when the power went off.”

“Do you think that could be it?”

“I don't know—I don't think so. The smell's too strong. I thought it might be the bodies in the stairwell at first, but that's a sealed fire exit—that's why we put them there. It seems like it's coming from outside, but I can't see anything from the windows.”

“I think it might be coming from the second floor,” she said.

“There's nothing on the second floor—it's underwater.”

“I'm telling you.”

He had no reply.

“It's getting worse all the time,” the nurse said. “I can't keep telling people to ignore it; we've got to take a look, and we've got to do it before it gets dark.”

“I've got better things to do than track down bad smells,” the doctor said. “Tell the patients it's coming up from the morgue; tell them whatever you want, but I've got to get back to work.”

She shook her head as she watched him pick a zigzag path down the hall.

She turned and headed for the stairwell—the unoccupied one. She took the stairs down toward the second floor. At the first landing she stopped and looked; halfway down the stairway, the steps disappeared into brackish black liquid.

She shuddered, then waded down into the water.

She twisted the door handle and pulled; the door moved slowly and heavily, pushing a waist-deep wave of water ahead of it. She waded down the hallway, stopping at each doorway to look in and sniff. She found nothing—until she came to a large, empty laboratory with a shattered window.

She cupped her hand over her mouth and stared.

22

“Both bodies are in an advanced stage of decay,” the doctor said.

“Yeah. I figured that out.”

Special Agent Turlock waded into the empty laboratory and looked around the room. It was late afternoon, and the room was already deep in shadow. He saw a table in the center of the room with two black body bags lying side by side, and a shattered window beyond.

“We sent word as soon as we discovered them,” the doctor said. “Our phones are still out; we had to shout a message to some National Guard people passing by in a boat. I know there's a lot going on right now, but we thought somebody ought to know.”

“You did the right thing.” Turlock stepped to the window and looked out; he could feel the glass crunching under his thick rubber boots. Why didn't the fools mention the window? He could have brought his boat directly around to the room.

“I'm a little surprised they sent the DEA,” the doctor said.

“Yeah, well, everybody's pulling double duty right now.”

“At first I thought the bodies might have come from our own morgue. I thought maybe somebody found them and put them in here to get them out of the water—but the body bags are made of some kind of mesh. They're not the kind we use here.”

“They're for pulling bodies out of water,” Turlock said.

“Well, they don't contain the smell very well.”

“No, they wouldn't.”

Turlock began to draw the long zipper on one of the bags.

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

“I'm sure.” He opened the flaps and laid them aside, exposing the entire body. He found both hands covered in brown paper sacks rubber-banded at the wrists.

“What are the bags for?” the doctor asked.

“Beats me,” Turlock said—but he knew exactly what they were for: It was a standard crime-scene technique to preserve forensic evidence from the fingers and nails. The sacks were wrinkled and spotted with grease; he looked across the room at a counter and saw a pile of sandwich bags and rotting fruit.

He moved around to the counter to take a closer look. He found a row of plastic containers of differing shapes and sizes; each one had a coffee filter stretched across its mouth. He lifted one container and shook it a little; he saw a handful of milky white maggots wriggling on a chunk of rotting meat. He checked a second container, then a third—they were all the same.

“What is all that?” the doctor asked.

“Nothing,” Turlock said. “Just somebody's rotten lunch.”

He heard the sound of the metal fire door opening at the end of the hall, followed by a heavy thump and a muttered curse; he turned to see his colleague standing in the doorway, shaking water from his dripping hands.

“There's junk all over the floor,” the man said. “Can't see the stuff underwater.”

Turlock glanced at the doctor. “Doc, this is an associate of mine—Special Agent John Detwiler of the DEA.”

Detwiler ran a hand over his sandy red hair and nodded a quick greeting.

Turlock frowned at his partner. “Took you long enough.”

“It's a long way by boat, Frank. I came as soon as you called.”

“Called? Are cell phones working again?” the doctor asked.

“Satellite phone,” Turlock said.

“Can we get one for the hospital?”

“We got ours in Dallas.”

Turlock waited while his colleague made his own quick study of the room. Detwiler followed the same path that Turlock had taken: first the window, then the bodies, then the counter along the wall. Turlock handed his partner one of the plastic containers; Detwiler held it up to the afternoon light and peered inside.

He looked at Turlock and nodded.

“Who would do this?” the doctor asked. “Do you have any idea?”

Turlock took the doctor by the shoulder and turned him toward the door. “I wouldn't worry about it, Doc. The truth is, we've got bodies everywhere right now—on sidewalks, on rooftops, even floating in the streets. People pull them out of the water, maybe throw a blanket over them—they're just trying to help. That's probably what we've got here—just some good Samaritan trying to lend a hand. He saw the open window, and he probably figured, ‘Why not? It's a hospital after all.' We'll figure it all out later—right now the important thing is to take these bodies off your hands.”

“I'd appreciate that,” the doctor said. “We've got patients on the floor above, and some of them are starting to panic.”

“Don't worry, we'll take care of it.”