The Brain Vault (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 3) (9 page)

A quick turn and he was back, facing the bed. He pulled the sheet free and wrapped it around his torso. He carefully tucked the treasure filled paper bag under his arm.

He was careful to avoid the shattered glass in the window frame with his face, hands, and shoulders. He was half out the window.
Free, I’m free
. He was almost through when a jagged edge caught his ankle. The warm blood began to run over his heel. He pressed his thumb against the wound, but the blood continued to run. He searched his mind for a remedy but was unsuccessful.

He stepped out into the rain, into the humid night’s air—one foot at a time, cautiously onto the asphalt roof. Bracing against the building’s exterior, he looked out into the night, his first taste of freedom—an opportunity he thought would never come. The world had been reduced to a dark haze. Colors and shapes that he was once able to define, clearly now ran into one another like a somber watercolor painting. He gazed down, beyond the roof’s edge. It blended into the darkness; a great dark void he feared would bring the end if he fell. He was intimidated by the challenge but not defeated.

One foot at a time, he slid his feet along the roof’s surface, holding the precious paper bag with one hand. The fingertips of his other hand grazed the building’s brick, monitoring his distance so as not to come too close to the edge.

For a brief moment, his wounded heart filled with exuberance. He’d thought he’d never again see the outside world, and though it had been reduced to a world of shadows, it filled him with a sense of liberation.

Slip-steps along the roof’s edge until he reached the corner of the house, he kneeled and tested the gutter’s strength where they were joined, pushing down on the apex. It seemed secure. From below, the central air unit blew hot exhaust into the air—he could feel the rising air current on his face as he looked over the edge. Hanging from the gutter, it would be a short fall onto the air conditioning unit. He centered himself above it by listening for the compressor’s hum.

He clenched the paper bag in his teeth and then feeling with his feet got down on his knees and backed toward the edge. He felt the gutter’s extruded metal in his left hand. Pushing against it, it now seemed far less sturdy than it had scant moments before. He thought about the jump, the safest way to spring from the roof. He wanted to do it slowly and cautiously but as he inched backwards, the opportunity for caution disappeared as the gutter broke free from the roof. Doe plummeted downward and disappeared into the darkness.

Dr. Maiguay was in the middle of a very busy night. He had just intubated a middle-aged woman in respiratory failure when the page came in from ICU. The pager began to vibrate, the LED switching from red to a bright turquoise, just as he was squeezing the breathing tube past the vocal cords. He concentrated to push the distraction out of his mind for the few seconds it took for him to position the apparatus.

He was drenched in sweat when he came off the elevator. He heard the screaming and raced toward the intensive care unit. “What the hell is going on in here, nurse? This man is—”

“Comatose?” Tucker said. “He still is. You ever see a coma patient go off the wall like this?”

“No, but it is possible.” Maiguay listened to his heart. “He’s extremely rapid. Push ten milligrams of Valium.”

Tucker left the room and quickly returned with the medication. She filled a syringe, purged the air, and administered the IV sedative. The screaming subsided immediately. “That was wild.”

Maiguay checked Doe’s heart again. “Much better.” He pulled the stethoscope out of his ears and draped it around his neck. “I think he’ll stay quiet.”

“So people can scream while they’re in a coma?”

“His brain’s inactive, not dead. Somewhere in his subconscious, he’s dreaming. My guess is that he’s experiencing dream terror as a manifestation of having been tortured. I don’t blame the poor man for screaming, do you? All we can do is keep him comfortable.” Maiguay left the unit.

Tucker looked at Doe’s desecrated face. “Alright, once is okay. Next time, do your crazy ass dreaming on somebody else’s shift.” She checked her watch and yawned. “It’s gonna be a really long night.”

D
r. Walter Bock was not the kind of physician that inspired confidence.
Perhaps that was the reason he was collecting bodily fluids and conducting follow-up checkups instead of pursuing excellence in the field of medicine and actually helping those who needed it. Under no circumstances would he have been my first choice for a physician. For that matter, he wouldn’t have been second or third, but the department had demanded that I have a follow up physical to ascertain that I was, in fact, suitably fit for active duty after being Tasered and knocked unconscious. Probably not a bad idea; my head still ached like hell. So, there I was.

Bock was a balding German with a perspiration problem and a severe case of flabby butt. At any rate, he was the doc that was going to give me my mandatory once over. Sometimes, you just have to go with the flow, kick back, and say, “What the hell.”

If I played my cards right, I’d be out of his office in thirty minutes and officially back on the case.

I was already in an examination gown when Bock entered the room. He walked right past me without looking at me and began flipping through my file. “Good to see you again, Detective. Feeling okay since your injury?” I’d been examined by Bock before and knew that he was playing coy. I knew that he was one of those stealth-peekers and would certainly find an opportunity at some point to take a refresher course in female anatomy at my expense.

There was a photo on the wall, with Bock posing alongside a big boned Shepard in front of a G-Class Mercedes truck. A mate of other than the canine persuasion was conspicuously absent. As for the SUV—I thought that Mercedes was turning out some stunning automobiles, but the G-Class truck looked to me like a rolling gas chamber, a carry over from WWII and the days when industrialized Germany focused its efforts on supporting Hitler’s mass genocide campaign. Personally, I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of them.

He wrapped the pressure cuff around my arm and pumped the bulb until the cuff was full. He twisted the wheel so that air would begin to bleed.

“They gave you a short gown,” he said without taking his eyes off the sphygmomanometer dial. Somehow he had managed to check out my legs without making it obvious. Hopefully he hadn’t seen more than that.

I hadn’t thought the gown short, but I suddenly worried otherwise. I checked myself quickly. All of my feminine apparatus appeared to be concealed.

“Pressure’s a bit high, Chalice. You’re not drinking are you?”

No, but now might be a good time to start.
“Of course my pressure’s a little high. I’m in the middle of a case and I’m chomping at the bit to get back to it.”
Steady girl. Stay calm. Get the okay to resume active duty. Don’t let this dirty little doctor get the best of you.

“You have to learn to relax, Detective. You wouldn’t want to do permanent damage. A concussion is not a matter to be taken lightly.”

Bock was right, but allowing a dangerous perp to continue to wander the streets was unhealthy for Paul Liu and God knew who else. “I don’t always do what’s good for me.”

“So I take it you’re not hitting the bottle.”

“No.”

“Just being careful; lot’s of cops on the sauce you know. It’s an occupational hazard.”

“Just wine with dinner.”

“Good. Your pulse, I mean. You exercise?”

Like a fiend
. “Yes, avidly.”

Bock turned away from me. He’d put on a ton of weight since the last time I saw him, and his slacks were way too tight. I mean it wasn’t pretty. It looked like he was smuggling cottage cheese. I laughed.

“Everything alright, Detective?”

Sure, maybe you should check my pressure now.
“Yes, fine.”

“I’m going to draw some blood—which arm?”

“Take your pick, I’m ambidextrous.”

“You’re a funny cop. I like that. He swabbed me with alcohol and tied a rubber tourniquet around my arm. He held up a basket full of squish balls. It felt good to squeeze anything, just to release a little tension.

He jabbed me with one of those venipuncture thingies, so that he could spill Chalice blood into multiple collection tubes without breaking stride. It was like tapping a keg of beer so that you could fill every mug in the frat house. He finished and gave me a Betty Boop bandage for my arm. “Can you jump on the scale for me, please?”

“Sure.”
Almost done,
I told myself. I couldn’t wait to get back into action. I heard my pulse pounding in my ears as I got off the examination table. It reminded me of the ticking clock. Every second lost worsened the chances for us finding the Chinese Ambassador’s son alive. I cursed myself for having smacked my head, and having to play doctor with the lame Dr. Bock. Sometimes life doesn’t give you a choice.

I stepped up onto the scale.
Christ, I put on three pounds.
Where the hell did that come from?
The gym was going to see a lot of me once this case was behind us.
Three pounds, really? Damn those stuffed peppers.

My mind was miles away as Bock conducted the rest of his tests. Distraction seemed to make the time go more quickly—Bock’s quips and leering glances seemed less irritating. He finally finished his exam. I left him a urine sample on the way out.

M
y skin was crawling as I answered Ambler’s call.
My head was spinning, and I was nauseous. I wasn’t sure if I was experiencing latent side effects from the concussion or if I needed a clue fix. Surely this was shaping up to be one of the most bizarre cases I had ever worked on. I had chided Lido on his childlike, almost gleeful interest in Evans Jack’s bug room. The truth was that I too had an almost macabre interest in the way the case was unfolding. Somewhere in New York City, a deranged monster was abducting young men, torturing them, and decapitating them. If that wasn’t bad enough, he was using their bug scrubbed craniums for some kind of anatomical study—to which end I could scarcely hazard a guess. It was just business as usual in The Big Apple.

Evans Jack and his dissertation on the bug cleaning of human remains had sent my appetite for meat and meat-like substances on a long-term hiatus. As I mentioned before, my head was dizzy, and I was nauseous, but like most New Yorkers, I find that pizza and beer will go down under almost any circumstances. This time was no exception.

Lido and I did a hit and run on Vincent’s, a neighborhood pizzeria my family has been frequenting for thirty years. We ordered a couple of slices and two cold sodas and were back on our way to work in three minutes flat. Thin crust, lots of cheese, and the sauce…it’ll drive you out of your mind—that first bite brought all my childhood memories streaming back. Brick oven pizza kicks the crap out of the stuff that comes out of steel ovens. Forget about those mass-market brands—Pizza Hut, I don’t think so. I’m a city girl for Christ’s sake.

My cell phone rang. Ambler’s name appeared on the display.

“G-Man, speak to me.”

“The doc give you a clean bill of health?”

“Yeah, my scans came over just before I left the office. I’m good to go.”

“I have something. It’s not much, but it comes from a highly valued source. What say I pick you up in the morning for a quick jaunt out to the Island.”

“Long Island?”

“Yes, Long Island. Don’t ask questions. I know this won’t make a lot of sense until I explain it all in person.”

I could never doubt anything Ambler told me. In all matters, he was sincere and professional. He’d been my father’s lifelong friend and now mine. If he wanted no questions, there would be none. My faith in the man was iron clad. Besides, I needed some time to pore over the case files the FBI had sent over. Research wasn’t always fun, but it was vital. “Okay, where and when?”

“Nine sharp in front of your building. There shouldn’t be any traffic at that hour; we’re going against traffic… Oh, just one more thing.”

“Yeah?’

“Lose the boyfriend.”

What?
I wanted to ask why. Again, I knew Ambler had a solid reason. “Okay,” I said, making sure there was no drama in my voice for Lido to pick up on. “Anything else I should know?”

“Yeah, Long Island’s beautiful this time of year—the rhododendrons are in bloom.”

“Great, I’ll wear my Easter bonnet and a calico dress.”

Ambler chuckled and then signed off.

“What’s up?” Lido asked.

“Ambler wants to show us something.” I said
us
because I was still trying to come up with a clever way to finesse Lido out of the transaction. I know I shouldn’t have… I mean the guy’s solid gold. I should’ve just told him that Ambler asked him to opt out on the Long Island trip, but I didn’t. I wanted to spare his feelings.

Is lying to spare someone’s feelings really lying? My thought stream sounded like one of those Sarah Jessica Parker meaning of life questions from Sex and the City. The kind of query she’d raise when she was in a quandary about life, love, and her relationship
du jour
.

“On Long Island?” Lido asked. “What’s that all about?”

“I don’t know. He was kind of vague. I’m not worried about him wasting our time.”

“Nor me. What time does he want to meet us?”

“9:00 a.m.”

“You’ll have to go it solo. I’m scheduled to give a court deposition in the morning.”

“Oh, that’s right.” I was so focused on the mission of tactfully ditching my partner that I had completely forgotten that he was due in court in the morning—how fortuitous.

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and then we went back to the house and dug into the evidence files.

I
hit the street at 9:00 a.m. sharp.
Ambler was already there, parked at the curb, eating bacon and eggs off a sheet of aluminum foil and looking happy as a kid in a candy store doing so. His Volvo was covered with dust. It wasn’t one of the new sexy models. It was a good twenty years old, dating back to the day when the Swedes were stuffing engines into God ugly sheet metal boxes and pretentiously marketing them under the hoax that Volvo drivers were smart. Well the drivers may have been smart, but the company’s marketing executives were dumb as sticks. They didn’t sell any of those boxy, ugly cars—go figure. Speaking of smart Swedes, who is smarter than Invar Kamprad, the founder of
IKEA
. Here’s a guy who’s amassed a multi-billion dollar fortune solely from marketing furniture constructed entirely from sawdust and glue. Volvo should have hired this guy fifty years ago. Had they done so, every car buyer in the free world would today be self-assembling their own cars from cryptic instructions that are wholly undecipherable, and lining up for miles to do so.