Trifecta (96 page)

T
he room was warm, dim and very still when Nakamura woke. 
He watched finely lit dust particles moving very slowly.  Disoriented for a moment,
he looked around, and then the fear came back with overwhelming force.  Michelle
was in danger.  He sat up groggily on the couch and looked around.  The peaceful
spacious room was almost dark because twilight was dimming the island.  He must
have been asleep for at least an hour.  The urgent need to relieve himself of all
the water and coffee forced down him was the only thing that had awakened him. 

After using the bathroom, Nakamura staggered into the kitchen
and drank a few glasses of water.  Outside, through the plate glass window above
the sink, he could Tom Mitsuto bending over in the garden pruning tiny Bonsai trees. 

Nakamura saw several donuts on a plate on the kitchen table
and ate a few.  He was still groggy and hoped the sugar would help wake him up. 
The keys for Tom Mitsuto's cars were hanging on a wooden rack next to the door that
led to the garage.  He opened the door to the garage almost soundlessly, speculatively
eyeing a blue Mitsubishi and a large green Cadillac.  The garage door switch was
right next to the light switch.  He could leave before Tom even realized he was
awake.

Nakamura took the keys for the Mitsubishi, went back inside
the kitchen and called the Sheraton hotel, asking for Michelle's room.  There was
no answer.  He called his own room and didn't get any response there either.  Then
he tried Michelle's home number.  Someone picked up the phone, he could hear loud
exhales over the phone lines, but his repeated, 'Hello's?' elicited no response
from the breather, who eventually hung up on him.

Nakamura looked out the window.  Tom was still working
in his garden.  He went into the garage to get the Mitsubishi, comforted in theft
by the fact that Tom had two cars.

O
mar's white haired witch, Genelle, had on a nurse's uniform
complete with a white folded hat with a dark braided band around it.  She wafted
through the green linoleum floored hospital hallways toward the Burn Center.  She
was on automatic pilot, nothing in her mind except the instructions she had been
given.  When she found the correct room she looked inside and saw the tiny woman
asleep, her eyes visibly moving under the lids as though she were dreaming.

Heather was drifting in and out of sleep.  The narcotics
she had been given seemed to overwhelm her in sickening waves.  She would move up
toward consciousness and then be pulled down into blackness again, until the dream
of fire in her chest awakened her again.

There was a tiny child in the next room who had been horribly
burned in a car accident.  He kept crying dismally, seemingly without hope of the
pain abating.  The sad hopeless sound continued on endlessly and periodically brought
Heather out of her own nightmares.  And then there was her own pain.  It was also
constant and somewhat masked by the drugs, but on a subconscious level her mind
knew it was there.  The pain was arousing and enervating at the same time, stealing
away all energy.

It was the pain, the nightmares and the child's dismal
low intensity crying which finally brought Heather to full consciousness.  She thought. 
Until she saw the nurse standing in the doorway. 

Even with continuous fluids entering her body through the
plastic bag hanging from a metal stand beside her and attached to her arm through
a needle, Heather seemed to be constantly thirsty.  She asked the nurse for some
water and the woman walked stiffly to the bed and handed her a glass with a plastic
straw.  The nurse then helped her sit up so she could drink more easily, fluffing
the pillows around her.  All the while the nurse was helping her, Heather was studying
the woman's face, which was familiar, but she was drugged and sleepy and the feeling
that she knew the woman from somewhere didn't disturb her very much. 

Then she remembered the waves crashing at Waikiki beach
and being pushed repeatedly under them.  She saw the woman's eyes had the same other-worldly
look she had seen in the women who had attacked her on the beach.  The pupils were
enormous, distorting the woman's face into dementia.

Demented or not, the woman seemed to understand exactly
when Heather remembered who she was.  She smiled at Heather, and with her thin lips
spread and smashed against her teeth, the lips appeared thick and revealed small
feral teeth.  She looked totally insane to Heather and it was the last thing she
saw. 

The woman placed the pillow she had been fluffing directly
over Heather's face and pressed down firmly.

T
here was an enormous hassle when Nakamura got to Michelle's
apartment building.  First, the guard looked him up and down, noting the filthy
torn clothing of a man who appeared to have lost a serious bar-room brawl, and refused
to let him in when no one answered at Michelle's apartment. 

Nakamura walked back to his car and used the car phone
to  call the private guard he had placed in Michelle's hallway for a reference to
enter the building, but there was no answer.  The other guard he had posted to patrol
the building did not answer his phone either.  Nakamura walked around the building's
perimeter searching for him.  The man was gone.

Nakamura paused, wondering what to do when he saw a car
enter the underground parking garage.  The gate rolled up and the car went through. 
He waited about five minutes until another car was entering and then snuck in under
the gate.  He waited until the last possible moment so the motorist wouldn't see
him.  He just made it, his stiff body rebelling so that he fell and had to crawl
under crab-like.  He barely made it through before the metal banged to the ground
and he wrenched his sprained ankle, pulling it through with only millimeters to
spare.  He cursed and waited until the tenant that he followed in, whistling and
jangling keys, was entering the building to act like he had just parked there too. 
He was finally inside.

Something was ominously wrong here, he thought, as he made
his way to Michelle's door.  His own private security guards were missing.  That
loud breathing had been creepingly sinister over the phone lines to Michelle's apartment.

He repeatedly rang and knocked to no avail.  He seriously
contemplated breaking down the door and was looking around for something big to
ram it with.  Then he remembered that Michelle and Heather had traded keys in case
of emergency.  He would go to the hospital and see if Heather had Michelle's key. 
She might have an idea where Michelle was, too.

He felt like he was wasting too much precious time already
and decided, hell with it, he would go out the fastest way.  When Nakamura walked
past the guard at the entrance the man started yelling, "Stop.  Stop, right
now.  I'm calling the police."

"Go ahead," Nakamura said.  Make my day, he thought,
and kept moving.

The guard was still waving his arms and yelling like a
maniac when Nakamura got in the car and screamed away, spreading rubber for twenty
feet.  He kept checking the rear view mirror for the law, but the idiot guard evidently
hadn't called them.  No wonder someone had been murdered there.

When he got to Honolulu General Hospital's imposing Information
Desk, the nurse stationed there took one look at him and gave him directions to
the emergency room.  When she finally understood he had come to see a patient, not
as one himself, she told him severely that it was after visiting hours.  He could
call the patient, but he could not go up and see her at this time.  The nurse gave
him the hospital telephone prefix and the number to Heather's room.  When he dialed
there was no answer.

He could feel the frowning countenance of the nurse watching
his back suspiciously as he loitered at the telephones near the hospital entrance.

At least now he had Heather's room number, Nakamura thought. 
He would wake her up.  He waited until the desk nurse was busy with some charts
and slunk quickly down a side hall.  He had no idea where he was and the hospital
was enormous.  They had moved Heather's room from Intensive Care where she had been
the night before.  He followed confusing signs, loping quickly toward the Burn Center. 
Once he had passed the night nurse at the front desk, though, there were friendly
janitors and orderlies who guided him, seemingly understanding his urgency.

Heather's room had a window in the door and he peeked inside
before entering to make sure she was decent.  What he saw was a nurse bending over
Heather.  He decided to wait.  Then he looked in again.  The nurse's back was toward
him and she was still bending over the bed, but what he had seen out of the corner
of his eye, during that first glance, was one tiny frantic movement from the bed. 
His second look into the room caused him to slam inside, banging the door against
the wall. 

The nurse turned her head, still bending over, but the
room was small and Nakamura saw that Heather was now perfectly still under a pillow
the nurse was holding over her face.

"Hey," Nakamura yelled.  "What're you doing?"

"Therapy.  Get out."

Nakamura hauled the nurse back by the collar of her uniform
so forcefully that she landed across the room and banged into the wall.  He turned
around and pulled the pillow up.  Heather did not seem to be breathing.  She was
lying, white faced and totally still.

Suddenly the woman pretending to be a nurse was on Nakamura's
back, clawing for his face from behind, her legs gripping his hips frantically. 
He tried to twitch her off and tend to Heather, but the woman was tenacious.  He
had to peel her arms away.  He realized she was really drugged up and dangerous
when she repeatedly came back ferociously, teeth barred and nails hooked into claws. 
He had to be more rough than he wanted to be with a woman.  Finally he slugged her
in the jaw.  Then he turned around again.

Heather had not moved an inch and was so motionless she
looked like a tiny doll lying in the hospital bed.  He tried her pulse and felt
nothing.  He was too late!  He looked for the bell to call a someone and couldn't
find it.  Shit, call buttons were always attached somewhere.  He didn't have time
to look.

Nakamura quickly forced Heather's jaw open and cupped his
hands around her mouth and nose, blowing inside forcefully.

"Hey!  Stop that."

Nakamura jumped back in shock.  Heather was looking up
at him with big surprised eyes, taking in enormous gulps of air.  "We have
to stop meeting like this.  I feel like 'Sleeping Beauty.'"

Nakamura couldn't help smiling.  "Actually, Michelle
did the mouth-to-mouth last time.  I'm the one who broke your ribs."

Heather coughed a few times.  "Oh.  I think thanks
are in order, anyway.  For both times."

"Faking?"

Heather nodded and sat up, wincing, to look at the unconscious
woman on the floor.  "I can hold my breath a long time.  Only chance was faking
her out.  Last time I saw her she was naked.  Dancing in Omar's Witch's Circle."

"I thought I recognized her."

"You sure arrived at a lucky time."  Heather
was now panting deeply and quickly, seemingly swallowing up air.

Nakamura nodded.  He didn't particularly want to call the
police, but couldn't think of any alternative.  The woman had been trying to kill
Heather. 

"I have to get out of here.  Fast.  She's obviously
working for Omar.  What happened to your face?"

"My car exploded.  A rather strange occurrence.  So
I got worried that Michelle might be in danger."

Heather was busy throwing off the covers and moved to a
sitting position on the side of the bed.  She started pulling off a bandage that
held the intravenous tube in place on her arm.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going with you.  Omar probably expects that
little babe to report in," Heather said, nodding at the unconscious woman
on the floor.  "When she doesn't, he might try something else.  Would you
help me with this?  I'm a little squeamish about needles."

"You can't just walk out."  Nakamura kept objecting
as he helped remove the needle very gently, taking care to pull it out at the correct
angle.  "You have to rest.  You've been badly hurt."  Then it dawned on
him exactly what she had planned.

"Shh.  Someone might peek in at any moment,"
Heather cautioned, nodding toward the window in the door.  She hopped off the bed
and bent over the unconscious woman.  Even with the broken ribs, Heather had enough
pain killer inside so that she hardly felt the twinges.  She started stripping the
nurse costume off the comatose white haired witch.  "Help me.  She's too heavy
for me to turn over."

The nurses uniform was enormous on Heather.  It was much
too long but she belted it snugly and was ready to go.

Nakamura picked up the unconscious woman and placed her
in the bed, covering her to the nose with sheets and blankets.  Luckily she had
blond hair.  He looked at his handiwork with satisfaction until he noticed that
the plastic bag on a metal stand was emptying at an alarming rate. 

He found the plastic tubing and pulled it up frantically
over the side of the bed.  Without the resistance of a human body, the needle was
dripping liquid rapidly.  No way was he going to try for a vein to stop the flow. 
He removed the covers again and used the plastic tubing to tie up her arms securely. 
That effectively stopped the flow from the needle.  It would have to do.

They exited the building without anyone making a comment;
one limping, the other a little bent over and holding her side, each helping the
other walk.

B
oth Nakamura and Heather were struck dumb when
they opened the door to Michelle's apartment.  They didn't need to turn on the lights;
the devastation was clear from the light spilling in from the hallway.

It was a serendipitous situation both were speechless. 
Instead of exclaiming over the wreckage, they were able to hear strange guttural
noises spewing from the bedroom.  A rough, raspy, male sound.

There were several loud, feline, screaming wails, like
an animal in the throws of pain or extreme panic.  It was so quiet in the next few
moments they could hear hissing, spitting and growling.  The man had the cat cornered. 

Then there was a loud yell.

Heather glanced at Nakamura and saw him shaking his head,
his finger over his mouth.

"She might be in there," Heather whispered. 
Omar had taken Lucifer from Michelle just last night.  Why was the cat back in her
apartment?

"I don't think so."

"She loves that cat.  We can't let him kill it."

"He's going to take it to Omar."

Heather nodded, understanding.  It was the giant, Omar's
minion in the bedroom, trying to catch Lucifer.  All they had to do was follow him;
he was never far from Omar. 

Heather and Nakamura had discussed the terrible suspicion
that Omar might now have Michelle on the drive to the condominium.  They went to
Heather's apartment first so she could change out of the nursing costume.  Then
Heather had grabbed Michelle's key and they went to her apartment.

Now, they heard Samson changing his tactics.  His humming
voice was deviously sweet and gutturally seductive.  The dulcimer sounds went on
and on.  Heather and Nakamura looked at each other in wide eyed surprise.  Samson
had a beautiful baritone, even without a tongue.

Heather had to clamp her hand over her mouth to keep from
bursting into laughter.  The giant might never catch the cat, who was undoubtedly
smarter than the giant, and much faster.  She glanced at Nakamura and saw him smiling.

A loud, angry yell.  The cat had scratched him again.

They both backed out of the apartment silently and let
the door close on the mess and the animals inside.  Samson Stoker seemed more beast
than human.  They walked quickly and silently down the hallway to the stairwell
and stood with the door slightly ajar, so they could follow the man when he finally
caught Lucifer. 

Both figured they were in for a long wait.  They were wrong. 
Samson was backing out of Michelle's apartment a few moments later.  He was topless
and held his shirt carefully away from his body.  The cat, trapped inside, was trying
desperately to escape.  It appeared as though the shirt held many fanatic beasts
with hundreds of limbs poking for a hole, as the cat noisily struggled.

Heather and Nakamura looked at each other.  The man would
never take the shrieking, struggling cat up in the elevator.  He might meet tenants
who would wonder if he was torturing animals.  They glanced back just once to see
Samson trotting down the hallway toward the stairwell where they had hidden.

"Up or down?" Heather whispered.

"Up.  We'll go in the next hall.  Make sure he goes
past."

They started up the stairs.