Blood Of Angels (38 page)

'Hey, Nina,' Paul said. 'Remember me?'

The hospital looked as though it had been opened with great fanfare ten years before and then promptly forgotten. It had been designed by an architect with an eye to posterity and a good straight ruler, who must have kicked himself when he realized he'd forgotten about windows and the fact that people might have to spend time inside. The lobby smelled of chemicals and sounded like rubber heels squeaking on linoleum, and the walls held lots of small posters about things that were either tedious or dire. I don't like hospitals. In my life nothing good has come out of them. It's where you go to be sick, or be told you're about to be.

And of course it's where you go to die.

The first glimpse I had of Julia Gulicks said this last was the job she was here to do. We walked up a long, grey corridor on a high floor to a private room near the end. A policeman was sitting outside but through the small, square window in the door above his head you could see a body lying on a bed, immobile as a model of a mountain range made out of sections of wood and a sheet. Most of the face was wrapped in bandages. The only confirmation it was her was the red hair straggling over the pillow, but even that was thin and muted now, as if her vitality was leaking elsewhere.

Before the cop had the chance to start telling us to get the hell away, we heard footsteps heading towards us up the corridor. 'What are you doing here?'

The voice was Monroe's. He was carrying a foam cup of coffee. I remembered Nina telling me once what a bear he was for the stuff. The memory didn't help much.

John held up the photograph. 'This.'

'What is it?'

'We think it's a picture of the woods where you found the second body.'

'Where'd you get this?'

'Her apartment. On the way here I got someone to look up the product code on the paper. The photograph was printed five years ago. It's premeditation, Monroe. It slam dunks your case.'

Monroe shook his head. 'It's landscape photography, that's all.'

'I want to…'

'She can't see it, Zandt. Have you
looked
in there? Her eyes are wrapped in gauze and even if they weren't it would make no difference. She's got a grossly fractured skull and massive lesions on both frontal lobes. They drained her and kept her alive but that's all medical science has on offer right now.'

'She doesn't have to be able to see,' John said. 'Just hear. I only want to talk to her.'

'She isn't listening. Next big thing she's going to do is die.'

Nonetheless he thought for a moment, and stepped aside. 'If there was one person here to speak for her,' he said, 'I wouldn't let you do this.'

'I think she wants to,' John said.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Monroe stopped at the end of the bed. I stood well back, near the wall. Gulicks was hooked up to a bank of machines. Probably their purpose was reassurance, but if you ask me they don't work. Being connected to a machine is never a sign things are going well. Even the comatose know that. John perched on the side of the bed.

Gulicks seemed to register a shift in the mattress. Her head moved to the side a little. Her mouth opened with a quiet pop as gummy lips separated.

'Julia?'

She closed her mouth again, and moved her head back the other way.

'I'm the person you talked to last night. In the police station. Do you recognize my voice?'

Nothing.

'Julia — why did you do this to yourself?'

It wasn't the question I was expecting him to ask. Monroe either, judging from his face. You made assumptions. She'd done it because she was nuts. Or because she was guilty and didn't want to stand trial. But maybe not.

She turned her head back towards him. Suddenly her tongue rolled quickly around her mouth, a little too fast. John reached to the bedside table and got a glass of water. He let a few drops into her mouth. Her tongue kept moving for a while, then slowly stopped.

'Rowboat,' she said, clearly. 'Penguin in the bank hall. It's a shitty mix, you need more butter.'

I looked at my feet. It wasn't the words so much as the way her tongue moved. It was too autonomous. It looked like a rat trying to desert a sinking ship.

He asked her other things. He asked her if she remembered the pictures she kept in the box in her apartment. He asked if she remembered taking a photograph of the woods near Thornton, and if so, when that might have been. He asked if she'd kept that picture pinned up on her wall, and why.

She said nothing in reply. There was little evidence that she hadn't gone back to sleep or, if she was awake, that her mind hadn't wandered somewhere else and gotten lost in a basement corridor. I didn't know what effect brain injuries had, and I didn't know whether they were always permanent, but something told me Julia was gone and wasn't coming back. I guess if I was Lawrence Widmar's wife then this might have made me angry: you want someone to blame, to rail at. Gulicks was beyond good and evil now.

'Here's here,' she said, suddenly.

I looked up. Though it didn't make any sense, it was the first thing she had said in over ten minutes.

'What's that?' John said. He leaned towards her.

The second time she was easier to understand. 'He's here. Isn't he?'

Monroe spoke. 'Who's here?'

'Where am I?'

John held a hand up to stop Monroe confusing her. 'You're in the hospital, Julia.'

'Am I being born?'

'No.'

'Did you say something about a photograph?'

'We found a picture which shows some woods. Do you remember taking it?'

'There's lots of woods. Always have been. Ever since I was a little, little girl.'

'Why did you take the picture, Julia?'

'What picture?'

'The picture of the woods.'

'Make memories. Right? Right? Right? Wonderful.'

'I don't understand what you're saying.'

'Did you ever go to Disneyworld?'

'Yes,' John said. 'Long time ago.'

'Nobody would take me when I was young. I took myself when I grew up. It's not the same.'

'No.'

'Nobody should have to take themselves to Disneyworld.'

'Julia…'

'Did you shit on me? Everything smells wrong.' Her tongue started to loll again. Her chin trembled. 'Oh, it's bad.'

'Julia — why? Why did you kill them?'

'I got it wrong, okay? None of it helps. It's a fucking, fucking disease.' Then suddenly her voice changed, dropping almost an octave. 'Twelve step me to hell, you nigger.'

She laughed uproariously, arching her back. Then it became a cough, and suddenly she was being sick.

Monroe slapped the attention button and John quickly rolled her onto her side. Very soon afterwards the room was full of medics and we were shoved out into the corridor.

We waited in silence while the people inside did their thing. After a half hour they started to leave, although a nurse was left by her bed. The last person in a white coat was a woman who glared at us as she shut the door firmly behind her.

'I told you she couldn't be talked to right now.'

'She's a suspect in two murders,' Monroe said.

'Your problem,' the doctor snapped. 'She's dying. The damage to her brain is compromising her autonomic nervous system. That's the part that controls the things we don't normally have to do deliberately, like
breathe.
I don't care what she may or may not have done, you don't have the right to hasten her death. Disturb her again and I'll call the police.'

'Ma'am,' said the uniform still sitting in a chair to one side of the door, 'um, I am the police.'

'More senior police, then,' the doctor said, and strode off down the corridor.

After she'd gone Monroe turned to Zandt. 'So. Was it worth it?'

'She took the picture. She killed those men because of something that took place a long time ago. Something that made her want to record a particular part of the woods for later reference. She saw something happen there.'

'She saw whoever killed the victim we found,' I said. 'And she's the only person who might be able to tell us who that was.'

'The body was definitely a woman,' Monroe said. 'Mid-forties. They lifted the rest of the skeleton last night. And the signs are you were right about when it happened. So who is she? Who killed her?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'But I believe there's a fifty-fifty chance he's the person who took Nina.'

'If not him, then who?'

'Ghosts,' I said, bitterly. 'People you don't believe in and nobody can ever catch.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

We left the hospital. Monroe evidently felt it wasn't worth waiting there any longer, and I believed he was right. Julia didn't strike me as someone who was going to say anything useful again.

John walked straight over to my car. I hung back, wanting a last word with Charles. I was surprised at how he looked. Tired I'd seen before, but now he looked defeated.

'You've got to find something, Charles,' I said.

'I'm doing everything I can.'

'I hope so. We're running out of time. And if I don't find Nina, your life is not going to be worth living.'

I left him standing there and walked over to the car. Before I climbed in I pressed the speed dial for Nina's number one more time.

Still nothing. And wherever her phone was, whether it was switched on or off, sooner or later the battery was going to trickle out.

The cellar was worse than the van. Nina knew life had come to a sorry pass if she looked on the VW as the glory days, but there had been movement, at least. There was the possibility she might be taken somewhere and released: pushed out into the wilderness, or rolled out onto the road at speed. Neither were great options, but they were doors to other realities — if you were strong, and if you were lucky. Perhaps a line-caught fish felt the same, right up until it was knocked on the back of the head. When you are lying on the floor of a cellar, it does not feel as if strength and luck are nearby. Instead there is damp, there is coldness, and there is the unforgiving sense of being underground.

Being under the ground is not good. Under the ground is where you go to be dead.

She knew she was lying in a space about thirty feet square. She'd gotten a glimpse of it when she was brought down the wooden staircase, and tried to look around before the door was shut again, returning the cellar to darkness. Immediately she closed her eyes, so as not to be misled by shadows. She felt the space around her, pictured where the supports were, thought about how you might try to get to the staircase: assuming you weren't lying flat on your back with your wrists and ankles tied. She tried to lock these ideas in her mind, but it had been a long time since she'd slept and there was a ringing in her ears. She felt physically wretched. Being short a pint or two of blood didn't help, but that shouldn't make you vomit, which had happened five minutes previously. She didn't know what damage petrol fumes could do, but whatever it was, they had evidently done it.

She had to remain alert. The guy who'd taken her had failed in some way. She had heard Paul called him 'James'. He was supposed to have done something else, either instead of, or as well as, abducting her. What? Not killing her, it seemed, otherwise Paul would have done that right away. He wasn't someone who kept people alive for the fun of it. Quite the opposite.

It was not a good question to have to ask yourself, but why was she not supposed to be dead? And what could she do to try to stay…

Then she remembered something else. She recalled that in the van she'd realized that she probably still had her cell phone. She knew she'd turned it off prior to the meeting with Reidel, so it should still have charge. Hopefully. In the van she'd been too constrained and sedated to dream of actually finding the phone.

Here it might be different. If she moved fast. She didn't even have to get a call out. If they had a beacon trace on it, or if Ward had been trying to call her and suddenly got through at last…

Nina craned her neck, turned her head on the dusty, splintered floor. When she'd been brought down into the cellar a bulky bag of her abductor's stuff had come too, everything out of the VW. It was lying against the wall, she thought. She'd been wearing her coat when he came to her hotel room. The phone would have been deep in the inside pocket. It must now be in his bag.

After being able to do nothing except withstand discomfort, she had a job now, a proper one.

Get hold of the phone. And not die, of course.

===OO=OOO=OO===

The best way would be getting herself to a sitting position. That way she could shuffle across the floor in the direction of the bag. Wouldn't be the fastest method, but it gave her a little control.

It took five minutes to wrench and turn herself upright from where she'd been left. Then she oriented her feet in the right direction, and wriggled her ass.

It worked, kind of. It was slow. The floor was uneven. There were things lying on it. Neither became obvious until she ran into an obstruction, and then she had to work her way around.

But slowly she kept moving, until her feet met the wall. Swivelled right a little, reaching out. A rustling sound.

The bag.

Now what? Couldn't use her hands and feet. Coat might be buried deep in there. It was thick, too — Ward had bought it for her against the coming cold of a Pacific Northwest winter. There was going to be no way she could actually get the phone out. But maybe if she put pressure on the bag…

Then she heard the sound of footsteps approaching up above.

She fell back onto her side immediately, straightened her body out, and rolled. She rolled fast. It didn't matter what she hit on the way, she had to get back to where she'd been. They couldn't suspect there was any reason for her to want to get over to the bag.

She made it, via thudding and scraping collisions with every single unseen obstruction. Something caught at her wrist and she had to yank it hard to keep going. She was in pain, and breathless. But she got back to where she'd started. Made sure she was lying flat. Forced her chest not to heave up and down.