Red Queen (13 page)

I was safe, that was good, I could relax. Someone had found me and taken me to a hospital. The doctors were probably trying to warm me up as I lay there.

Yet I didn't see any doctors and I didn't feel any heaters. I felt . . . well, I couldn't feel anything. I would have said I felt nothing below my neck but I couldn't feel my face, either.
My vision of the green tile ceiling didn't waver, even for an instant, which led me to believe I wasn't even blinking.

That worried me. Blinking was a reflex. I had read somewhere that if a person went as little as an hour without blinking, their pupils began to suffer damage. That was why it was important to tape shut the affected eye of people who had strokes or other conditions that often paralyzed one half of the face. I made a conscious effort to close my eyes and they didn't budge. The green ceiling refused to go away.

I disliked this particular shade of green. I was surprised the hospital staff had gone with such a blah color, even if I was stuffed somewhere in a cheap emergency cubicle. The green had a faint yellow tinge to it that reminded me of vomit. Perhaps my nose was influencing my eyes. There was an odor in the air that was making me nauseous. Not rubbing alcohol, something else I couldn't pinpoint, although I was sure I had smelled it before.

Without thinking, I reached up to close my eyelids and discovered my arm wouldn't move. Even though I couldn't feel anything, I had assumed I had the use of my limbs, that I wasn't frozen. But it was beginning to look like I was numb all over.

I had never heard of such a thing. I wondered if that meant my condition was serious. Yet the fact that no doctors or nurses were hovering over me reassured me somewhat. If I were truly
in danger, the hospital staff would be working on me this minute. They had probably left me to slowly thaw out. I was sure I was going to be okay.

I wished I could turn my head, get a better look at my surroundings. The green tiles were getting on my nerves. I tried glancing out the corners of my eyes but discovered my field of view did not alter. What the hell? Were my eyeballs frozen, too? Now that was getting ridiculous. I wished someone would stop by and check on me so I could ask what was going on. Nothing about this hospital felt right, except for the occasional page.

“Dr. William Jacob to X-ray. Dr. William Jacob to X-ray, please.”

Lying there, my thoughts drifted back to my captivity in the meat locker. I remembered how I had tried to break through the metal door, how close I had come to escaping. If only I hadn't fallen and broken my ankle. Wait! I had hurt my ankle. I had hurt my nose as well. Why didn't I feel any pain? I mean, yes, I knew I was still thawing out and all that but I would have expected those two sore spots to be the first to wake up and start complaining. Yet I continued to feel nothing.

Just strange, very strange.

I heard footsteps, two people talking, a man and a woman. They were definitely approaching—their voices were steadily getting louder. What a relief, I thought, finally someone to talk to. Someone to answer my questions.

The man and the woman entered my room. I tried turning
my head to look at them but it refused to budge. I could hear them but I couldn't see them. Yet I was aware the man was off to my right, while the woman was closer, on my left.

“Would you believe I had tickets to the championship game and didn't go?” the man said. “I thought to myself, why drive all the way down to Staples Center when I can watch the Lakers on TV.”

“But you missed out on the excitement of being there,” the woman replied. “I heard the crowd was practically in tears as the final minutes counted down.”

“That's true,” the man said. “You can get a rush from being in the crowd and yelling your head off, especially if you're drunk. But I had cheap seats, they were way up in the nosebleed section. That's why I stayed home and watched the game on TV. Staples is a lot bigger than the Forum used to be. Sit in one of the last rows, and I swear you can hardly see the players. They look like cartoon figures. And we're all spoiled with instant replay. On TV, when someone makes a great dunk or an off-balance three-pointer, they replay it ten times. You get to enjoy it over and over again. But live, you blink and you can miss the biggest play of the game.”

“Don't they have a screen at Staples where they show instant replays?” she asked.

“They've got several. They're all pointed toward the rich seats. I tell you, the whole arena is designed for those who pay five hundred bucks a seat and up. Peons like us they can't even
be bothered with. Even the food they offer in the cheap seats is different from the food you can buy in the high-priced sections.”

“Really? It seems there should be a law against that.”

“There should be a law against many things,” the man said.

The woman seemed to pick up a chart. I heard the fumbling of papers, and the sound came from the left, where she stood. “All right, what do we have here? A twenty-year-old Caucasian female. Discovered by a family who got lost after leaving the Strip, some place in the industrial section of town.”

“Poor girl. What a crappy place to get dumped.”

The woman continued to read from her chart. “She was brought into emergency an hour ago, not long after midnight. Dr. Palmer and Dr. Kirby tried a lengthy resuscitation. Cardiac massage was immediately applied, while patient was ventilated using a tracheal tube. One milliliter of epinephrine was injected in the internal jugular vein along with ten milliliters of calcium chloride. Defibrillation was repeatedly tried with no response. Dr. Palmer certified her a DOA at twelve fifty-nine.” The woman stopped and spoke to her partner. “What do you think we're looking at here, Dave?”

DOA? I thought. Didn't that mean “dead on arrival”?

What the hell were these two talking about?

For a moment thick stubby fingers passed over my eyes.

“It's a strange one, Susan,” Dave said. “Look at this blood on the nose. Someone must have roughed her up. Before they . . .”

“Before they what?” Susan asked.

“Feel how cold her skin is. And she's been here over an hour. You would at least think she would be at room temperature.”

I heard Susan feeling my left arm, although I couldn't see or feel her doing it.

“God, you're right, she's like an icicle,” she said.

“Palmer didn't mention it in his notes?” Dave asked.

“He made a quick note she appeared hypothermic but this is ridiculous. It's like someone had her stored in a freezer before they finally decided to dump her body. You know what that means?”

“What?”

“She could have been dead for a long time,” Susan said.

Dead? I thought. That word again. They were talking about me like I was dead. What the hell was wrong with them? They were doctors, for God's sakes, and I was lying right here in front of them. All they had to do was check my pulse or listen to my chest and they would know I was alive.

But what if they weren't real doctors, just interns or even medical students? They might be examining me as part of their studies, in the same way they might dissect a body during gross anatomy in their first year in medical school.

“If she's been dead a long time,” Dave said, “then whoever killed her went to a lot of trouble to keep her in good shape. She almost looks alive.”

Yes!
I tried to scream.
I am alive! What's wrong with you people?

But I couldn't get my mouth to move. I couldn't make a groaning sound deep inside my throat, or any other sound to let them know they weren't dealing with a corpse.

“True, she looks great,” Susan said. “I hope I look that good when I die. But it makes me wonder.”

“What?”

“If the cause of death was hypothermia.”

“That's a leap,” Dave said. “They could have simply frozen her after killing her. For all we know this blow to her nose sent bone fragments into her brain.”

“You're right. We won't know until we open her up. But I've been doing a preliminary exam of this arm and I can tell already her blood wasn't pooled in the lower extremities when she was put in the deep freeze.”

Open me up!

My horror transcended reason. It came close to shorting out my brain and leaving me in a quivering, mindless corner. What stopped me from cracking up completely was the realization that I was in greater danger than I had been in the meat locker.

Dr. Susan and Dr. Dave were not real doctors who treated living people. They were goddamn coroners. They were the kind of doctors who were only interested in corpses.

Christ, I had to get out of here. Or else I at least had to make some kind of sound before they started cutting. I struggled with all my might to make my lips move, to twitch, but I couldn't move what I couldn't feel.

Dave appeared to examine my right arm. “I see what you mean. The veins on the front and back of her arm and hand are filled with fresh blood. I wouldn't be surprised if your theory turns out to be correct.” He paused and then added, “What a horrible way for a cute young thing like this to go. To freeze to death in some dark box.”

“I disagree,” Susan said. “I can think of a lot worse ways to go.”

“Do we have permission to perform a full autopsy?”

Susan studied the chart. “We don't need it. She's been classified an official Jane Doe, and a probable murder victim. Which means the LVPD has been notified and wants answers right away. We can open her up now if you want.”

No! Dave, you don't want to open up such a cute young thing like me!

But Dave suddenly sounded excited. “Can I take the lead on the case?” he asked.

“Do you want the headache? A case like this, you'll probably end up in court answering a hundred questions.”

“I told you before, I think it's time I stretched my legs. For years I've been working cases no one wants to hear about, other than the immediate family. I've watched you in court, I think I can handle the pressure.” He added, “Unless you have an objection?”

Object! He's an idiot! He can't tell a dead girl from a live girl!

But neither could Susan. I was mentally screaming at the
wrong pair. Susan put down her chart and wheeled an overhead light above me. She turned it on, and I was bathed in blinding white light. For several seconds, I couldn't see a thing.

“Be serious, Dave. I've been waiting for the day you would step forward like this and demand your day in court, as the lawyers like to say. It's time you used your talents to the fullest and this looks like the perfect case. You have a beautiful young victim, a mysterious method of murder. I wouldn't be surprised if two months from now we see you on TV three nights a week, giving the locals the latest update on the Fridge Freak Killer.”

Dave chuckled. “The Fridge Freak Killer. I like that.”

“I thought you would. Now, since we're talking about a possible court case, we have to start recording in the preliminary stages. I know you're not used to that.”

“I don't mind. When do you want to turn on the mic?”

“In a couple of minutes. Let's take her clothes off. But no tearing of the material. We have to bag everything and label it and hand it over to the detective in charge of the case.”

“But the docs in the ER ripped the buttons off her blouse when they were working on her,” Dave said.

“That usually happens. The police won't hassle you about that.”

“Gotcha,” Dave said.

They were going to strip me naked? I shouldn't have cared, of course, they were going to cut me open. But I did care. Plus their excuse for doing my autopsy without a family member—
or even a friend—signing off on it was bogus. At least I thought it was bogus. The fact was, I didn't know much about the law. But shit, if they simply checked with the police, they would discover that I was missing.

That is if Jimmy had filed a missing-persons report. I was beginning to think Alex had told him about Russ, maybe to calm him down and make him jealous at the same time, and Jimmy had yet to go to the police. Nothing made any sense, I only knew I was trapped in a nightmare. It couldn't get any worse.

Of course it could get a lot worse.

They could start cutting.

As they removed my clothes, my head rolled from side to side and I was able to get a look at Dave and Susan. From their comments, I expected Dave to be younger than Susan. Such was not the case. Susan was an extremely attractive thirty, with dark features that had probably originated with a dash of Middle Eastern genes. Her hair was a dark brown, but because it was tucked behind a surgical cap, I couldn't tell its length. As she turned me, it was as if her eyes caught mine.

“Dave?” she said.

“What?”

“This girl freaks me out. It's almost like she's alive.”

Go, Susan! Go, girl! Look into my eyes again! Look and you'll see I'm still here!

“I know how you feel,” Dave said. “She's almost perfectly preserved.”

Susan sighed. “It's a shame, isn't it? Young, pretty, her whole life in front of her. Then some creep gets hold of her and she ends up on our chopping table.”

“Well, we're all going to end up here one day.”

“That's true. But I'd rather not think about it.”

“I think about it every time I eat another doughnut.”

Susan chuckled. “It doesn't stop you from putting another one in your mouth.”

My head rolled in Dave's direction. He was older than Susan by ten years, but it looked like twenty because he was obese. He had huge fleshy lips and fingers, and a serious problem with body hair. It was everywhere but where it was supposed to be. His green eyes bugged out of his fat head.

They finished removing and bagging my clothes. Since they had both moved closer to the table, I could see the two of them, especially when they were examining the upper part of my body. Susan reached for a black wire and I heard a loud click. A twitch of nervousness crossed Dave's face.