The Brain Vault (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 3) (27 page)

J
ohn Doe, the apartment over the restaurant, and the tunnel staircase, they all reeked from cigarette smoke, and then it hit me, so did Ryan.
I don’t know why it hadn’t dawned on me before, but it all hit home the moment Marsh lit his cigarette. Terrance Ryan, the man known as Rat, needed to be looked in on, and he needed to be looked in on now.

Ambler had stayed behind to wrap things up. Gus was sitting next to me as the chopper lifted off and headed back to Manhattan.

I took the time to brief him on the meeting Ambler and I had taken with Marsh and Hector. Needless to say, I had his full and undivided attention.

“You have to wonder, why didn’t they torture Paul Liu the way they tortured John Doe?”

“Because, Gus, he was the right one. In Paul Liu, they’d had found their holy grail, the one human being that could be used to repair Terrance Ryan’s congenitally deformed skull. It was their prize and they needed to keep it, keep Paul Liu in good condition until they could perform the surgery.”

There was a lot that I had to presume, but presume I would for I needed to make all the pieces fit within my mind before I reached Lenox Hill. Marsh had stated that the twins had been discharged from Pilgrim State upon reaching their majority. He also said that they had been outpatients for a short time, but soon after, disappeared. The word, disappear, meant different things to different people. To a man like Marsh, it meant that they stopped making appointments and coming to the hospital. To me, it meant that they had simply dropped out of sight.

I would never be able to imagine what life was and had been like for someone like Terrance Ryan. His deformities had forced him to retreat underground, to shun society, and lurk within Manhattan’s shadows and the tunnels that connected Pilgrim State and Edgewood Hospitals. He must have learned early in life to intimidate and to use his intellect to his best advantage, in order to survive against the never-ending pain he was forced to endure as a result of his appearance. Torture and manipulation had become the tools he relied on for survival.

The promise of a new day must exist in the human mind in order for an individual to go on day after day. There must be hope, and to create hope, Terrance had fantasized about and attempted to carry out his warped plan to alter his appearance by replacing his congenitally deformed skull with a healthy one. I could only imagine that his plan was years in the making, learning medicine, learning surgery, dreaming, scheming—in his sick mind, somehow it all made sense. As for his brother James, he was either equally deranged, or so completely dominated by Terrance, that he could not escape his brother’s evil.

The trip back was over in the blink of an eye. As Lido and I stepped from the chopper, the whomp of the chopper blades subsided, and for a brief moment I was acutely aware of how quiet and serene the city was in the middle of the night. For a few brief seconds, all was still. There were no cries for help, no alarms, and no gunshots. Manhattan was peaceful and serene, bathed in the tranquility of night. And then, just as quickly, status quo returned.

The automatic doors slid open. Lido and I raced into Lenox Hill’s emergency room. The quiet was gone, medical personnel were rushing about, a stricken older man was moaning, a woman was sobbing—the world was back to normal.

We took the elevator to the floor where the psychiatric patients were housed, identified ourselves, and rushed to Terrance Ryan’s room, Rat’s room.

It was empty.

“T
his is bad.”

The policeman who had been assigned to watch Ryan was lying face down on the floor with a hypodermic needle sticking out of his neck. The sharps container had been ripped off the wall and torn apart. The needles are supposed to be broken off before the syringes are disposed of, but someone had gotten lazy. Lido helped the officer up and he started to come around. 

I was eye level with the bed. One of the leather restraints that should have secured Terrance Ryan was saliva soaked and had been gnawed through. I couldn’t imagine that he had been flexible enough to bend over and chew through the leather restraint, but in that instant I knew that was exactly what had happened.

“What hit me?” the officer said. He leaned forward and rubbed the back of his head.

“Don’t move,” Lido said. “There’s a hypodermic needle sticking out of your neck.”

The officer winced.

“Any idea how long you’ve been out?”

He shook his head.

“Stay with him. I’m going to take a look around.” There was no need to buzz for a nurse. I heard footsteps racing down the corridor.

“No hero shit, right?” Lido said.

“I’ll be right back.”

I dashed out of the room and scanned up and down the hallway—nothing. I began going door to door, from one patient room to the next, checking every bed to make sure Ryan wasn’t in one of them, playing possum. I finally came upon an on-call room and yanked the door open. A man was lying face down on the floor, clad only in boxers. He had a pulse, so I left him and raced back to Lido.

A doctor was already attending to the police officer. The hypodermic was out of his neck and the doctor was dressing the injection site. A nurse was assisting.

“There’s a man unconscious in the on-call room down the hall. We need to mobilize security. The man who was in this room is a suspect in a murder investigation and is trying to escape. I need all the exits sealed immediately.”

“Help them,” the doctor said. “I’ve got this.”

The nurse raced out of the room.

“We’d better hit the ground floor. I’ve got no idea how fast hospital security moves.”

The doctor was shaking his head. “Unless it’s time for a coffee break, you’re on your own.”

We raced to the elevator, pacing, while we waited for it to hit our floor. We jumped in and began planning strategy. “He may be gone already. It’s New York City. If he’s hit the street, he can vanish in a hundred directions.”

I could see that words were stuck in Lido’s mouth. We went three floors down before he spoke. “Unfortunately, we have to split up. I’ll take the main entrance and coordinate sealing off the building with hospital personnel.”

“I’ve already called it in. I’ll cover Emergency.”

He grabbed me and kissed me before the doors opened. It was unexpected, but not unwelcome. I felt myself slipping away. We were both so tired. I wanted to rest in his arms and leave the world’s problems behind me, but in the next instant, the doors parted, and we reluctantly split up.

When I hit Emergency, it was no different than the way I had left it. The old man was still moaning and the woman was still sobbing. I could see an ambulance pull up just outside. Within a moment, the ER doors burst open. A pair of paramedics rushed in pushing a gurney. Emergency room physicians rushed over to them. The place was in pandemonium.

I checked everyone in the room. I wasn’t sure how Ryan would be dressed, but there was no camouflaging his face, and for that reason, I considered it an unlikely route of escape. Ryan would seek an exit that would afford as little attention as possible. I tried to think as he would. I knew that he was most comfortable below ground. Lenox Hill had a basement, probably a hell of a basement, filled with supplies, emergency equipment and generators, but that would only provide him a place to hide—egress to street level would be difficult.

I was standing in the center of the ER’s entrance, turning in a circle, trying to will the answer into my head, when from the corner of my eye, I noticed that outside, the doors on the back of the ambulance opened and closed. I hit the street.

L
ess than a minute had passed from the time the paramedics had rushed into the ER.
Unless I was mistaken, they hadn’t left the building. If Ryan was already outside the building, it didn’t make sense that he would remain nearby, knowing that we would be looking for him. Still, something told me not to ignore what I’d seen.

As I drew the LDA from my shoulder harness, I realized that I was pulling a recently fired weapon. It felt different in my hands as I gripped it, as if it were still warm from being discharged, although that was not the case. I had no desire to fire it again, but knew that I wouldn’t hesitate to use it on Ryan. In quadrants of my mind, I held pictures of his victims, John Doe, Kevin Lee, and the real Dr. John Maiguay. All three were heinous and violent atrocities. Doe had been abducted and maliciously tortured. Lee had been murdered and used as a study for Ryan’s insane surgical procedure. John Maiguay had befriended Ryan, and lost his life as a result.

I was outside the ambulance when I heard a muffled voice coming from within. It was not anything I expected to hear. Once again, the voice was muffled, but what I thought I heard was, “Do you take Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior?” It struck me as so bewildering, but at the same moment I understood. I heard it again, “Do you take Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior?” The possibility was so extremely remote and yet I was one hundred percent sure. I opened the ambulance door.

Terrance Ryan was on the floor, pressed into the corner of the ambulance bay. He was dressed in short sleeve hospital scrubs. Damien Zugg was still in his hospital gown. Without his cap, I could clearly see the horseshoe shaped scar on his head. He had Ryan pinned in place with his foot against Ryan’s throat. He was a large man and had little trouble keeping Ryan underfoot. The IV start was still in Ryan’s arm. Zugg was holding a syringe. The syringe’s needle was already inserted into Ryan’s IV line.

“Damien, what the hell are you doing?”

Zugg looked at me, but didn’t see me, and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was off. All the medications had taken their toll on him, the painkillers as well as the scorpion venom. And there was the cancer, the glioma tumors growing within his brain, eating away at him, changing him irreversibly.

“I offer him salvation,” Zugg said.

“I’ve no interest in salvation,” Ryan said. His voice was still adenoid. I could still hear his wind resonating where it didn’t belong, producing an unnerving wheeze, but this was no longer the voice of a child. It was the voice of furious contempt, the voice of an intelligent man who hated the world and every perfect soul that dwelled upon it. “I want everyone to suffer.”

“Damien, you and I both know this is not the way we serve justice. Let me take him in.”

Zugg was still looking and not seeing me. “His hatred is his only true deformity.”

“We both know that, Damien, and we both know this is not the way law enforcement officers administer justice. Don’t do this—you’ve served so many years—don’t let it end this way.”

“Do it! Do it!” Ryan wheezed. “We’ll burn together.”

Zugg looked down at him, “Walk toward the light. The good Lord will overlook your contempt.”

I didn’t know what was in the syringe that Zugg had prepared. I didn’t know whether Ryan’s death would be instantaneous, or if Zugg had planned to administer death as an agonizingly slow retribution to this creature that was foul in appearance and foul of heart. I did know one thing for certain—Damien Zugg was going to squeeze that plunger and end the creature’s life. The LDA was still in my hands, but pointed at the ground. There was something I was supposed to be saying; something about dropping the syringe or I’ll fire. But Zugg was going to squeeze the plunger with or without a bullet in him.

May God forgive me.

I holstered the LDA, made the sign of the cross, and stepped from the back of the ambulance.

It wasn’t until the doors were closed that I once again heard Zugg’s muffled voice.

“And you shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever and ever. Lord hear our prayer.”

T
errance Ryan, the man who had lived his life anonymously, planning one day to walk the streets of New York City normal in appearance, but mentally insane, was found dead in the back of a NYCEMS ambulance.
Cause of death would be determined to be myocardial infarction.

My best guess was that Zugg had administered small consecutive doses of potassium chloride through Ryan’s IV. An elevated potassium level will stop the human heart. The problem is that if done in one quick dose, elevated electrolyte levels are detectable during autopsy. By administering small doses once every ten seconds or so, Zugg was able to bring on cardiac standstill and allow the body time to metabolize the poison, making it undetectable in postmortem testing. By the time Ryan’s body was autopsied, all electrolyte levels were once again within normal range. Zugg was not reported missing from his room, and the lethal syringe was never recovered.

Only God, Zugg, and I, knew the way it actually went down, and it is something I would have to wrestle with all the remaining days of my life. One day we will all have to answer for our time on earth. Zugg would likely stand before his maker many years before me—but not today. I prayed that the book of Damien Zugg’s life on earth still had many chapters unwritten.

The sun was coming up over New York City as Lido and I walked back to my apartment, arm in arm. The sky was clear, and the morning air was refreshing. It gave us just enough strength to stagger the path home.

My cell phone rang just as we were mere yards from my doorstep. I didn’t recognize the number. Exhausted as I was, my first thought was to ignore it, but once again, something, call it instinct, told me answer. The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Dr. Bock, the physician that had given me my departmental physical exam. He was calling to give the results of my lab work.

The breath caught in my lungs.

Lido undoubtedly saw the look on my face. “What’s the matter?” I held him at bay until Bock was completely finished.

I mentioned to you before that I pray each night for my loved ones and friends. I pray for the memory of my father, and for Ma and Ricky, and Ambler of course. Gus would always be in my prayers, and I prayed for those like Sonellio and Zugg, the ones that needed a little extra help.