Torn (Second Sight) (8 page)

“No more sedation,” Prentiss announced, his voice firm and authoritative, echoing slightly in the empty room.

Though many of the tiles in the floor were shattered and missing, most of the walls were intact. A metal panel with spigots was mounted about head level on the far wall and there were several electrical outlets as well. But the real reason he’d picked the room were the long fluorescent bulbs overhead. Unlike virtually everything else at Linda Vista, they worked. There had to have been a film crew here recently. He wondered for a moment which part of the hospital had been used for the pilot of
ER
. It might have been this very room.

Delicately, he picked up the scalpel in the middle of the tray.

“Okay, people,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

A surgeon never worked alone.

• • • • •

Isabelle tugged on the index finger of her glove. The wheelchair had turned up quickly. Just as Dadashian had noted, it wasn’t a common piece of equipment and it hadn’t wandered far from where the Chameleon had left it. Someone had moved it just inside the entrance.

“Are you sure about this?” Mac said quietly.

They’d immediately dusted for fingerprints but only found a smudged palm print on one of the textured handles at the back of the chair and a partial thumb print on the other. In the video they’d seen the Chameleon wearing gloves. More than likely, it was the print of someone who’d moved the wheelchair into the building, probably a guard.

Mac had arranged for them to be alone in a nearby waiting room. Dixon stood at the entrance so they wouldn’t be disturbed. He glanced back over his shoulder at them.

“Yes,” Isabelle said, tugging the remaining fingers of the glove off.
 

Mac stood next to her, close, his hand on the small of her back as they looked down at the worn and dented wheelchair. An object like this
had
to bring pain and they both knew it. His hand was warm, his touch soft. As the last of the glove came off, he slipped his arm around her waist. She glanced at his hand on her hip and her own bare hand just inches from his.
 

It would be so easy to read him. It would only take a second.
Dixon shifted at the entrance and glanced up and down the hallway.
Stop it,
Isabelle told herself
. You’re not here to read Mac. Concentrate.
 

With a deep, quick breath–she touched the armrest of the wheelchair.

A bored security guard pushed the chair through the automatic door. Bright lights made her eyes hurt and she winced. Someone yelled ‘action!’ A dozen faces flashed by. People were making speeches. A strong, young Latino man popped a wheelie in the chair and then sped down a wide corridor. Something wasn’t right. Nothing felt real. Isabelle didn’t recognize anything, only the automatic door. More faces–smiling, nervous, crying–popped in and out in rapid succession.
What is going on?
The outside of the hospital was lit at nighttime. A small, stenciled sign read Linda Vista Hospital. Isabelle let go of the armrest and stepped back, directly into Mac’s arms.

“I’ve got you,” he said from behind.

His arms closed around her midriff and she instinctively closed her arms around his, hanging on as the grey vision of the reading gradually cleared. The images in her mind started to slot into place. Quickly, she turned to Mac, her hands finding his shoulders, her eyes straining to see him through the fading grey.

“Linda Vista Hospital,” she exhaled breathlessly. As Mac’s face slowly swam into view, his deeply green-blue eyes stared into hers. “That’s where this wheelchair is from.”

“
Linda Vista?
” Dixon asked.

“Do you know it?” Mac said, jerking his gaze away.

“Well, sure,” Dixon said. “But it’s not a hospital. Not anymore.” Isabelle took her eyes off Mac’s puzzled face to look at Dixon as well. “It’s abandoned. They use it for film shoots now.”

• • • • •

It turned out that the kneecap was full of arteries. Esme had survived–as he had long ago–but that never needed to happen again, now that he was a surgeon.
 

Live and learn
, Prentiss thought. Though he’d started to shrug, he stayed in character and kept his shoulders rigid. A surgeon wouldn’t approach the operating table with a shrug. With the rubber of the latex glove nearly sticking to the steel handle of the scalpel, he gripped it like a pencil and pointed it at Angela’s kneecap.

The enormous femoral artery that dived down between the hip and the groin and then into the thigh eventually branched and had to pass through the knee. It was beautiful really–the way everything seemed as though it were meant to be. In his mind’s eye he pictured the jpeg from
Grey’s Anatomy
. Though the anterior tibial artery was at the back of the knee, he would begin at the front as he always did. It was tradition.

Mac felt it in his bones. The Chameleon would be here.
 

The dark SUVs and black and whites screamed into the parking lot, sirens blaring, lights flashing in the growing darkness of evening. The vacant hospital was a lot of territory to cover. With a strange sense of déjà vu, Mac jumped out of the passenger door before the vehicle had come to a full stop. Without missing a step, he checked the helicopter overhead and keyed the mic on his walkie-talkie.

“All right, everybody,” he said. “You know the drill.”

They had to know it. This was the third time this week.

“Hostage Rescue Team first,”
 
he said, turning slowly in a circle to look at the gathered agents and police officers that surrounded him. “Target the operating rooms identified on the floorplans first. Then work your way up.”
 

Although the owners of Linda Vista had immediately complied with the building plans, always handy for film crews, they knew facility by heart. The operating rooms were all located in the level below ground.

Mac saw Isabelle standing next to Dixon, both them wearing bullet proof vests like himself.
 

“LAPD secure a perimeter around this facility. No one in or out. Let’s find her!”

Bodies ran in every direction and the squad cars took off as well. Mac waved Sergeant Dixon and Isabelle over. As with Esme, there was a chance that a reading might provide them an important clue about the Chameleon.
 

“Keep Isabelle behind you,” Mac said to the sergeant. “We’ll follow the HRT.”

It had to be an operating room.
 

He took a moment to meet Isabelle’s gaze. Her amber eyes were clear, focused, and staring intently into his. With a quick nod, he turned and jogged after the HRT.

• • • • •

Linda Vista could have been the setting for a horror movie
, thought Isabelle as she trailed behind Sergeant Dixon. Mac was up ahead, barreling down the dark corridor. The shouts of the Hostage Rescue Team echoed from the dirty and broken tiles. She could hear radios squawking and the pounding of boots. The beams of flashlights flitted wildly as though a hundred tiny trains had derailed and were charging forward.

Though she wanted to be closer and see what was going on, Dixon kept his long arm in front of her.

“This distance is good,” he said. “We’ll know as soon as they do.”

The small radio clipped to his belt was full of terse staccato reports in partial sentences, mostly composed of numbers and letters.

Suddenly, up ahead, the lights disappeared, moving as a group to the left. A cacophony of raised voices echoed though Isabelle couldn’t make out what they were saying. And then, even as she and Sergeant Dixon closed the distance, an eerie silence followed. Their own footsteps sounded around them, her heels clattering in the empty hallway, the only light that of the sergeant’s flashlight. They were approaching a large doorway that looked as though it once might have held two swinging doors. But just as they arrived, the hostage rescue team exited. Though they turned and continued their progress up the corridor, something in the way they moved was different. They were hunkered lower, not bunched so tightly together, assault rifles held at the ready. And though they moved with purpose, Isabelle realized as they retreated further into the darkness of the long hallway, that they weren’t running. They weren’t in a hurry.

“
No
,” she muttered.

Mac’s voice came from the sergeant’s radio just as they reached the wide doorway.

“We’ve found her. All teams, we’ve found her,” he said. “The victim is dead.”

No sooner had the words registered than the scene in the operating room assaulted her. An incredibly bright lantern rested on a metal tray, casting a harsh light throughout the large room.
 

“
Goddamn it
,” Dixon swore aloud.

“Forensics,” Mac’s voice said in stereo, compounded by Dixon’s radio. “Operating Room Number Seven. Now.”

Isabelle stifled a scream by clamping both hands over her mouth. Angela’s eyes were open as was her mouth. Her face, pasty white, seemed nearly to glow and her lips were equally pale. Though Isabelle wanted to run, be as far away from this place as possible, she couldn’t even turn away. Instead, her staring eyes were drawn as though by a magnet down to Angela’s knee.
 

Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.

Mac cut off her view.
 

“There’s no need for you to see this,” he said, his voice tight and strained. “There’s nothing you can do here.”

Angela’s knee had been completely open, as though a dissection class in high school had been at work. Blood pooled all around her lower body, maybe as deep as an inch, nearly cresting the low metal rim of the operating table.

“Sergeant,” Mac said over her head, as he wrapped her in a hug. “Call Sharon so she can let the Caras family know.”

Special agents in suits began to arrive, pausing at the doorway as the sergeant had done. Mac moved Isabelle out of the operating room, her hands still clamped over her mouth. The forensics team, in their white jumpsuits, passed them as well. She shut her eyes but all she could see was Angela’s lifeless face. Mac hugged her tight to him and she finally took her hands from her mouth only to begin sobbing. She buried her face in Mac’s chest and clung fiercely to his back.
 

“I know,” he whispered.
 

It had never even
occurred
to her that they wouldn’t succeed. Without knowing it, until this moment, Isabelle had envisioned a rescue scene. It had been just like finding Esme but with Angela substituted.

“Mac?” Dixon said. “I think you should see this.”

But Mac didn’t respond. He just held her and gently caressed her hair and then her back. With an effort, Isabelle finally managed to stop crying. She wiped her eyes and sniffed as Mac let her go.
 

“Are you okay?” he said quietly. There was a flurry of activity behind him and Isabelle nodded her head yes. “All right,” Mac said. “Wait out here.”
 

She quickly nodded again. The mere thought of going in that room made her shudder. As she hugged herself and moved further away from the doorway, she found the nearest wall and leaned against it.

Oh my god
, she thought.
Angela is
dead
.

Isabelle wiped her eyes again, her gloves wet with tears. Police officers joined the group of onlookers and flashes from a camera popped, illuminating their faces. Their expressions were grim, hard, and instantly angry. And none of them turned away, especially not the way she had done.

Mac pushed through their midst, leaving the operating room and heading toward her, followed by Dixon. In his hand, Mac held a large, clear plastic bag with something inside it. Something was wrong. The tense look on his face made her stomach tighten and, as he raised the bag so she could see what was inside, she felt a sense of dread that nearly took her breath away.

But inside there was just a stethoscope. It looked brand new, the metal of it glinting in the harsh light as Mac turned the bag. But as the back of the stethoscope came into view, Isabelle realized that the paper inside wasn’t like the object tags that she’d once seen in the evidence room. This piece of paper had her name handwritten on it.

“What…” she started, tilting her head, staring at it.

“I think he’s left you a message,” Mac said.

• • • • •

Mac watched Isabelle’s face as realization dawned and she recoiled from the bag. Reading the stethoscope was the
last thing
he wanted her to do but if the Chameleon had left any clue,
anything
at all, intentional or not, that could lead to his identification, his
capture
, then it had to be done.

But Isabelle knew it too. Mac could see that. Though she’d put her back against the wall, she pushed away from it now. With her lips set into a thin line, she began to remove one glove.

Forensics had already determined that the stethoscope and paper were devoid of prints, though the metal diaphragm appeared to have been damaged–like everything else in this place. Whatever mistake Mac was hoping the Chameleon would make, especially given the ‘operation,’ leaving prints was not one of them. As Isabelle tugged her glove free, Mac opened the bag. But the fact that he’d specifically left something behind was yet another indicator he was getting cocky–
very
cocky.

As she reached her bare hand into the bag, it trembled. With one, last, hissing inhale, she touched one of the earpieces. Light from the floodlights set up by forensics spilled into the hallway and lit Isabelle’s face from the side. The one eye that Mac could clearly see unfocused immediately as though she were staring right through his chest.

Suddenly her eyes widened, her eyebrows flew upward, her mouth dropped open, and then she screamed.

“Isabelle!” Mac yelled, yanking the stethoscope from her grip.
 

Isabelle began to fall backward, her body as rigid as a board, the scream suddenly cut off. In an instant, Mac had flung the bag toward Dixon and lunged forward. He caught her in both his arms as she’d been about to collide with the wall behind her.