Yearnings: A Paranormal Romance Box Set (51 page)

However, when she went to call up the unfinished records, there were none. Not a one. Had she screwed up so badly that she didn’t log them properly? If that were the case, she would have to go down to the hospital and complete them by hand.

“
Remember.” A widget popped up on the screen.

Sal’s heart sank. Before tears could well, she turned the prompt off.

Since she had little to no social life, the widget could only be reminding her about Maria’s birthday. Because her friend didn’t just have a party on the day, she rocked the house for the full month. Over the past few years, Sal had tried to get more and more creative. For Maria’s thirtieth, they were going to New Orleans.

Sighing, Sal returned her attention to her overdue charts. First, she did an overview of the emergency room’s records to figure out exactly what happened, when she found all forty-three of her charts were signed off.

How could that be?

Clicking on a gallstone patient she knew that she hadn’t finished entering, Sal found the signature stamp.

S.C. Manning
.

Stacy. The ice queen had helped her. Not just helped her, but potentially pulled Sal’s ass out of the fire. Who knew she had it in her?

Sitting there, she felt overwhelming relief and irrational anger fight one another. Then tears that she had narrowly fought off spilled over.

Everything came back to her friend, Maria. Even Stacy’s help stemmed from one place. Pity. Pity for Sal’s loss.

As sobs racked her body, Sal realized that maybe Richard had been right. She had gone back to work too soon. She’d tried to fill the gaping void of Maria’s loss with work rather than honest grief. Sal felt bone-weary.

“
Remember.”

Sal slammed the widget off. As a matter of fact, if her charts were done, she could completely turn off her laptop. No more horrible reminders of how much she had lost. How much she would miss.

Besides, she didn’t need any intern finding an open Internet portal and charging eight hundred dollars worth of porn, like what happened to Yakasuma last year. Closing out the programs, she found one that shouldn’t have been there. An ME’s report. A confidential ME’s report.

Sal certainly hadn’t hacked into the morgue’s files. Who had?

Then she remembered the signature on her charts.
S.C. Manning
.

Why would Stacy nose around the ME’s files? And how had the resident gotten past the password protection?

Sal didn’t know, but there were autopsy after autopsy reports opened and reviewed. Why would Manning do that? Why risk it?

Another reminder widget popped up. Sal slammed it down. Couldn’t anything go normally? At this point she almost wished she had forgotten her charts. Going down to the hospital would have been easier than trying to figure out Manning’s new game plan. For no matter the kind act that Stacy showed tonight, the resident had an agenda. If these files were worth Manning risking immediate termination, Sal wanted to know why.

It took another few minutes to skim the causes of death to realize the enormity of what lay in those reports. Building one case of idiopathic anemia on top of growing encephalitis, the case grew that San Francisco was in the grip of a new epidemic. To spot this new disease and be the one to report it to the CDC could make your career. Make Stacy’s career.

Another widget flashed. “Remember.”

Sal groaned. Her computer just added insult to injury. Plus, when did she animate the widget? And wasn’t it supposed to say “reminder?”

Whatever
, she thought as she brushed past it to check on the ME’s conclusions. Yet the coroner hadn’t correlated all the unusual deaths into a pattern. It was a virgin find.

Torn, Sal stared at the screen. On one hand, Stacy had done her a huge favor by finishing her charts. On the other, the resident had used Sal’s computer to hack into official files for her own career advancement, leaving Sal with all the liability and none of the benefit.

Another “Remember” widget. Sal x-ed out this one, but another just replaced it. Typical. Just when she was on the brink of something really important, her laptop always fritzed.

As if reading her mind, a dozen new widgets popped up. She couldn’t knock them down fast enough. Rapidly, the entire screen filled with them, flashing, almost seeming desperate.

There was nothing left to do but sever the connection. When she hit the Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys, another pop-up sprang to the center of the screen.

“
Tyr.”

The name kept expanding until it filled her vision.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 28

The name hit her in the gut—just like that baseball bat had back in the third grade. She’d lain out on the field, gasping for breath, with all the parents circled around as her mother wailed. Sal could acutely remember her childish fear that she would never breathe again. The sense of panic that eclipsed all else. Even conscious thought.

Then her carefully crafted amnesia crashed down, filling her mind with memories best left forgotten. The ache was back, painful and restless.

Painful for Maria. Restless for Tyr.

And for what? She would never see either of them again. Doubled over, she tried to rock away the hurt, but she couldn’t blink without the sight of Maria’s blood-splattered eyes staring to the ceiling or the feel of Tyr’s hand in hers. When she did open her eyes, his name flashed across the screen.

That was it. Her laptop had gone too far. Tomorrow, she was chucking it and buying a Mac. For right now, Sal made it her mission to close each and every one of the reminders, as if erasing them from the screen would seal off the font of pain.

Screen clear of widgets, Sal began closing the autopsy reports. How naïve she’d been just a second ago. San Francisco wasn’t looking at a viral infection, but an epidemic of violence. An outbreak that no medicine of hers could cure.

No matter how many times she tried, the reports simply reappeared.

Over and over again they came back, no matter what keys she hit. The files stared back at her, accusing her, as if Sal hadn’t done enough to stop the deaths. But what could she have done?

So many dead, and if Tyr was right, so many more to come.

Anger rose. Maria was dead. Worse, no detective would ever capture her killer. No jury would ever convict the beast. What prison could hold him? Just the thought of the deep, rumbling roar made her muscles spasm and a desperate urge to run take hold.

Even if a dying baby’s blood held power, could Tyr really kill the beast before it took another black-streaked blonde?

Her hands began to shake as the fear burned itself out, leaving behind only a charred and unyielding sense of helplessness. She would remember this horror for the rest of her life without being about to do anything about it.

Nothing at all. Sal hung her head, defeated. There would never be the chance to put Maria’s spirit to rest.

Forever, she would carry a sense of …

What was on the screen? At the bottom of the page, tiny blue letters shimmered beneath the autopsy reports, asking if she would like to “map it.”

If Sal wasn’t mistaken, ME reports didn’t usually have that feature.

Biting her lip, she moved the mouse over the link. Her rational mind told her it was impossible that her laptop wanted to help her find Maria’s killer. However, if she could accept the beast, in all his horrible glory, her computer’s sentience really wasn’t that hard to swallow.

With a wince, Sal clicked the mouse. Not only did her laptop map the deaths, but with unnatural swiftness it marked each murder site in bright red.

The points formed a spiral. Sal had seen the pattern before. Back in Biology 101. A predator circling its prey. The beast zeroed in on Golden Gate Park.

No wonder the deaths didn’t make any epidemiological sense. It wasn’t a tiny virus doing the killing, but a beast. A creature that coveted something within the park. But what could it need there? She didn’t think the animal cared much for a couple of miles of rollerblading paths, world-class museums, and free outdoor concerts.

With a few keystrokes, Sal brought up the park’s history. Was it a forgotten battleground? What horrible event drew the beast to it?

Unfortunately, the park’s founding and early years were pretty boring. Yes, transforming acres and acres of sandy wasteland into a lush urban playground was a technical feat that would be admirable even now, but not exactly the stuff of dangerous legends.

Where was the blood and horror?

Maybe the beast’s interest was more current than that? Sal scanned the Park’s stats—the number of Pan Handle pickup basketball games, the California Academy of Sciences’ renovation, and the fact that Stow Lake had been reopened to boaters. All of which, as a frequent visitor to the park, she already knew. No, she was going to have to dig deeper.

But wait …

* * * * *

CHAPTER 29

Sal scrolled back up to the list of the Park’s employees. Rodrick Hernandez, Head Groundskeeper. Where did she know that name from? Hadn’t she just read it?

Flipping through the autopsy reports, Sal found the connection. Poor Rodrick was the second-to-last victim. That couldn’t be a coincidence. If they weren’t random, then it meant that there was some purpose behind their selection. Which meant that all of her assumptions had been wrong. She had taken it for granted that the body count had piled up from people in the wrong place at the wrong time, like Maria. What if the beast had not only purpose, but intent as well?

Quickly, she Googled the rest of the names. Sure enough, over half of them were connected to the park. From the first death, a Park tour guide, to the latest victim, who ran the Golden Gate Treasure Hunt, each had become more and more intimately involved with the Park.

Especially this last, a Gregory Hutchinson, or as he preferred, “Hutch the Dutch.” He ran a society, over two thousand members strong, that searched for Golden Gate Park’s lost legacy, its statuary.

Sal studied the Hunt’s website. Golden Gate Park’s patriarchal first superintendent, John McLaren, didn’t feel that man-made art had any place in a natural area. Unfortunately, the City’s elite decided that one very public way to display their Gold Rush wealth was to donate fine art, most of them being sculptures, to the Park. The City Commission, fearful if they declined the gifts they would anger the very citizens that they needed to fund their salaries, just couldn’t say no.

This left the old Scotsman with a quandary that he eloquently solved.

Instead of “throwing” the art out, he elected to “plant” it out. Sure, he would place the donated statues in the park, but then using heavy foliage, McLaren simply overgrew the sometimes massive sculptures, returning them to the earth from which they arose.

To date, the Society had recovered over two hundred pieces of art, but there were still another fifty or so unaccounted for.

While the subject might be fascinating under other circumstances, Sal became frustrated. What in the hell did the beast need with some old marble? Nearly to the end of the document, she found it. Gregory’s last entry in the Treasure Hunt’s blog.

“
Greetings, fellow adventurers! It is my proud pleasure to inform you that I am confident that at long last I have determined the grid location of the infamous Emanuel Church murder weapon. Still encrusted with the dead girls’ blood, the small statue of the Archangel Michael was buried by McLaren himself, deep in the park. This weekend I plan to finally unearth this treasure and bring it to light! Keep on digging! —Greg.”

A statue used to bludgeon someone to death, now Sal could see how the beast might be interested in that. With nimble fingers, she brought up a search on the Emanuel Baptist Church murders. The deaths were the work of San Francisco’s purported first serial killer. A medical student, Theo Durrant, seduced, then beat to death, two young churchwomen.

The hideous crime had brought turn-of-the-century San Francisco to a halt. And to have this act against nature occur in a church? The press was sensational enough that it would have given Court TV a run for its money. Even though the murder weapon was never discovered, it only took the jury five minutes to convict Theo and sentence him to death by hanging.

How did the sculpture end up at the Park, then? Following several more links, she found the answer. After the church’s patronage steadily declined after the murders, the Archdiocese closed the sanctuary and sold the property. During the church’s demolition, a workman found the bloodstained statue crammed between two joists.

Now the church had a problem. With Theo long dead, the police had no use for the object, and how could the Archdiocese move the religious icon to another church, so tainted? And destroying it? That was out of the question. Donating the foul icon to the park became the perfect solution.