His breathing came faster and faster. Cut it, lovely. Cut it!
Once or twice he came close to finishing but he managed to slow down just in time.
He was, after all, the king of control.
*
Monterey Bay Hospital is a beautiful place, located off a winding stretch of Highway 68--a multiple-personality route that piggybacks on expressways and commercial roads and even village streets, from Pacific Grove through Monterey and on to Salinas. The road is one of the main arteries of John Steinbeck country.
Kathryn Dance knew the hospital well. She'd delivered her son and daughter here. She'd held her father's hand after the bypass surgery in the cardiac ward and she'd sat beside a fellow CBI agent as he struggled to survive three gunshot wounds in the chest.
She'd identified her husband's body in the MBH morgue.
The facility was in the piney hills approaching Pacific Grove. The low, rambling buildings were landscaped with gardens, and a forest surrounded the grounds; patients might awaken from surgery to find, outside their windows, hummingbirds hovering or deer gazing at them in narrow-eyed curiosity.
The portion of the Critical Care Unit, where Juan Millar was presently being tended to, however, had no view. Nor was there any patient-pleasing decor, just matter-of-fact posters of phone numbers and procedures incomprehensible to lay people, and stacks of functional medical equipment. He was in a small glass-walled room, sealed off to minimize the risk of infection.
Dance now joined Michael O'Neil outside the room. Her shoulder brushed his. She felt an urge to take his arm. Didn't.
She stared at the injured detective, recalling his shy smile in Sandy Sandoval's office.
Crime scene boys love their toys. . . . I heard that somewhere.
"He say anything since you've been here?" she asked.
"No. Been out the whole time."
Looking at the injuries, the bandages, Dance decided out was better. Much better.
They returned to the CCU waiting area, where some of Millar's family sat--his parents and an aunt and two uncles, if she'd gotten the introductions right. She doled out her heartfelt sympathy to the grim-faced family.
"Katie."
Dance turned to see a solid woman with short gray hair and large glasses. She wore a colorful overblouse, from which dangled one badge identifying her as E. Dance, RN, and another indicating that she was attached to the cardiac care unit.
"Hey, Mom."
O'Neil and Edie Dance smiled at each other.
"No change?" Dance asked.
"Not really."
"Has he said anything?"
"Nothing intelligible. Did you see our burn specialist, Dr. Olson?"
"No," her daughter replied. "Just got here. What's the word?"
"He's been awake a few more times. He moved a little, which surprised us. But he's on a morphine drip, so doped up he didn't make any sense when the nurse asked him some questions." Her eyes strayed to the patient in the glass-enclosed room. "I haven't seen an official prognosis, but there's hardly any skin under those bandages. I've never seen a burn case like that."
"It's that bad?"
"I'm afraid so. What's the situation with Pell?"
"Not many leads. He's in the area. We don't know why."
"You still want to have Dad's party tonight?" Edie asked.