“Jesus,” she said. “That’s your version of hope?”
“Absolutely. It gives us a little extra time to find him.”
“Jesus,” she said again.
“I could be wrong,” I said.
She looked back out the window. “Don’t be wrong, Dex.
Not this time,” she said.
I shook my head. This was going to be pure drudgery, no fun at all. I could only think of two things to try, and neither of them were possible until the morning. I glanced around for a clock. According to the VCR, it was 12:00. 12:00. 12:00. “Do you have a clock?” I asked.
Deborah frowned. “What do you want a clock for?”
“To find out what time it is,” I said. “I think that’s the usual purpose.”
“What the hell difference does that make?” she demanded.
“Deborah. There is very little to go on here. We will have to go back and do all the routine stuff that Chutsky pulled the department away from. Luckily, we can use your badge to barge around and ask questions. But we will have to wait until morning.”
“Shit,” she said. “I hate waiting.”
“There there,” I said. Deborah gave me a very sour look, but didn’t say anything.
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I didn’t like waiting either, but I had done so much of it lately that perhaps it came easier to me. In any case, wait we did, dozing in our chairs until the sun came up. And then, since I was the domestic one lately, I made coffee for the two of us—one cup at a time, since Deborah’s coffeemaker was one of those single-cup things for people who don’t expect to be entertaining a great deal and don’t actually have a life.
There was nothing in the refrigerator remotely worth eating, unless you were a feral dog. Very disappointing: Dexter is a healthy boy with a high metabolism, and facing what was sure to be a difficult day on an empty stomach was not a happy thought. I know family comes first, but shouldn’t that mean after breakfast?
Ah, well. Dauntless Dexter would make the sacrifice once again. Pure nobility of spirit, and I could expect no thanks, but one does what one must.
C H A P T E R 1 5
Dr. mark spielman was a large man who looked more like a retired linebacker than an ER physician. But he had been the physician on duty when the ambulance delivered The Thing to Jackson Memorial Hospital, and he was not at all happy about it. “If I ever have to see something like that again,” he told us, “I will retire and raise dachshunds.”
He shook his head. “You know what the ER at Jackson is like.
One of the busiest. All the crazy stuff comes here, from one of the craziest cities in the world. But this—” Spielman knocked twice on the table in the mild green staff lounge where we sat with him. “Something else,” he said.
“What’s the prognosis?” Deborah asked him, and he looked at her sharply.
“Is that a joke?” he said. “There’s no prognosis, and there’s not going to be one. Physically, there’s not enough left to do anything but sustain life, if you want to call it that. Mentally?” He put both hands palm up and then dropped them on the table. “I’m not a shrink, but there’s nothing left in 1 3 0
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there and no way that he’ll ever have a single lucid moment, ever again. The only hope he has is that we keep him so doped up he doesn’t know who he is, until he dies. Which for his sake we should all hope is soon.” He looked at his watch, a very nice Rolex. “Is this going to take long? I am on duty, you know.”
“Were there traces of any drugs in the blood?” Deborah asked.
Spielman snorted. “Traces, hell. The guy’s blood is a cock-tail sauce. I’ve never seen such a mix before. All designed to keep him awake, but deaden the physical pain so the shock of the multiple amputations didn’t kill him.”
“Was there anything unusual about the cuts?” I asked him.
“The guy’s had training,” Spielman said. “They were all done with very good surgical technique. But any medical school in the world could have taught him that.” He blew out a breath and an apologetic smile flickered quickly across his face. “Some of them were already healed.”