“You are high, aren’t you?” he said. “I didn’t want to write about this until I was sure, but—”
“Ronald Guidice, you’re under arrest for trespassing on a designated crime scene,” I told him. I already had the bracelets out. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
He was still between the cars, and I had to step in there to try to get him moving. But then, as I did, I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in my leg.
When I looked down, it was just in time to see Guidice pulling his hand back. He was holding something, but I couldn’t see what it was.
My next response was automatic. I hit him, hard. My fist sent a shower of blood out of his nose and down over his mouth. I probably should have stopped there, but the adrenaline had me, and Guidice was still standing. I countered the right punch with a left hook.
This time, he went down.
He landed on his back, looking stunned. My knee was on his chest now, holding him in place. My thigh was throbbing with the pain. He’d gotten me right in the muscle.
“What the hell was that?” I yelled at him. “What’d you stick me with?”
I’d barely started reaching for his pockets before two uniformed cops were pulling me off of him. A third cop knelt down next to Guidice and pulled him in the opposite direction, up onto the sidewalk.
Valente was there, too, and I saw Huizenga rushing over from her car.
“Alex? What’s going on here?” she said.
“He’s under arrest!” I pointed at Guidice. “Check his pockets! Book him!”
Guidice had gone slack, watching me as they held us apart. “Sergeant, your detective here is obviously on drugs. He just attacked me for no reason.”
He wiped the blood off his mouth, keeping his hand up high for the cameras at the end of the block.
“Alex Cross did this to me!”
“Come here!” I yelled at him, but Huizenga put herself in the way and walked me back. Valente had me by the arm, too.
“Pull it together, Alex!” Huizenga said. “Now tell me there’s a good goddamn reason for this.”
“He just stuck me!” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. . . .” I said. “I don’t know what that . . . was.”
It was hard to concentrate, and my thoughts were starting to swim. I felt a tingling all over my body. A warm sensation crawled up through my limbs and into my head.
“I think I’m . . .”
I meant to say, I think I’m going to pass out, but I never got that far.
It wasn’t just a stab or an ordinary needle stick, I realized. It was something else. The last thought I can remember before I lost consciousness was that I’d just been poisoned.
Had Guidice killed me? Was I dying?
CHAPTER
57
I WOKE UP IN THE AMBULANCE. HUIZENGA WAS THERE. WE WERE MOVING.
None of it made sense at first, but quickly I remembered what had happened.
“Lie back,” Huizenga said, pushing me onto the gurney when I tried to sit up.