Stuart Kaminsky - Deluge

"Bury Hawkes," said Stella.

"It gets worse," he said. "There's a support beam down there. You can take a look. It's on its side holding up a section of ceiling. It could go if we touch it."

By this time two more firemen had joined them at the hole.

"It'll be okay," said Devlin. "What do I call him?"

"Doctor Hawkes," said Stella.

"Doctor?"

"He's an MD," she said.

"Check," said Devlin, motioning the other two firemen back. He leaned over near the hole and said, "Doctor Hawkes, we'll rig something up. Don't try to climb up and don't touch that wooden beam to your left."

"Right," said Hawkes. "How long will this take?"

"Not sure," said Devlin. "We can't move too quickly. Anything we can do for you?"

"Stop the rain," Hawkes said. "I'm up to my ankles in water and it's rising."

"How fast?" asked Devlin.

"Not sure. I'm not worried about myself."

"What do you mean?" Stella called.

"I'm not alone," yelled Hawkes. "There's a man trapped down here, with one of his legs pinned down by that beam."

"Alive?" asked Stella.

"Alive."

"Is he on his stomach or back?"

"His back."

"The water?" asked Stella.

"To his armpits," said Hawkes.

Something shifted in the debris. Across from Stella and Devlin a small avalanche of rubble rumbled down the hole. It drummed against the concrete basement floor.

"Hawkes, you all right?" Stella yelled.

"I am. He isn't."

"You have your kit?"

"I don't…yes. There it is."

Behind Stella, Devlin was giving orders to the other two firemen.

"Can he talk?" asked Stella.

Muffled sounds from below. A crack of thunder from the east.

The two firemen hurried away, moving toward their truck parked on Catherine.

"He can talk," said Hawkes.

Hawkes shined his flashlight on the face of the trapped man. He was white, probably in his late forties, lean, salt-and-pepper hair, military cut. He was wearing a leather jacket, now torn at the sleeve, and a drenched green turtleneck shirt.

"You all right?" Hawkes asked the man.

"Couldn't be better," said the man with a pained grin and a slight accent Hawkes couldn't quite place. "Legs pinned down, water rising, world about to come down on my head. Who could ask for more?"

"I'm a doctor," said Hawkes, gently touching the man's ribs and arms, and then his pinioned ankle. "Anything feel broken?"

"Ankle, maybe."

"You've got a few lacerations and bruises, nothing serious. Did you hit your head?"

"No, I always talk this way," the man said. "Name is Connor Custus. Easy to remember. Hard to forget."

He held out his right hand. Hawkes took it. The two end fingers were missing. Hawkes could feel the rough calluses on the man's palm.

"Scottish?" asked Hawkes.

"Australian," said Custus. "I guess I really know the meaning of being down under now."

"We'll get out. FDNY is working on it." Hawkes reached for his kit and opened it.

"How's a doctor happen to be at the scene of an explosion?"

"Crime Scene Investigation," said Hawkes, carefully touching the man's trapped right ankle, which was almost covered by water.

Custus winced and bit his lower lip.

Hawkes tried the other ankle. No reaction.

"Right one broken?" asked Custus.

"Yes," said Hawkes.

"Can you set it?"

"I'd rather get you out of here first."

"The precarious state of this dungeon might make timely escape unlikely," said Custus. "Edmond Dantиs had more to work with than we have and he had the use of both legs and no rising water."

"Are you in pain?" asked Hawkes.

"On a scale of one to ten? I'll give it a seven, but I've been close to nine in my day. You have something that will take the edge off in your box of tricks there?"

"Yes."

"Then by all means administer to a body and soul in distress."

Hawkes pulled a plastic bottle of Vicodin out of the kit. Being able to carry prescription painkillers in case of a situation like this one was one of the advantages of being both a physician and a CSI.

Hawkes could hear the rain rush through cracks and fissures above him, threatening the fragile, sagging ceiling.

"You were in the bar?" asked Hawkes.

"I was," said Custus, downing the pill Hawkes handed him. "Driven in by the rain for a morning wake-up beer and winding up in a hole as ominous as any of Dante's pits. Poetically and metaphorically that would make you my Beatrice."

"Do you remember what happened?" asked Hawkes, shining the beam of the flashlight into Custus's eyes. The pupils constricted normally.

Hawkes perched the flashlight on a flat rusted square of iron next to the injured man. Its light was crime-scene bright. The waterproof flashlight had a battery life of one hundred hours. Luckily, Hawkes had put in new batteries two days ago.

"It's an odd story and I'm given to making my stories lengthy," said Custus as Hawkes opened the man's shirt to examine him for other bruises or trauma.

"Not too lengthy, I hope," said Hawkes.

"Ah yes, the tide is rising," said Custus with a grin, "and we await the shadow of an albatross.

"I was sitting at the bar, talking to a man I had just met when- "

The ceiling shifted. The beam moved a fraction, pinning Custus even more tightly. He let out a pained groan.

"Hawkes?" Stella called from above.

"We're here," said Hawkes.

Custus's chest was a map of scars, most of them old, pink, hardened.

"Football, Australian rules," Custus explained. "Rough and tumble. Lots of biting, scratching and the rare but distinctive spitting. Fun for one and all."

Custus was grinning. Hawkes didn't grin back. Custus's scars were not the result of football injuries. He'd seen these kinds of scars before.

And then Hawkes saw it. Under folds of his clinging wet shirt and a smudge of oily filth, he saw it.

"You were sitting at the bar talking to a man you had just met," prompted Hawkes.

"Right, well- "

"Who shot you?"

"Shot me?" asked Custus.

"You've been shot," said Hawkes. "Don't you feel it?"

"Not really. A little stiffness there, but nothing like the heroic agony of my broken ankle. How bad is it?"

"I don't know," said Hawkes. "We'll get you out of here to a hospital."

"It doesn't have to hurt to kill you," said Custus.

"No, it doesn't," Hawkes said, leaning over with his flashlight to examine the wound, out of which, Hawkes could now see, blood pumped steadily.

THE BODY OF JAMES FELDT was discovered by a woman named Annabeth Edwards. "Discovered" might suggest that she had either stumbled upon or been searching for the body. In actuality, she couldn't miss it as she made her way through the nooks and crannies of Strutts, McClean & Berg. The door to one of the offices was open, wide open and waiting for her to push it. She did. The room was painted red with blood and the body that lay sprawled next to the desk had its pants pulled down to reveal a horror of mutilation.

To her credit, Annabeth did not drop her bag, which contained a lemon poppy muffin and a coffee sweetened with cream and three packets of Equal. Annabeth didn't recognize the man with granny glasses dangling from one ear. She'd only been at her job for two weeks. She was here on this shit of a day to make an impression, to impress any partner who might happen in, deciding that there was something in the office worth the risk of being swept away by the deluge outside.

She stood in the doorway, hands at her side, knowing enough not to go in or touch anything. It wasn't necessary to see if the man might still be alive. He obviously was not.

It struck her that whoever had done this might still be here. She stood silently, listening. Just the rain pounding against the blood-streaked window over the head of the dead man.