Stuart Kaminsky - Blood On The Sun

She put down the evaluation and said, "The recommendation was that you be allowed to go back to work, but that you should be evaluated every six months."

"I have been," Danny said.

"I know. It says here that in each evaluation session you showed some signs of resentment toward the evaluator."

"Maybe they were paranoid," said Danny seriously. "Stress of the job. I think one of the evaluators, Dr. Dawzwitz, had a tick in his right eye."

Sheila couldn't hold back the smile. He was right. He was also deflecting.

"I mentioned the tremor in your hand," she said. "In your initial evaluation, Dr. Dawzwitz noted a small tremor in your right hand."

"No," protested Danny, trying to remember.

There had been so much to think about, so much not to think about. He had wanted to go to bed and pull the blanket over his head. He had also wanted to plunge into work, all-consuming twenty-four-hour work. Had his hand really trembled?

"What happened last night?" she asked.

Danny shrugged.

"When you held up your hand I could see your knuckles were bruised. I think one of them might be broken."

Danny looked away, sighed, examined his hand and said, "Two men tried to mug me last night on the way home from work."

"On the street?"

"Subway."

"And you were afraid?" she asked.

Danny smiled, a bitter smile.

"No," he said. "That was the problem. There were two of them. One had a knife. One had a lead pipe. I think I was happy to see them."

"What did you do?" she asked.

"Lost it," he confessed. "Beat the hell out of them. I heard a rib crack, a nose break, saw blood spurting. I kept punching. I wanted to kill them. I think I shouted or grunted or something."

"What were you thinking?" she asked.

"Thinking?" he said. "Nothing. I was seeing. Maggots. A dead little girl. A killer who wanted sympathy. And then more bodies, mangled, torn, sometimes faceless. An old woman dead on the floor of a subway car clutching her shopping bag. I thought I had forgotten most of them."

"And the man you killed two years ago, did you see him?"

"No," he said.

"You kept punching the two men on the subway after you had subdued them?" she asked.

Danny nodded.

"How did it feel?" she asked.

"Losing it? Scary. When I stopped punching and looked down at the two of them groaning, I didn't remember beating them. But maybe what was worse was that, scary as it was, I felt good about it."

"You don't get to touch the bad guys in CSI," she said.

"No. Not if we can help it. Even when we use force when we have to, it always winds up as an issue in court if there's a trial."

"This time you did use force," she said. "For all the victims you've seen, all the killers of the innocent you had to endure. You did something."

"The wrong thing," he said.

"And you regret it?" she asked.

"No," he said. "I let them go."

He looked down at his trembling hand and then up at her and said, "I just want the tremor to stop."

"I'll call Dr. Pargrave in neurology to set up tests and prescribe blood work," she said, making a note, "and I'll ask him to give you a prescription for propranolol for the tremors and a mild drug prescribed for combat veterans. Make an appointment with me for one week from today. If you need me sooner, call day or night." She handed him a card.

"What's wrong with me?" asked Danny.

"How much coffee do you drink on an average day?" she asked.

"Not much. Four, five cups."

"Cola?"

"Diet, three a day maybe."

"Too much caffeine. Cut the caffeine. Cold turkey."

Danny looked at her, adjusted his glasses and repeated, "What's wrong with me?"

Sheila Hellyer nodded and said, "Cop trauma. You've seen too much darkness, death. You hold it in and then, in your case, something triggers all the memories and you explode. That hand is angry."

"You sure I'll be OK?"

"No," she said. "That's why we're running tests. The tremor might get worse without the caffeine. What you should do is go home for a few days and meditate or rent all six Star Wars movies."

"Are you going to recommend that I be taken off the unit?" he asked.

Sheila Hellyer closed the file in front of her and said, "If I recommended that all of the walking wounded police officers be fired, the New York police department would probably be reduced to a few hundred people. Besides, a lot of those officers living with the horror of what they see and do are the best this city or any city has. Just my opinion. I'm not planning to write a paper about it."

The Stalker entered Stella's apartment using a copy of the key he had made himself from the one he had found in a drawer in the kitchen the first time he had been there. The first time he had picked the lock. It hadn't been easy. It wasn't something he knew how to do, but he had practiced at it, especially with the lock Stella had installed. He had purchased a lock just like hers, read a book on how to pick a lock, bought the right tools, and practiced.

It had taken him almost twenty minutes that first time he had entered Stella's apartment, and by the time he was finished he had been drenched in sweat from the fear of someone seeing him. He had also been afraid that he had left small scratch marks that she might notice.

Now was the third time he had been in her apartment, and this time he didn't bother searching drawers and accessing Stella's computer. It took too much time to put everything back exactly as it was so she wouldn't notice anyone had been there.

He moved quickly to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. He knew where the bottle was. He took the bottle he had brought with him from his pocket and carefully, over the sink, poured the white-brown gel from the bottle he had brought into Stella's medication and shook Stella's bottle for a full two minutes.

He had learned how to make the gel, which used simple fly strips and turpentine, from notes he found on a bookmarked web site on her computer.

He had been certain it would work. The person who had written the notes knew about such things, but just in case, the man had tried the poison on a dozen white rats he had purchased at a pet show. He had told the woman who sold the rats to him that he was feeding them to his two corn snakes. The rats had died almost instantly. That wasn't good. He moved on to guinea pigs and finally a rhesus macaque monkey, tried various mixtures, percentages, until he found one that made the monkey immobile for about two minutes before it died.

She might take it that night. It might be days or weeks before she would need it, but she would need it. When she did take it, it would kill her quickly, but she would suffer.

He carefully cleaned and dried the sink using toilet paper and a spray bottle of cleanser Stella kept under the sink. He flushed the paper down the toilet, made sure it was gone, pocketed the bottle he had brought with him and returned Stella's half-full bottle of antihistamine syrup to the cabinet with the label facing out as he had found it.

Less than a minute later, he left the apartment. He would return when the time came. He wanted to be there when she died. He wanted her to live long enough to know why this was happening to her, but he would settle for simply knowing that she was dead.

Mac had returned just before dawn to the wooded area where Jacob Vorhees' bicycle and clothes were found. He wanted to use an ALS on the area to look for signs of blood. With his luminol light on and wearing an amber eye-shield, Mac went over the ground, moving outward in circles to a distance of fifty yards.

No signs of blood, but as dawn came, Mac found the missing sneaker behind a rock, half a football field away from the bike and clothes. Had the boy broken away from Kyle Shelton still wearing one shoe? Had the shoe come off when the boy was running away?