Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

“Mr. Pendergast!” he was calling. “Mr. Pendergast!”

Pendergast rose as the red-faced, lanky figure came up to them, sweating and blowing.

“Gasparilla . . . in the hospital. He’s regained consciousness, and—” Tad paused, heaving. “And he’s asking for you.”

Twenty-Six

H azen sat in one of two plastic portable chairs set up outside Gasparilla’s intensive-care room. He was thinking hard: about the first cool nights of fall; buttered corn on the cob; reruns of The Honeymooners; Pamela Anderson naked. What he tried very hard not to think about was the incessant moaning and the terrible smell that came from the room beyond, penetrating even the closed door. He wished he could go. He wished to hell he could at least head off to the waiting room. But no: he had to wait here, for Pendergast.

Jesus Christ.

And there was the man himself, in full undertaker’s getup as usual, striding down the hall on those long black-clad legs. Hazen rose and reluctantly took the proffered hand. It seemed as if where Pendergast came from they shook hands five times a day. Great way to spread the plague.

“Thank you, Sheriff, for waiting,” said Pendergast.

Hazen grunted.

Another long gibbering moan, almost like the cry of a loon, came from behind the door.

Pendergast knocked, and the door opened to reveal the attending physician and two nurses. Gasparilla lay in the bed, swathed like a mummy, only his black eyes and a slit for a mouth relieving the massive white swaddle of bandages. He had wires and tubes out the wazoo. All around, banks of machines ticked and blinked and chirped and buzzed like a high-tech orchestra. The smell was much stronger here; it hung in the air like a tangible presence. Hazen stayed near the door, wishing he could light up a Camel, watching as Pendergast strode across the room and bent over the prostrate form.

“He’s very agitated, Mr. Pendergast,” the doctor said. “Asking for you continuously. We hoped your visit might calm him.”

For several moments, Gasparilla went on moaning. Then, suddenly, he seemed to spy Pendergast. “You!” he cried, his body suddenly struggling under the bandages.

The doctor laid a hand on Pendergast’s arm. “I just want to caution you that if this is going to overly excite him, you’ll have to leave—”

“No!” cried Gasparilla, his voice full of panic. “Let me speak!” A bony hand, swathed in gauze, shot out from underneath the covers and clutched at Pendergast’s jacket, clawing and grabbing so frantically that a button popped off and rattled to the floor.

“I’m having second thoughts about this—” the doctor began again.

“No! No! I must speak! ” The voice rose like the shriek of a banshee. One of the nurses quickly shut the door behind Hazen. Even the machines responded, with eager low beepings and a blinking red light.

“That’s it,” said the doctor firmly. “I’m sorry. This was a mistake; he’s in no condition to speak. I must ask you to leave—”

“Noooo!” A second hand grasped Pendergast’s arm, pulling him down.

Now the machines were really going apeshit. The doctor said something and a nurse approached with a needle, stabbed it into the drug-delivery seal on the IV, emptied it.

“Let me talk!”

Pendergast, unable to escape, knelt closer. “What is it? What did you see?”

“Oh, God!” Gasparilla’s anguished voice strangled and choked, fighting the sedative.

“What?” Pendergast’s voice was low, urgent. Gasparilla’s hand had Pendergast by the suit, screwing it up, dragging the FBI agent still closer. The awful stench seemed to roll in waves from the bed.

“That face, that face! ”

“What face?”

It looked to Hazen as if, lying on the bed, Gasparilla suddenly came to attention. His body stiffened, seemed to elongate. “Remember what I said? About the devil?”

“Yes.”

Gasparilla began thrashing, his voice gargling. “I was wrong!”

“Nurse!” The doctor was now shouting at a burly male nurse. “Administer another two milligrams of Ativan, and get this man out now! ”

“Noooo!” The clawlike hands grappled with Pendergast.

“I said out! ” the doctor yelled as he tried to pull the man’s arms away from Pendergast. “Sheriff! This man of yours is going to kill my patient! Get him out!”

Hazen scowled. Man of yours? But he strode over and joined the doctor in trying to pry off one of Gasparilla’s skeletal hands. It was like trying to pry steel. And Pendergast was making no attempt to break his grip.

“I was wrong!” Gasparilla shrieked. “I was wrong, I was wrong! ”

The nurse stabbed a second syringe into the IV, pumped in another dose of sedative.

“None of you are safe, none of you, now that he is here!”

The doctor turned toward the nurse. “Get security in here,” he barked.

An alarm went off somewhere at the head of the bed.

“What did you see?” Pendergast was asking in a low, compelling voice.

All of a sudden, Gasparilla sat up in bed. The nasogastric tubing, ripped out of position with a small spray of blood, jittered against the bedguard. The clawed hand went around Pendergast’s neck.

Hazen grappled with the man. Christ, Gasparilla was going to choke Pendergast to death.

“The devil! He’s come! He’s here!”

Gasparilla’s eyes rolled upward as the second injection hit home. And yet he seemed to cling even more fiercely. “He does exist! I saw him that night!”

“Yes?” Pendergast asked.

“And he’s a child . . . a child . . .”

Suddenly Hazen felt Gasparilla’s arms go slack. Another alarm went off on the rack of machinery, this one a steady loud tone.

“Code!” cried the doctor. “We’ve got a code here! Bring the cart!”

Several people burst into the room all at once: security, more nurses and doctors. Pendergast stood up, disentangling himself from the now limp arms, brushing his shoulder. His normally pallid face was flushed but otherwise he seemed unperturbed. In a moment he and Hazen had been sent outside by the nurses.

They waited in the hall while—for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes—there was the sound of furious activity within Gasparilla’s room. And then, as if a switch had been turned off, there came a sudden calm. Hazen heard the machines being shut down, the alarms stopping one by one, and then blessed silence.

The first to emerge was the attending physician. He came out slowly, almost aimlessly, head bent. As he passed them he looked up. His eyes were bloodshot. He glanced at Hazen, then at Pendergast.

“You killed him,” he said wearily, almost as if he had passed the point of caring.

Pendergast laid his hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “We were both only doing our jobs. There could have been no other outcome. Once he had me in that grip, Doctor, I assure you there would be no escape until he had his say. He had to talk.”

The doctor shook his head. “You’re probably right.”

Nurses and medical technicians were now wandering out of the room, going their separate ways.

“I have to ask,” Pendergast went on. “How exactly did he die?”

“A massive cardiac infarction, after a long period of fibrillation. We just couldn’t stabilize the heart. I’ve never seen anyone fight sedation like that. Cardiac explosion. The heart just blew up.”

“Any idea what caused the fibrillations to begin with?”

The doctor shook his head wearily. “It was the initial shock of whatever happened to him. Not the wounds themselves, which were not life-threatening, but the profound psychological shock that came with the injury, which he was unable to shake off.”