Michael Prescott - In Dark Places

"Doesn't make sense," agreed Banner, sitting next to him. "Whole goddamn thing is spinning out of control."

Hammond gave Banner a warning glare. "No I-told-you-sos, Phil. I don't need any bullshit from you right now."

Banner frowned. "Just because this gamble of yours didn't pay off, you don't need to take it out on me."

"Why the hell not? I've got to take it out on somebody. Anyway, it's too soon to say it didn't pay off."

"Come on, Chief, it's a fucking catastrophe. We're talking Bay of Pigs here. We've got Sergeant Brand's car wrecked on the freeway. A DB inside that's probably Brand himself, and an armed carjacker ID'd as Justin Gray. It's a total meltdown."

"We don't know for sure it was Gray. The carjack vic might've been seeing things. You know how unreliable eyewitnesses are."

"That's a pretty thin branch to cling to," Banner groused.

"Are you forgetting the chain of command here, Lieutenant?"

"I'm not forgetting anything. Including the fact that I warned you not to stick your finger in this particular pie."

"That's an I-told-you-so. I don't want to hear any I-told-you-sos, God damn it."

"Sir?" Lewinsky broke in. "We're here."

The car had come to a stop on the left-hand shoulder of the freeway. Hammond hadn't even noticed.

He stepped out. Cones and flares had been set up by CHP, cordoning off three lanes and forcing eastbound traffic over to the right. Highway Patrol officers stood waving flashlights to direct the vehicular flow.

Brand's Crown Victoriathe plate had been traced to him by the first officers on the scenelay crosswise on the road, straddling a lane division. The front was all crunched in and busted up, and the dented guardrail some distance to the west showed why. The rear of the car had taken some scrapes as well. Both taillights and one headlight were out. The engine was dead. The occupant of the passenger seat was likewise.

Hammond approached the driver's side and looked in, not touching anything.

It was Brand, all right. His face was largely gone, but his build and the dark windbreaker he'd been wearing in Hollywood were still identifiable, although the windbreaker had changed color, having been dyed in a geyser of blood.

"It's him," he said as Lewinsky and Banner joined him. "Gunshot to the face. Where's the carjack vie?"

"First officer said a unit took him to Saint Vincent's," Banner reported. "He wasn't hurt, just shook up."

"Damn." Hammond shook his head. "I need to talk to him, confirm it was Gray. We got anybody at Brand's residence?"

"Hollywood unit is on the way," Lewinsky said.

"Maybe they'll find something that makes sense out of all this." Hammond took another look at the dead man in the passenger seat. "Somebody has to."

During her hospital internship Robin had seen a few cases of smoke inhalation. She knew the smoke could kill her in a variety of ways. It could squeeze the oxygen out of the room, replacing it with carbon dioxide, leaving an inadequate supply of breathable air. It could irritate her respiratory passages until her airway swelled up and closed, choking off breath. It could poison her body with carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen cyanidetoxins that would render her unable to metabolize oxygen. Most likely, it would kill her in all three ways at once.

There was some consolation. She probably wouldn't burn to death. She wouldn't last that long.

The room was dark with smoke now. The overhead light was vanishing behind a sooty haze. Because Wolper had disconnected the smoke detectors, no alarm would sound until the smoke escaped into the hallway. It would take a long time for the fumes to seep through the door to her waiting room and the door to the hall. By then she would be dead.

Already she was coughingthe MBI current did not inhibit autonomic reactions like bronchial spasmand her head pounded, and her eyes were watering from heat and toxic vapors. Soon her respiration would become troubled.

She would experience shortness of breath. She might begin to hyperventilate, an instinctive response that would only aggravate the problem. She would become light-headed, disoriented. Her eyesight would fail. She might go into convulsions, or slip into a coma, or drift off to sleep. That would be best. Dreamless sleep.

She was sleepy now. Even as the coughing grew worse, she seemed to distance herself from it. She might be leaving her body, a near-death experienceshe'd read of those, had even talked to some critically ill patients who'd had such adventures. They had come back. She wouldn't. So it was not a near-death experience, was it? Just a death experience, that's all. What was it they always said? Go into the light. The light

Darkness.

She blinked, coming back to herself. Everything was the samesmoke and heat, coughs racking her chestyet everything was somehow different.

The overhead light. It was out. The clicking of the coils had stopped.

And she could move.

She leaned forward in the chair, testing her muscles, unsure what had happened, and then she was scrabbling at the appliance, pulling it off her head, letting it fall to the floor as she pitched headlong onto the carpet, climbed to one knee, and collapsed.

A new smell, burned rubber, filled the air. The insulation on the office wiring. The fire had burned through the wall, shorted out the wires, killing power to the lights and to the MBI gear. No power, no currentno current, no inhibition of her motor control, no paralysis. She could move again.

Couldn't walk, though. Lacked the strength.

Her coughs were savage, torturous. She spat up something like black goo. Mucus from her respiratory tract, dyed with soot.

She could barely see. Smoke everywhere and an orange flickering at the corners of her vision, the rise and fall of flames progressing around the perimeter of the room, inexorably sealing her in.

Her groping hands discovered her purse on the floor. It had been in her lap, must have been flung forward when she fell. Her cell phone was inside the purse, but she had no strength or voice to use it, and help could never arrive fast enough.

Still, the purse might help her. She unclasped it and thrust it over her nose and mouth, a makeshift mask. The air in the purse was stale but uncontaminated. She drew a deep breath, felt a little stronger.

With one hand pressing the purse to her face, she crawled forward. She reached the door to the anteroom. Raised her arm, searching for the knob, which seemed high, so high above her head, and slippery when she grasped it, the smooth metal resisting her efforts to turn it, until finally it yielded and she swayed backward, pulling the door open.

The lights in the waiting room were still on. That circuit hadn't failed. The room looked almost clear of smokea haven, a refuge. If she could get in there, cross the threshold, then she would be okay. She had to do it, even though her body insisted that it was time to curl up and rest, just rest. She had to keep going, for Megfor Meg, for Megher mantra, her focusfor Meg.

She struggled across the threshold into the waiting room, fighting to catch her breath, recovering slightly. But already the smoke, a tenacious adversary, was crowding into the smaller room. She inched forward and encountered something dark and tacky on the carpetbloodthe deputy's blood. What was his name? Rains, Rivers? It seemed wrong that she couldn't remember.

She tried pushing herself to her feet, but her legs wouldn't carry her. Helplessly she fell onto the couch where her patients waited before sessions. A long spool of mucus, black and heavy, unreeled from her mouth onto the sofa cushion as she hacked out another series of deep coughs.

Her hands amp; she could see them gripping the arm of the couchthe fingers so pale, almost bluish. Cyanotic. Insufficient oxygen to the extremities.