Michael Connelly: The Overlook

A woman in hospital blues walked up to them, carrying a clipboard.

“I’m Dr. Garner. You need to stay away from that patient until we know more about what happened to him.”

Walling and Bosch showed her their credentials.

“What can you tell us?” Walling asked.

“Not much at this time. He’s in full prodromal syndrome-the first symptoms of exposure. The trouble is, we don’t know what he was exposed to or for how long. That gives us no gray count and without that we don’t have a specific treatment protocol. We’re winging it.”

“What are the symptoms?” Walling asked.

“Well, you see the burns. Those are the least of our problems. The most serious damage is internal. His immune system is shutting down and he’s aspirated most of the lining of his stomach. His GI tract is shot. We stabilized him but I’m not holding out a great deal of hope. The stress on the body pushed him into cardiac arrest. We just had the blue team in here fifteen minutes ago.”

“How long is it between exposure and the start of this produro-whatever syndrome?” Bosch asked.

“Prodromal. It can happen within an hour of first exposure.”

Bosch looked at the man beneath the plastic canopy enclosing the bed. He remembered the phrase Captain Hadley had used when Samir was dying on the floor of his prayer room. He’s circling the drain . He knew the man on the hospital bed was circling it as well.

“What can you tell us about who he is and where he was found?” Bosch asked the doctor.

“You’ll have to talk to the paramedics about where he was found,” Garner answered. “I didn’t have time to get into that. And all I heard was that he was found in the street. He had collapsed. And as far as who he is…”

She raised the clipboard and read from the top sheet.

“He’s listed as Digoberto Gonzalves, age forty-one. There’s no address here. That’s all I know right now.”

Walling stepped away, pulling her phone out again. Bosch knew she was going to call in the name, have it run through the terrorism databases.

“Where are his clothes?” he asked the doctor. “Where’s his wallet?”

“His clothing and all his possessions were removed from the ER because of exposure concerns.”

“Did anybody look through them?”

“No, sir, nobody was going to risk it.”

“Where was it all taken?”

“You’ll have to get that information from the nursing staff.”

She pointed to a nursing station in the center of the treatment area. Bosch headed that way. The nurse at the desk told Bosch that everything from the patient was placed in a medical waste container that was then taken to the hospital’s incinerator. It was not clear whether this was done in accordance with the hospital’s protocol for dealing with contamination cases or out of utter fear of the unknown factors involved with Gonzalves.

“Where’s the incinerator?”

Rather than give him directions, the nurse called over the security guard and told him to take Bosch to the incinerator room. Before Bosch could go, Walling called to him.

“Take this,” she said, holding out the radiation-alert monitor she had taken off her belt. “And remember, we have a radiation team coming. Don’t risk yourself. If that goes off, you back away. I mean it. You back away .”

“Got it.”

Bosch put the alert monitor in his pocket. He and the guard quickly headed down a hallway and then took a stairway to the basement. They then took another hallway that seemed to run at least a block in length to the far side of the building.

When they got to the incinerator room the space was empty and there appeared to be no active burning of medical waste occurring. There was a three-foot canister on the floor. Its top was sealed with tape that said CAUTION: HAZARDOUS WASTE.

Bosch took out his key chain which had a small penknife on it. He squatted down next to the canister and cut the security tape. In his peripheral vision he noticed the security guard step back.

“Maybe you should wait outside,” Bosch said. “There’s no need for both of us to-”

He heard the door close behind him before he finished the sentence.

He looked down at the canister, took a breath and removed the top. Digoberto Gonzalves’s clothes had been haphazardly dropped into the container.

Bosch took the monitor Walling had given him out of his pocket and waved it over the open canister like a magic wand. The monitor remained silent. He let his breath out. Then, as smoothly as emptying a wastepaper basket at home, he turned the canister upside down and dumped its contents onto the concrete floor. He rolled the canister aside and once again moved the monitor in a circular pattern over the clothes. There was no alarm.

Gonzalves’s clothes had been cut off his body with scissors. There were a pair of dirty blue jeans, a work shirt, T-shirt, underwear and socks. There was a pair of work boots with the laces cut by the scissors as well. Lying loose on the floor in the middle of the clothing was a small, black leather wallet.

Bosch started with the clothing. In the pocket of the work shirt were a pen and a tire pressure gauge. He found work gloves sticking out of one of the rear pockets of the jeans and then removed a set of keys and a cell phone from the left front pocket. He thought about the burns he had seen on Gonzalves’s right hip and hand. But when he opened the right front pocket of the jeans there was no cesium. The pocket was empty.

Bosch put the cell phone and keys down next to the wallet and studied what he had. On one of the keys Bosch saw a Toyota insignia. Now he knew that a vehicle was part of the equation. He opened the phone and tried to find the call directory but couldn’t figure it out. He put it aside and opened the wallet.

There wasn’t much. The wallet contained a Mexican driver’s license with the name and photo of Digoberto Gonzalves. He was from Oaxaca. In one of the slots he found photos of a woman and three young children-shots that Bosch guessed were taken back in Mexico. There was no green card or citizenship document. There were no credit cards and in the billfold section there were only six dollar bills along with several tickets from pawnshops located in the Valley.

Bosch put the wallet down next to the phone, stood up and got out his own phone. He scrolled the directory until he found Walling’s cell number.

She answered his call immediately.

“I checked his clothes. No cesium.”

There was no response.

“Rachel, did you-”

“Yes, I heard. I just wish you had found it, Harry. I just wish this could be over.”

“Me, too. Did anything come through on the name?”

“What name?”

“Gonzalves. You called it in, right?”

“Oh, right, yeah. No, nothing. And I mean nothing, not even a driver’s license. I think it must be an alias.”

“I’ve got a Mexican driver’s license here. I think the guy’s an illegal.”

She gave that some thought before responding.

“Well, it’s believed that Nassar and El-Fayed came in across the Mexican border. Maybe that’s the connection. Maybe this guy was working with them.”

“I don’t know, Rachel. I’ve got work clothes here. Work boots. I think this guy-”

“Harry, I’ve gotta go. My team is here.”

“All right. I’m heading back up.”

Bosch pocketed his phone, then gathered the clothing and boots and put them all back in the canister. He put the wallet, keys and cell phone on top of the clothing and took the canister with him. On the long walk back down the hallway to the stairs he pulled out his phone again and called the city’s communications center. He asked the dispatcher to dig out the details on the paramedic call that had brought Gonzalves to Queen of Angels and was put on hold.