Karin Slaughter - Fallen

“I don’t know,” she said, pressing the gauze back in place. Then, because the patient might hear, she said, “Maybe.”

The cop dropped back. She glanced up the hall, but he was gone.

The trauma team set up immediately, cutting off the man’s clothes, drawing blood, connecting lines to hook him up to various machines. A cut-down tray was laid out. Surgical packs were opened. The crash cart appeared.

Sara called for two large-bore IVs to force fluids. She checked the ABCs: airway clear, breathing okay, circulation as good as could be expected. She noticed the pace slow considerably as people began to realize what they were dealing with. The team thinned. Eventually, she was down to just one nurse.

“No wallet,” the nurse said. “Nothing in his pockets but lint.”

“Sir?” Sara tried, opening the man’s eyes. His pupils were fixed and dilated. She checked for a head injury, gently pressing her fingers in a clockwise pattern around his skull. At the occipital bone, she felt a fracture that splintered into the brainpan. She looked at her gloved hand. There was no fresh blood from the wound.

The nurse pulled the curtain closed to give the man some privacy. “X-ray? CT the belly?”

Sara was technically doing the regular attending’s job. She asked, “Can you get Krakauer?”

The nurse left, and Sara did a more thorough exam, though she was sure Krakauer would take one look at the man’s vitals and agree with her. There was no emergency here. The patient could not survive general anesthesia and he likely would not survive his injuries. They could only load him up with antibiotics and wait for time to decide the patient’s fate.

The privacy curtain pulled back. A young man peered in. He was clean-shaven, wearing a black warm-up jacket and a black baseball hat pulled down low on his head.

“You can’t be back here,” she told him. “If you’re looking for—”

He punched Sara in the chest so hard that she fell back onto the floor. Her shoulder slammed against one of the trays. Metal instruments clattered around her—scalpels, hemostats, scissors. The young man pointed a gun at the patient’s head and shot him twice at pointblank range.

Sara heard screaming. It was her. The sound was coming out of her own mouth. The man pointed the gun at her head and she stopped. He moved toward her. She groped blindly for something to protect herself. Her hand wrapped around one of the scalpels.

He was closer, almost on top of her. Was he going to shoot her or was he going to leave? Sara didn’t give him time to decide. She slashed out, cutting the inside of his thigh. The man groaned, dropping the gun. The wound was deep. Blood sprayed from the femoral artery. He fell to one knee. They both saw the gun at the same time. She kicked it away. He reached for Sara instead, grabbing the hand that held the scalpel. She tried to pull back but his grip tightened around her wrists. Panic took hold as she realized what he was doing. The blade was moving toward her neck. She used both her hands, trying to push him away as he inched the blade closer and closer.

“Please … no …”

He was on top of her, pressing her into the ground with the weight of his body. She stared into his green eyes. The whites were crisscrossed with a road map of red. His mouth was a straight line. His body shook so hard that she felt it in her spine.

“Drop it!” George, the security guard, stood with his gun locked out in front of him. “Now, asshole!”

Sara felt the man’s grip tighten. Both their hands were shaking from pushing in opposite directions.

“Drop it now!”

“Please,” Sara begged. Her muscles couldn’t take much more. Her hands were starting to weaken.

Without warning, the pressure stopped. Sara watched the scalpel swing up, the blade slice into the man’s flesh. He kept his hand wrapped tightly around hers as over and over again he plunged the scalpel into his own throat.

CHAPTER TEN

WILL HAD BEEN TRAPPED IN THE CAR SO LONG WITH AMANDA that he was worried he was going to develop Stockholm syndrome. He was already feeling himself weaken, especially after Miriam Kwon, mother of Hironobu Kwon, had spit in Amanda’s face.

In Ms. Kwon’s defense, Amanda hadn’t exactly been tender toward the woman. They had practically ambushed her on her front lawn. She’d obviously just come from arranging her son’s funeral. Pamphlets with crosses on them were clutched in her hand as she approached the house. Her street was lined with cars. She’d had to park some distance away. She looked exhausted and limp, the way any mother would look after choosing the coffin in which her only son would be buried.

After mumbling the perfunctory condolences on behalf of the GBI, Amanda had gone straight for the jugular. From Ms. Kwon’s reaction, Will gathered the woman hadn’t been expecting her dead son’s name to be sullied in such a manner, despite the nefarious circumstances surrounding his death. It was the nature of Atlanta news stations that every dead young man under the age of twenty-five was celebrated as an honor student until proven otherwise. According to his criminal record, this particular honor student had been a fan of Oxycontin. Hironobu Kwon had been arrested twice for selling the drug. Only his academic promise had saved him from serious jail time. The judge had ordered him to rehab three months ago. Apparently, that hadn’t worked out too well.

Will checked the time on his cell phone. The recent change to daylight savings time had switched the phone into military hours. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to change it back to normal. Thankfully, it was half past noon, which meant he didn’t have to count on his fingers like a monkey.

Not that he didn’t have ample time to perform mathematical equations. Despite traveling almost five hundred miles this morning, they had nothing to show for it. Evelyn Mitchell was still missing. They were about to hit the twenty-four-hour mark since her abduction. The dead bodies were stacking up, and the only clue Will and Amanda had been given thus far had come from the mouth of a death row inmate who had been murdered before the state could kill him.

Their trip to Valdosta State Prison may as well have never happened. Former drug squad detectives Adam Hopkins and Ben Humphrey had stared at Amanda as if gazing through a piece of glass. Will had expected as much. Years ago, they had each refused to talk to Will when he’d shown up on their respective doorsteps. Lloyd Crittenden was dead. Demarcus Alexander and Chuck Finn were probably just as unreachable. Both ex-detectives had left Atlanta as soon as they were released from prison. Will had talked to their parole officers last night. Alexander was on the West Coast trying to rebuild his life. Finn was in Tennessee, wallowing in the misery of drug addiction.

“Heroin,” Will said.

Amanda turned to him, looking as if she’d forgotten that he was in the car. They were heading north on Interstate 85, toward another bad guy who was more than likely going to refuse to talk to them.

He told her, “Boyd Spivey said that Chuck Finn had a belly habit for heroin. According to Sara, Ricardo was packed full of heroin.”

“That’s a very tenuous connection.”

“Here’s another one: Oxy usually leads to heroin addiction.”

“These straws are mighty thin. You can’t throw a brick without hitting a heroin addict these days.” She sighed. “If only we had more bricks.”

Will tapped his fingers against his leg. He’d been holding back something all morning, hoping he’d catch Amanda off guard and get the truth. Now seemed as good a time as any. “Hector Ortiz was Evelyn’s gentleman friend.”

The corner of her mouth turned up. “Is that so?”