The Nowhere Man by Gregg Andrew Hurwitz

Author:Gregg Andrew Hurwitz [Hurwitz, Gregg Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

38

A Bad Night’s Work

Bags of blood.

Dangling from mounts inside glass-fronted medical refrigerator units, the shiny IV bags bulged like glossy red fillets.

There was medical equipment, too, complex elephantine machines with tangles of cords and smooth beige casings. Enough gurneys for a warfront triage center. And Dr. Franklin sprawled across one of the mattresses, his jaws loose around a rubber strap, blinking languidly.

Evan threw the emergency stop lever, freezing the elevator, and stepped out into the basement. It seemed unreal, a warehouse of dream imagery. He stared through the refrigerator windows at the chilled bags, coded by date and donor name.

They hung like shiny fruits, an orchard of blood.

Evan stopped in his tracks in front of one of the blood-storage units. To his side rose a gleaming, chrome-plated industrial safe. Five feet tall, heavy-duty steel hinges, bolted to the floor.

Curious.

Beside the safe was a tall metal filing cabinet, one drawer slightly ajar. He flicked it the rest of the way out. Medical files, each tab with a “patient” name. He snapped one up from the rack, flipped it open. A full medical workup of a girl listed as seventeen years old. Blood screening and analysis, pathogen reduction and purification, red-blood-cell and platelet count.

Franklin seemed barely to register Evan’s approach. His skin had a gray, stoned pallor. Stubble fuzzed his cheeks and neck. A needle dangled from his left arm just below the cinched rubber strap, the tip still embedded in a swollen vein. Vials neatly lined a metal medical tray at his side.

Evan set the heavy coat on the neighboring mattress. “What is all this?” he asked.

The doctor’s chapped lips moved, but no sound came out.

Evan grabbed one of the vials. Fentanyl. He threw it across the room. That brought the life back into Franklin’s eyes.

“What is all this?” he said again.

Franklin’s slender hands spread open as if bestowing grace. “This is René’s secret garden.” He smiled. “It’s how he’s fed.”

“Fed. He transfuses himself with this blood? For what?”

“Studies. There are studies…” Dr. Franklin’s gaze loosened, and he drifted off.

Evan cuffed him across the face.

The elevator shaft conveyed raised voices from above, distorted shouts and radio static.

Evan looked at all those bags, all those donor names. “He kills these people?”

“No, no. Unless…” A smile flickered across Franklin’s face, an inside joke. “Unless there are accidents.”

His eyelids fluttered. Evan traced his dilated pupils to the ancient brick fireplace across the basement. Beneath the log holder, mounds of dark ash.

Only now did Evan feel the cold of the room seeping through his skin, sinking into his bones. Crossing the space on deadened legs, he dropped to his knees on the hard concrete before the fireplace. He swept a hand through the ash. Came up with a metal hoop the size of a silver dollar.

A gauge earring.

He thought about the black smoke he’d seen pouring from the chimney two days before.

Evan drew his hand through the heap one more time, let the ash sift between his fingers like sand. A dental bridge remained on his palm.

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