Do No Harm (9 page)

One hand staying beneath his sweatshirt, Clyde shuffle-stepped down the walkway into the subterranean ambulance bay, careful not to sway too much. Three rivulets of sweat arced down his left cheek. At the bottom of the ramp, two ambulances had been left deserted along the curb. He slid between them and the wall.

A couple lingered by their car in the parking slots across the ambulance bay, and Clyde pressed his cheek against the cold metal side of the ambulance until their engine turned over. His breath came quick and pressured, like a sprinter's. The car chugged up the ramp toward the open sky and disappeared from sight.

The ambulance bay was silent.

The automatic glass doors to the ER stood about fifteen yards to his left. He watched the doors and waited, trying to get his breathing under control. He had about three more minutes before the security guard would reappear. He held the Pyrex beaker with both hands, gripping it so tightly his knuckles whitened. The blue liquid lapped up the sides as his hands trembled.

A sudden noise as the ER doors pushed open. He ducked, peering through the ambulance windows. The driver-side window was down, and the ambulance interior smelled of pine disinfectant.

An Asian woman emerged from the doors, her clogs echoing off the enclosed walls. She wore blue scrubs.

Clyde's nostrils flared as he drew breath. His eyes were dark and flat, stones smoothed in a river's bed. He did not blink.

Pulling a cigarette from a pack she kept hidden in the inside breast pocket of her scrub top, she lit it and inhaled deeply, throwing her head back. An indulgent moan accompanied her exhalation.

His pounding footsteps alarmed her. The lighter dropped on the asphalt and bounced up, almost knee-high. Her face spread in a scream and both arms went up, intercepting most of the blue liquid. A spurt found its way through, dousing the left side of her face as she turned. She yelped and fell over, her palms slapping the asphalt.

Clyde pulled to a stop right above her and watched, head cocked. Gasping, she kept her eyes squeezed shut, evidently unaware that the alkali had struck only the side of her head. Her arms and legs scrabbled on the ground. She found a knee, then her feet, and then she ran back toward the ER doors, arms flailing blindly in front of her.

Clyde tossed the Pyrex beaker aside. It bounced twice but remained stubbornly intact. Walking briskly back to the ambulance, he removed his sweatshirt, revealing a worn scrub top. He threw the sweatshirt through the open ambulance window, aiming for the back, then pulled off his corduroy hat and tucked it in the band of his scrub bottoms so his top hung down over it. His pallid face tingled with a blend of horror and perverse gratification.

The woman ran into the wall a few feet to the left of the ER entrance and toppled over. She rose again, mouth down-twisted, chin slick with drool, and felt her way along the wall toward the doors, sobbing louder now. She kept her lips pressed tightly together, so her crying sounded muffled and throaty. Oddly, she still did not scream.

The doors swung open automatically before her hands could find them, and she stumbled through. Clyde followed her in silently as she navigated the small, deserted hall, so close behind her he could have stroked the soft fabric of her scrub top. She missed the turn and banged against one of the pay phones, knocking the receiver from its perch. She felt her way back to the open air as the dangling phone began to bleat.

He tried the stairwell door to the side of the pay phones. It was locked and did not budge. He returned to his position behind her, a running back floating behind a blocker. She fumbled forward, her breathing harsh and rasping, that of a dying animal's. Her hand went to her face and came away with a clump of hair. Her shoulder struck the wall and she half turned, enough for him to see the white blisters rising in patches on the soft skin around her ear.

She stumbled through both sets of glass doors and collapsed on the lobby floor, wheezing. He stepped past her quickly before anyone noticed her. Someone screamed, and all at once the room was a whirlwind of scrubs, ringing phones, running patients. Putting his head down, he turned through the swinging doors into the ER proper and strode purposefully through the hallway.

Two nurses blew by, wheeling a gurney, then the security guard he'd observed outside ran past, shouting into his radio, "Call for all officers! Zones Two and Six! Call for all officers!"

A doctor dashed from an exam room, barely clipping his shoulder. Clyde glanced down just in time to notice his ID badge: DR. DAVID SPIER. Without so much as a backward glance, the doctor ran toward triage.

Keeping his eyes on the cheap tile, Clyde turned right at the radiology suite and threaded back into the huge maze of hospital corridors, leaving the commotion behind.

DETECTIVE Yale signaled the ambulance to stop as it came down the ramp. The driver hit the brake, nonplussed. A criminologist snapped photographs by the curb and Dalton stepped around him and picked up the Pyrex beaker with his pen. It slid easily into the plastic bag another officer held open for him.

The paramedics struggled to offload the patient but were having difficulty yanking the gurney out uphill. A security guard appeared at the top of the ramp and gave them a hand. Yale pulled his arm away when David grabbed it. "You should've learned by now not to handle a police officer like that," Yale said.

David was impressed by the coolness of his eyes. "Sorry. I'm a little tense."

Another cop approached David immediately and thrust a clipboard at him. It carried a Crime Scene Attendance Log, and David signed it as he continued to address Yale. "You can't shut down this ambulance bay. It's an emergency entrance--it's imperative that we get patients down here and through those doors in a hurry."

The paramedics wheeled the gurney down the ramp, leaning back to slow it. An old woman wearing an oxygen mask sat up, gripping the metal rails, her eyes bulging almost comically. They passed Yale and David and were slowed by Dalton, who steered them wide of the scene, then through the doors, ensuring they didn't touch anything.

"I haven't shut anything down," Yale said. "But I can't have people contaminating the area. We need to preserve the integrity of the scene. Surely I don't have to explain to you that this is a serious matter we're dealing with."

"No more serious than having patients with acute conditions delayed en route to the ER."

"We'll see that the patients make it inside in timely fashion." Yale snapped his fingers at Dalton and pointed to the side of the parked ambulance. "Logical hiding place. Have Latent check the side of the vehicle for prints." He glanced at David's ID tag. "You be sure to inform me of any potentially violent patients who come in."

"I'll help as much as I can, but there are patient confidentiality issues," David said.

"There are people getting their faces burnt off." Yale turned away, raising a knuckle to his nose. His Rolex slid out from beneath his cuff; the smooth rotation of the second hand showed that it was real. Family money, no doubt. He couldn't afford that watch on a police detective's salary.

David stepped around Yale so he was facing him again. "Please get this ramp clear as soon as you can. We can't have patients going critical out here because you're putting a crime scene ahead of a medical emergency."

Yale sighed, putting on a weary expression. "Dr. Spier, we're just doing our best to cut down the number of patients you do get."

The morphine had mellowed Sandra out substantially, constricting her pupils and giving her limbs a lax, almost fluid flexibility when they moved. Diane clutched Sandra's soft unscarred hand as she poured water down over her blistering left forearm.

David crouched on the far side of Sandra's bed as Pat worked the left half of her face with a saline bottle. From his vantage, her profile was lovely. The smooth brown skin of her cheek, the soft line of her sternocleidomastoid, the arch of a penciled eyebrow. The contrast between the halves of her face was brutal. He did not want to rise from his crouch.

". . . couldn't see anything," Sandra continued, her voice a drone. "When I looked up, I just saw the stuff coming at me." She seemed oblivious to the people working industriously to repair her face. "But I knew it was him. I fell down, and I knew to make sure I kept my eyes squeezed shut."

Pat ducked her face behind a hand as a sniffle escaped her. Diane looked over, resting a hand on Pat's wrist. "We got it from here," she said softly. "Don't worry."

Pat turned, averting her face, and headed out of the exam room. She hurled the saline bottle as she exited, and it popped open when it struck the floor.

It was the first time David had seen her lose her temper.

". . . didn't want to scream," Sandra said. "Didn't want to open my mouth so he could throw the stuff down my throat." A halting breath. "I don't want to be like Nancy." Her voice went high, and broke, so her next words were almost soundless. "Oh God. Oh God."

"You're all right." David wanted to stroke the unmarred side of her face, feel it soft beneath his fingers, but he did not. "Nothing went in your eyes or down your throat. You just sustained burns on one side of your face, which we have under control."

"It stung," Sandra said. "It stung so bad but I couldn't scream. I couldn't open my eyes." A single tear beaded at the pointed corner of her eye and streaked down her perfect cheek. David wiped its trail away with his thumb, wanting to keep the cheek pristine.

"Why did someone do this to me?" Her head rolled loosely to the right so she was facing him. The blistering had blown her cheek out of shape--a weeping, pitted bulge of ruby and white. Much of the hair had fallen from the side of her head. The flesh at the base of her ear had been eaten away, the divots pooling with serous fluid and saline. Her tragus was burnt down to a small nub.

David felt himself shot through with a burst of anger so sudden and intense it left him nauseous. He shook his head and laid the backs of his fingers across the unscathed skin of her forehead. "I don't know."

His legs were shaking when he rose from his crouch.

Dalton tossed the In-N-Out bag in Yale's lap. Yale quickly picked it up, trying to work a spot of grease out of his pants with a fingernail.

"Sorry," Dalton mumbled. He raised the remaining crescent of double cheeseburger to his mouth and angled it in.

Yale glanced inside the bag, closed it, and set it aside on the bench. He stretched his legs, running his eyes around the grassy quad of the Medical Plaza.

A burly male patient in a hospital gown flirted with a nurse near the wide steps of the hospital entrance. He leaned in to whisper something to her, and she drew back slightly.

Dalton wiped his nose with his sleeve. "I took another look at the construction guys on Le Conte. Two of them have arm tattoos, but neither one resembles a skull. One of the guys is a parolee, got popped for a B and E in '96, but he's alibied three times over. Other guy's tat looked like jailhouse ink. I'm gonna run him, but he's also got a solid alibi."

"We're looking for a disorganized offender," Yale said. "He's smart enough to wear latex gloves, but discards evidence at the scene. I think he gets close to the victims by necessity--he's not sophisticated enough to figure out how to do dirty work from afar."

"I don't know about that. There's a hundred easier ways to fuck someone up." Dalton sighed. "It's just too bad neither vic got a good look."

Yale signaled to Dalton that he had a crumb on his cheek. "That could be something psychological, not just strategic." He pressed his fists together, lining up the knuckles. "Maybe there's another motivation to his not wanting to be seen. Maybe he's got some physical impairment he's ashamed of."

"Limp or something?"

Yale shook his head. "Probably not. Too memorable. Someone would've noticed--and remember, he's vanished into thin air twice. I'm thinking something less immediately visual. Something you only notice if you talk or interact with him. Glass eye. A lisp. Bad acne. Something. I think he doesn't want to be seen. I think he's afraid to be seen. Self-conscious. Avoids eye contact. As soon as the victims are aware of him, they have Drano flying in their eyes."

"Not a single fucking eyewitness. The goddamn ER doesn't post guards at the doors. Everyone comes in in their vehicles, so the guys in the parking kiosks are the gatekeepers. No one walks to the ER."

"God bless LA," Yale said.

Dalton scratched his head. "Well, now that we have two vics, at least we can rule out a personal attack on Nance."

"I don't know," Yale said. "We gotta cross-check records, see if there's any patients both Nancy and Sandra Yee treated. Could make sense. Nurse and doctor. Maybe they fucked someone up, pissed him off."

"They're reading like crimes of opportunity to me. We've found no evidence to show he stalked either of the victims. And believe me, me and Jenkins dug hard for any unusual shit in Nance's life." Dalton picked a loose string off his shirt. "I think anyone who stepped through the ER doors into the ambulance bay at that moment was gonna catch the faceful of lye. Yee just got unlucky."

"Smoking kills," Yale said.

"I think he would've hit anyone."

"Male or female?"

"Crimes like this, I'd guess he's at least sex-specific."