The Last Victim (5 page)

“Uhh,” Garland moaned. His head moved slightly. His wrists were shackled and fastened to the chain around his waist. His hands, resting on his abdomen, twitched. His chest heaved as he suddenly began to fight for air. He gasped and coughed and choked. Bloody froth rose to lips.

Not good
. Charlie’s heart beat faster.

“It’s bad,” she told Pugh, reluctant to be more specific on the off chance Garland was still capable of understanding what she was saying. She could feel his heart beating against her palm, feel its desperate attempt to function. His skin was still warm, hot even, but she saw with a sinking feeling that his lips were starting to turn blue.

“Mr. Garland, it’s Dr. Stone.” She spoke as calmly as she could. “I know it hurts. Keep trying to breathe.”

“Just keep him alive.” Pugh’s face was a study in furious dismay. “Dr. Creason”—the prison doctor—“is on his way. There’s a stretcher coming, too. My God, we can’t let something like this happen again.”

“Tell them to bring oxygen.” Charlie’s voice was tight as Garland gasped again. “Mr. Garland, take shallow breaths. In and out, as easy as you can.”

She was almost sure he couldn’t hear her. His chest continued to shudder as he fought for air just as violently as before. His blood felt thick and slimy beneath her palm. From the way it was spurting and the location of the wound, Charlie guessed that the aorta had been
nicked. Attempting CPR or chest compressions with such an injury would only make the patient worse, as it would force more blood from his body, which was the last thing he needed. Without any kind of medical equipment, she was doing all she could. But she felt woefully inadequate. Helpless in the face of what she recognized, even as she hated to admit it, was encroaching death.

“He needs to be inside an operating room
stat
,” she looked up from her patient to tell Pugh urgently, although she already knew Garland’s chances of survival were almost nil. His only hope—and that it would work was a million-to-one long shot, in any case—was a top-notch surgeon and an immediate operation to open the chest and suture the aorta, which just wasn’t going to happen at Wallens Ridge. While the prison’s medical facilities included a rudimentary operating room for emergencies, it wasn’t equipped or staffed for something like this. And as for getting Garland to an outside hospital, there simply wouldn’t be enough time.

Pugh stood up abruptly, saying something to one of the guards, who started yelling into his radio again. Charlie wasn’t listening anymore. Every ounce of her concentration was focused on doing what she could to save Garland’s life. He was a convicted serial killer with a death sentence hanging over his head, yes, which should have made the loss of his life by brutal murder more a case of justice being served early than a tragedy, but he was also a human being. To have him die like this, under her hands, when just moments before he had been alive and well and full of insolence as he passed her office, was horrifying.

His legs moved, and a fresh fountain of blood coated her hands.

“Keep still,” she told him, although she doubted that her words were getting through. Swiftly stripping off her coat, she wadded it up and pressed it down on top of the wound, holding it in place with all of her strength, only to watch the white cotton soak up the blood with terrifying speed. As she worked, she could tell from the way the blood was gushing that nothing was going to help. It was already too late. He was bleeding out even as she tried her best to hold off the inevitable. A scarlet pool of blood spread out around them, creeping across the floor, soaking through her pants from the knees down. She knelt in the warm, wet puddle of it, and the knowledge of what she
was kneeling in made her ill. The raw meat smell of fresh blood hung in the air. Garland’s wheezing breaths were becoming more widely spaced, more erratic, and with a sinking heart she realized he was going.

“Where the hell is that oxygen?” she bit out, glaring at Pugh, at the guards, even at the two FBI agents who hovered uselessly with the rest, galvanized with the need to try something else, anything.

“Mmm,” Garland groaned, coughed up a bright red dribble of blood, and opened his eyes.

Charlie found herself looking into them. Their normal sky blue had turned almost colorless. The pupils were dilating even as she met his gaze. Death, she knew from experience, was just a few heartbeats away. The baddest of bad men, black heart, merciless and evil: all those descriptions of him and more were written down in his file, and she had no doubt that they were true. Still, she worked feverishly to keep the life-giving blood in his veins.

“Stay with me. Do you hear?” Her voice was fierce, her pressure on the wound relentless.

“Doc,” he said. Or at least his lips moved to form the word: her pulse was beating so hard against her eardrums by then that she couldn’t be sure she actually heard it.

“I’m here,” she said. “Don’t try to talk.”

Reaching up, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist. They were still surprisingly strong. For a moment their gazes locked.

Then he died.

CHAPTER FOUR

Charlie knew the instant death occurred. Garland’s chest quit rising and falling, and the sound of his breathing ceased between one breath and the next. His grip on her wrist slackened, and then his hand dropped away. The blood stopped spurting from his wound. Instead what was left from the last pump of his heart oozed out in a warm gush that she could feel soaking through the cotton of her lab coat. His lips quivered once, and then remained motionless. His eyes, which had been focused on her face, fixed and began to glaze.

“Mr. Garland
.” Refusing to accept the truth, she leaned in, pressing harder on his chest, her voice urgent.

Then it happened. The thing she dreaded, that she went to extraordinary lengths to avoid, that she had never come to terms with and never would.

Garland’s soul left his body. Frozen in place, leaning over him, her hands, which were drenched in his blood, still pressed to his wound, Charlie saw it begin. Her heart started thumping as she watched what looked like tendrils of white mist gather above the whole long length of him. The mist engulfed her wrists in a surge of electric energy. The tingle of it was tangible. She snatched her hands away, out of the force field, sinking back on her heels as the shimmering miasma gathered
and seemed to hang like fog in the air just inches above Garland’s body. In the next instant she felt a cold rush of wind that went past her with a
whoosh
. The fog blew away, swirling upward, seeming to rise and solidify until Garland himself stood there. Or, rather, until what Garland had now become stood there.

Charlie sucked in air.

Garland’s body lay limp and unmoving on the concrete floor beside her, framed in a growing pool of his own blood. His soul, his essence, his being, his
ghost
—Charlie was never sure how best to describe the apparitions she saw—stood near the body’s head, not quite solid, not quite as substantial as a living, breathing human being, but undeniably there. His feet appeared to be planted on the concrete floor. His ankles and wrists were shackled just as they had been at the moment of his death. His jumpsuit was unzipped to the waist. His bloody chest was exposed. But no blood pumped from the wound, which was visible as a small black slit, and he appeared as hale and hearty as it was possible for anyone to be,
except for the fact that he was dead
.

Charlie’s gut clenched.

Dear God, don’t let this be happening again
, was the half thought, half prayer that sprang instantly to her mind.

But it
was
happening, and she was the unwilling witness. Garland looked down at his dead body, the apparition taking in the corpse lying on the floor at its feet. Charlie saw a long shiver run through the shade. Then it—or
he
, rather, for the corpse was no more Garland now than discarded wrappings were the gift they had once adorned—raised his head and met her gaze.

Charlie’s heart lurched. Her breath caught. His eyes were once again their normal sky blue, alight with awareness and consternation and a touch of disbelief. He looked as conscious in death as he ever had in life.

“Fuck,” the apparition said. “Are you shitting me?”

She could hear him as clearly as if he were still alive, she realized, rattled. Profanity and all, it sounded so exactly like something he would say, it didn’t seem possible that the words were coming from a phantom.

“No,” she replied, forgetting the crowd around them, that they
could see her talking to what to them looked like empty space, that they could hear her side of the conversation.

His eyes widened. “I’m dead?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

His lips parted, and she thought he would say something more. But then he glanced around sharply, as if he heard a sound behind him. Charlie didn’t know what was there—she could never see more than the apparition itself—but an emotion that looked very much like fear contorted his face.

As if he saw something coming that would drag him to hell.

The rattle of metal wheels on concrete broke the spell that kept her eyes fastened on him. Looking beyond Garland, she saw the stretcher careening around the corner at last, propelled by a pair of guards, its clatter echoing off the walls. Behind the stretcher ran Dr. Creason and a male nurse pulling a wheeled resuscitation cart. Only a split second or so passed before Charlie realized that she could see the newcomers clearly: her view was no longer obstructed by Garland.

The apparition was gone. Only Garland’s corpse remained, sprawled just inches away from her bent knees. Her soaked-through coat was no impediment as the last of his blood oozed out beneath it. Charlie felt a surge of profound pity for the dead man, along with a strong sense of thankfulness that his spirit had moved on.

“Dr. Stone, are you okay?”

Large male hands dropped onto her shoulders from behind. Startled, Charlie glanced up. While the rest of the crowd focused on the oncoming stretcher, one of the FBI agents—Bartoli—leaned over her. He frowned down at her, looking concerned. It was he who clasped her shoulders, she realized with relief. And the reason she felt relief was that he was alive, and solid. A man, not a ghost.

Thank God
.

All of a sudden the reality of what was happening around her, the noise, the confusion, the presence of so many people crowding into way too small a space, snapped back into sharp focus. Charlie looked over at Pugh, who was beckoning wildly at the medical team rushing toward them while yelling at them to hurry. Two of the guards were
halfway up the hall as they ran to meet the would-be rescuers. As she watched, they grabbed the stretcher by the front bar and pulled. The smell of death, of blood, of sweat, of fear, assaulted her nostrils. Colors popped: the scarlet blood, Garland’s orange jumpsuit, the deep blue of the guards’ uniforms. Sounds were amplified. The white glow of the fluorescents overhead bathed the scene in ugly, flickering, merciless light that hid nothing. Bartoli was still staring down at her. Charlie felt suddenly self-conscious, wondering what he and any other onlookers had noticed, and, if they had noticed, what they’d made of her conversation with the dead man.

“I’m fine,” she told Bartoli, who let go of her shoulders and straightened, although her answer was something less than the truth. Shaken and drained, she felt woozy, disoriented, nauseated. Garland’s death in and of itself filled her with sorrow. On its own, such a sudden, violent end was terrible enough. Add to it the fact that she was seeing ghosts again and she felt almost like she had endured a physical assault. It had been a long time, a year at least, since a spirit had manifested itself to her, but still the unpleasant feeling was disturbingly familiar. Even though she had been careful to arrange her life so the opportunity for such a thing happening was limited, when she didn’t see anything supernatural she had begun to hope that her unwanted ability to communicate with those who had recently, violently passed over had waned. Apparently not, but now was not the time to dwell on it, not with so many eyes to see and ears to hear in her immediate vicinity, not with her professional reputation to consider. To a lot of people, maybe even most people, the idea that anyone could see the spirits of the dead was nonsense, and any person claiming to see them was nuts. Nuts are not respected doctors, nor do they qualify for research grants from the government. Therefore, the fact that she’d just had a brief but vivid encounter with Garland’s ghost was something she wasn’t planning to share anytime soon. Pulling herself together required effort, but she managed it. The first order of business was not to look at Garland’s body, because looking at it made her feel ill all over again. As the stretcher arrived with a noisy rattle of wheels she glanced at it instead.

“You want we should get him on the stretcher?” cried one of the
perspiring guards, letting go of it as he and two more of the new arrivals made a concerted move toward the corpse without waiting for an answer.

“No! Shock him! Shock him!” Pugh shouted, waving them back, addressing the medical team as he pointed at the corpse.

“Give me the paddles,” Dr. Creason yelled to the nurse, who had pushed the crash cart up beside him. He grabbed the paddles out of the nurse’s hand while barking at Charlie, “Airway clear?”

“It’s too late,” she said in a reasonably strong voice, then repeated the words more loudly as Dr. Creason, paddles in hand, dropped to his knees beside her. To him, to them all, she announced, “He’s dead.”

“Ah, hell.” Pugh groaned.

A shimmer in the air on the other side of Garland’s body caught her eye. It was no more substantial than a heat mirage on a blistering summer’s day, just as quickly there and gone. What worried her more was the sensation that assailed her seconds later, which felt exactly like a cold breeze whispering along the nape of her neck.

Whatever it was, she didn’t like it.

As the warden let loose with a stream of curses and the medical team got busy verifying her words, Charlie stood up, helped at the last minute by Bartoli, who was there with a steadying grip on her elbow when she staggered a little. Ordinarily she would have shaken free of his hand, but her knees, as it turned out, were about as stable as Jell-O. Her legs shook, she felt cold all over, and her breathing was still not entirely normal. She was also, she realized as she glanced down at herself, covered with Garland’s blood.