"You don't need a medical degree to know that's not normal," Stein said. "Now check this out. Watch his eyes."
He grabbed Lom's head with both hands, one at the chin and one at the crown, and rotated it back and forth a few times, then moved it up and down like a nodding marionette. Lom's eyes never moved in his head; his gaze remained fixed straight ahead, staring whichever way he was turned.
"We call that 'doll's eyes.' It means his brain's in deep shit. He's got no higher brain function—nothing above the brain stem, if that much. He's a turnip."
"And he couldn't be faking it?" Renny said, although he already knew the answer.
"No way."
"How about drugs? What'd the blood tests show?"
Stein looked away. "We didn't do any."
"You mean to tell me you've got a guy you're calling brain dead and you haven't checked to see if he's full of H or blow or ice?"
"We couldn't get any blood out of him," Stein said, still looking away.
An icy-fingered hand began a slow walk down Renny's spine.
"Oh, shit. Not another one."
"You know about the kid too?" Stein said, looking at him now. "I guess everybody in the hospital's heard. What the hell's going on, Sergeant? Somebody brings in a bloodless mutilated kid who can't be anesthetized, and you cops bring in this… this zombie with no pulse, no blood pressure, no heartbeat, yet he sits, stands, and walks. I couldn't find any blood anywhere in him—I even stuck his femoral artery, or at least where I thought his femoral artery should be. We cathed his bladder for urine but wound up with a dry tap. This is getting scary."
"Maybe he's brain damaged," Renny said, shaking off the chill. He'd heard enough Twilight Zone bullshit for one night. "Can't you X-ray his head or something?"
Stein brightened.
"We can do better than that. We can get an MR—and we can get it stat."
Renny stayed with the inanimate, staring Lorn while Stein rushed off to set up the MR or whatever it was.
"You're not fooling me, pal," he whispered as he leaned over him. "I'm going to break up your little game and see that you pay for what you did to that kid."
Renny almost jumped back when Lom's mouth twisted into a toothy grin.
Renny was still shaky as he sat outside the Magnetic Resonance Imaging room. Lom's grin had lasted only an instant before collapsing back into the slack expression he'd worn all night, but that had been long enough to convince Renny that he had a supreme con artist on his hands here.
Which was just great. As if this case weren't already twisted enough, he had to have some Houdini-type trance artist as a prime suspect.
Stein came down the hall and dropped into the seat next to him. He was carrying a pair of X rays. He didn't look so good but he managed a smile.
"Standing guard?" Stein said.
"Actually, I'm sitting."
Renny had stationed himself here when Lom was wheeled in and he'd sit here until he was wheeled out again. There was only one way in or out of Magnetic Imaging and this was it. He was here to see to it personally that Lom didn't pull anything cute—like a disappearing act. Renny would have been inside, right next to the MR machine, except that they'd wanted him to remove anything that contained any iron and leave it outside. Something about warping the magnetic field or something. That meant stripping off his pistol and his badge; they'd even told him he'd have to leave his wallet outside because the field around the MR machine would scramble the magnetic strips on his credit cards.
Sounded like Star Trek stuff to Renny, but he wasn't going anywhere around Lom unless he was fully armed. So he'd camped outside.
"I'm telling you, Sergeant, Mr. Lom is not going to take a walk. Anywhere."
"And I'm telling you he grinned at me. He's playing you for a sucker, Doc."
"Uh-uh. That was a random muscle twitch."
Renny was about to suggest another muscle Stein could twitch when the MRI technician stuck his head out the door.
"Yo! Dr. Stein. We got ourselves a little problem in here."
Renny was on his feet, reaching for his .38. I knew it!
"Where is he? What's he doing?"
The tech was a skinny black guy sporting short dreadlocks. He looked at Renny as if he was nuts.
"Who? The patient? He ain't doing nothin', man. Be cool. It's the computer. It's puttin' out some weird shit."
As Stein followed the tech into the control room he glanced back over his shoulder at Renny.
"Coming?"
Renny was about to tell him that he'd already seen enough weird shit for one night, then decided that a little more wouldn't make much difference.
"Yeah, sure. Why not?"
He followed them to the control console with its rows of monitors. He watched Stein lean forward and stare at one of the screens, saw his face go slack and fade to the color of the eggshell wallpaper behind him.
"You're kidding, right?" Stein said. "This is bullshit, Jordan. If you think this is funny—"
"What's wrong?" Renny said.
"Hey, man," the tech told Stein. "If I could make it show that kinda shit just for fun, you think I'd be workin' this shift?"
"What the hell's wrongT' Renny said.
Stein sagged into the chair before the console.
"That's Mr. Lom's head," he said, pointing to the screen before him. "A side view. A sagital cut through the center of his head and neck, top to bottom, right between his nostrils."
Renny could see that. The nose was toward the right side of the screen, the back of the head toward the left.
"Looks like one of those sinus medicine commercials," Renny said.
Stein laughed. The sound had a slightly hysterical edge to it.
"Yeah. His sinuses look fine. But something's missing."
"What?"
Stein tapped the screen with the eraser end of a pencil, indicating the big empty space behind the nose and sinuses.
"There's supposed to be a brain here."
That cold hand did an encore down Renny's spine; this time it was dancing.
"And there's not?"
"Not according to this. No sign of a spinal cord either."
"Then your machine's fucked up! He'd—he'd be dead!"
"Tell me about it," Stein said, and turned to the technician. "Slide him farther in and get the chest cavity."
The tech nodded and threw some switches. Before too long, an empty circle lit on the screen.
Jordan the technician said, "Shit, man! Where's his lungs? Where's his fucking heart?'
"That's what I said when I saw these," Stein said, handing Jordan the X rays he'd been carrying. "I was trying to tell myself they'd pushed the tube too high but I didn't really believe it."
"Shit!" Jordan said as he held the X rays up to the recessed fluorescents overhead.
"What's wrong?" Renny said, knowing he sounded like a broken record but unable to say anything else. He was completely in the dark here.
Jordan held the films up for him. Renny had no idea what he was supposed to see.
"What?"
"Empty, man," he said. "The guy's whole chest is fucking empty!"
"Aw, come on!" Renny said. He was starting to feel a little sick.
"He's not kidding," Stein said. "Just for the hell of it, Jordan, let's get a look at the abdomen."
Jordan did some more fiddling at the console and soon another image filled the screen. Stein stared at it, then rotated his chair to face Renny. He wore a crazy smile and his eyes looked as if they were receding toward the back of his head.
"He's hollow!" he said. "No brain, no heart, no lungs, no liver, no intestines! He's completely hollow! A walking shell!" He started to laugh.
Renny found Stein's laughter almost as frightening as what he was saying.