Now what?
Then fate provided him with the opportunity he needed. Several members of the press arrived outside and were attempting to force their way past the deputy guarding the front door. The man guarding the stairwell noticed his partner’s plight and moved to help, leaving the door to the stairwell unguarded.
Sam took advantage of the opportunity and calmly walked over to the door, opened it, and slipped quietly into the stairwell. He took the steps two at a time, his heart thumping madly in his chest. There might be more guards at the top, but for now he didn’t care. His only concern was the fate of his friend. He had to discover if Gabriel was still alive!
He emerged onto the third floor at the opposite end of the hall from Gabriel’s room. The small corridor before him was empty, but he could hear a good deal of commotion coming from the main hallway around the corner.
Sam took the chance.
The main corridor was filled with people, most of them uniformed deputy sheriffs. A few men were dressed in dark suits and ties. Sam took them to be detectives. Two ambulance attendants sat in the plastic chairs that lined the hallway with decidedly queasy looks on their faces. An empty stretcher was pushed up against the wall next to them.
While Sam was standing there trying to decide what to do, he heard a familiar voice call his name.
“Sam! Over here!”
He looked to his left and saw Jerry Peters, a coworker. Jerry was sitting at the nurses’ station, a uniformed cop at his left elbow. An open notepad was in his hand, and he frowned as Sam walked over to join them.
“What a fuckin’ mess, Sam! Last time I switch shifts with you!”
His friend’s face, normally ruddy with a glow bestowed from the flask of Dewar’s he kept in his pocket, was so pale as to seem almost bloodless. Dark circles drooped beneath his eyes. Sam watched Jerry’s hands shake as he took a drag from the cigarette he was smoking. The ashtray in front of him was filled with butts.
“Tell me about it, Jerry. What happened?”
Before he could receive an answer the cop spoke up, “Who are you?”
Jerry answered for him. “It’s okay, Deputy. He works here. This was supposed to be his shift.”
The deputy looked questioningly at Sam.
“Yeah, that’s right. I had the night off but came in for some things out of my locker and saw all the commotion. I came up to see what was going on,” Sam replied.
Deputy Collins hesitated. His orders were to make sure no one left the floor; nobody had said anything about keeping anyone out. For all he knew, the guys downstairs had sent this guy up here. After giving it a moment’s consideration, he decided it would be best to check with the sheriff and let him know the guy was here. That way he’d at least have covered his ass.Let the guys downstairs take the heat for letting him by.
“Got any ID?” he asked Sam.
Sam dug out the laminated ID card he carried in his wallet. The card bore his photograph, and had his name and position printed beneath the nursing home’s seal. He handed the card to Collins, who scrutinized it for a minute, then moved off down the hall without saying anything.
Sam slumped into the chair the deputy had vacated. “What’s going on, Jer?”
“Shit! You ain’t gonna believe this man! Some fucker got in here and sliced one of the old coots to bits.” Peters shuddered. “Found what was left of him ’bout a half hour ago. Man, you shoulda seen that room. Blood was freakin’ everywhere!”
Sam had heard enough. “Who was it?” he asked, dreading the answer but needing to ask.
“It was, ahh, what’s his name? The guy who’s always havin’ those weird dreams? You now, the guy with the funny last name. Gabe what’s-his-face?”
Before Peters knew what was happening Sam was up off the chair and running down the hall, racing past a group of deputies too surprised by his sudden appearance to stop him. His heart lodged like a bone in his throat.
Flashes of light could be seen coming from Room 310, and a group of deputies were clustered in front of that door, their backs to him.
Barely slowing, Sam shoved through them into the room itself, ignoring the protests and evading their attempts to stop him.
The room was awash in blood. Crimson splatters covered every surface.
On the walls.
On the floor.
On the once-white sheets of the bed.
Unidentifiable lumps covered in blood were scattered all about the floor. As he glanced around the room in shock, Sam’s gaze came to rest on the two men who were working inside the room. Dressed in white lab smocks, one used a camera to photograph each of the strange lumps in the place where it had been found, then waited while his partner used a spatula-like device to scoop those pieces into a small plastic bag. The bag was then deposited onto a small, steel cart that stood behind them.
Sam could see the cart was slowly being filled with bags. Numb with horror, he forced himself to walk over and peer at one of the objects through the clear plastic.
The bags were filled with ragged chunks of human flesh.
Gabriel’s flesh.
The veteran deputies watching from the door might have been around long enough to have become hardened to the overpowering stench, but Sam had not. He spun around and stumbled back out the door of the room into the hall, desperately struggling to keep his teeth clenched tightly against the tide that surged up from his stomach.
His distress grew stronger than his willpower, however, and he threw up, splashing the shoes of one of the nearby detectives with a semisolid stream of vomit.
25
THE BATON PASSES
The cold water from the basin felt good on his face and hands. After unceremoniously losing his dinner, Sam had stumbled down to the men’s room and suffered another attack of retching that lasted almost fifteen minutes. His throat was raw. His stomach ached. He was all but certain the next attack would leave him exhausted.
Sam reached over and yanked several paper towels from the dispenser hanging on the wall and used them to mop his face dry. One glance in the mirror at the bleak, unhinged look in his eyes was enough. As he bent his head beneath the faucet and tried to rinse the foul taste from his mouth for the fourth time, he made sure he refrained from looking in that direction again.
When he felt he had himself together, he left the men’s room and stepped back into the hall.
Two uniformed deputies were waiting for him just outside the door.
Damon was talking with one of the responding officers when Collins came up beside him and signaled for his attention.
“What have we got?” Wilson asked while studying Sam over his fellow officer’s shoulder.
“Nothing much, I’m afraid.” Collins pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. “Name’s Samuel Travers. Claims he works here, stopped by to get a few things from his locker, and ran into the commotion downstairs so he thought he’d check things out. The victim was a friend of his it seems.”
Collins handed Damon a small laminated card that had Sam’s picture and employee information. Damon glanced at the photo, then suddenly remembered where he had seen him last.
Travers had been at the site where they’d discovered the Halloran corpse. Damon wondered if it was just a coincidence that Sam had shown up at this murder scene as well.Come to think of it, Jake Caruso had been at two of the murder scenes as well, the two at the Blake estates. Damon filed the thought away for later investigation.
The sheriff handed the ID back to Collins. “Check this out for me. Find out who his supervisor is and get him on the phone. I want to know everything he can tell us about this guy. You know the drill.”
“Gotcha, Sheriff.”
As Collins headed down the hall, Damon walked over to where Sam was standing. “Feeling any better, Mr. Travers?” he asked kindly.