When the doors opened he was the picture of serenity.
Hospital guards and policemen were running everywhere. Joe slipped unnoticed from the elevator. By taking
Damon's advice and waiting until half the hospital staff was on lunch break, the big musclebound predator had found just the right amount of wiggle room to get in and out of the hospital's detention wing unnoticed. Now he had to do something even harder. He had to get out of there with Alicia.
Alicia was stil in Emergency fol owing her surgery. Her chart showed her listed in critical condition. Joe slipped into her room and knelt down beside her bed.
Her chest was covered in bandages.
There was a morphine drip feeding into a pulsating vein behind the elbow on her left arm.
"My God. What have I done to you?" There was no way he could take her out of the hospital in this condition without causing her further pain or death. He would have to leave her.
"I'l be back for you. Don't worry. I won't leave you like this."
Joe thought he saw a smile creep across her face at the sound of his voice.
He removed his bloody smock and walked out the front door of the hospital as police officers began to swarm the place. He stalked across the parking lot and slipped behind the wheel of his van. Minutes later he was back at the motel listening to the prostitute next door get her head banged against the wal by her latest trick.
Chapter Forty-two
After driving for hours without stopping, Professors Locke and Douglas pul ed up outside the state hospital only to find it swarming with police and news media. They were too late.
They parked the car in a parking lot across the street from the hospital and walked across the four lanes of slowmoving traffic, making their way through the crowds of onlookers and newshounds to get to the police officers. Professor Locke ran up to the yel ow crime scene tape, ducked under it, and seized the nearest officer. Professor
Douglas was right behind him.
Douglas was right behind him.
"You there! Officer! What happened here?"
"Who the hel are you? Get back behind that barricade! "
"I'm Professor John Locke and this is Dr. Martin Douglas. We're here looking for a murderer."
"Wel, take your pick. There's about a hundred of them locked up in that hospital. Now please step back."
"What's going on here?"
"Nothing that concerns you. Now get the hel back behind that tape!" The exasperated officer be gan forcibly pushing the two professors back into the crowd.
"I need to know what happened. Has there been a murder? Has someone been arrested?"
"If you don't step back, your ass is going to get arrested!"
"But we may know something that could help you," Professor Douglas spoke up.
"I'm real y not interested in what you know."
"Oh, but I am." Detective Montgomery stepped forward, flashing his gold shield. The faces of the two professors fel in defeat.
"Is your captain around?" he asked the flabbergasted patrolman.
"Uh, yeah. Who are you again?"
"My name is Detective Montgomery of San Francisco Homicide. I'm here investigating a series of murders that I believe may involve your fair city. I also believe these professors may be material witnesses. Now, would you please do me a favor and arrest these two gentleman for withholding evidence and interfering with the course of an investigation and whatever else you can think up, then take me to see whoever's running this show?"
"I'd be happy to," the officer said, glaring at the two professors with an everwidening grin.
"We haven't done a thing wrong! You can't detain us!"
"Yeah? Wel, we'l see about that. I want them to be available for questioning.
There's a kil er on the loose and I think they know where he is."
Another officer took Montgomery to meet the captain in charge of the investigation. He was a stocky, middleaged man of medium height, with thick, weathered skin from too much time in the sun. His eyes were hard but jovial. He looked like an old cowboy or farmhand, like he would have been just as at home on a horse as in a squad car.
"Captain Marshal. This is Detective Montgomery of San Francisco
Homicide."
They shook hands and leaned back against the captain's vehicle.
"So what brings you al the way up from San Francisco?"
"I'm looking for a man named Joseph Miles. He's kil ed two people that we know of and he's going to kil a lot more if we don't stop him. I have reason to believe that he might be here in your town and that he might be responsible for whatever happened here tonight. Uh
… what exactly did happen?"
"A janitor was kil ed. He had his throat ripped out. The ME says it looks like his larynx was bitten through and the bite marks look human. We've also got a dead inmate. He was carved up, vivisected. There's pieces of him al over his room."
"Are there any pieces… uh… missing? I mean… is there any evidence of cannibalism?"
"Not as far as we can tel." The captain's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Maybe you'd better tel me what you know about al this."
"Unfortunately, I don't know a hel of a lot, but the two professors that I fol owed up here might. They're with a couple of your officers right now awaiting questioning. I have a feeling they know a lot more than they're tel ing. One of them used to be a profiler with the FBI. At the very least he may have a theory."
"I think we'd better go talk to them then. Oh, and there's something else. You said your boy was a cannibal?"
"Yeah, his last two victims were both partial y eaten. One of them he roasted alive."
"Wel, a woman was brought into the hospital earlier today in critical condition. The man who brought her in told the emergency room nurse that she had been attacked by pit bul s. He disappeared before he could be questioned. Both of her breasts were missing. Bitten off. The surgeon that treated her said the bite marks looked human."
"Christ."
"Her ID says her name is Alicia Rosales
… from San Francisco."
"Has anyone questioned her yet?"
"She's stil in critical right now. We'l talk with her as soon as she regains consciousness."
"Was the nurse able to give a description of the man who brought her in?"
"Yeah. That's the funny thing. She said that he looked just like-"
"Superman?" Montgomery asked knowingly.
The captain paused, staring at
Montgomery in disbelief and what looked like disappointment. "Shit. I was hoping you were wrong about al this.
Yeah, she said he looked just like the comic book character. I guess this real y is your boy we've got here. Looks like we'd better see what those two eggheads have to say."
The two professors were stil seated in a patrol car with the officer who'd arrested them, doing his best to ignore their whining when Captain Marshal and
Detective Montgomery approached the car.
"Get them out of there!" the captain barked.
"Now see here! You can't hold us like this! We haven't broken any laws!" Locke was yel ing almost at the top of his lungs. His face had turned a bright pink and thick blue veins pulsed in his forehead.
"Then tel us how you knew that Joseph Miles would strike here. Why you two drove al the way from San Francisco straight to the scene of your student's latest murder? You're either witnesses or accomplices. It al depends on how you answer our questions." Montgomery stood nose to nose with Professor
Locke, glaring at him as if he were a schoolyard bul y shaking him down for lunch money.
"I don't have to answer a goddamned thing!"
"I think we'd better tel them what we know," Professor Douglas croaked meekly, the unlit mahogany pipe dangling from his trembling lower lip.
Locke whirled on him, eyes blazing with righteous indignation. "We don't have to tel them shit!"