Spider - Michael Morley [129]
Jack’s eyes are fixed on the girl as they lift her on to a stretcher and attach a drip to her arm. He recalls the nightmare he’d had at the Holiday Inn, when he’d dreamt of saving her and how the room had been full with medics and cops, just like this. He digs deeper into the vaults of his memory and pulls out footage from the other nightmares, images of a black room, an autopsy scene, the water pipes and the blood on the floor. Like the shrink had said, for years his subconscious hadn’t rested, it had still been puzzling over the crime scene, processing the psychological profiles, still trying to force him to forget about mundane distractions and return to the case.
‘Get me a backboard over here and some lifters!’ shouts O’Brien across the room.
‘He okay?’ asks Howie, hovering a few feet away.
‘Should be,’ says O’Brien.
‘I’m fine,’ manages Jack, his voice raw and full of dust.
O’Brien shines his light in Jack’s eyes, pulls the lids wide and checks the state of dilation. ‘Yeah, you’re going to be okay. You’ve lost a bucket of blood, but then you’re a big guy, so you’ve got some to spare.’
Jack lifts his undamaged hand and motions Howie to lean close to him. ‘Look, I know this place is all fucked up, but get them to preserve what they can. Anything. Get Forensics in here as quickly as possible. This is it; this is the place where he cut up some of his victims. I’ve seen this hell-hole in my nightmares; make sure we get something out of it.’ Howie looks around at the wreckage. It’s as bad as a Beirut bombsite, but he knows CSU will find something; no offender can ever get rid of everything.
O’Brien pulls Howie to one side as his colleagues arrive and slip the backboard into place and start manoeuvring Jack on to it. ‘He needs some shots. Tetanus, the full works,’ he says to the lifting team. ‘Keep an eye on the bleed, I’ve only tacked the deeper cuts across the fingers, they’ll be able to open them up in the hospital and do a proper clean.’
The lifters nod, heave Jack up to waist height on the creaking backboard and head for the door. Lu Zagalsky’s now up top, covered by blankets and an ESU coat, being rushed to a waiting helicopter on the nearby golf course. Paramedics have managed to get an intravenous hydration drip into a vein and the word among the crew is that she’s got a good chance of making it, though it’s likely to be another twenty-four hours before medics know whether she’ll be left with any permanent disabilities such as renal failure.
Jack’s fully conscious by the time they get him outside. He squints at the sunlight and slowly sucks in the fresh air. He sees Howie emerging from the blackness and waves a hand again for him to come closer. ‘Nancy, Zack, are they…’ His voice chokes on him.
Howie finishes the sentence. ‘They’re okay, they’re both absolutely fine.’
Jack swallows and feels the leaden fear sink to the pit of his stomach. ‘And BRK?’
‘Dead as the dodo. I don’t know all the details, but some saintly soul shot him into oblivion.’
‘A pity,’ says Jack.
‘Pity?’ queries Howie, frowning.
‘Yeah, a big pity. I wanted the pleasure of seeing him rot on Death Row for half a decade. Then I wanted front-row seats and a popcorn combo while I watched the fucker fry.’
Orsetta can barely stand unaided, but still manages to kick Spider’s bullet-riddled corpse before paramedics shuttle her, Nancy and Zack into a helicopter waiting to airlift them to a hospital in Siena.
Once they’re in the air, the medics clamp off Orsetta’s shoulder bleed and give Nancy pure oxygen to help her get over the effects of the Lidocaine. Within a few minutes she’s clear-headed enough to understand that Jack is alive. The Tuscan countryside rolls surreally beneath the low-flying copter and she spends the whole journey holding Zack tight to her, neither of them speaking. Her brain is still struggling to make sense of everything that has happened, but one thing she is certain