The Nowhere Man

38 A Bad Night’s Work

Bags of blood.

Dangling from mounts inside glass-fronted medical refrigerator units, the shiny IV bags bulged like glossy red fillets.

There was medical equipment, too, complex elephantine machines with tangles of cords and smooth beige casings. Enough gurneys for a warfront triage center. And Dr. Franklin sprawled across one of the mattresses, his jaws loose around a rubber strap, blinking languidly.

Evan threw the emergency stop lever, freezing the elevator, and stepped out into the basement. It seemed unreal, a warehouse of dream imagery. He stared through the refrigerator windows at the chilled bags, coded by date and donor name.

They hung like shiny fruits, an orchard of blood.

Evan stopped in his tracks in front of one of the blood-storage units. To his side rose a gleaming, chrome-plated industrial safe. Five feet tall, heavy-duty steel hinges, bolted to the floor.

Curious.

Beside the safe was a tall metal filing cabinet, one drawer slightly ajar. He flicked it the rest of the way out. Medical files, each tab with a “patient” name. He snapped one up from the rack, flipped it open. A full medical workup of a girl listed as seventeen years old. Blood screening and analysis, pathogen reduction and purification, red-blood-cell and platelet count.

Franklin seemed barely to register Evan’s approach. His skin had a gray, stoned pallor. Stubble fuzzed his cheeks and neck. A needle dangled from his left arm just below the cinched rubber strap, the tip still embedded in a swollen vein. Vials neatly lined a metal medical tray at his side.

Evan set the heavy coat on the neighboring mattress. “What is all this?” he asked.

The doctor’s chapped lips moved, but no sound came out.

Evan grabbed one of the vials. Fentanyl. He threw it across the room. That brought the life back into Franklin’s eyes.

“What is all this?” he said again.

Franklin’s slender hands spread open as if bestowing grace. “This is René’s secret garden.” He smiled. “It’s how he’s fed.”

“Fed. He transfuses himself with this blood? For what?”

“Studies. There are studies…” Dr. Franklin’s gaze loosened, and he drifted off.

Evan cuffed him across the face.

The elevator shaft conveyed raised voices from above, distorted shouts and radio static.

Evan looked at all those bags, all those donor names. “He kills these people?”

“No, no. Unless…” A smile flickered across Franklin’s face, an inside joke. “Unless there are accidents.”

His eyelids fluttered. Evan traced his dilated pupils to the ancient brick fireplace across the basement. Beneath the log holder, mounds of dark ash.

Only now did Evan feel the cold of the room seeping through his skin, sinking into his bones. Crossing the space on deadened legs, he dropped to his knees on the hard concrete before the fireplace. He swept a hand through the ash. Came up with a metal hoop the size of a silver dollar.

A gauge earring.

He thought about the black smoke he’d seen pouring from the chimney two days before.

Evan drew his hand through the heap one more time, let the ash sift between his fingers like sand. A dental bridge remained on his palm.

He wished now that he had killed David for helping lure the victims here.

It was not, however, too late for Franklin.

Half turning, Evan unleashed a volley of rounds at the refrigerator units, shattering the glass and ripping through the IV bags. Shards and red droplets filled the air, raining down on the concrete floor. He shot up the equipment next, riddling the oversize units, sending forth showers of sparks. Only the safe remained impervious, the bullets pinging off the chrome exterior.

From his languid recline, Franklin watched Evan approach.

A clanking echoed down from above, the guards up in the spa forcing open the elevator doors. Evan could hear René’s men monkeying down the shaft.

He stood over Franklin, backlit by the dim glow of the shot-to-shit unit behind him, his shadow falling across the doctor’s face. A drop clung to the lower lid of Franklin’s left eye, but he didn’t look sad. He looked relieved.

“Yes,” Franklin said with a wan smile. He swept an arm toward the sparking machines. “It deserved it.” He blinked, and the tear gummed on his lashes. “I deserve it.”

Evan raised the AK.

The single report echoed around the concrete.

Across the room a series of thuds announced the men’s landing on top of the elevator. From the sound of it, they had numbers. Evan had succeeded in drawing them here to the belly of the chalet.

He buttoned up the guard’s heavy coat. Kicked over a medical cart beneath one of the basement windows. Readied the slender remote in one hand, the Kalashnikov in the other.

He shot out the basement window, then hopped up on the cart and dove through the opening in the glass. As soon as he hit the snow, he clicked the remote, turning on the outdoor lights.

The chalet and grounds lit up like day.

A pair of approaching guards reeled back, clutching at their night-vision goggles, the sudden brightness scalding their retinas. The sniper on the northern slope behind his night-vision scope would likewise be blinded.

With the last of his bullets, Evan stitched a line of holes across the guards’ critical mass, spilling them forward into the snow.

As he tossed the weapon aside, swept up a set of night-vision goggles, and bolted for tree cover at the base of the southern slope, he ran his mental tally.

Two dogs, six guards, two snipers, David, and Dex.

Not a bad night’s work.