The compressor shut off abruptly, startling him with the sudden stillness. A few seconds later, he let out his breath, realizing that he had frozen along with it. The assemblage of unfinished sculptures – some bare, others draped with tarps – seemed eerily caught in mid-pose, and brought a sharp twinge of the fear he had felt last night. The phrase still as a statue flitted through his mind.
"Is anybody here?" he said. Now his voice was too loud. There was no answer, no movement or sound.
He stepped farther into the room. A door at the far end was also slightly open. Perhaps she had gone into the main house, expecting him to follow. He started toward it.
Then he saw a light, a bright cone from a lamp, illuminating a workbench littered with tools and chips of stone. It was partly blocked from his vision by the canvas-draped statue of Eden Hale. He took another two steps, and Julia's figure came into view.
She was sitting with her back to him. Her hands were at rest on the workbench. She was upright, stiff, and Monks's apprehension came back. She might have waved him in a moment ago, but his strong sense now was that she had taken up a hostile posture, and she was not going to cooperate after all – had called him in only to vent anger on him.
"Julia, I need help finding your husband." Monks tried to keep the tension out of his voice, to sound nonthreatening, even placating. It was not easy. "You have to talk to me."
She did not move. Monks exhaled impatiently and stepped to her, his hand rising to touch her shoulder. He imagined suddenly that there was a sweetish smell in the air.
That was when he saw the blood seeping down the side of her face and neck.
Monks registered instantaneous bits of visual information in an insane, impossible collage. Her left eye, the one he could see, was half-closed, filled with congealing blood. Her chin was propped on a stone block. The bleeding was profuse and seemed to be coming from under her disarrayed hair.
His hand went to the hair instead of to her shoulder. He gripped it and tugged. It came away in his hand. He reared back, shaking the bloody scalp from his grip. Her body seemed to lean slightly, sliding away as though avoiding his grasp, but then she kept sliding, unchecked, until she crumbled to the floor.
There was a sudden rustling behind him. He started to turn, and caught a glimpse of something like a giant gray bat unfolding its wings and lunging forward. A rough, blinding weight closed over his face and body. He lurched, batting at it with his arms, realizing that it was a canvas tarp, draped over him like a tent. He stumbled around, tripping on it, trying to shake it off. But it seemed to have no end. He managed to grab a handful of canvas and started pulling it off himself, hand over hand.
A searing slash of pain ripped across the back of his right wrist.
Monks screamed. He let go of the canvas as if it were red-hot and clasped his hand close to his body. He could feel blood welling from the cut, wetting his shirt.
Another slash ripped down his back. Then another.
He took two running steps before his feet caught up in the canvas and he fell, crashing onto the floor. His fingers pulled at the pistol in his pocket, but they were slippery with blood. He managed to get the gun free, lost it in the bloody slick, found it again.
The pain ripped through him again, this time down the left side of his head. Monks lashed out with his legs, swinging them, clinging to the gun with both hands.
He felt his feet connect with something solid but yielding. Flesh.
He pointed the gun at it and pulled the trigger four times, starting low and moving up, crisscrossing from side to side.
He heard a cry, a roaring sound of rage and pain.
One of the slashes had slit the canvas near his face. He thrust his left hand into it and forced the blood-soaked edges apart, peering through. His panicked gaze took in a man's upper body lunging forward, a patch of blood above the abdomen-
A large scalpel in the surgically gloved hand, slashing down at him.
The charging weight closed his canvas window. Monks shot point-blank, again and again, all the five rounds that were left in the clip. He felt the body slam down on top of him, and he cried out as the scalpel sliced down across his hip. He tried to roll, but he was hopelessly entangled in the canvas, with the weight pinning him down.
He closed his eyes and waited for the next stabs or slashes that would open him and bathe him in his own blood, wrapped in his canvas shroud.
Then he realized that the visceral groan he was hearing was not his own. The weight on top of him shifted slightly, in a sort of writhing. Nothing was cutting at him anymore.
Monks started working his way free. He was losing blood – could feel the wetness down the side of his face and neck, seeping from his back, and below his waist into his pants. He was already weak and getting weaker fast. The canvas had him wrapped tight as a cocoon, with no end or opening. It was like fighting some giant soft thing that patiently absorbed his struggles, flexing but never giving ground.
Finally, his groping hands found an edge. He wormed his head and shoulders under it, forearms pushing the weight away, feet scrabbling wearily on the floor as if he were climbing a hill of loose sand.
When he got his head free, he could see that the attacker was lying on his side facing Monks, motionless, curled into himself. There were more expanding patches of blood on his shirt. His face was contorted with pain and rage, but Monks recognized him instantly:
Todd Peploe, the clinic's maintenance man.
His hair and forehead were smeared with blood, too, but that, Monks knew already, was not Todd's. It had come from Julia D'Anton, when Todd had worn her bloody scalp like a wig, to lure Monks in.
Chapter 33
The following Monday morning at seven, Mercy Hospital Emergency Room's monthly Quality Assurance committee meeting was starting. The conference room was unusually crowded. In fact, it was packed. All the thirty-some seats were taken, and there were more people in the hall. The air was filled with a low buzz of talk.
Monks had gotten there early and found a chair near the back. He was moving very carefully and stiffly because of his wounds. None of the scalpel slashes had been deep, thanks, in part, to the canvas tarp that had enwrapped him. But they had required a total of 173 stitches. He felt like Frankenstein's monster, his torso a tight sack stuffed full of flesh that the wrong twitch could pop open, ripping a seam like a zipper. The cuts hurt like hell, too, and he was almost salivating with anticipation of an afternoon feast of Percocet and vodka.
But not yet. He was staying clearheaded for this meeting. This was where judgment of his treatment of Eden Hale was going to be rendered by his peers.
He did not know which way it was going to go.
Most of the faces were familiar. Vernon Dickhaut was sitting beside him, and all the other ER docs who were not on duty were also present, along with Jackie Lukas and Mary Helfert, the nurses who had worked with him on Eden. Roman Kasmarek, the pathologist, was sitting on his other side. Baird Necker, the chief administrator, and Paul Winner, the internist who had criticized him, were there, too, along with several nurses and physicians from other departments. Apparently, the word had spread. This case was not just interesting – it was now tinged with notoriety.
Dick Speidel, the committee chairman, stood up at the head of the long conference table. He was a commanding figure, big and bearlike. The room got quiet.
"I'm sure I don't have to remind anybody that these proceedings are protected from discovery," Speidel said. "I've approved some non-ER personnel who have asked to sit in. But what happens here, stays here.
"We're going to start right off with Dr. Monks's case, because I don't think we have three times the usual number of people just for the coffee and doughnuts." A sprinkling of laughter arose. Monks did not join in. "Committee members have had a chance to look over the material, including my own review. I'll recap it.