Harding or one of the other officers had tohave made a mistake about this guy being alive. She didn’t faultthem for their error, didn’t care she’d missed dinner because ofit. This whole scene was disturbing, and for the first time in herlife, she was grateful she hadn’t had a chance to eat.
Harding settled his hat back into place. “Itook his pulse myself. He’s alive, or he was alive before youarrived.”
“Fine.” Roger nodded to her, and togetherthey set their equipment down, careful to keep it out of theblood.
She knew Roger was placating Harding; thisvictim had to be dead. Not even Superman could lose that much bloodand survive. Roger knelt beside the body and took hold of the man’swrist.
When fingers gripped his wrist, Aiden’sbones felt as if they were fracturing into pieces. He gritted histeeth as he tried to recall what had happened to him and what wasgoing on now. Was someone taking his pulse?
Lights flashed across his closed lids,voices sounded around him, but he couldn’t separate one from theother.
Maggie studied the alley as Roger continuedto check for a pulse. The officers stood further than normal awayfrom the two dead victims. Three feet away from her, and near thehand of one of the dead, Maggie spotted what looked like a smooshedtomato. It took her a second to realize it was the brutalizedremains of a human heart.
She was never eating again after this, andshe may never come out of the shower she planned to take as soon asher shift ended. She would give anything to be somewhere else.
In the side of the brick building to herright was a metal door. Blood streaked the door, there was no knob,and nothing indicated what lay beyond. Near the door, Walt andGlenn were talking to each other as they set to work on theirvictim.
“Shit,” Roger breathed beside her. “Heisalive.”
CHAPTER 6
Maggie barely managed to keep herself fromgawking at Roger as he leaned back and rested his hands on hisknees. His skin had become a pasty color she’d never seen on himbefore, and his brown eyes were troubled when they met hers.
It didn’t make it any easier that Roger andHarding were as unsettled by this as she was; it made it worse.That meant she didn't imagine this was all wrong; it meant itwasall wrong.
For a second, they stared at each other, andthen their training kicked into place. They’d been riding togetherfor so long they didn’t have to speak as they went to work on theirpatient. In the victim’s condition, the best thing they could dowas get him loaded up and to the hospital as fast as possible.
Kneeling at the man’s side, Maggie got acloser look at his back. The skin had been pulled back about threeinches on each side from the center of his spine. The wound ranfrom beneath his shoulder blades to the middle of his lower back.Through the blood, glistening pieces of his spine were visible. Theflow of his blood seemed to have ceased as none pooled within thewound and the puddle beneath him wasn’t spreading.
No one can survive this. The pain, theshock to his system, the blood loss. This is impossible.Then,she saw the small rise and fall of his back.
She had the unsettling notion she’d trippedheadfirst into a Pink Floyd song and someone was about to startscreaming at her that she couldn’t have her pudding until she ateher meat. She then cursed Roger for making her listen to PinkFloyd.
Maggie’s head twisted to the side as sheinspected beyond the wreckage of the man’s back. Through the bloodand the tattered remains of his shirt and coat, she noted rawslices arcing across the man’s flesh. Beneath those reddened slicesshe saw the faint white lines of what appeared to be scars.
It looked as if he’d been… whipped?
“What is going on here?” she whispered.
The man’s bloody fingertips twitched on theground when she spoke. Maggie gazed at his hand, waiting forfurther movement, but it remained still.
“Drug deal gone wrong would be my guess,”Harding said. “I think they were teaching this guy a lesson beforethey decided to kill him. They picked the wrong place as a group ofyoung bar hoppers stumbled across them and called it in. I wasright down the street and the first to arrive.”
“Wrong place for them, good for him,” Maggiesaid, and the man’s fingers twitched again.
Harding grunted. “I picked the wrong decadeto quit smoking.”
“You and me both,” Roger muttered as heworked. “Let’s get him loaded, Mags.”
“On his back?” she asked as she gazed at hisspine, and the man’s fingers jerked toward her.
“Yes,” Roger said. “We need access to hischest in case he codes, which with the amount of blood he’s lost,is a very good possibility. He’s barely bleeding anymore, so Idon’t think he’ll bleed out if we put him on his back.”
“I don’t think there’s any blood left inhim,” Harding muttered, and as improbable as it was, Maggiesilently agreed.
Maggie gazed from the open wound to Rogerand back again. “If we put him on his back, it’s really going tohurt him.”
“He’s probably so far into shock, he’s notfeeling much pain anymore,” Roger replied.
