Текст книги "Hard Spell"

Автор книги: Justin Gustainis

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Our canvass of the neighborhood turned up precisely zip. Richie Masalava, the M.E.'s guy at the crime scene, guesstimated that Kulick had been cold about twenty-four hours, but nobody we talked to remembered seeing or hearing anything unusual the day before.

  When Karl and I got to the hospital, the tranquilizers had worn off enough so that Alma Lutinski was more or less coherent. She said she had been George Kulick's housekeeper for about two and a half years.

  "I dust, I vacuum, I sweep and mop up. That's all." Her voice sounded husky, like the kind you get with heavy smokers, but I couldn't smell any tobacco on her. I wondered if Alma had screamed herself hoarse inside George Kulick's house.

  "Once in a while he leaves a note," she said. "'Dust the venetian blinds,' so I dust them. 'Clean the shower,' two-three times, maybe. He leaves a check on the kitchen table, every week. Never bounces. Not like some."

  "You never saw him when you came over to do your cleaning?" Karl asked Alma.

  "A few times, he's there. But then he goes into that room, his 'study' and closes the door. It's like I'm there by myself. I like that, nobody bothers me."

  "But didn't you have to get into the study to dust?" I said.

  "Oh, no." Alma shook her head. "Never the study. 'Stay out,' he says. 'Don't worry about the dust, the dirt,' he says. Why should I argue – I need more work to do?"

  Karl gave her his special smile then, the one he once claimed could charm the knickers off a nun. "Bet you went in at least once, though, didn't you? Looked around a little, maybe checked out his desk, all that crazy stuff he had in there. Weren't you curious? Just a little?"

  The look she gave him reminded me of a nun, all right, but not the kind who'll slip her knickers off for you. Her expression was right out of Sister Yolanda's playbook, and I was glad for Karl's sake that there wasn't a big wooden ruler handy.

  "You little snot," Alma said venomously. "You think I snoop? Look around? You think I steal, maybe, too, huh? He says stay out, I stay out. I'm a good Catholic woman, you German bastard."

  Karl and I backed away slowly, the way you do from a Doberman that's slipped its chain. Once we were safely outside, Karl said, "I think maybe she took a dislike to me. He shook his head. "'German bastard.' Talk about old country."

  "Maybe you should have tried for her knickers, instead," I said.

Things were quiet among the supe community the next few nights – nothing that the other detectives couldn't handle, anyway. Karl and I spent the time going through George Kulick's personal effects. We were looking for names of friends, associates, relatives, even enemies – anybody who could tell us what Kulick kept in that safe besides money.

  We came up empty on all counts. The only letters we found were professional correspondence, like the letter from a magical supply house, saying that the shipment of powdered bat wings he'd ordered would be delayed. Stuff like that. If he had an address book, we didn't find it. No diary, of course. My luck never runs that good. No answering machine for somebody to leave a juicy message or two.

  Phone records revealed no incoming calls for the last four months, and only two outgoing. Both of those were made to the local Domino's Pizza place.

  Kulick didn't even have a home computer. Guess he did his communicating in ways that Bill Gates had never heard of – although there were news stories that Microsoft was getting ready to release a new product line called Spell Software.

  I checked with my contacts in the magical community, but nobody knew George Kulick – or would admit to it, anyway. And no relative ever claimed the body, so it was buried in some land that the city owns in a local cemetery just for that purpose. In the old days, I guess it would have been called the potter's field.

Driving home at the end of the third fruitless night, I found myself wishing that the forensics guys would pull off one of those miracles that you see on TV every week – the kind where they find some microscopic bit of evidence that would give us the perp's name, address, phone number, and astrological sign.

  Because what we had right now was shit.

After two more nights of no leads, no evidence, no witnesses and no dice, McGuire was talking about putting this one in the Pending Cases file, the place where unsolved crimes go to die.

  I could see his point. The other detectives in the unit were overworked, picking up the slack we'd left to work Kulick's murder. Things were getting busy again – the supes don't stay quiet for long. But the idea of just letting this one go made my whole face hurt. Nobody should have to die the way George Kulick did. Nobody. Except maybe the bastard who'd killed him.

  Near the end of our shift on the fifth night, I closed another cardboard box full of Kulick's stuff and said to Karl, "I guess if we're going to clear this one, we're going to have to go to the source."

  He turned and stared at me.

  "There's only two people who know for sure who whacked Kulick, right?" I said. "The perp and the victim."

  Karl shrugged. "Yeah, so?"

  "It's pretty clear that the perp hasn't left us anything to go on," I said. "So I guess it's time to ask the vic."

  "But the vic is fucking..." Karl's voice trailed off as his eyes narrowed. "Stan, you're not gonna–"

  "Yeah, I'm gonna. I don't see what other choice we have, if we're going to find this motherfucker."

  "Necromancy's against the law, for Chrissake!"

  "Not if it's conducted as police business, by a duly licensed practitioner of magic. And I know just where to find one."

Rachel Proctor was barely five feet tall, and built lean. She had auburn hair, smart-looking gray eyes and a beautiful smile. The smile put in an appearance when I first walked into her office, but once I'd started talking, it was gone, baby, gone.

  She was looking at me as if I'd just suggested that we have three-way sex with a goat some night. A real old, smelly goat.

  "Necromancy's against the law, Stan. You of all people ought to know that."

  "And you of all people ought to know that it's legal with a court order, Rachel."

  "And what do you think your chances are of getting that?"

  I pulled the court order out of my inside jacket pocket and laid it gently on her antique oak desk. "Pretty good, I'd say."

  She looked at the folded document for a few seconds, then at me for a few more, then she reached out one of her small, delicate hands to pick it up. She unfolded the order and scanned it quickly. "Judge Olszewski. I should have known."

  Rachel tossed the paper back on her desk. "Your paisan."

  "We prefer homie," I said.

  "I suppose you two hang out together at meetings of, what is it? – the Polish Falcons?"

  I shrugged. "Man's gotta do something with his free time, and Mom always told me to stay out of pool halls."

  She managed to combine amazement and annoyance in one slow shake of her head.

  "So," I said. "Can you do it?"

  "A better question is will I do it?" She leaned back in her chair, a huge leather thing that made her look like a kid playing on the good furniture. "Explain to me, slowly and carefully, why you want me to do this, and what you're hoping to accomplish by it."

  So I laid it out for her. I started by describing what had been done to George Kulick, in as much detail as I could without sounding like some kind of freak sadist who was getting off on it. To her credit, Rachelby,ooking a little queasy when I was done.

  She swallowed a couple of times, then said, "And you've exhausted all of the usual means of getting information about this... atrocity."

  "Every damn one," I told her. "Witnesses: none. Forensics: none. Associates: none. Friends and family: none. Enemies: none."

  "Well, one, anyway," she said grimly.

  "Depends on how you define your terms," I said. "Whoever tortured Kulick wanted the location and combination of that safe. Once he got that, I expect he put Kulick out of his misery pretty quick. I don't think it was personal."

  "I doubt that it made much difference to Mr Kulick," she said, and made a disgusted face.

  "What do you say we ask him and find out?"

  She sighed, then there was silence in the room for a while. I'd made my pitch. The rest was up to her. Nobody could order her to perform a necromancy – it was her call.

  Rachel was studying her right thumbnail as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Without looking up she asked, "Where was he buried?"

  "In one of the city-owned plots at the public graveyard."

  "Well, that's something," she said. "No hassles with the Church to worry about. And it's not hallowed ground. When did interment take place?"

  "Day before yesterday. But he died a week ago. They kept him on ice at the morgue for a while, in case somebody claimed the body. When nobody did, they planted him."

  "And in life he was a wizard, you say."

  "Yeah," I said. "He had the mark on him – and about a gazillion books on magic in his library. Why – does it matter?"

  "Indeed, it does. It means his spirit will be harder to control, once it's raised. I'll have to take extra precautions."

  "So you will do it." I didn't bother keeping the relief out of my voice.

  "Against my better judgment, yes, I will," Rachel said, sounding tired. "And I suppose you need this done immediately, if not sooner?"

  I shrugged. "Afraid so. The longer we wait, the greater the perp's chances of getting away with it. And a guy who'd do Kulick like that, you gotta figure he won't be squeamish about torturing somebody else to get what he wants."

  She gave me a look that said she knew I was trying to manipulate her emotionally, and she didn't like it.

  But she didn't tell me that I was wrong.

  "As you're aware, Stan, I'm a practitioner of white magic. But what you're asking for here is gray magic."

  I knew that one. "Black magic, performed for the purpose of good."

  "Exactly right. Normally, necromancy is one of the blackest of the black arts." She sighed deeply. "I'll need to get permission before I can proceed."

  I tapped the court order that lay on her desk. "We've already got this. What more do you need?"

  The thin smile she gave me didn't look much like the one I'd received walking in. "The kind of permission I need comes from a court you've never heard of, Stan. But it is one that I dare not disobey. I'll let you know, one way or the other, as soon as I find out."

  I stood up and slid the court order back in my pocket. "When do you plan to put in the request, or whatever it is you have to do?"

  "A few seconds after I see that door close behind you. So, get."

  I got.

The next day, I was getting ready for work when "Tubular Bells," the theme from The Exorcist, started playing in my shirt pocket. I touched an icon and brought the phone to my ear. "Markowski."

  Rachel Proctor's voice said, "Tomorrow night, at midnight. I'll need a day to prepare. Pick me up at my house about 9:00." She paused a moment. "You're going to be there, you know."

  "I wouldn't miss it for the world," I said. I might even have been telling the truth.

• • • •

The next night, I brought the car to a stop in front of Rachel's house at 8:59. A few moments later, she was tapping at the passenger-side window.

  "Pop your trunk."

  I pulled the lever. She disappeared from view, and then I felt the springs shift a little as something heavy was placed in the trunk. The lid slammed shut, and then Rachel was slipping into the passenger seat next to me.

  She looked terrible.

  Even in the light from the street lamps, I could see circles under her eyes that she hadn't bothered to hide with makeup. The skin of her face seemed looser, somehow, like someone recovering from a bad accident.

  "What're you staring at?" she snapped. I was stammering an apology when she laid a gentle hand on my arm. "Sorry, Stan. I know I look a fright – almost like one of the stereotypes of my profession."

  "Are you sick? Maybe we can–"

  "No, I'm not sick, in the usual sense of the term. I haven't slept, that's part of it. I last ate something... this morning, I think, but I forget what it was. I've been working pretty much nonstop since you left me yesterday. Necromancy takes a lot of preparation, and we're not exactly blessed with time, are we? A lot of the work involves setting up protections for the necromancer." She paused, then added, "That would be me."

  "Protections against the corpse? I thought–"

  "We won't be raising his corpse, Stan. You've been seeing too many movies. What we're going to resurrect, if this works, is his spirit – and that is infinitely more dangerous."

  "How come?"

  "Protecting myself from a physical body is a piece of cake, comparatively – there are a hundred spells that could do it. But guarding against a pure spirit is harder, because of all the different ways it can manifest. And the fact that he was a wizard makes it even trickier."

  "Why should it? Dead is dead, no? Except when it's undead."

  "I wish it were that simple. A dead man is a dead man, Stanley. But a dead wizard is... well, a dead wizard."

  Rachel turned to face forward. "Come on, let's get this circus on the road, before I come to my senses."

After a while, the silence in the car started to get uncomfortable. For me, anyway. "Proctor," I said. "That name has... associations for me. Something to do with the Salem witch trials, maybe?"

  "Very astute. I'm a descendant of John Proctor, who was hanged as a witch after being denounced by his housekeeper."

  "Your family history of witchcraft goes back a long ways, then." I said.

  "That it does – on both sides. My mother, whose maiden name was Brown, was a direct descendant of the Mathers – Increase, and his son, Cotton."

  "Mathers – like in Leave it to Beaver?"

  From the corner of my eye, I saw a glimmer of a smile.

  "I've always thought that ought to be the title of a porn flick. Or maybe it was, and I missed it."

  "I didn't know witches liked porn."

  "Don't generalize from one example, Stan. And d beplay dumb, either. You know who the Mathers were."

  "The guys behind the witch trials."

  "That's an oversimplification, but – yeah."

  "Sounds like an interesting family."

  "It was that, all right. Proctors on one side, Mathers on the other – and me in the middle."

  "You mean they used to–"

  "Let's not talk any more, Stan. It's distracting me."

  "Distracting? From what?"

  "Praying."

Grave 24-C looked like all the other plots in this corner of the city cemetery, apart from the freshly turned earth on top. There'd be no headstone, of course. Anybody willing to spring for a marker to put on George Kulick's grave would probably have paid for a proper funeral in the bargain, and he'd likely have buried the guy in a better class of graveyard, too.

  I helped Rachel Proctor set up for the ritual of necromancy, which was supposed to reach its climax at midnight. My help had mostly consisted of performing vital tasks such as "hold this" or "bring that."

  As she laid out her materials, Rachel said, "I'm going to follow the Sepulchre Path of necromancy. It's the easiest, but it should allow us to get the information you need. If I do it right, it will temporarily grant me the power of Insight, which is the ability to see what the deceased saw in the last moments of his life."

  "Could be pretty ugly, considering how he died," I said. "Can't you just call up his ghost and ask him who the killer was? I've heard of that being done."

  "Yes, it can be done." She carefully opened a packet containing a dark blue powder and poured some into a bowl. "But probably not by me. That would require the Ash Path, which is far more difficult. You'd need a real adept to have a chance of pulling that one off. And when it comes to this stuff, an adept I ain't."

  A little later I asked, "How many, uh, necromantic rituals have you been involved in, so far?"

  Without looking up from what she was doing, she said, "Including tonight?"

  "Sure."

  "One."

  "Oh."

  She had made three concentric circles on the ground near Kulick's grave. The outer ring, I could see, was made of salt. The two inner circles were laid down using powders that I didn't recognize. The one making up the middle circle was red. The innermost circle was in white. "This is where you'll stand when it starts," Rachel had said. "Whatever happens, do not leave the inner circle until I have given the spirit leave to depart and I explicitly tell you it's safe. Always assuming I'm able to summon his spirit in the first place."

  "What's so special about the inner circle?" I asked.

  "The white circle is the strongest, kind of like the innermost ring of a rampart," she said. "It is your place of refuge, and mine, too, if things get hairy. Kind of like a shark cage when Jaws is in town."

  I didn't remind her how relying on the shark cage had worked out in the movie, let alone the book.

  "Why don't you just stay in the white circle the whole time, if it's safest?"

  "Because I need access to the altar, which cannot itself be within the circle. Did you bring a personal object of Kulick's, as I asked you – something he had a lot of physical contact with?"

  I produced a silver Montblanc pen. "Here. This was found on his desk blotter. Looks like he used it quite a bit."

  "Good. Then we can begin."

  Just outside thng, I coer ring, Rachel had set up the small portable altar we'd brought with us. On it burned three candles – red, white, and black. They sat at the points of a triangle drawn on the altar; the lines were red at the sides, but black across the bottom. She had also placed there several other objects, including bowls, small bottles, and a variety of instruments – some of which I recognized, others whose function I could only guess.

  I was glad it wasn't windy, otherwise those candle flames wouldn't have lasted long. Then it occurred to me to wonder whether Rachel had anything to do with that.

  Using a long handmade match that she sparked into life with a thumbnail, she lit two sticks of incense, placing each one in a container at opposite ends of the altar. It didn't take long for the smoke to make my eyes water.

  "What the hell is that?" I asked.

  "One is wormwood, the other is horehound," she said. "And I'd be careful about using the 'h' word right now – you never know what it might summon by accident. In fact, it would be better if you didn't talk at all, Stan."

  I've been told to "shut up" before, but never so politely.

  Facing the altar, Rachel stood with her hands spread wide. Then she began what I later learned is known as a "Quarter Call":

  Spirits of Air,

  We call to you.

  The Breath of life

  the Knowledge of life,

  the Wind of life,

  it blows from thee to me,

  be with us now.

  Then she turned forty-five degrees to her left, and continued:

  Spirits of Fire,

  We call to you.

  The Heat of life,

  the Will of life,

  the Fire of life,

  it burns from thee to me,

  be with us now.

  She made another quarter turn. She was facing me now, but I don't think she even saw me.

  Spirits of Fire,

  We call to you.

  The Heat of life,

  the Will of life,

  the Fire of life,

  it burns from thee to me,

  be with us now.

  Another turn, and she chanted:

  Spirits of Earth,

  We call to you.

  The Flesh of life,

  the Strength of life,

  the Earth of life,

  it moves from thee to us,

  be with us now.

  Then she faced the altar again.

  I call upon Hecate,

  goddess of the crossroads.

  Bless my work, and my endeavors.

  Protect and keep me safe from harm.

  From every place that harm is wrought.

  From every evil that walks.

  Protect me, wise one, guard me now.

  O great Hecate, I beseech thee:

  Watch over me this night

  that I might do this work

  both faithfully and well.

  In thanks for your protection

  I make this offering now.

  There was a small wooden box on the altar. Rachel raised the lid and quickly reached in. Her hand came out holding something that moved in her grasp.

  I looked closer. She was holding a brown-andwhite mouse, its tail twitching like a hooked worm. I wondered whether she'd trapped it herself or bought it at a local pet store. Either way, things weren't looking too good for Mr Mouse right about now.

  Black magic requires a sacrifice – a blood sacrifice. It has its roots in the ancient religions, and their gods always required blood. In the case of some, like the Aztecs, the blood had to be human.

  I guessed the mouse was the smallest offering that Rachel thought would allow the ritual to work. Or maybe it was the biggest thing she could bring herself to kill.

  She closed the box again, and held the mouse down on its lid with her lift hand. With her right, she picked up a knife with an ornately carved handle.

  "Spiritus!" she said loudly, held the knife up to shoulder height, then lowered it. She did this twice more. Then, with the mouse still pinned against the top of the wooden box, she cut off its head with one quick, economical movement. I expect the little guy was dead before he even knew he was dying.

  I noticed that a breeze had sprung up, but the candle flames didn't flicker. The smoke from the incense rose straight up, as if the air was perfectly still. Maybe over there, it was.

  Rachel seemed to hesitate before beginning the next part of the ritual, but when she spoke, her voice was clear and strong.

  Colpriziana,

  offina alta nestra

  fuaro menut,

  I name George Harmon

  the dead which I seek.

  Spirit of George Harmon

  you may now approach this gate

  and answer truly to my calling.

  Berald, Beroald, Balbin,

  Gab, Gabor, Agaba!

  Arise, I charge and call thee!

  She repeated this twice more, a little louder each time. The smoke from the incense sticks had thickened and come together into one mass that grew as I watched. According to the laws of physics, what I was seeing was impossible. But I had a feeling that the laws of physics didn't count for much right now.

  Using a sharp stick of polished wood that I knew was her wand, Rachel made a big X in the air above the altar. A few moments later, she repeated the movement. Then a third time.

  I don't know how long it was – a minute, maybe two – before I noticed that an outline was appearing in the gathered smoke. An outline in the form of a man.

  Rachel must have seen it about the same time I did, because she started chanting, over and over: "Allay fortission fortissio allynsen roa!"

  I don't know how many times she repeated that phrase before she decided it was enough. But when she stopped, the quiet was almost oppressive. It wasn't just the absence of sound. The silence was like a force, pressing against my eardrums. The outline of the man in the smoke was clear and distinct, like a silhouette you'd see through the blinds of a lighted room at night.

  Then Rachel spoke, her voice only a little louder than normal. "I bid you welcome, spirit of George Kulick. I charge and bind thee now, to answer what I ask of thee, to harm none present, and to depart when thou hast been dismissed. I do this in the terrible names of Baal, of Beelzebub, and of Asmodeus."

  I once asked a warlock why spells contain all those "thee"s and "thou"s, ad other stuff that nobody says anymore.

  "When it comes to theory, no one is more conservative or fundamentalist as a magician," he'd told me. "It would make Southern Baptists look wild, by comparison. Lots of the spells in use today were first translated into English in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when people did talk like that. The belief is, if a spell works, you don't mess with it, even to update the language. You'd never know what effect even the smallest change would have – until it was too late."

  Rachel took some powder from a jar and sprinkled a generous amount into one of the bowls. It immediately burst into flame, even though the bowl was nowhere near the candles, or any other heat source. "Speak to me now, George Kulick. Give to me the sight of thy death, and of he who did bring it upon thee. Let me see as thou hast seen, know as thou hast known, and learn as thou didst learn. Grant unto me the Insight into thy departure from this life, George Kulick, that I might take vengeance against thy tormentor."

  Things began happening very fast, then. The candles on the altar went out, all in the same instant. The incense stopped burning as if it had been doused with water. The small cloud of smoke that had borne the outline of a man dissipated into nothing.

  Then Rachel Proctor collapsed to the ground. A few seconds later, she started writhing and screaming – screaming like one of the damned.

I stood outside Room 8 of Mercy Hospital's Intensive Care Unit and looked through the window at the still form on the bed. Rachel lay there, mercifully quiet, surrounded by machines that hummed and beeped as they kept track of every biological process of her body.

  "At least she doesn't seem to be in pain now," I said to Charlie Mulderig, who's been a doctor at Mercy for as long as I can remember.

  "No, she's not," Charlie said softly. "It wasn't easy. She's under very heavy sedation. For a while, I was afraid we were going to anesthetize her."

  "You mean, like in surgery?"

  "Exactly like in surgery. The pain centers of her brain were going crazy. And, apart from the humanitarian concerns, there was a real danger that she'd have a stroke if it continued."

  "Jesus."

  "Problem is," Charlie continued, "you can't keep someone under surgical anesthesia indefinitely without a substantial risk of brain damage. Fortunately, we found a combination of painkillers that worked, at least for the time being."

  "What the fuck was causing it, Charlie? Far as I could tell before the EMTs got there, there wasn't a mark on her."

  "There isn't a mark, in the sense you mean it. No evidence of trauma, anywhere on her body. And we found no evidence of anything internal that might have caused it, like a ruptured appendix or a kidney stone."

  "It must have been the magic, then." I ran down for him what Rachel had been doing just before her collapse.

  Charlie shook his head. "When it comes to magic, you're talking to the wrong guy. I don't pretend to understand that stuff. In fact, according to everything I learned in med school, magic ought to be impossible."

  "Except that it isn't."

  "No, I've seen too much evidence to the contrary."

  "Yeah, me, too."

  "I can imagine," he said. "Oh, yeah, that reminds me: I did find out something that may be of interest to you. As she was finally going under, Ms Proctor stopped screaming and started muttering intelligible words. Well, more or less intelligible."

  Charlie produced a folded sheet of paper from a pock;&nbs his white doctor coat. "One of the nurses wrote some of it down, after they'd got her stabilized."

  He unfolded the sheet and peered at it over the top of his glasses. "Apparently, she was saying something like I'll never tell you, you sick fuck. You'll never get the book, never. I gather it went on like that for a while, repeating the same stuff, over and over."

  He refolded the paper and handed it to me. "Here, for whatever use it is. I wonder who she thought she was talking to?"

  After a few seconds I said, in a voice that I barely kept from breaking, "She was talking to whoever tortured and killed George Kulick."

"The necromancy worked too fuckin' well," I told Karl the next night. "Not only did she raise the spirit of the late George Kulick, but he was able to get inside her head, somehow. That's gotta be what happened."

  "I thought you said she'd set up protections against that stuff," Karl said.

  "That's what she told me. But she'd never done one of these rituals before. Maybe she messed up somehow. If she did, it's my fault. I'm the stupid sonovabitch who pressured her into it."

  "Or maybe Kulick was just stronger than she expected. The dude was a wizard, after all."

  "Could be either one, could be both," I said. "She was trying to plug into Kulick's last moments, and it looks like she succeeded, big time. All of a sudden, she was right where Kulick had been, at the end."

  "And Kulick was being tortured. Which means that Rachel–"

  "Was going through the same thing – at a nerve level, anyway. Not so much as a bruise on her, but she still felt all the stuff that had been done to Kulick. I didn't think even magic could do that."

  "Why not?" Karl said. "They do it with hypnosis."

  I looked at him. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "My cousin Cheryl's a therapist. You know, like a shrink. I guess she uses hypnotism in her job. Helping people recover memories, stuff like that. She told me once that when she was in school, they had 'em watch movies of some of the experiments in hypnosis. From like thirty years ago. Stuff that you couldn't get away with today. One guy in this film was put into a real deep trance, right? Then the hypnotist told him he was on fire."

  "Bet I can guess what happened then," I said.

  "Fuckin' A. Cheryl said the guy was on the floor, screaming like he was being burned alive."

  "Just like Rachel, who thought she was being tortured to death."

  "Cheryl said it took days to get that guy's screams out of her head."

  "I've got a feeling," I said, "that it's gonna take me a hell of a lot longer than that."

"It's Charlie Mulderig, Stan. I'm calling about Rachel Proctor."

  "Hey, Charlie. How is she?"

  There was a brief silence, then: "She's gone, Stan."

  I felt an icy fist reach into my stomach, grab my guts, and twist them.

  "Stan? Are you there? Stan?"

  "Yeah, Charlie, I'm here." I cleared my throat, then did it again. "What happened? Heart failure?"

  "No, Stan, I'm sorry for… Rachel isn't dead, as far as I know. She's just – gone. Missing. Her bed in the ICU is empty."

  The icy fist loosened its grip, but only a little. "Did she regain consciousness, Charlie?"

  "Not according to the nurses, and they were checking on her every hour or so. And if something had gone bad at any time – iegular heartbeat, sudden drop in blood pressure, something like that, the alarms built into the monitors would have gone off at the nurses' station. Those were still functioning, by the way. We checked."