Текст книги "Heartless"

Автор книги: Patrick T. Phelps

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

The .45 caliber bullet hit Derek two inches to the right of his navel. At first, it felt like he had been kicked hard in the gut. But seconds later, the burning and intense pain emerged. He reached his hand down to cover the wound. When Derek raised them to his line of sight, they were covered in bright, red blood.

“Too bad your blood won’t suffice,” Alexander said to Derek before turning back towards Thomas. Without changing the direction of his gaze, Alexander turned the gun towards Straus and pulled the trigger. Straus’s body, already battered and near death, offered only a quick jolt of movement before becoming too still.

Derek reached around to his back, hoping to find an exit wound and praying that any exit wound found was not spilling blood. As his hand returned from its exploration, Derek saw that fresh blood covered his hand. Too much blood for a clean exit wound.

“Son of a bitch,” he cried.

He knew that he didn’t have long before the internal bleeding would stop. His heart, though undamaged from the shot, would soon run out of blood to pump and would, hopefully painlessly, stop beating. Derek rested his head on the floor and watched as his vision began to darken at the edges. Slowly, his pain began to numb as he felt his skin grown cool and damp.

Derek tried to remain as still as he could, knowing that any struggle would only serve to speed up the bleeding. He closed his eyes and concentrated on slowing his heart rate. He remembered reading about Tibetan monks that were able to get their heart rates down into the teens. He would be satisfied with any rate under seventy-two.

He heard voices in the background of his mind yelling at each other, but it seemed as if they were miles away. Then, clearly and loudly, he heard a high-pitched snap, echoing for what seemed like to Derek for several seconds before fading slowly into a distant hum. Another pop, followed by a series of crackles and ripping screams. And then he saw her.

Her face, flowing with the smile he had sought for so long, filled the side of his vision. It evaporated the cloudy darkness that had crept in slowly when the pain began to fade. He smiled back, remembering so much about that face, about her smile. He remembered so vividly the times he overlooked the simple and elegant beauty of that smile and still, the smile was offered.

The vision began to drift further into an expected distance when he remembered. That was what he saw that day. This was the smile that caused him to turn his head away at the last possible moment the day he tried to end his searching forever. It was always there, waiting for him. Always beside him as he focused his sights behind. He smiled in the knowing, then everything went still.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Alexander stood over Straus for several seconds before confirming his suspicions.

“I am afraid that I lack the motivation to write out another list so that I can cross off another name,” he said. “Good night, Doctor Straus.”

Thomas had found his feet and stood, his back pressed hard against the wall. Alexander motioned for Thomas to sit on the floor. The pain in his neck was severe, and Alexander could feel that his left side was growing weaker and was charged with a disturbing sensation. The fingers of his left hand burned with the sensation, and he felt his left leg shaking under the weight of his body.

“Move an inch, and you’ll join these two,” he said to Thomas.

“I’m your brother. I helped you,” Thomas protested. “That day I saw you at the lake, when you were walking with Straus and the other doctor, I knew that what I found out was true. I knew that I had to help you. And now you stand over me with a gun and threaten to kill me?”

“You stole my heart,” Alexander said. “You stole my father, my mother, my life. Why were you chosen over me? What was special about you?”

“I didn’t steal anything. Our heart was in my chest. I didn’t make the decision to cut you off from it.”

“You’ve been selfish with it too long. I need it now.”

Alexander carefully plunged the syringe into the side of his neck, and depressed the plunger, emptying the syringe’s contents into his body. He paused, hoping that the injection would provide an immediate report of effectiveness. Instead, he felt a terrible burning being pulled by gravity through his body. He cringed in pain as the fire reached his chest and abdomen. He dropped to his knees as the  substance was pulled through his pelvis and into his thighs before finally collecting itself together in his feet.

Thomas stood, raced to his brother’s side and removed the revolver from Alexander’s limp hand. He backed away from Alexander, training the gun’s barrel on Alex’s head. When he reached Derek, Thomas reached down and was relieved when he felt Derek’s chest rising under the pressure of breaths. He glanced at Straus and knew without the aid of feeling for a pulse or visual confirmation of a rising chest that Straus was dead. He was slumped against the wall, his eyes were cloudy and partially closed, staring at nothing.. Seeing a dead body this close disturbed Thomas. Besides attending a few wakes of family members, Straus was the first dead body Thomas had ever seen.

“What have I done?” he asked himself. “What have you done?” he asked Alexander who had fallen to his knees in pain. “I told you that I would help you. I didn’t mean to help you kill people.”

“The help you offered,” Alexander said, “did not include specific forms.”

“You’re a animal. No, you’re evil. I should kill you now,” Thomas said.

Alexander seemed to collect himself, pushing the pain away from his thoughts.

“I still need to fill my prescription,” he whispered towards Thomas. “And to continue working on my list.”

When he stood as quickly and as authoritatively as he did, Thomas wondered if what Straus had put into the vial labeled “Plan C” really was the cure for whatever was killing Alexander. Thomas pointed the gun at Alexander’s head and though his hands were trembling, squeezed the trigger, and released the hammer.

“Out of bullets,” Alexander said, smiling his vacant smile. “I highly doubt that even if you brought additional ammo for your gun, that you can load the bullets and fire off a round before I tear open your chest and take back what is rightfully mine.”

Sensing no reason to hurry, Alexander walked towards Thomas, who was still standing still, repeatedly squeezing the trigger of the revolver. Alexander was just beyond an arm’s length away when he felt the barbs dig into his back.

“Now y’all had best move back a few steps.”

Alexander was all too familiar with the Taser gun’s barbs to wonder what would happen next.

“My name is Ralph Fox, Chief of Police in the town where you started all this ruckus. That man laying on the ground next to you is someone I consider to be a good friend. Now, I will admit to being tempted to just depress this trigger and see just how sensitive you are to electricity, but, being a man of the law, I’m gonna give you a couple of options. Option one is that you lay flat on your face with your hands in such a position that placing handcuffs on them would be a simple matter.”

“And option two?” Alexander asked.

“Well now, Alexander, seems I don’t really have another option,” Ralph said. “Kinda just hoping you’d take the first one offered.”

He could feel the acidic-like substance fading yet still burning in his feet. His vision was becoming disturbingly blurry, and he felt the sudden need for sleep wash over him.

“That there option I gave you does have an expiration attached to it,” Ralph said.

Alexander, sensing that Straus was truthful in his prognosis, felt he needed another option. An option that he needed to grant to himself. Thomas stood just out of his reach, his heart, pounding away in his chest. Alexander could almost feel the heart’s rhythmic pattern. Could almost feel blood surging through his body.

“I do have another option,” Alexander whispered then lunged towards Thomas.

 The charge raced through the lines and the barbs and into his body. Immediately, his muscles constricted, then went utterly limp, though the current was still charging into him. There was no pain. No moment of regret or of remorse. Just a horribly familiar feeling, then nothing.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

When he again opened his eyes, it was the face of Ralph Fox staring back at him.

“Had me scared there for a minute. Thought we’d lost you” Ralph said, his voice sounding faded.

“Black. . .Thomas. . .” Derek struggled to say.

The area around him was brilliantly bright and sterile. Ralph’s face was certainly familiar, but the others around him, those ushering orders, were wholly foreign.

“Don’t worry about them. Old Ralph took care of things for you. You just need to hold on there for a bit longer. These fellas will get you fixed up and running like a horny colt in no time flat.”

Derek drifted, thankfully to a place where his pain wasn’t allowed.

Again his eyes captured light and his ears, sound. Ralph was absent as others, unfamiliar but comforting, darted in then out of his field of vision. Each offered something, some to him and some to others. His pain reemerged, and then was muted.

“I saw her,” he said through a voice that sounded much too distorted for his own comfort. “She saved me.”

“Relax and take a deep breath,” a comforter said to him.

“She saved me.”

Derek awoke to the sounds of dinner plates being placed onto a cart and wheeled away. There were sounds coming from a television hidden somewhere in the room that he found himself in. It wasn’t the appearance of the room, the sounds he heard, or even the fact that a nurse was taking his blood pressure that let him know he was in a hospital. It was the person sitting beside his bed that made him fully aware of where he was.

“That was quite a nap you took there, son.”

Ralph Fox sat in a rather uncomfortable-looking blue chair beside Derek’s hospital bed. He has holding a Styrofoam take-out box, overly stuffed with french fries, potato salad, and the remains of three pieces of fried chicken.

“How long have I been out?” Derek asked.

“Two and half days,” Ralph said. “Kind of lost track. Been busy cleaning things up.”

“What happened?”

“You mean after you got your gut all busted up? Hell son, you missed the best part of your whole damn case.”

“You feel like filling me in, or do I have to read about it in the paper?”

“Ain’t never trusted no journalist to tell things accurately. You tell me when you feel up to it, and I’ll tell you the truth. Gotta say, ya]ou ain’t gonna be happy about being in la la land during what transpired in that room you was dying in. Ain’t gonna be happy at all, I imagine.”

“Thomas? Is he okay?”

“Okay is very subjective term, Derek Cole. If you’re asking if Thomas O’Connell is alive, he is. Straus weren’t so lucky, though. As for Alexander, now that is the best part of the story. Truth is, I don’t know if he’s dead or alive, but I suspect he ain’t living.”

“Tell me what happened. I’m okay to listen,” Derek said.

“You sure you’re up to it?” Ralph teased.

“I’m sure.”

As Derek continued to reach full consciousness, Ralph detailed what had happened when he walked into Ward C.

“I suppose that after you walked yourself in, that old Alexander Black forgot to close the door. Hell son, once you told me you was heading down to Hilburn, I jumped in my car and headed down myself. Captain Smith weren’t too happy when he found out that I was the one who stopped Black, but hell, this was my murder investigation from the start.”

“What did you mean when you said you weren’t sure if Alexander was dead or alive?” Derek asked.

“When I left that room, there were a whole mess of NYPD people milling about. Coroner confirmed that Straus was dead and declared Alexander to be dead as well. I told him what I knew about Alexander, but I don’t think anyone in that room believed me.

“I was taken outside and was giving my deposition when I saw them wheeling out two gurneys with filled body bags lying atop them. I told them officers again, but I gave up trying to convince them of something that I ain’t sure I fully believe yet. I imagine that Straus and Alexander are together again in some city morgue.”

“If he isn’t really dead, they’re going to have quite a surprise,” Derek said.

“Thomas was telling me, right before they cuffed him and brought him downtown for questioning, that Straus was telling Alexander that he was pretty close to dying as it was. Said that Straus injected Alexander with a virus that was causing his body to start decomposing. Sure did smell like a dog twelve days dead in that room.”

“Straus told Alexander that he brought a cure with him. I didn’t see him for sure but I half remember Alexander injecting a vial of something into his own neck.”

“Yup, that he did. Thing is, Straus had a couple of plans himself. Found out about them once I was allowed to take a few glances at Brian Lucietta’s journal. Seems Straus devised a Plan B and a Plan C. Plan B was to kill off all the other doctors so that he could blame them for everything. He was planning on holing up in Hilburn until he heard that the other doctors were all dead and that Alexander was apprehended.

“His Plan C was devised in case Alexander found his hiding spot. Hell, he even labeled that vial ‘Plan C.’”

“What was in the vial?” Derek asked.

“Pure acid. Ain’t sure which type. Didn’t matter, I guess, but it sure weren’t no cure.”

Ralph and Derek talked about the case, how all the clues were there, and about what would happen to Thomas O’Connell. They talked about Straus and how, in the end, he got what he probably deserved: To die in agony in the same room that he held Alexander captive for so many years.

“What about the message I got when I landed in Albany,” Derek asked.

“Thomas assured us that he had nothing to do with that message. Using deductive reasoning, I determined that it was Ken O’Connell. See, as you know, his plan was all about extortion. Thomas’s plan was all about getting his brother out of the lodge and making everything public. Alexander’s plan was all about killing all the doctors. That Ken O’Connell sure was a smart man, but he also sure did make a lot of mistakes. The way I see it, he called and left that message for you to get you to thinking that Straus was behind Alexander’s release. That way, you’d be more inclined to focus your looking towards finding Straus.”

“I still don’t understand everything,” Derek said. “Like, how did Thomas get away from the guys his father had watching him?”

“According to Thomas, those guys protecting him only did so during the night. During the day, they’d pull that boat up to shore and take off doing whatever it was that O’Connell paid them to do. Thomas received an email from Alexander, telling him that it was time to implement their plan. He just walked off the boat, jumped on a plane, and was going to meet Alexander at the lodge. Thing was, by the time he got there, the lodge was a crime scene. He told us that he and Alexander had a backup plan. Two of ‘em actually. One was the paths marked with the hearts that I showed you, the other was to meet up in Manhattan.”

“How did Alexander find Ken O’Connell when he killed him?”

“O’Connell set Alexander up in an apartment in Manhattan. When he found out that Lucietta had been killed, he sent one of his goons over to find Alexander and probably to kill him. Alexander wasn’t in that apartment, but he left a note that was addressed to Ken O’Connell. We found the note tucked into O’Connell’s back pocket. Good thing he wasn’t burned up, or we never would have solved that part of the mystery.

“Note just told Ken where Alexander was expecting to meet him. O’Connell showed up with one of his goons. NYPD found his goon dead outside the old warehouse, and they found Ken dead inside the warehouse.”

“That means Alexander killed seven people, and Straus killed two. That’s a lot of activity for a small town chief of police,” Derek teased. “Good thing my old buddy Jared Smith was there to lend his hand.”

“Yup,” Ralph said, “this old Texas boy sure was in need of some help with this whole case.”

By the time the nurse came into Derek’s room and suggested that Derek be allowed to get some rest, Derek understood everything about the Alexander Black mystery. As Ralph stood to leave, he extended his hand to Derek.

“That glossy card you carry in your wallet? You think you got enough room to add another name to it?”

“I bet I can squeeze in a few more letters,” Derek said

“Put my name down on that card.  And Derek?”

“Yeah, Ralph?”

“If you ever get called for another case in my neck of the woods, just give me a call instead of sneaking round. Deal?”

“Thanks Ralph. And yes, we have a deal.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

He was cold. Frigid. He struggled to open his eyes, to move, but none of his muscles responded. His mind swayed from reason to confusion, never remaining in reason long enough for him to string together consecutive thoughts.

The voices he heard, muffled and distorted as they bounced inside what seemed to be a narrow space, could not be understood. He knew that the voices were speaking words, but the meaning of them failed to register.

He slipped again. Somewhere deeper and much darker. His realization returned but offered no solution. No identifiable signs indicating a way to escape the deepness. He felt like he was in a hole, long, narrow, and too smooth for a hand to steal a pulling grip.

He then felt movement, the cause of which was not from his own choice but from some outside force. The movement was brief and halted with a shuttering shake. Instantly, he felt warmth, flooding over his still unreachable body. It offered a hope. A chance to come to some understanding and knowing.  He thought the movement would offer an exit.

He imagined himself swimming in the cool waters of Piseco Lake, feeling the soft current wash over him. He knew that he still harbored the wish that he had taken the chance to swim that one day, so as to know what immersion would feel like. This feeling, now seen not as a dream but something foreboding, turned sour. It was cold, too cold, and was followed by pain, enhanced by his inability to prevent it’s directed march.

 “Son of a bitch!” the medical examiner said. “We have a serious issue over here!”

The medical examiner stopped once the body’s chest cavity was fully opened, skin pulled back, and muscle tissue removed.

“Get someone down here, now!” she said to her assistant. “Now.”

I find the questions and comments I’ve received about this fictional book both amazing and curious. Several readers have connected with me on my Facebook author page, https://www.facebook.com/authortpp with questions that, for reasons known only to them, they felt more comfortable asking me in private. While I honestly enjoy hearing comments and constructive criticism, I have received a disturbing number of questions regarding the same topic. So I’d like to answer the most frequently asked questions here at the end of Heartless. I hope that you enjoy some of the questions as much as I did!

“I don’t think it’s realistic that someone could live without a heart or lungs. How can Alexander Black continue to live without these important organs?” Heartless is a work of FICTION, meaning that it is not based on reality. I agree that living without a heart would present significant challenges.

“You wrote about the role genetics may have played in Alexander. Was his father also heartless?” No, Alexander’s father was born with a heart. I created his character to be more allegorically heartless.

“Is Derek Cole a real private investigator?” I’m sure that there is someone out in the world with the same name who may be a private investigator, but, again, this is a work of FICTION and any and all similarities with anyone, living or dead, is 100% coincidental.

“At the end, it seems that Alexander is still alive. Will he make a return in another Derek Cole book?” Alexander Black is a huge mystery. From his birth to his time on the medical examiner’s table. Will he survive and live to continue his evil ways? Only Derek Cole knows for sure, and he isn’t talking to me since I had him get shot in the stomach. (Sorry Derek).

“When is the next Derek Cole book coming out?”  Those of the Margin, the second in the Derek Cole Suspense Thriller Series was released in October. However, it was released in error. It had not been professionally edited before the scheduled release date arrived. We left it up for nearly a full week, received over 5,000 downloads before we realized it was in rough shape. It is being edited now (editor found over 100 errors!), and will be released in November. “The Observer,” the third Derek Cole book, will be released in 2015. And, if I may be so bold, it is the best Cole series written (so far).

I write a lot. Always have. It’s not atypical for me to pound out 5,000 words in a single day. Since I was 11, I knew I wanted to be a novelist, but I had no idea how difficult it is to make your mark in the publishing industry. Beyond producing the best content I can, having thousands (millions) of people read my books and working with my creative team (editor, content editor, beta readers and marketing firm), the best way for a new author to gain some traction is via “Reader Reviews.”

The averages are disturbing: Less than 1% of people who buy a book, leave a review. But with Amazon, it’s very hard to get people to download a book unless it has 100 or so reviews.  A horrible catch 22. So on behalf of all my fellow authors out there, please take a minute or two to leave an helpful and honest review of Heartless and any other book you’ve read. It means a lot to me and to authors around the world.

Lastly, I’ve already mentioned my Facebook Author’s page https://www.facebook.com/authortpp and I invite you to connect with me there, ask any questions you’d like or even make a suggestion for a Derek Cole Series novel. As a thank you for reading, I am including the first few chapters of the next book in the Derek Cole Series, "Those of the Margin." It is available in both paperback and ebook through Jabby House Publications.

Thank you for reading!

T Patrick Phelps