Page 40

THIRTY-NINE

SHERIFF HUDSON

I rub my eyes to alleviate some of the strain that’s built up from staring at the computer screen while sitting in the dark. Lifting my arm to check the time, the face of my G-Shock reads 2:28 a.m. I can’t lie in bed, curled up under the blankets, getting a comfortable night’s sleep, when I know two women are missing and that there’s a killer on the loose.

I’ve been studying the footage from the hospital security cameras for over an hour now. I had our tech team splice together all the shots where the suspect appears on camera into one continuous video to save me time from jumping between camera files. Even with the more cohesive footage and the quality of it slightly amplified, the video tells me nothing. But there has to be at least one clue. In my gut, I know I’m missing something.

I’m about to start the footage over from the beginning again when I hear the door of my office creak open. Turning in my swivel chair, I find Pam standing in the doorframe dressed in a pair of my boxers and a white tee, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“It’s like three in the morning. What are you doing up?” she says. The second part she pushes through a yawn.

“Can’t sleep. So, I figured I’d review the footage from the hospital.”

“We already had half a dozen deputies review the tape nearly a hundred times. They found nothing.”

“I know. But maybe they missed something,” I say as I extend a hand to her, inviting her to join me.

Pam slowly shuffles across the room and takes my hand, letting me pull her into my lap. I rotate the two of us back in front of the monitor.

She moves the mouse and clicks Play . The video starts again. “We’re never going to ID that guy. He’s in a surgeon’s gown, cap, and mask.” She points at the computer monitor, a tinge of whining mixed with frustration in her voice. “This isn’t some average Joe. This guy’s a professional. Maybe ex-military or police or even a hit man. But this definitely isn’t his first time killing someone and leaving without a trace.”

Finding the target in question for the tech team to splice together footage was easy, at least at first. All we had to do was look at the large gap in security, the time when Deputy Morrow vacated his post, and track it backward. A man in surgical gear entered Stevens’s room and then left less than a minute later—blood covering his gloves and gown. He dipped into a supply closet and changed into clean gear so no one would pay him any mind, and they didn’t. Once he looked like a regular doctor again, it became difficult to track him as not all of the hospital cameras overlap into another feed. This isn’t a bank or a casino floor after all. The one odd piece, at least to me, was that he entered the hospital already dressed for surgery. Even though there weren’t that many people walking the halls at that time of night, he just looked so... ordinary.

“It won’t be easy, but everyone makes mistakes,” I say, staring at the footage, watching the man on his exit path out of the hospital. He never changes his pace. Even when he can see the exit, he doesn’t rush. He’s cool, calm, and collected—like he belongs there. Something does feel familiar about his gait, but it’s not enough to place him. One of the tricky things about being a cop as long as I have is that so many people have blurred together over the years. Sure, we have our high-frequency repeat offenders, the guys with multiple DUIs, the guys who can’t seem to stop beating their wives, the petty drug dealers who go right back to dealing the minute they get out of jail. But even they blur together, seeing as they are all really cut from the same sleazy, grease-covered cloth.

Once outside the building, the man removes his surgical gloves and tosses them into a trash can. His hand flicks into the air as he lets go of the gloves and watches them drop into the black hole. The light from a streetlamp illuminates his now-exposed hand.

“Wait! Pause it there,” I say to Pam. She clicks the mouse. “Can you zoom in on his hand?”

“Sure, but it’ll get blurry.”

“That’s fine. Just do it, please.” I squint as the picture tightens in, more and more until it takes up the entire screen. “Holy shit.”

“What?”

“I know who it is.”

A memory takes hold. It’s so strong, it’s like it’s playing out on the monitor before me.

* * *

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Gunshots echo off the walls of the shooting range and casings clatter to the ground as I watch him fire at a paper sheet. Some rip through the target, others don’t hit it at all, instead smashing into the back wall. He’s supposed to be aiming between the eyes and down to the throat. This area is known as the fatal triangle, the zone where a shot is most effective at hitting the cerebellum, the brain stem, or the cervical parts of the spinal cord. Cops aren’t taught to “shoot to kill,” but we are taught to “shoot to stop.” The difference is subtle, but the result is the same. On a paper target that isn’t moving, with no threat of danger, he should be hitting his mark every single time, but he’s not.

“You need more physical therapy, bro. You can’t shoot for dick,” I yell.

“What!?” he shouts back. With his hearing protection on, my words must be muffled to a whisper. He removes the earmuffs. “What did you say?”

“I said you can’t shoot for dick.”

“I know that. That’s why I’m practicing, so I can get cleared and get off of fucking desk duty. It’s killing me.” He shakes out his hand, flexing and clenching it, grimacing as he does.

It was an unfortunate situation for him. During a routine traffic stop, while he was instructing the driver of the vehicle to step out on a suspected DUI, they instead sped off. And as a result, his hand got crunched in the door, fracturing it in the process. He had surgery, went through months of physical therapy, but now he’s gotta pass firearms training again in order to go back into the field.

“Didn’t you complete PT three weeks ago?” I ask.

“Yeah, and I don’t know why it’s taking so long to get my aim back,” he says, shaking his hand out again, harder this time.

“It’s probably ’cause of your weird-ass fingers,” I tease.

“What the hell is wrong with my fingers?” He looks down at his hand as he keeps flipping it back and forth.

“Your pointer finger is longer than your middle finger. You’re probably pulling on the trigger weird compared to your grip.”

“Shut up. My marksmanship was better than yours before this injury, thanks to this finger,” he says, making a finger gun.

“Well, not anymore. Maybe you should go to a doctor and ask if they’ll shave your pointer finger down. Or, better yet, just take a bolt cutter and trim a little off the top.” I chuckle as I mime chopping it.

“Hard pass on both, asshole. I’ll just keep practicing, and eventually, it’ll come back to me. Hopefully, sooner than later. Like I said, man, I can’t take desk duty anymore.”

“You better, because you’ll be a liability if I need backup.”

“I’m not a goddamn liability.” He puffs up his chest and flips me the bird. “Sit on it and spin, bitch.”

“Sit on what? I can’t really see anything behind that alien finger. You tryin’ to phone home?”

We both start laughing again as he does an ET impression, waddling around the shooting range with his pointer finger raised. “Me phone home. Me phone home.”

“Marcus,” Pam says, pulling me out of the memory I fell into. “Who is it?”

I stare at the hand on the screen again. The pointer finger is significantly longer than the middle one, and suddenly, the familiar gait makes sense. I recognized him in the crowd too, the day I gave my statement to the media. The beard threw me off because I’ve never seen him with one, but it was him. He must have shaved it off before he decided to kill Stevens, but now I can see him as if he were wearing no disguise at all, walking around with his face clear for all the cameras to see.

“It’s Scott Summers,” I say. “He’s back.”