Do No Harm

"We'll see that the patients make it inside in timely fashion." Yale snapped his fingers at Dalton and pointed to the side of the parked ambulance. "Logical hiding place. Have Latent check the side of the vehicle for prints." He glanced at David's ID tag. "You be sure to inform me of any potentially violent patients who come in."

"I'll help as much as I can, but there are patient confidentiality issues," David said.

"There are people getting their faces burnt off." Yale turned away, raising a knuckle to his nose. His Rolex slid out from beneath his cuff; the smooth rotation of the second hand showed that it was real. Family money, no doubt. He couldn't afford that watch on a police detective's salary.

David stepped around Yale so he was facing him again. "Please get this ramp clear as soon as you can. We can't have patients going critical out here because you're putting a crime scene ahead of a medical emergency."

Yale sighed, putting on a weary expression. "Dr. Spier, we're just doing our best to cut down the number of patients you do get."

The morphine had mellowed Sandra out substantially, constricting her pupils and giving her limbs a lax, almost fluid flexibility when they moved. Diane clutched Sandra's soft unscarred hand as she poured water down over her blistering left forearm.

David crouched on the far side of Sandra's bed as Pat worked the left half of her face with a saline bottle. From his vantage, her profile was lovely. The smooth brown skin of her cheek, the soft line of her sternocleidomastoid, the arch of a penciled eyebrow. The contrast between the halves of her face was brutal. He did not want to rise from his crouch.

"… couldn't see anything," Sandra continued, her voice a drone. "When I looked up, I just saw the stuff coming at me." She seemed oblivious to the people working industriously to repair her face. "But I knew it was him. I fell down, and I knew to make sure I kept my eyes squeezed shut."

Pat ducked her face behind a hand as a sniffle escaped her. Diane looked over, resting a hand on Pat's wrist. "We got it from here," she said softly. "Don't worry."

Pat turned, averting her face, and headed out of the exam room. She hurled the saline bottle as she exited, and it popped open when it struck the floor.

It was the first time David had seen her lose her temper.

"… didn't want to scream," Sandra said. "Didn't want to open my mouth so he could throw the stuff down my throat." A halting breath. "I don't want to be like Nancy." Her voice went high, and broke, so her next words were almost soundless. "Oh God. Oh God."

"You're all right." David wanted to stroke the unmarred side of her face, feel it soft beneath his fingers, but he did not. "Nothing went in your eyes or down your throat. You just sustained burns on one side of your face, which we have under control."

"It stung," Sandra said. "It stung so bad but I couldn't scream. I couldn't open my eyes." A single tear beaded at the pointed corner of her eye and streaked down her perfect cheek. David wiped its trail away with his thumb, wanting to keep the cheek pristine.

"Why did someone do this to me?" Her head rolled loosely to the right so she was facing him. The blistering had blown her cheek out of shape-a weeping, pitted bulge of ruby and white. Much of the hair had fallen from the side of her head. The flesh at the base of her ear had been eaten away, the divots pooling with serous fluid and saline. Her tragus was burnt down to a small nub.

David felt himself shot through with a burst of anger so sudden and intense it left him nauseous. He shook his head and laid the backs of his fingers across the unscathed skin of her forehead. "I don't know."

His legs were shaking when he rose from his crouch.

Dalton tossed the In-N-Out bag in Yale's lap. Yale quickly picked it up, trying to work a spot of grease out of his pants with a fingernail.

"Sorry," Dalton mumbled. He raised the remaining crescent of double cheeseburger to his mouth and angled it in.

Yale glanced inside the bag, closed it, and set it aside on the bench. He stretched his legs, running his eyes around the grassy quad of the Medical Plaza.

A burly male patient in a hospital gown flirted with a nurse near the wide steps of the hospital entrance. He leaned in to whisper something to her, and she drew back slightly.

Dalton wiped his nose with his sleeve. "I took another look at the construction guys on Le Conte. Two of them have arm tattoos, but neither one resembles a skull. One of the guys is a parolee, got popped for a B and E in '96, but he's alibied three times over. Other guy's tat looked like jailhouse ink. I'm gonna run him, but he's also got a solid alibi."

"We're looking for a disorganized offender," Yale said. "He's smart enough to wear latex gloves, but discards evidence at the scene. I think he gets close to the victims by necessity-he's not sophisticated enough to figure out how to do dirty work from afar."