Flashback

“It’ll probably need some stitches and tending,” said Gunny. “But he’s not going to bleed out or anything. I’ve had Lennie and Dorrie watch the external cams extra close this afternoon, but there’s been no sign of Val watching from across the street or coming back to the bridge.”

“Okay,” said Nick. “Thanks.” He headed back to the stairway, trying not to stare at the blood trail. It was true that he’d seen much worse.

Suddenly there flowed in the unbidden memory of his youngest attacker, wounded and begging for his life in the predawn dimness of the Huntington Botanical Gardens the previous Monday. That young man had been three or four years older than Val, at least, and had almost certainly spent his night with his older pals shooting at unarmed civilians as if they were deer in the woods—it was just his bad luck that Nick hadn’t been unarmed—but who was going to be the merciless older man aiming the muzzle of his Glock at Val’s forehead and shielding his face from spatter if this crap kept up?

Knock it off, shithead. It doesn’t help.

“Whaddya wanta do with the climbing rope, Mr. B.?” called Gunny from the corner of the roof.

“I’ll get it later,” lied Nick.

His cubie was a total mess. Not only had it been tossed, clothes strewn everywhere, the contents of his dresser drawers dumped out and then the drawers themselves thrown around, but there was the usual paramedic mess of discarded plastic and paper wrappings from where Dr. Tak had done his initial work on Leonard.

Nick ignored the mess. All he could focus on was the scatter of colored dossiers.

Did Val read the grand jury stuff?

Of course he had.

Nick brushed the pile of folders off his desk with a furious sweep of his forearm. Would Val believe that I tried to kill his mother?

Of course he would. Nick was, after all, the same man who’d dumped his son with an elderly grandfather in Los Angeles and never come to visit him… who never found enough money to fly the son home to Denver for a visit… who only phoned a few times a year and who totally forgot that son’s sixteenth birthday. Why wouldn’t a so-called father like that conspire to kill a wife who’d been unfaithful to him?

Nick sat on the chair with his elbows on his knees, his hands gripping the sweaty sides of his head, and concentrated on trying to breathe.

For 4 percent of people with this problem, the first noticeable symptom is sudden death.

Yeah, and ain’t that a great practical joke on the 4 percent? Nick’s father had been careless to get himself killed when Nick was pretty young, but at least he’d paid attention to Nick when he was still alive and had the time. With no shade of melodrama whatsoever, Nick realized that he would never be able to make things up to Val, no matter how much time the two might have in the rest of their lives.

Almost certainly less than eight hours for me, thought Nick.

This flood of certainty washed over Nick again as a mere fact, no melodrama. If he couldn’t escape with Val and Leonard, if he couldn’t live in real life that lovely dream he’d had that morning just before waking, he was certain that the meeting with Mr. Nakamura would not end well for a certain ex-cop named Nick Bottom. It was as if he could already smell the decomposing stench of his own death…

“Shit,” said Nick. Slamming his cubie door shut, he stripped naked, throwing everything he’d been wearing, down to his boxer shorts, into the far corner of the room. Then he went into the bathroom and showered fast but hard, scrubbing until his skin almost bled. Even then, Nick could still detect the death stench of Denver Municipal Landfill Number Nine.

The remembered NCAR smell was more subtle—a faint hint of chlorine and other chemicals, as when lying near a well-tended swimming pool—but just as terrifying.

Nick dressed quickly and carelessly—clean underwear, clean socks, a blue-plaid flannel shirt washed so many times that it was almost obscenely soft, clean chinos that weren’t as tight on him as they’d been two weeks earlier. He clipped the holster and Glock on his belt on the left side and velcroed the little holster with its tiny .32 on his right ankle.

Then he looked for Dara’s phone. It wasn’t there on the desk or bed.

Someone’s stolen it. The neighbors or some other residents came in and took it while Gunny G. and Dr. Tak were parading back and forth, the place unlocked and unwatched. Or maybe Val had taken it with him or come back to get it…