Zachary was far away when the cavalry finally rolled in.
Without any warning to Teddy, the cops came crashing in through the door of the shack, flashbangs tossed in ahead of them to stun their quarry. Teddy didn’t have a gun. He froze with the knife in his hand, too startled to do anything but turn toward the door with his mouth open.
In the seemingly chaotic entry, Teddy was disarmed and thrown to the ground. He clearly had nowhere to hide any additional weapons. They handcuffed him, shouting charges and a Miranda warning. They wrapped a blanket around him and hauled him out of the shack, Teddy grinning like he was having the time of his life.
It was Dougan who bent over Zachary on the bed, feeling his pulse and calling his name, but Zachary himself was far from the scene, watching it all from a distance, time and space morphing into shapes he hadn’t known existed. He remembered Santiago’s words, ‘I’ve never really felt like I move linearly through time…’ It hadn’t made sense to him before, but now he understood.
He watched without emotion as Dougan took a series of pictures and then pulled the single sheet of the bed over Zachary’s body.
“Need paramedics in here!” Dougan barked. “Where are they?”
They must have arrived and assembled with the cops before the breach, because they were right on hand, pushing their way in the door as soon as Dougan called for them.
“Preserve all the evidence you can,” Dougan ordered. “Make sure they take blood as soon as he gets to the hospital. Swabs of everything. Full forensic kit. Act as if this is the one and only thing we can get Mr. Archuro for. I want it to be ironclad. Is that understood?”
“Not our first rodeo,” one of the paramedics growled, bending over Zachary’s body to shine a light in his eyes and check his pulse.
“I don’t care about your hurt feelings. This monster needs to be locked up.”
“We’ll take care of it,” the other paramedic, a woman, reassured Dougan.
The drugs were wearing off and Zachary was more in control of his faculties a few hours later when he heard Mr. Peterson and Pat arrive. The ordeal of the forensic examination was finally over. He could hear the doctor talking to them before they were allowed to see him.
“Is he all right?” Pat demanded. “I want to know what that bastard did to him.”
“Under patient privacy laws, I really can’t give you any specifics. I’m sorry. If Mr. Goldman wishes that information to be shared, I can talk with you later. But right now, I have to assume that he wishes it to be kept private.”
“Is he awake?” Mr. Peterson asked.
“He may be in and out. And he may appear to be conscious of what’s going on around him and be able to answer questions, but then later wake up and have no recollection of it. His memories of the past few hours and the next few may be patchy or even totally lost. Don’t worry if he asks you the same questions over and over. It will probably be a while before he’s really back with us.”
“He was drugged, then.”
“I can’t answer that. Let’s see how he feels about sharing that information once he’s feeling like himself again.”
There were a few more murmurs, and then the two men were escorted to Zachary’s gurney. There were curtains pulled around the bed. Zachary knew by the noise on the other side that he wasn’t in a private room yet. He was still in the emergency room examination area.
“Zachary.” Mr. Peterson was the first to his side, reaching out to touch him and reassure him. “Zach, how are you?”
Zachary shied away from his hand, his body convulsing with sudden panic.
“Whoa.” Mr. Peterson pulled back slowly. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. Too fast.”
Zachary let his body melt back into the mattress again, breathing through his open mouth and watching the two of them uneasily.
Mr. Peterson leaned in slightly, trying to meet Zachary’s eyes and evaluate his state. “Pretty rough night, huh?”
Zachary breathed in and out a couple of times and nodded. “Yeah.”
“Oh, Zach,” Pat’s face was lined with grief. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. All because I had to involve you in Jose’s disappearance.”
“No. Not your fault. I shouldn’t have gone on without Dougan.”
“Why did you?” Mr. Peterson asked. “You said you weren’t going to meet with Dimitri alone. Why didn’t you wait?”
“I wanted to make sure… I was afraid of losing the evidence. That by the time Dougan got there, it would be gone and he wouldn’t be able to get a warrant. And I wasn’t sure… I didn’t even know, at first, if what was going on in the cemetery was related. It could have just been a coincidence, someone in the cemetery right before I was supposed to be meeting Dimitri. I didn’t know if it was anything related, I just wanted to check.”
“You took a real risk.”
Zachary nodded. “Poor impulse control,” he reminded Mr. Peterson with an embarrassed shrug. “It’s always been at the top of my psychological profile.”
“Yes, it has. Of course, we had hoped you would outgrow it.”
“Not yet.”
Mr. Peterson gave him a warm smile. “I think you turned out pretty good. I just worry about you. If the police hadn’t gotten there when they did…”
Zachary swallowed. He had no doubt whatsoever how it would have ended. Teddy had been explicit in his descriptions of what he planned to do, and he hadn’t planned for Zachary to be found when it was all over. Teddy had plenty of places close at hand in which to hide a dead body, where he could continue to visit it for years to come.
“The police got there,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“Are you?” Mr. Peterson’s eyes moved down Zachary’s body and back up again. With Zachary wearing a hospital johnny and a sheet pulled up over him, Mr. Peterson couldn’t see the things Teddy had done. The most he could do was guess. Zachary wasn’t going to divulge any details.
“I’m just sore,” he said. “Nothing a few pain pills won’t cure.” He closed his eyes, resting, thinking about sleep. As removed as he still felt from himself, he wondered whether he would ever sleep again. Maybe he would always float above himself, watching his sleeping body from a safe distance. “You won’t have to worry about me taking my pills tonight,” he said, nodding toward the IV bag.
Mr. Peterson lowered himself into a chair. He kept his hand near Zachary’s head, as if wanting to comfort him, but worried about Zachary’s reaction. “I’d rather be worrying about your pills tonight.”
There were strange lights and colors behind Zachary’s lids when he closed his eyes. He opened them again. “I’m sorry about that. About taking too many. I’m usually very careful.”
“I know you are. I think that’s one of the reasons it scared us so much. You’re more likely to not take something you ought to than you are to take too much. When you weren’t up and I went into your room and found you so pale and your breathing so shallow… I was afraid at first…” He didn’t finish the thought.
Zachary knew what he’d been afraid of. Mr. Peterson knew that Zachary had attempted suicide in the past. That he might not have made it past the previous Christmas if he had been left alone.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
Some time passed without any of them saying anything.
“Where’s Dougan? Did he come to the hospital?” Zachary asked.
“He’s got his hands full right now,” Mr. Peterson advised. “He said he would check in when he could, but he’s got a body and a serial killer on his hands, and that’s way above his pay grade. He will be passing everything on to whoever is heading up the investigation into Teddy Archuro.”
“Teddy,” Pat repeated, putting his hands over his eyes and shaking his head. “Can you believe it? I can’t. He never seemed… he was normal, just like anyone else. I never saw anything weird…”
Zachary thought about how Teddy had zeroed in on him at The Night Scene. Zachary had attracted Teddy’s interest as someone new. He remembered how Teddy had suggested a shorter, more intense relationship. Just how short and intense, Zachary had not guessed. Teddy had been a predator, on the prowl for fresh meat.
“I think I’ll go to sleep now,” he said. “I want to be awake when Dougan gets here later.”
Both men nodded. Mr. Peterson touched Zachary’s shoulder very lightly, the weight of a butterfly. “Do you want someone to stay with you? In case you wake up and don’t know where you are or need someone to talk to?”
“No.”
Zachary was too enervated to explain. He wanted them to just go home and leave him alone.