When we landed in New Orleans, I was still suffering from aphasia, but the rest of the symptoms were starting to go away. Unfortunately, a gentle pulsing sensation was returning to my brain. Any relief the mamba venom had offered was wearing off too fast to be of much use. It had helped for less than three hours, but the side effects were continuing. To our surprise, a US Marshal and something other than a black SUV greeted us. We were loaded into a green passenger van. I wasn’t convinced this was an improvement, even less so when I slid into the seat and my foot caught a steel D-ring in the floor. My eyes noticed several D-rings in the floor, which would be fine if we had a prisoner or two to shackle back here, but it was unnerving when the van didn’t contain a single prisoner.
“Hiccup camel flown margarita,” I said pointing them out to Lucas. They really bugged me and I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps I had spent too much time with ghosts in the last few weeks while watching Malachi sleep.
“You couldn’t find a black Suburban?” Lucas asked the marshal as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Is she alright?” He asked pointing at me. He lacked the accent I had been expecting.
“Long story,” Gabriel climbed into the passenger’s seat. “She’s fine, the transport is fine, everything is fine.” He didn’t sound like everything was fine. I wondered if the D-rings bothered him as well.
“If you say so,” the marshal grimaced and started the van. “Where to first? Hotel or hospital?”
“I said she was fine,” Gabriel snapped at him.
“I meant to talk to the latest victim.” The marshal gave him a sideways glance and a full frown.
“Sorry, it’s been a very long day.” Gabriel relaxed in his seat. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Nope, help yourself,” the marshal answered. Gabriel lit a cigarette in the front seat and passed it back to me. He lit another for himself.
“Hospital first,” Gabriel exhaled and watched as the smoke went out the window.
“Reebok citizen muffin irritated pan?” I asked.
“Yes, while Lucas and I talk to the victim, Xavier can go scan your head again and it had better be fine still.” Gabriel shot a look at Xavier.
“You understood that?” Lucas asked.
“Not really, but I imagine she is just as worried about her brain as the rest of us and pan rhymes with scan,” Gabriel answered. I nodded. I had indeed asked for another scan. This time, I wanted contrast dye to make sure I wasn’t leaking somewhere. Xavier had special doctor rights that allowed him to practice medicine at whatever hospital he showed up at, as long as his patients were limited to members of the SCTU and VCU. Xavier took it as a cue to break out his handy dandy flashlight and blind me again.
“Migraine lipstick stupid blinker flipping crochet shoe!” I swore at him as I felt my pupils contract.
“Well, the migraine’s back,” Xavier said. “So much for it being a more reliable pain reliever. I could have shot her up with morphine and gotten better results with fewer symptoms.” I gave him the finger.
“So, next time, we just shoot her full of morphine,” Lucas suggested. I shook my head and dug a small bottle out of my pocket. The contents were large white pills. I held one up to him.
“Those really only work with stress migraines,” Xavier said. I pointed at him and made a gesture. “And I am not always the source of your migraines, so you can’t blame me for causing you unnecessary stress.”
“Today, you might be,” Fiona offered. “You did inject her with snake venom and now she talks like that. For Aislinn Cain, that has got to be torture.” I clapped at her analysis.
“Today might be the exception,” Xavier tilted his head to one side. “But she should have responded better than this.”
“The fact that her brain isn’t entirely wired right never raised red flags?” Gabriel snarked. “What’s going to happen if she has to draw a gun on someone? She can’t identify herself or tell them not to move.” I smiled.
“Yeah, right, like she enjoys that part of her job, she might fake aphasia to make excuses to Taser people more often,” Lucas said.
“Let’s just get through the next couple of hours. She’s metabolizing the stuff faster than she should be, as she does with everything, so the side effects should be wearing off soon. You can crucify me later,” Xavier said. I nodded in agreement. I wouldn’t crucify him, but I might Taser him.
“I don’t mean to overstep, but can you guys work with her like that?” The driver asked. I nodded.
“Yes,” Lucas answered. “If she really wants us to know exactly what she’s saying she finds a way. Besides, she’s more…” He didn’t finish his thought. Instead, he looked at me. I had dug out my cell phone and was furiously typing on it. “She’s resourceful,” Lucas said turning away from the screen.
“If you say so.” Aside from my fingers hitting the screen on my phone, we rode the rest of the way in silence. I was working on a threatening text message to send to Xavier and using words I did not let escape my lips. I wasn’t much of a lady, but my mother had ingrained in me a sense of something that made some words absolutely out of bounds. She didn’t even like the f-word, which was why I had found substitutes over the years. Even as an adult, I tried not to use the word around her for fear of having my mouth washed out with soap. I hit send. Xavier’s phone went off. He read the screen, a smile spreading over his face.
Sometimes, Xavier had odd emotional reactions. Sometimes, he had inappropriate emotional reactions. Both were caused by taking a bullet to the brain years earlier. However, at this moment, he was amused by my language choices. Just because I didn’t say them out loud, didn’t mean I couldn’t swear the barn down. I had words and phrases in my vocabulary that would make pirates blush and feel dirty.
“Have you spoken with Brady Wilchek?” Gabriel asked.
“Yes,” the marshal answered.
“How traumatized is he?”
“He’s having the worst couple of days of his entire life,” the marshal answered. I texted Lucas asking the marshal’s name. Lucas texted me back that I had not missed introductions, because they hadn’t been done.
“What kind of guy is he?” Lucas asked the marshal. “How would you describe him?”
“Freaked out,” the marshal answered.
“Yes, but why exactly is he freaked out? Is it the missing time? His stay in the hospital? The fact that he was attacked? The cuts to his face? I need to know exactly what he is most focused on, so I can figure out how to approach the situation.” Lucas informed him.
“I don’t know,” the marshal answered. I texted Gabriel asking for the marshal’s name. Gabriel ignored my message.
“I will have to evaluate him upon arrival. If we get it wrong, he may shut down and feel as though we are attacking him a second time. Or he may become defiant and feel we are being judgmental, which wouldn’t work in our favor either. Do we know where he was last seen?”
“His credit card was recovered from a bar in the French Quarter where he was running a tab. He didn’t pay his tab or attempt to get his card back from the bar.”
This meant he was drugged before he left the bar. Someone had needed him compliant. There wasn’t any indication of sexual assault, which ruled out a man attempting to prey on other men for sexual superiority. However, drugging him before he left the bar would help a man to convince him to go with him. From his before picture, I was guessing the guy thought he was a ladies’ man. He had a wide smile and very white, perfectly straight teeth. A smile like that cost money. It screamed he had amazing dental insurance or a lot of money. My vote was on money. His eyes were a medium brown, his hair a sandy blond, his tan was beach related, and his torso had muscle definition. Even if his file hadn’t said he was a tourist, it would have been a solid bet.
Not only was heterosexual men low risk victims, but this guy was among the lowest. He was fit. He was young. He had money. The trifecta of terrible victims. Serial killers didn’t go for these types of victims unless they were ultimate thrill seekers that could be very dominant. History showed only a handful of serial killers willing to prey upon this type of victim, and the majority had been captured because of it. Immediately, Adolfo Constanzo came to mind. The cult leader had done fine as long as he was using poor Mexicans for his rituals. It was only after he grabbed a rich, college kid on vacation that someone was willing to go after him.
This brought another thought to my mind; we were in New Orleans. It was the magic capital of the US. Most people were familiar with voodoo in the sense that they knew it existed, but there were many other religions in the south that dealt with magic. Of course, our victims weren’t dead, so that ruled out the darker religions like Palo Mayombe, but blood was used in other religions. I couldn’t think of any right off the top of my head that would approve of this sort of mutilation to get the blood though. Most used willing donors, preferably those involved with the spell they wanted to cast, because it made the magic stronger. Also, mutilation when ritualistic was more controlled than these gashes. It seemed unlikely we had an enraged voodoo priest running around, slashing people up, unless someone had raised Marie Laveau from the dead. I shrugged and realized I hadn’t vocalized anything, not even in aphasia gibberish.
We turned into the parking lot of a huge hospital. The lot was packed. Hospitals were busy places. There was something tragic about a hospital parking lot. The amount of cars was not a reflection of the amount of people inside, since most patients weren’t driving themselves to be admitted. It was a reflection of visitors and staff. Visitors always outnumbered patients and staff. People stacked on top of each other with no privacy led to a decrease in dignity. No one enjoyed tossing their cookies or using a bedpan in a room full of other people. Closing the curtains was supposed to offer privacy, but the illusion failed to live up to the reality.
My list of reasons to hate hospitals was long, but this was at the top of the list. Sometimes a person just needed privacy, real privacy. I firmly believed that privacy led to faster recovery times, because one did not have to deal with a roommate or their roommate’s visitors, or doing things behind a closed curtain that would normally be done in a private setting without any embarrassment or stigma.