Rage Against the Dying - By Becky Masterman Page 0,106
the fingers on his right hand over his chest and smiled at them.
“Why didn’t you just move one of the bodies onto your truck?”
“I tried. It came apart when I tried to move it. I didn’t like it that way.”
I guess even necrophiliacs have an aesthetic sense. “You used both the bodies? The one you called the lot lizard?”
“Uh-huh,” he said in kind of a singsong.
“He didn’t tell you how or when he killed that one, did he?”
“Nuh-uh,” in the same singsong and did that childish zipper thing across his lips. “He was pretty closemouthed about it. Jush-ed she was different.”
I alerted. The killer blabbed about every detail of his other kills but didn’t want to talk about that first one. If he wouldn’t talk about her maybe it was because he hadn’t been as organized with her. Maybe he knew he’d made some mistakes, done something that could connect her to him. “Different? How?”
“Jus, diff…” he said, trailing off. I wished I knew how to punch in the codes that would cut off his drugs, but other than ripping the epidural out of his back, which was sure to cause a stink, I was at a loss.
“How different, Floyd? Physically? Mentally? Tell me what you remember, Floyd.”
Lynch wasn’t paying attention to me, just telling the truth. It must have felt good. “Then I studied about how to make a mummy and I was going to kill someone, I swear I was, but I didn’t have the time to work up to it. I printed out his e-mail messages and pretended I was the one who did it all. I sent some postcards to the father of the FBI agent like he did. I even sliced the body I found to pretend it was one of his victims. Then they picked me up. He got a message to me in jail. Shed if I ever denied it he’d have me killed.”
“Route 66.”
Lynch put a finger to his lips, “Shh. Don’t even say it.” Then he giggled.
Oh God, I didn’t have time for this. “I’m near certain he’s got Agent Coleman. Floyd, she was nice to you. She was trying to get a fair deal for you. Can’t you help me find her?”
He licked around the inside of his mouth as if he wanted to speak but his tongue was catching on his teeth. “I don’t know anything else. I’m sleepy. Let me…” His eyes closed and his mouth dropped open so I could hear his breathing. It struck me that there wasn’t much breathing, shallow and much, much too slow. Suddenly worried, I slapped his face lightly.
As if in response to my touching his face, a loud ping from the monitor beside the bed made me jump. It felt like the timer going off to tell me my interview was done.
About two seconds later a male doctor and two female nurses came through the door. One of them glanced my way but then all focused on bringing Floyd Lynch back from what they apparently considered the brink.
The doctor shone a light in Lynch’s eyes. “Can you hear me, Floyd? No response. Respiration?”
“Shallow, six per minute, pulse rapid, thin.”
“Looks like an overdose.” The doctor punched at the panel on both the morphine pump and the epidural to stop the flow. “Nurse, check his IV. You, go get a crash team.”
One of the women dashed out, the other stayed, checked the IV. “I hung the bag myself but I didn’t open it to full. It’s all the way open now. Maybe there’s an obstruction,” she said. She fiddled with it, trying to be useful until the emergency response team arrived.
“He was complaining that his hand was burning,” I said, but no one paid attention to me.
Three guys crashed through the door pushing a metal cart filled with emergency gear. Without asking for directions one of them grabbed a board while the other two lifted Lynch off the bed so the third could push the board under him. At the same time that Lynch was being lowered onto the board the guy who had put it on the bed got a syringe off the cart and plunged it into Lynch’s chest. That would be the epinephrine. It had no effect.
They were getting the defibrillator off the cart to try that next when the guard poked his head in the door, cell phone held uncertainly, not having been given instructions about this eventuality. He saw me standing against the wall, watching the activity. “Who