Manitou Blood Read online

  “You can talk, then?”

  She nodded. “Yes . . . but only when I have to.”

  “Is there a reason for that?”

  “Not really. But if you stay silent, you can never tell lies, can you? And nobody can ever misquote you.”

  He finished checking her vitals. “I don’t think I’d last very long in my line of work, if I had to mime everything.”

  “Oh . . . you’d be surprised,” she said. She circled her head around and around, with her eyes crossed. “Dizzy spells,” she explained.

  “Okay,” Frank conceded. “I guess it’s just as well that you’re so good. There’s no way I would have stopped to watch you, otherwise.”

  “You don’t like mimes?”

  “Unh-hunh. All that smelling pretend daisies and leaning up against pretend walls—that doesn’t do anything for me, I’m afraid.”

  “I see. You’re one of those people who refuse to believe that things exist unless you can actually see them.”

  “When it comes to walls, yes.”

  “How about ladders?”

  “Okay . . . for a split second, yes, you did make me believe that you were climbing a ladder.”

  She gave him a faint, sloping smile. “I could have climbed higher, but I lost my nerve.”

  “Sure,” he said. He leaned over her and shone his flashlight into her eyes, one after the other.

  “You took care of me,” she told him.

  “Hold still. Of course I took care of you. It’s my job. You were lucky that the finest gastroenterologist in the entire Western hemisphere happened to be watching you when you started to bring up all that blood.”

  “Do you have any idea what’s wrong with me?” she asked him.

  “Not yet. You have very low blood pressure, which is causing us some serious concern. Your CBC shows that you also have pernicious anemia, which is probably caused by an inability to absorb sufficient quantities of vitamin B12. But neither of those conditions would directly cause you to hemorrhage, and so far we haven’t been able to detect any lesions in your digestive tract or any vesicles in your esophagus.”

  “I’m not sure I know what any of that means.”

  “It means, simply, that we haven’t yet discovered what’s wrong with you.”

  She didn’t answer him directly, but turned her face away, so that she was staring at the picture of Jesus. “He looks sad, don’t you think?”

  “Have you been feeling at all sick lately?” Frank asked her.

  “No, not exactly. I’ve been feeling . . . different.”

  “Are you on any medication? Antianxiety agents? Antidepressants? How about diuretics?”

  “I take ginger and yarrow, for menstrual cramps.”

  “Okay . . . how about alcohol? How much do you drink, on average?”

  “A glass of red wine, sometimes. But not very often. I get drunk very easily, and I don’t like losing control.”

  “Street drugs?”

  “Never. Well, once, but that was over a year ago.”

  “Tell me about your diet. Are you a vegetarian?”

  She nodded, although she still kept her face turned away.

  “Sometimes strict vegetarians suffer from vitamin B12 deficiency,” Frank told her. “It’s pretty easily sorted, though, with tablets or injections.”

  He scribbled a few notes, and then he said, “Dr. Gathering tells me you’re very sensitive to sunlight. How long have you suffered from that?”

  “I don’t know . . . three or four days. Maybe longer. I can’t really remember.”

  “Is it just your eyes, or is your skin sensitive, too? Do you get a rash or anything like that?”

  Susan Fireman shook her head. “I can’t go out without my makeup, even if the sun’s not shining.”

  “What happens if you don’t wear makeup?”

  “It hurts. It feels like I’m standing an inch too close to a furnace.”

  Frank made a note to talk to Dr. Xavier, the skin specialist. Then he said, “You’ve been having recurrent nightmares, too, I understand?”

  Susan Fireman pulled a dismissive face, as if she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “A recurrent nightmare can sometimes be a symptom of an underlying medical problem. It’s your body sending a warning to your brain that something might be seriously wrong.”

  “I don’t know . . . this feels more like a memory than a nightmare.”

  “You keep dreaming that you’re on board a ship, is that it? And you’re shut up inside a box, in the dark.”

  “Not just shut up. The lid’s screwed down tight. And there are more boxes stacked on top of my box, so that I couldn’t possibly get out, even if it wasn’t.”

  “I see. So how do you know you’re on board a ship?”

  “Because I can feel it moving. It pitches up and down, and then it rolls. And I can hear timbers creaking, and the sound of the ocean. Sometimes I hear somebody shouting, in a very singsong way, and that frightens me more than anything else.”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  Susan Fireman turned back and looked at him. “It’s a boy, by the sound of it. He shouts out something like tatal nostru, over and over again. There’s a whole lot more but when I wake up I can never remember it.”

  “Tattle nostrew? Do you have any idea what language that is?”

  “None. But it frightens me, because the boy sounds so frightened.”

  Frank said, “We’re going to have do some more tests. Some allergy tests, and some eye tests, and at least one more X-ray, to see if we can find an ulcer. I think we need to contact your parents, don’t you, and let them know what’s going on?”

  “My dad’s real sick. I don’t want him upset.”

  “Well, maybe we could talk to your mother first, and let her decide how to tell him.”

  Susan Fireman thought for a moment, and then she said, “No . . . leave it for now. Please. I’ll tell her myself.”

  “Is there anyone else you want us to talk to? How about the people you share with?”

  “No—don’t tell them.”

  “Don’t you think they’re going to be worried, when you don’t come home?”

  “Please . . .”

  Frank tucked his notebook back in his pocket. “Okay, you’re the boss. I’ll come back later and see how you’re getting along.”

  He was walking back through his office door when his beeper went off. It was Dr. Gathering, and it said urgent. He pressed his phone button and said, “George? What’s happening?”

  “Willy’s sent me up the final results of Susan Fireman’s bloodwork. She’s anemic, no question about it, but there’s something else, too. Willy says that she has some enzyme in her bloodstream that he can’t identify. He might have to send it off to Rochester.”

  “Well, I’ve just been down to talk to her, and there’s definitely something unique about her.”

  “That’s not all, Frank. Willy also tested a sample of the blood that she vomited.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s not hers. In fact, it’s two different blood types altogether. She’s type AB, but the blood that she vomited was a mixture of type A and type O.”

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid so, Frank. That blood didn’t get into her stomach from internal bleeding. She drank it.”

  2

  BLOOD THIRST

  While Frank and George sat on the low-slung leather couch and watched him, Dr. Pellman skimmed through the results of the blood tests, tapping his ballpoint pen furiously against his teeth. Eventually he threw himself back in his chair and said, “Christ.”

  “We thought you ought to see it ASAP,” said George.

  “Well, you’re damn right about that. We need to call the police, and we need to call them now.” He leaned across his desk and flipped his intercom switch. “Janice?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Get me Captain Meznick at Midtown South, and make it snappy.”

  He read the blood tests
again, more slowly. “We’re sure about this? There’s no room for any mistake?” He was a small man with a high white pompadour and compressed, Hobbit-like features. His staff called him The Death Troll, but they respected him. He was fierce and quick-tempered and a formidable stickler for detail.

  “No mistake, sir,” George told him. “Willy repeated his tests twice, just to make sure. It’s human blood, and there’s no question that it isn’t hers. Unless she stole it from a blood bank, or she’s been keeping it refrigerated, there have to be at least two people out there who have lost a serious amount of blood. Almost certainly, a fatal amount.”

  The intercom buzzed. “Lieutenant Roberts on the phone, sir. Captain Meznick is away in Philadelphia, at a law-enforcement convention.”

  “Okay, that’s okay.” Dr. Pellman picked up his phone. “Lieutenant Roberts? This is Harold Pellman, senior VP and medical director at the Sisters of Jerusalem. I won’t beat around the bush: We have a young woman here who appears to have been drinking blood.”

  Frank could only guess what Lieutenant Roberts’ reaction was on the other end of the phone, but Dr. Pellman had to repeat himself twice. “Drinking blood, lieutenant. Human blood, and other people’s blood, not her own. And unless they’ve been given an emergency transfusion, whoever she drank it from is probably dead.”

  He spelled out Susan Fireman’s address and personal details, and then he hung up the phone. “That’s it, gentlemen. There’s nothing else we can do.”

  Frank stayed in his seat. “With all due respect, sir, I think I should try to talk to Ms. Fireman before the police get here. We really need to find out why she ingested all that blood, and who she got it from.”

  “Bad idea,” said Dr. Pellman. “You’re not a detective, Frank, and I don’t want anybody on this hospital’s medical staff laying themselves open to accusations of compromising a police investigation. You remember what happened with the Koslowski kid. Nightmare.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Frank. “But Ms. Fireman is still our patient, isn’t she, no matter what she’s done? We’re morally bound to pursue our diagnostic procedure until we find out what’s wrong with her.”

  “Frank—for Christ’s sake, we know what’s wrong with her. She’s been binging on other people’s circulatory systems, and it’s almost a certainty that she’s killed them in the process.”

  “I realize that, sir. But for all we know, drinking human blood may be a key symptom of her condition. If we don’t investigate it—well, I personally think that we’d be failing in our duty as physicians.”

  George said, very quietly, “I’m afraid I have to agree with that. Supposing her condition can be transmitted? If one of our staff catches it, or one of our other patients goes down with it—I mean, the legal consequences don’t bear thinking about.”

  “So that’s it,” said Dr. Pellman. “We’re damned if we do, and doubly damned if we don’t.”

  Frank said, “All I need to do is ask her some very straightforward questions. Like, whose blood did you drink? Where did you get it from, and how, and why did you drink it?”

  “And what do you think the cops will ask her? Exactly the same things.”

  “But once the police get here, she’s far less likely to respond to any questions about her condition, in case she incriminates herself—and if she gets herself a lawyer, forget it, we won’t have a hope in hell of finding out what’s wrong with her. She has a highly unusual combination of physical symptoms—her anemia, her sensitivity to light—and she obviously has severe psychological problems, too.”

  Dr. Pellman tossed down his pen. “Okay. But don’t ask her anything other than medical questions; and if she refuses to answer, don’t push her. And don’t instigate any new diagnostic procedures until you’ve cleared them with me.”

  They were just about to leave his office when Frank’s beeper buzzed again.

  “Okay if I use your phone, sir?” he asked Dr. Pellman. Dr. Pellman gave him a wave of his hand and Frank picked it up.

  “Dean Garrett here, Frank, in the emergency room. We’ve just had a young man brought in here, vomiting blood. His symptoms are very similar to that girl you brought in this morning.”

  “I’ll be right down.” Frank cradled the phone and then he looked at Dr. Pellman with a serious expression. “Sounds like we’ve got ourselves another one.”

  Frank and George went down together to the ER. As they arrived, seven victims of a gang fight were being brought through the doors by paramedics, all shouting and swearing and covered in blood.

  Dr. Garrett grabbed one of the gang members by the lapels of his sleeveless leather vest. “What’s your name, bobo?” he demanded. Dean Garrett was thin and unshaven and he had a drooping moustache, like Wyatt Earp, but he was so wired and wild-eyed that the boy couldn’t help stumbling to attention.

  “Julius,” the boy blurted out. “What’s it to you?” He had one eye closed by a big purple bruise and a deep diagonal cut across his lips.

  “What gang do you belong to, Julius?”

  “The Blue Moros.”

  “The Blue Morons? That’s appropriate. And those other bobos? Which gang do they belong to?”

  “The X-Skulls.”

  “Okay, Julius, my name is Doctor Dean and I belong to the Screaming Medics, and this emergency room is my turf from which you will not escape alive if you so much as break wind out of tune. Look at you—you think this is tough, what you gilapollas have done to each other? Super-ficial scratches, that’s all. I’ve been trained to take a man’s entire insides out without him even knowing that I’ve done it, take them out in handfuls and heap them on the night-stand next to his bed, and if you don’t behave yourself I promise I will do it to you.”

  Julius opened his bruised and bloodied lips, but said nothing, and when Dean Garrett let go of his vest, he sullenly beckoned the members of his own gang over to the far end of the emergency room, well away from their rivals.

  “Kids,” said Dean. “That’s all they are, kids—and you have to treat them like kids.”

  George said, “I don’t know how you cope with it, Dean. Most of my patients are dear old ladies with purple hair, and they run me ragged.”

  “It’s simple,” said Dean. “You have to be ten times more scary than they are, that’s all.”

  “You are, believe me,” Frank told him. “What’s a gilapolla?”

  “A gilapolla? Roughly translated, a dickhead.”

  Dean led them down to the last triage cubicle, farthest away from the doors. He dragged back the curtain and there lay a skinny young man of about nineteen or twenty, shaking and shivering, his T-shirt thick with glistening blood. The young man’s hair was sticking up, and his eyes were flickering wildly from side to side. A big black emergency nurse was adjusting his saline drip, while a spotty blonde one was standing beside him with a stainless steel basin.

  Almost as soon as they came into the cubicle, the young man sat up with a spastic jerk, and vomited blood into the basin. He retched, with strings of blood swinging from his chin, and then he dropped back onto the bed, still shivering.

  The nurse was about to take the basin away, but Frank said, “Don’t throw that away. Take that to Dr. Loman for analysis. We need a blood sample out of his veins, but we also need a sample of the blood that he’s just vomited.”

  “You think he might have been poisoned?” asked Dean.

  “It’s possible. But if he’s anything like the young lady we’re looking after upstairs, we need to check what type it is. The blood that she was vomiting wasn’t her own.”

  “You mean—Jesus.”

  “Frankly, Dean, I don’t know what I mean.”

  Frank approached the bed and leaned over it. The young man’s eyes were wide open but his pupils were still darting around and he was muttering and twitching and occasionally he arched his back, as if he were being electrocuted.

  “Listen to me, son,” said Frank, loudly. “Listen to me—do you know where you are?”


  The young man clutched at the sheets, obviously making an effort to control himself. “I’m ah—I’m gah—”

  “Listen to me, try to concentrate. My name is Dr. Winter and you’ve been admitted to the Sisters of Jerusalem. Can you tell me your name?”

  “I’m ah—I’m ah—”

  “Where was he picked up?” asked Frank.

  “Port Authority. He was standing in line for a bus ticket when he collapsed.”

  “Any ID?”

  “Nothing. The paramedics said they couldn’t find a wallet. Either he didn’t have one, which seems unlikely, since he was waiting to buy a bus ticket; or else somebody lifted it while he was lying on the ground puking his guts up.”

  “It’s a happy world,” said Frank.

  “Okay,” said Dean. “We’ll run the usual tests and let you know the results pronto. But I just thought you ought to see him.”

  “Sure.”

  They heard shouting, and whooping, and clattering. The Blue Moros had started taunting the X-Skulls from opposite ends of the emergency room, and one of the X-Skulls had picked up a chair and was brandishing it in the air, as if he intended to throw it. Dean said, “Excuse me for a moment. I have some heads to crack.”

  George checked his watch. “I have to go, too, Frank. Lunch with my tax lawyer.”

  “Okay,” said Frank. “Let’s talk later.”

  Frank stayed beside the young man’s bed for a little while longer. His face was even whiter than Susan Fireman’s, and he seemed to be much more distressed. At least Susan Fireman had been reasonably coherent. It was difficult to tell if this young man even knew where he was, or what had happened to him.

  “I—can’t find—can’t find—gah—” he gagged.

  “You can’t find what?” Frank asked him. “Your wallet? Is it your wallet you’re worried about?”

  “I can’t find—where I have to go—”

  “You were standing in line for a bus ticket. Do you know where you were intending to travel?”

  “Got to—ucchh—”

  Frank took hold of his hand. “Listen, the best thing you can do is get some rest. We’re running some lab tests, and once we’ve done that we’ll have a clearer picture of what’s wrong with you.”