Accord­ing to my spread­sheet, here’s where I am for the first book with three days to go:

dead­line for the novel:	12/​10/​2009
daily need	3,707
days left before deadline	3
esti­mated length of novel:	75,000
cur­rent length of novel:	63,878
per­cent done	85%
best day	4,361
avg words per day	1,795
avg words per hour	1030
expected hours needed to write	11
avg hours/​day	1.7
expected hours per day	3.6

So my words per day has suf­fered from the last few days of min­i­mal pro­duc­tiv­ity, but as long as I get a chap­ter a day writ­ten today through Wednes­day, I’m still on track.

Who knew writ­ing involved so much accounting?

4: Inves­ti­ga­tion

Daniel stood in front of a mod­est duplex apart­ment in Arling­ton. Accord­ing to what he’d been able to find out online, it was the address of Richard Hen­driks, a dead man. The lit­tle court­yard Daniel was stand­ing in was get­ting dark, and he could see that there were no lights on inside. He pulled the latex gloves from his back pocket, dusted the dried blood off of them and put them on. No sense leav­ing fin­ger­prints if he didn’t have to.

We walked up to the front door and tried the door­knob. Noth­ing. It was locked. So was the only win­dow on the ground floor. Okay, Daniel thought, we do this the hard way.

He jogged around the build­ing and sur­veyed the alley behind the row of apart­ments. It was filled with Dump­sters and dis­carded fur­ni­ture. He walked down the alley­way, shoo­ing a pair of din­ing rac­coons, until he got to what he was pretty sure was the back of Hendriks’s duplex. The dis­tance was about right and it was the only one in the row with no lights on.

There were only two small win­dows, high on the wall, at ground level, and nei­ther were designed to open. That was assum­ing Daniel would have been able to squeeze through them any­way. There was what looked like a bed­room win­dow on the sec­ond floor that was open just enough to allow a small breeze.

Daniel looked up and down the alley for some­thing to use as a lad­der. The rac­coons observed him quizzi­cally, but offered no sug­ges­tions of their own.

“You guys are a lot of help,” he said as he spot­ted a longish three-​​cushion couch, minus the cush­ions, that might serve his pur­pose. He dragged it over to the wall and propped it up directly under­neath the bed­room win­dow. He braced it as best he could, and then scaled up it until he was stand­ing on the edge of the arm. The ledge of the bed­room win­dow was just a few inches out of reach. The rac­coons made chat­ter­ing noises.

“No, really, I’m fine,” Daniel told them. “Go get some pop­corn or some­thing.” He knew what he had to do. He was going to have to jump, know­ing that if he missed, he’d land on the unsta­ble couch and quite likely break or at least sprain some­thing on the way down, and there was really nowhere he could go for help.

As it was, he was exhausted. He’d been run­ning since he got out of the police sta­tion, and by the time he made his cir­cuitous way on foot back to his apart­ment, he saw the unmarked police cars staked out in front of his apart­ment. He couldn’t go home until he could prove that he wasn’t a ter­ror­ist and that he wasn’t crazy.

It had taken him all after­noon to find where Hen­driks lived. He’d real­ized as soon as he got out of the police sta­tion that he had to turn off his phone. The same GPS and cell sig­nal tri­an­gu­la­tion that 911 oper­a­tors used to direct him to emer­gency sites could just as eas­ily lead the cops right to him. And lack­ing a func­tional phone made him almost hand­i­capped in 21^st cen­tury Amer­ica. There was no easy way to look up infor­ma­tion about Richard Hen­driks, no way to call a cab, no way to do much of any­thing . He’d ended up wan­der­ing for hours, chang­ing direc­tions at ran­dom and avoid­ing street cops, until he found a branch library. Inside he’d used the free inter­net access to do a Google search and find out what he needed. Armed with print­outs of Hendriks’s address and how to get there by bus, he let D.C.‘s mass tran­sit sys­tem do the rest. Before that after­noon Daniel had never con­sid­ered how dif­fi­cult it really was to be “off the grid” in the elec­tronic sur­veil­lance soci­ety. Now he knew.

And he also knew that if he fell and busted his ass try­ing to climb into that win­dow, there was nowhere he could go for help that wouldn’t deliver him right back into the hands of the police. Every­thing was net­worked now.

But he had no choice. If he’d been con­tent with not know­ing how a dead man could get up and walk away, he could have just acqui­esced and gone to St. Elizabeth’s. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Daniel jumped straight up off the arm of the upturned couch, and caught the sill of the win­dow with his right hand, his left hand slip­ping off and back to his side. As he dan­gled by one hand, the couch slipped and tum­bled beneath him, scat­ter­ing the rac­coons. The eight foot drop prob­a­bly wouldn’t hurt him, but he didn’t want to find out. He reached his left hand back up and pulled him­self up level with the sill, try­ing to find a bet­ter grip. The latex gloves helped, but he couldn’t do this for long.

Level with the win­dow, he reached his hand into the open win­dow and got a firm grip on the inner sill, allow­ing him to brace him­self. Then he tried to slide the win­dow open with his other hand. It wouldn’t budge.

Shit, Daniel thought, he must have it blocked by a dowel or some­thing. The del­toid in his right shoul­der was start­ing to burn.

Screw it, I’ve gone this far. He smacked the win­dow frame with the flat of his palm as hard as he could. The glass cracked, and he saw a slight bend in the alu­minum frame. The hit it twice more, until the win­dow popped off the track and crashed to the floor. He could hear the glass shat­ter with the impact.

Add break­ing and enter­ing to the charges, offi­cer, Daniel thought as he hauled him­self up and through the win­dow. He turned around and glanced back out, scan­ning quickly up and down the alley­way. There didn’t seem to be any wit­nesses. At least that much went right today.

He stepped back into the room and looked around. The room was full of wooden crates, stacked neatly in rows. The crates looked and smelled old, the mel­low musti­ness of old wood. Sten­ciled writ­ing on the sides was in vary­ing styles and lan­guages, indi­cat­ing a world­wide collection.

Daniel looked up and down the rows of crates, but saw noth­ing else of inter­est. He stepped out into the hall­way and then into the room across from the one he entered. There were more crates in this room, just like the oth­ers. Dark faded wood mak­ing a grid of the room, with just enough space between the rows for a man to walk down.

Daniel con­tin­ued his search, and found two more bed­rooms on the upper floor, both also filled with pack­ing crates. Where the heck does this guy sleep? Daniel thought. He headed down the stair­way to the ground floor.

The kitchen was stocked, but also obvi­ously a bachelor’s kitchen. There were just a few dishes, a cou­ple of pots soak­ing in the sink, and very lit­tle in the refrig­er­a­tor. It looked like Hen­driks ate out a lot, and didn’t entertain.

The liv­ing room was the only indi­ca­tion Daniel could find that any­one actu­ally lived there. There were a cou­ple of chairs, a widescreen TV mounted to the wall and against the far wall, more crates. The front closet held what looked like Hendriks’s entire wardrobe, mostly designer suits.

Daniel started to think there was no way the guy actu­ally lived here. This was clearly a place for him to store stuff, shower, change clothes and grab the occa­sional bite to eat. Daniel actu­ally had heard of men who kept places like this to make it eas­ier to keep var­i­ous activ­i­ties from their wives.

Near the front door, he saw a crow­bar lean­ing against the door jamb. He paused and looked back at the crates in the liv­ing room. Why not, he thought. The guy’s sup­posed to be dead, right? May as well see what’s in there.

He grabbed the crow­bar and walked to the near­est crate. It took some doing to wedge the lid off, rusty nails anchored by time reluc­tant to give up their grip. When he finally got the lid torn free, he pulled out the pack­ing mate­r­ial and looked inside.

He saw a large vase or pitcher, fash­ioned from tan clay. Dec­o­ra­tions were painted on the outer sur­face in faded blue dye, show­ing two dimen­sional fig­ures engaged in var­i­ous tasks. His first thought was that the fig­ures looked Egypt­ian, but the more he stared, the older they looked. Daniel wracked his brain try­ing to remem­ber the museum trips his mother had insisted on tak­ing him and his sis­ters to as chil­dren. How was he sup­posed to know that knowl­edge would be use­ful later? He decided the designs looked Baby­lon­ian, maybe even Sumer­ian. If the vase was real, it was ancient, dat­ing back more than four five thou­sand years.

He care­fully moved the crate aside and moved on to the next. The nails screamed as he tore them from the wood, but it wasn’t long before he uncov­ered the sec­ond item, a bronze hel­met. The styling was Greek or Roman, and it too looked authentic.

This was get­ting weirder by the minute. Was Hen­driks an art thief? A high-​​end fence? What was he doing with this res­i­den­tial ware­house of ancient artifacts?

Daniel spent the next hour pry­ing open crates upstairs, keep­ing to the rooms away from the cen­tral court­yard since he had to turn the lights on. He found paint­ings, sculp­ture, pot­tery, armor and weapons from every period of his­tory. He stood and stared at the incon­gru­ence of a civil war rifle next to an Ara­bian aba­cus dat­ing back to before the Dark Ages. Ming Dynasty pot­tery next to an ottoman from the actual Ottoman Empire. He even found arti­facts that had to have come from pre-​​colonial Africa, pre-​​conquest South Amer­ica. Ancient maps on parch­ment show­ing a coast­line of Antarc­tica he didn’t rec­og­nize, because it pre­dated the ice­cap. The house was full of price­less items, with no dis­cern­able theme or pat­tern, other than their antiquity.

What the hell was going on here? Daniel won­dered. Where was Hen­driks going in such a hurry when he died? Or didn’t die? Or…

Daniel had to sit down for a moment on an empty crate. None of this made any damn sense at all. He didn’t know what this place was, and rather than get­ting insight into the man he’d seen walk away from death, Daniel had more ques­tions now than when he started. A check of his watch also told him it was three in the morn­ing, and that he’d been awake and on the go for twenty one hours now. It was time to get some rest, attack this from a dif­fer­ent angle tomor­row. Turn­ing off the lights, Daniel walked down the stairs and let him­self out the front door, his gloved hands leav­ing no fin­ger­prints. He’d find a motel room he could pay for in cash and crash until things made sense again.

*

As Daniel walked alone into the night away from the house of a dead man, he was not unnoticed.

3: Another Day in the Blogosphere

Susan Richard­son was hav­ing a shitty day. She’d been call­ing around Capi­tol Hill all after­noon, and had noth­ing but a big pile of “no com­ment” for her efforts. It wasn’t fair. She majored in jour­nal­ism. She knew her job.

But it didn’t mat­ter how good she was at it. No, as soon as she revealed that she was call­ing on behalf of New Amer­i­can Cen­tury, every­one lost inter­est in talk­ing to her. So she worked for a blog. Big deal. Print was dying anyway.

Susan threw her head­set down on the desk in her Arling­ton apart­ment and grabbed her keys. Stan was going to kill her. Well, not kill her, but he damn sure was going to yell at her. Blog or print, a dead­line was a dead­line. She had to file a story by mid­night, and Stan didn’t want any more fluff pieces.

Susan walked out of her build­ing and jumped in her car, head­ing for the Pen­ta­gon City Mall. It was a quick shot on the Metro from there under the river into D.C. She needed to be around peo­ple. Impor­tant peo­ple. Peo­ple who could tell her things.

She was sure it wasn’t even that she worked for a blog. The same aides and assis­tants that had been stonewalling her all day all worked for pow­er­ful Democ­rats. They didn’t care that the blog she worked for had a .com at the end. They talked to Daily Kos and Talk­ing Points Memo all the time. No, they shut her down because she worked for a con­ser­v­a­tive blog, and they knew she was hos­tile. They knew she wouldn’t take every­thing that they told her as gospel, that she’d check their facts and make sure the real story was told.

It was ridicu­lous, of course, Susan thought as she stretched out on the orange vinyl seat and watched her reflec­tion in the dark sub­way win­dows as they hur­tled under­neath the Potomac river. It went counter to every­thing she’d learned in jour­nal­ism school. Okay, so she went to jour­nal­ism school at the Uni­ver­sity of Nebraska, not Har­vard or Yale, but the courses were the same. And they all taught that the press, the fourth estate, was sup­posed to keep the gov­ern­ment hon­est. The press was sup­posed to be adver­sar­ial. It was in all the books.

Susan tromped up the esca­la­tor at L’Enfant Plaza, elbow­ing her way around slack­ers just stand­ing on the right. She burst out onto the D.C. streets, and started think­ing about where to go. There was always good chat­ter in the bars on K street, but some­thing told her tonight wasn’t the night. Instead, she hailed a cab head­ing North. “George­town,” she told the driver.

The cab took her uptown to M and Wis­con­sin, the cor­ner of George­town Park. This was where the 20-​​something staffers on the Hill came to unwind, many of whom had spent the bulk of their col­lege years in the bars and clubs near George­town Uni­ver­sity. Although they were roughly her age, Susan never felt at ease here. The young men and women in these bars were Wash­ing­ton insid­ers, an insu­lar cult of asso­ci­a­tion that she would never pen­e­trate or fully under­stand. But she wasn’t here to talk tonight. She was here to listen.

She stopped in the first bar she saw and ordered a beer. After pay­ing the bar­tender, she took the cold bot­tle in her hand and started wan­der­ing. She con­cen­trated on her hear­ing, and tried to pick up what she could from the crowd around her, hop­ing to pull some­thing juicy out of the din.

“So I told her, that’s why horses have sad­dles…” Ug. Next.

“Don’t care who you work for, those are not com­pli­men­tary.” Susan wasn’t sure she wanted the con­text of that one.

“No shit, in the broom closet. He was damn lucky his wife didn’t walk in five min­utes ear­lier.” That one she might try to come back to, but it wasn’t what she was look­ing for.

Susan downed the beer and moved on the next bar. Her instincts told her there was a story around here some­where, but where, she had no idea.

She found it at the fifth bar she tried. She was start­ing to get tipsy from the beer, so she would have stopped soon any­way. She almost didn’t even walk into the bar. She was just com­ing out of the Ladies Room when she heard, “He just ran out of the police sta­tion? A terrorist?”

Ter­ror­ist. There had to be a story there. Susan pre­tended to read the notices posted on the bul­letin board, look­ing fiercely inter­ested in loser bands play­ing col­lege frat houses.

“You know you can’t say a word about this, right?”

“Dude, who are you talk­ing to.”

“I know, I’m just saying.”

“It’s in the vault.”

“Your vault sucks.”

“Get on with it.”

“Okay, so, and you didn’t hear this from me — “

“Dude.”

“There was a crash today on M.”

“I know, the traf­fic totally bjorked my lunch date.”

“You want me to tell this story or not?”

“By all means, sir.”

“One of the bod­ies disappeared.”

“What, like it went poof?”

“No, it’s just miss­ing. One of the drivers.”

“And he was the terrorist?”

“No, man, let me fin­ish. So this guy, a Korean off-​​duty para­medic stops to help res­cue people.”

“Bunch of sav­ages in this town.”

“Dude, that doesn’t even make sense.”

“I was quot­ing ‘Clerks’.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t make sense.”

“I was being ironic.”

“Yeah, good job there, Ala­nis. Anyway — “

“You fel­las doing okay?” The wait­ress had just walked up. Susan pre­tended to scrib­ble down some show dates for bands she’d never heard of.

“Another round, please.”

“You bet!”

Out of the cor­ner of her eye, she watched the two young men in the booth next to the bul­letin board check out the waitress’s ass as she walked away to get their orders. Pigs. Then they started talk­ing again.

“So any­way, this para­medic stops to help — “

“Bunch of sav­ages in this town.”

“It wasn’t funny the first time, Randall.”

“Well, excuse me.”

“Any­way, the body of one of the dri­vers goes miss­ing, and this para­medic goes nuts. He goes chas­ing it down a back alley.”

“He was chas­ing a dead body?”

“No one saw it but him, but he said he was.”

“Dude, you never chase a zom­bie. That’s like basic knowledge.”

“I am going to pour this beer on your head.”

“Keep going, I’m listening.”

Susan’s hand was cramp­ing up from all the fran­tic scrib­bling, and she was start­ing to won­der if these two frat mon­keys would ever get to the damn point.

“So this guy starts ram­bling about the dead body walk­ing away, the cop takes him in for questioning.”

“For, like, a zom­bie line up.”

“I’m done tak­ing to you.”

“Okay, I’ll be good. Keep going.”

“The cops get the guy down­town and start ques­tion­ing him and the guy goes all ninja on them.”

“Korean para­medic ninja.”

“Dude.”

“I’m just say­ing, they’re overachievers.”

“Who?”

“Ori­en­tals.”

“Dude, you can’t say Ori­en­tals any­more. That’s offensive.”

“To the para­medic nin­jas? I’ll take my chances.”

“How have you not been fired?”

“I have pic­tures of my boss in ass­less pants. True story.”

“I’ve met your boss, man. He can’t look good in those.”

“Which is why he won’t fire me. Can’t let those wind up online.”

“Your life is a source of unend­ing con­fu­sion to me.”

“So the para­medic ninja. What makes them think he’s a ter­ror­ist? Sounds pretty cool to me.”

“Well, that’s the part I’m not sup­posed to talk about. The guy is North Korean — “

“Do you think they’re all issued track suits and those cool sunglasses?”

“And sup­pos­edly he’s an M.D.”

“He’s a doc­tor? Well then he’s def­i­nitely guilty.”

“If he’s trained as a doc­tor, why would he be work­ing as a paramedic?”

“To meet chicks?”

Susan snapped the lead off her pen­cil. Get to the point!

“And there’s more. He’s a loner — “

“So are you. Does it count if it’s not on purpose.”

“And he just moved here from San Francisco.”

“So a gay loner para­medic Korean ninja.”

Susan couldn’t take any more. “What the hell hap­pened to him?” she shouted, at just the moment that the juke­box was paus­ing between songs. The entire bar stopped to stare.

The frat mon­key who had been telling the story, his spot­less black suit a sharp con­trast to his friend’s kitschy ironic t-​​shirt and jeans, turned to look at Susan. “I’m sorry, what?”

Susan rushed to pull a chair from a nearby table up to their booth. The rest of the bar went about their busi­ness. “My name is Susan.”

The frat mon­key reached out to shake her hand. “Dante. He’s Randall.”

Like I care, Susan thought. “I couldn’t help but over­hear part of your con­ver­sa­tion, and I was curi­ous. Who said this guy was a terrorist?”

Dante’s face went pal­lid, then blank. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talk­ing about.”

“Please,” Susan said. “It’s com­pletely off the record. I just need to know.”

“Show us your tits,” Ran­dall said. Susan glared at him.

“I’m sorry,” Dante said. “Both for my friend and for the fact that I really can’t talk about this. It’s a national secu­rity matter.”

“That I’m sure your boss wouldn’t want to know you were dis­cussing in pub­lic bar,” Susan said.

“Miss, you don’t even know who I work for.”

“The FBI,” Ran­dall said.

Dante spun on his friend. “Why would you tell her that?”

“Hey, man, you’re the one who just con­firmed it. She might have thought I was delib­er­ately lying to throw her off the path. And besides, she’s hot.”

“I swear,” Susan said. “It’s totally off the record. Just background.”

Dante threw a twenty on the table. “Miss, I’ve already said more than I should have.” He shot a stern look at Ran­dall. “Too many bad influ­ences in my life as it is.”

He got up and edged out of the booth. Susan stood and fol­lowed him out the door.

“Please, I know you’re not sup­posed to say any­thing. But if there’s a ter­ror­ist loose in Wash­ing­ton D.C., the people — “

Dante stopped short of the curb and Susan almost knocked him into traf­fic. “Are you nuts, lady? Keep it down!”

“The peo­ple have a right to know,” Susan said, much qui­eter but still loud enough to be heard over the happy hour traf­fic on M street.

“The peo­ple know what we let them know,” Dante said, wav­ing furi­ously at a cab. “And right now we don’t know that there’s any­thing to be con­cerned about.”

“That’s not what you told your friend in there,” Susan said.

“That was just two bud­dies talk­ing. Offi­cially, there’s no threat. We don’t even know if Cho — “

“That’s his name? Cho?”

A cab pulled up and Dante flung the door open. “Lady, you never met me. I have noth­ing else to say.” Then to the dri­ver, “Hoover Build­ing, please.”

Susan watched Dante shut the door and the cab pull away. She ran back into the bar to see if Ran­dall had heard some­thing she didn’t, or maybe he could give her Dante’s phone number…

But he was gone. The booth where the two men had sat now held three super perky soror­ity types. She was fairly cer­tain they weren’t expect­ing him back.

Susan walked back out to the side­walk. It was get­ting dark, and she still didn’t have much to go on. A last name, eth­nic­ity, occu­pa­tion and the utter and total cer­tainty that nei­ther the police nor the Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion would con­firm or deny any­thing at all. Very thin.

But wasn’t thin what “real” jour­nal­ists always said about blog­gers anyway?

Susan hailed a cab and started writ­ing the out­line in her head. It wasn’t much, but she could spin it, make tan­ta­liz­ing enough to get people’s atten­tion. Get them to come back the next day for the next arti­cle in the series.

Maybe Stan wasn’t going to yell at her after all.

2: Inter­ro­ga­tion

“I don’t like it, Sal.”

“You never like it, Mick. But we still have to go talk to the guy.” Detec­tive Sal­vadore Durante stood with his part­ner in a dark­ened room look­ing at the sus­pect through a plate of one way glass. The man was Asian, late twen­ties, rea­son­able shape. He seemed well edu­cated, intel­li­gent, and they had ver­i­fied that he actu­ally was a para­medic for a fire house in south­east. He lived in the neigh­bor­hood where the acci­dent hap­pened, and had every rea­son to jump in and see who he could help. There wasn’t much rea­son to hold him at all.

Except the miss­ing dead body.

“Come on,” Sal said. “Let’s get this over with.” They walked out of the obser­va­tion room and into the inter­ro­ga­tion room next door. The sus­pect looked up when they entered, but didn’t jump or seem overtly nervous.

“Mis­ter Cho,” Sal said as he took a seat oppo­site the sus­pect, “I’m Detec­tive Sal­vadore Durante, and this is Detec­tive Michael Ware. The arrest­ing offi­cer read you your rights, is that correct?”

“I didn’t do any­thing but save that woman’s life.”

Mick remained stand­ing, near the door. “That’s not what Detec­tive Durante asked, sir.”

Sal shot a glance at Mick. Shut up, don’t spook him. “Mis­ter Cho, were you read your rights?”

The sus­pect slumped in the chair. “I was. I don’t need a lawyer, I haven’t done any­thing wrong. I just want to go home.”

“Good, then we can begin. Hope­fully this will be quick.”

The sus­pect leaned for­ward. “What am I being charged with?”

Sal leaned back. “Cur­rently, noth­ing. We’re hold­ing you as a mate­r­ial wit­ness pend­ing fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion. Accord­ing to Offi­cer Fitsimmons’s report,” Sal said as he con­sulted the file he’d brought in with him, “one of the vic­tims was miss­ing from the scene, and you seemed highly agi­tated about that.”

“And being agi­tated is a crime?”

“Not as such, no. But look at this from our per­spec­tive. You were the first respon­der, and you acted alone, with­out peers or super­vi­sion. You declared the dri­ver of the Mer­cedes dead on the scene and moved on to the other vic­tims. And yet by the time the ambu­lance and offi­cer Fit­sim­mons arrived, the man was gone. Which means either he wasn’t as dead as you thought, or some­one took the body. We just want to know what you saw.”

The sus­pect slumped back again. “I gave Offi­cer Fit­sim­mons a full report.”

“A report that doesn’t make any damn sense,” Mick said.

“Don’t you think I know that?” the sus­pect said. Then he clammed up again, clearly think­ing bet­ter about say­ing more.

“Mis­ter Cho,” Sal said, “we’re just try­ing to find out what hap­pened this after­noon. Let’s go over it from the begin­ning. You heard the crash, called 911, and then what?”

“I started work­ing the scene.”

“Based on your job expe­ri­ence as a paramedic.”

“That’s right,” Cho said. “I’m trained and licensed as a para­medic. So I was doing my job.”

“Only today is your day off, is that right?”

“Yes. I was doing a lit­tle shop­ping when I heard the crash.”

“Okay, so you were off duty, but were pitch­ing in in an emergency.”

“Exactly.” Cho said.

“Okay, go on.” Sal could hear Mick sigh behind him, but avoided look­ing at him again. One of these days his part­ner would have to learn patience. May as well be today.

“I got to the Mer­cedes and the guy was clearly dead.”

“And on what do you base this?” Sal asked.

Cho snorted. “The fact that he hit the steer­ing wheel hard enough to break it off the pylon and drive the steer­ing col­umn through his chest. They guy was impaled.”

“And there’s no chance he could have been alive, but unconscious?”

“None at all. His heart, lungs, stom­ach, spleen and liver would have been com­pletely destroyed.”

“And in fact you do have the back­ground to make such a diag­no­sis, is that right?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You received your M.D. from Stan­ford four years ago, did your intern­ship in an E.R. in Oak­land, is that right?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“So you’re trained as a doc­tor, an emer­gency room sur­geon, in fact, and you’re work­ing as a paramedic.”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us why that is?”

“It’s pri­vate, and has no bear­ing on this. I’d rather not get into it.”

Mick took a step for­ward. “We’ll decide what’s rel­e­vant, Mis­ter Cho.”

Sal waved a hand, try­ing to shush his part­ner. “We’ll come back to that if we need to. For now, suf­fice to say that you have both the train­ing and expe­ri­ence to judge whether or not an injury is fatal. Is that fair to say?”

Cho kept a wary eye on Mick, but said, “Yes, that’s fair to say.”

“Excel­lent,” Sal said. “We’re mak­ing progress. So you declared…” he checked the file again, “Mis­ter Richard Hen­driks dead, and moved on to the next vehicle.”

“If that’s the name of the man in the Mer­cedes, yes. I did.”

“How long do you think it was before you came back to the Mercedes?”

Cho figeted in his seat. “I don’t know. Twenty min­utes, maybe.”

“Long enough for you to res­cue the dri­ver of the pickup and the mother.”

“And her baby.” Cho said.

“Yes, and her baby. You did a fine job there, from what I under­stand. Mrs…” Another glance at the file, “Del Toro is expected to make a full recovery.”

Cho relaxed a bit. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“So when Offi­cer Fit­sim­mons called your atten­tion to the empty Mer­cedes, what did you do?”

“First, it wasn’t empty. There was still blood all over every­thing. The damn car was coated with it. Detec­tive, have you ever seen some­one bleed out?”

Sal sat back in his chair, but said noth­ing. Mick took another step for­ward. “That’s none of your busi­ness, sir,” he started.

Sal waved his hand again. “It’s okay, Mick. It’s a fair ques­tion. Yes, Mis­ter Cho, I have.”

“Then you know how much blood is really in a human body. How much can get out, and how much space it can take up when freed from all those arter­ies and veins.”

Now it was Sal’s turn to be uncom­fort­able. “Yes, I know.”

“Detec­tive, the dri­ver of that Mer­cedes bled out. I want you to under­stand that. He was dead. He had a hole the width of a milk jug in the mid­dle of his chest.”

“So then you’re say­ing the body was stolen.”

Cho laughed, a harsh sound in the small room, and ran a fin­ger through his close-​​cropped hair. “No, it wasn’t stolen. That’s my point. It walked away.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Mick said.

“I know how it sounds!” Cho said, pound­ing a fist on the metal table between him and Sal. God damn it, I’m a doc­tor! I know it’s impos­si­ble, but that’s what I saw.”

Sal flipped through the file again. “Offi­cer Fit­sim­mons was unable to con­firm what you saw. He saw an empty car, and then he saw you try­ing to flee the scene.”

Cho rested his head in his hands. “Shit,” he said. “Look, I know it sounds…”

“Bug shit crazy,” Mick said.

Cho hes­i­tated a moment, then said, “Yeah, I guess that is what it sounds like. But I’m try­ing to help, guys. I’m telling you the truth. I’m telling you what I saw. A dead guy, this Mister…”

“Hen­driks,” Sal said.

“This Hen­dricks, he walked away from a fatal acci­dent. He had a hole in his chest the size of your head, every rib and both col­lar­bones bro­ken, and he got up, dusted him­self off, and wan­dered away. And just before he dis­ap­peared, he…”

“He what, Mis­ter Cho?” Sal said.

Cho ran his fin­gers through his hair again. “He saw me, he turned and looked at me, and he grinned.”

“Grinned?” Sal asked.

“It was like he knew. Like he was get­ting away with some­thing. I ran down the alley to see if I could get a closer look at him, but he was gone. He stepped behind a Dump­ster and just, just vanished.”

“I think I see,” Sal said. “Mis­ter Cho, if you’ll just wait here for a lit­tle while, I’ll see what I can do to make your release as quick as possible.”

Cho slumped back down into the chair again. “Thanks.”

Sal silenced his part­ner with a stern look until they were out­side in the hall­way, the door to the inter­ro­ga­tion room firmly closed behind them. He ush­ered Mick into the obser­va­tion room and shut the door.

“You didn’t hon­estly buy that shit, did you?” Mick said.

“No, of course I didn’t believe it. Dead bod­ies don’t walk away on their own.”

“So we gonna charge him?”

“With what? Look, Mick, if he did take the body, what would he have done with it? I have no idea where the damn thing is, but Cho prob­a­bly doesn’t have it.”

“So we’re let­ting him go?”

“Not exactly. While I don’t think he did it, I don’t think he’s ready to go back out on the street, either.”

Mick looked like he wanted to spit. “He’s the only God damn sus­pect we have, Sal.”

“Sus­pect for what? Seri­ously, Mick, for what? Maybe Cho did some­thing he’s not telling us. Maybe some­one else walked away with the body while he was busy sav­ing that woman and her kid. He did save her life, you know. It’s not like we have some rea­son to sus­pect him of any wrongdoing.

“But the point is that we don’t have any­thing to hold him on, and the guy is clearly not right. Maybe he’s hallucinating.”

“Maybe he’s try­ing to make us think he’s hallucinating.”

“Mick, really, man, you gotta stop watch­ing those mur­der mys­ter­ies on cable all hours of the morning.”

Mick took a deep breath. “Look, Sal, think about this. You read the file on this guy, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So he’s the first gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­can son of refugees from North Korea. He’s highly edu­cated, but work­ing well beneath his capa­bil­i­ties, and has easy access to emer­gency ser­vices. He just moved across the coun­try to the nation’s capi­tol. And what’d his boss at the fire house tell you?”

“That he’s quiet, keeps to him­self, never causes any trou­ble and knows his job, but doesn’t hang out with the guys.”

Mick just looked at Sal, wait­ing for his part­ner to make the connection.

“Mick, that’s nuts. That guy is not a terrorist.”

“Yeah, they said the same thing about McVeigh and Mohamed Atta. You know, before they blew stuff up and killed people.”

“You think every­one is a ter­ror­ist,” Sal said.

“No, just the ones who fit the pro­file. And Sal, this guy’s folks are from North Korea. You know how crazy those fuck­ers are.”

Sal looked back through the one way win­dow. Cho was sit­ting qui­etly, no longer fid­get­ing or impa­tient. It almost looked like he was med­i­tat­ing or some­thing. There was no way Mick could be right, and Sal had heard this shtick before, ever since ⁹⁄₁₁. But maybe…

“Okay,” Sal said. “I’ll grant that you may, just may, have a point. Enough that we should at least get him looked at before turn­ing him loose.”

“Not Con­nors,” Mick said.

“No, Phil isn’t right for this.” The department’s res­i­dent psy­chol­o­gist was a soft touch, too easy to fast talk or sweet talk. A guy as smart as Cho could tell him what he wanted to hear and be on his way home in fif­teen min­utes. “Call Berlucci over at St. Elizabeth’s. Tell her we have a con­sult we’d like her to look at.”

#

Daniel bided his time in the inter­ro­ga­tion room. He told the cops every­thing he knew, and now he was think­ing bet­ter of it. They prob­a­bly thought he was crazy. Frankly, if Daniel hadn’t been so rat­tled, he prob­a­bly could have blown it off and avoided so much atten­tion. But damn it, dead guys didn’t just walk away from a fatal acci­dent. And he knew what he saw.

More than any­thing, the grin was what both­ered him. That wasn’t some­one in shock, wasn’t semi­con­scious sham­bling. That grin was the expres­sion of some­one who knew exactly what he was doing, and what it meant.

But what did it mean?

Daniel had seen more than his fair share of death. It seemed he would never get away from it com­pletely. Even now, work­ing as a para­medic where no one expected him to work mir­a­cles, the patients didn’t aways make it to the ER. He saw peo­ple die all the time, and prob­a­bly always would. It was his lot in life.

But what if they didn’t have to die? What if he and every other med­ical pro­fes­sional in the world had just missed the obvi­ous alter­na­tive of just get­ting up and walk­ing away from a fatality?

Daniel knew it was crazy. He knew, with both his insticts as a doc­tor and his years of train­ing, that peo­ple didn’t do that. They never did. He could name off all the injuries Hen­driks had sus­tained that would have been instantly or nearly instantly fatal and run out of fin­gers. They guy should have been dead. Peo­ple didn’t walk away from stuff like that.

So what if Hen­driks wasn’t peo­ple? He looked human, and Daniel was all too aware that he had smelled human. The cop­pery smell of blood and death had been all over that car. Even if robots advanced enough to pass for human existed, he wasn’t a robot. And yet…

What could walk away from that kind of dam­age? What looked, smelled and bled like a human, but could walk away from a piledriver right through the chest?

Daniel stood up, started to pace the room. This was get­ting him nowhere. The more he thought about it the cra­zier he sounded, even to himself.

The physi­cian in Daniel’s mind turned on a light bulb. Maybe that’s what this was. Maybe he really was crazy. Maybe he had hal­lu­ci­nated. Maybe Han­driks wasn’t really in that alley and this was all the ter­rors Daniel had seen over the years finally com­ing home to roost.

But if that were true, where was the body? Some­body had to have been dri­ving that Mer­cedes. The dam­age it did to that poor woman’s son was cer­tainly real enough.

The door to the inter­ro­ga­tion room opened. It was the older cop, Durante.

“Mis­ter Cho, we’re almost ready to send you home. We just have one stop to make first.”

Daniel felt for his wal­let. It was there, as were his keys. He was a lit­tle fuzzy, but he’d been pretty sure they hadn’t taken any­thing from him when he was brought in. So where…

“Are you famil­iar with St. Elizabeth’s?” Durante said.

Daniel grew cold. “It’s a psy­chi­atric hospital.”

“We have a friend of the depart­ment there, Doc­tor Sylvia Berlucci. She’d like to ask you a few ques­tions, maybe help you talk through what you’ve been through today.”

“I’m not crazy,” Daniel said.

“No one said you were,” Durante replied, his tone arti­fi­cially calm and sooth­ing. “We just want to make sure you’re okay before we send you home. You’ve been through a trau­matic expe­ri­ence today.”

Daniel started back­ing up a step at a time, edg­ing towards the wall. “I know, I was there.”

“So, Mis­ter Cho, if you’ll come with me…” Durante held out a hand to guide Daniel to the door.

“No, I don’t think I will.”

Durante actu­ally looked dis­ap­pointed. “Mis­ter Cho, I really must insist.”

Daniel looked up to the cam­era in the cor­ner of the room near the ceil­ing. More to it than to Durante, he said, “I am of sound mind and do not agree to any psy­chi­atric con­sult. I’d like to go home now.”

“Mis­ter Cho, please don’t make me make this official.”

“You’ve already got me in a locked room, Detec­tive. How much more offi­cial are you going to make it?”

“I don’t want to have to place you under arrest. We’re just talk­ing about a ride over to St. Elizabeth’s and a chat with Dr. Berlucci.”

“And I’ve deliv­ered enough peo­ple there myself in the six months I’ve been here to know I don’t belong there. You know it as well as I do. I’m not crazy.”

Durante sighed. “Very well. I tried to do this the easy way.” He knocked on the door.

Four uni­formed offi­cers walked in. They did not have their weapons out, but they were all armed with police batons as well as sidearms.

“Daniel Cho,” Durante said in a loud and clear voice, intended as much for the cam­era as Daniel. “Under arti­cle 6 of the PATRIOT act, I am plac­ing you under arrest as a poten­tial enemy com­bat­ant, pend­ing fur­ther crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion. Offi­cers, place the sus­pect in custody.”

Daniel took in the room and fell into a Tae Kwon Do ready stance. [estab­lish ear­lier in the book that Daniel is a black belt or do it here?] He’d stud­ied mar­tial arts since he was a child, though he’d always thought of it as more for exer­cise or active med­i­ta­tion than actual fight­ing. Out­side the dojo [are they called that in tae kwon do?] he’d never been in a fight in his life. He really didn’t want to start now, but he didn’t want to be taken to St. Elizabeth’s either. He’d already said too much to avoid a long obser­va­tional period.

“Mis­ter Cho,” Durante said, “please don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

Daniel man­aged a half smile. “Please let me go, then.”

Durante nod­ded to the offi­cers and they stepped towards Daniel. Am I really about to assault police offi­cers? Daniel won­dered. He was arguably already look­ing at resist­ing arrest, and assault­ing an offi­cer would just extend the jail time, not to men­tion the PATRIOT act stuff. He could end up in Gitmo.

No, he thought. I have to find out what hap­pened out there, and the trail’s get­ting colder by the minute. I can’t go to jail or a hos­pi­tal now. I have to know.

The two cops on the outer edges moved first, and simul­ta­ne­ously. They weren’t doing the movie cliché about a gang of com­bat­ants engag­ing the lone defender one at a time. Why can’t life be more like the movies? Daniel thought as he slid to the ground feet first, then vaulted off his hands through the gap between the mid­dle two offi­cers. The two on the edges reacted first, but were blocked by the two inner offi­cers and before the four of them could get turned around, Daniel was on the other side.

Durante was block­ing the door, but by this point Daniel had momen­tum on his side. He low­ered a shoul­der and rammed the older detec­tive, push­ing him out into the hall­way. Not quite Frank Gore, but it’ll do, Daniel thought as he scanned both ways up and down the hall­way, look­ing for the exit.

Both direc­tions ended in blind turns. Too much to hope for that they’d put the inter­ro­ga­tion rooms so close to the front door, Daniel thought, and ran to the left. He heard a breath­less “Stop him!” as Durante strug­gled to recover. He glanced back and saw that the first of the offi­cers in the room was out the door and break­ing into a run.

Daniel tried des­per­ately to remem­ber what he saw of the lay­out of the police sta­tion when he’d been brought in, but at the time he’d been too dis­tracted by Hendriks’s lit­tle dis­ap­pear­ing act and in any case wasn’t expect­ing to have to make a run for it. He spun around the cor­ner and saw the front door maybe a dozen yards away on the left. It would have been no prob­lem at all if it weren’t for the half a dozen uni­forms stand­ing around the admit­ting desk.

“Quick, someone’s been hurt!” Daniel shouted, point­ing back behind him around the cor­ner. The offi­cers ran past him as Daniel angled towards the admit­ting desk. “Call an ambu­lance!” he told the desk sergeant.

As the man picked up the phone, Daniel juked left and bolted out the front door into blaz­ing D.C afternoon.

#

Mick handed Sal a cup of cof­fee. They’d searched around the depart­ment, but there was no sign of Cho out­side, and of course all the pedes­trian wit­nesses they’d lined up gave very detailed and com­pletely con­tra­dic­tory accounts of where he’d gone.

“I don’t know why you don’t lis­ten to me,” Mick said.

Sal leaned back in his creaky office chair and downed a gulp of the cof­fee, real­iz­ing it would prob­a­bly just upset his stom­ach even more after that shot Cho gave him to the bread bas­ket. He made a men­tal note to start show­ing up at the gym more. “I did lis­ten to you.”

“Then why wasn’t he in irons?” Mick asked. “At least handcuffs?”

“Christ, Mick, he was a frig­gin’ para­medic! He saved that woman’s life! How was I sup­posed to know he was dangerous?”

“I’m just sayin, Sal, if you’d trusted your gut, he wouldn’t have hit you in it.”

Sal picked up the file on Cho, looked through it again for any­thing he’d missed. Any­thing that would have tipped him off that Cho was a ter­ror­ist oper­a­tive for North Korea, right under his nose. He didn’t see a damn thing. But there was no mis­tak­ing what happened.

He slammed the file back on his desk. “All right, fine, you’re right. He fits the pro­file. Make the call. He’s not our prob­lem anymore.”

I got pre­cious lit­tle actual writ­ing done over the week­end, about 2 pages total, because of get­ting the new blog and wiki up and run­ning. Rev­e­la­tion is sit­ting at 63,182 words, and I need to do 4k per day to fin­ish it before Thurs­day. Yes, I know that’s only 75k. But I skipped a few scenes ear­lier in the book and have recently fig­ured out I do need to find a place to put Jeff Frankel’s tale of vengeance from the orig­i­nal novella back into this ver­sion, so the first draft should round out almost exactly 80k.

I need to be done by Thurs­day because that’s when I start a WORD WAR with Josh Curry, my pod­caster in arms from Max­i­mum Geek. I’ll be writ­ing Cru­sade and he’ll be writ­ing the first book in his Pan­theons series. First to 80k wins!

So yeah, the next three days will be head down, writewritewritewrite.

I’m going to be post­ing four chap­ters a day, on aver­age about 10k words, here until I get y’all caught up to what I’m writ­ing currently.

1: Acci­dent

[Make Daniel walk­ing home from Tae Kwon Do to estab­lish he knows how to fight before he has to] Daniel Cho stepped out of the 7-​​Eleven and heard the unmis­tak­able col­li­sion of steel on steel. He looked up and down the street, and saw the usual mid­day DC grid­lock. No way an ambu­lance was going to get here quickly. Look­ing for­lornly at the pis­ta­chio ice cream already melt­ing in the sum­mer heat, he dropped the gro­ceries and ran towards the crash.

Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, he dialed 911. “This is Daniel Cho. Report­ing a mul­ticar acci­dent at 17^th and M, send emer­gency units.” With­out wait­ing for a con­fir­ma­tion, he dis­con­nected the call and reached into his back pocket for the latex gloves he kept there just in case.

The acci­dent was a bad one, a three car pileup. As Daniel pulled on the gloves, he could see what had hap­pened. A heavy Mer­cedes town car had been bar­rel­ing down M and ran the light, t-​​boning a mini­van into the pickup truck going the other way. The whole clus­ter had veered side­ways and now blocked off M street in both direc­tions, along with part of 17^th. It would be at least half an hour before the ambu­lance and fire truck got here, if then. Daniel had sat in the back of that ambu­lance wait­ing to get to wrecks like this, knew what that wait was like.

Well, now he didn’t have to wait. Why do I even have days off, he won­dered as he approached the near­est car, the Mercedes.

Before he even got the door open he could see that the dri­ver was beyond help. The bas­tard who caused all this car­nage hadn’t been wear­ing a seat­belt, and the force of the crash had pro­pelled him onto the steer­ing wheel with enough force to break off the wheel itself and ram the steer­ing col­umn through his ribcage. The car pre­dated airbags, so there was really noth­ing to do. The blood was every­where in the cabin, even drip­ping from the ceil­ing. But what Daniel noticed most was the man’s eyes. They were angry, focused on the road ahead of him, as if deter­mined to con­tinue on their way. That’s odd, Daniel thought. They usu­ally look surprised.

Daniel shook it off and moved to the next vehi­cle, the mini­van. It was sand­wiched between the other two cars, and Daniel couldn’t seen much past the shat­tered wind­shield. He didn’t hear any­thing, or sense any move­ment. Come back to this. He moved on to the pickup truck.

The pickup dri­ver was belted in and con­scious, try­ing to claw his way past the deployed airbag. Daniel opened the pas­sen­ger door and leaned in to help. “It’s okay,” he said, “I’m going to help get you out of there.” The man was still dazed, but com­plied with Daniel’s efforts to slide him out of the truck cab.

Daniel quickly pal­pated the man, look­ing for hid­den injuries. He had sev­eral minor cuts from bro­ken glass and would have the dual black eye rac­coon mask from the airbag, but fun­da­men­tally he seemed okay. No bro­ken bones and his spine looked nor­mal. Daniel guided him to the side­walk and propped him into a seated posi­tion against a build­ing. “Just sit here, and try to stay awake until we can get you to a hos­pi­tal and check for any head injuries,” Daniel said. The man nodded.

Now Daniel had the hard work to do. He went back to the pickup and crawled through the cab. The now shat­tered dri­ver side win­dow was matched up with the pylon on the mini­van. He couldn’t reach into the mini­van, but he could get a bet­ter look inside it.

The front seat was just the dri­ver, a woman in her late twen­ties. She was also slumped over a deployed airbag, and had both blood and tiny cubes of safety glass in her hair. He didn’t see any major bleeds, so she could prob­a­bly hold on for a bit while he fig­ured out how to get her out. He looked into the back seat and froze. Daniel had seen a lot of hor­rific things in his career. This was one of them.

Behind the dri­ver was an infant, maybe a year old, maybe less in a car seat. He was cov­ered in blood and bro­ken glass but seemed to be breath­ing. Thank­fully, he was also uncon­scious. He didn’t have to see what was next to him.

The pas­sen­ger side of the back seat held a bag of meat that used to be a lit­tle boy, maybe six or so. He was dead cen­ter for the front end of the Mer­cedes and took the brunt of the kinetic energy trans­fer. Every bone was bro­ken, sev­eral jut­ting out through his flesh and cloth­ing, red smeared white shards in all direc­tions. Bits of gray brain mat­ter where drip­ping from the ceil­ing, and what the seat belt held in place was crammed into his brother’s car seat.

So three pos­si­ble sur­vivors, two dead on arrival, Daniel thought. As these kinds of crashes went, that actu­ally wasn’t bad, but the next few min­utes would prove crit­i­cal. And he needed some help.

He backed out of the pickup and looked around. A crowd of gawk­ers had started build­ing, and Daniel could hear now the dis­tant wail of the ambu­lance siren. He couldn’t wait. If the mother and her baby were going to live, they needed to get out of that car as soon as pos­si­ble. He scanned the crowd and found what he needed a burly man in a Red­skins t-​​shirt. Daniel jogged up to him.

“Ever been a hero?” he asked.

The man started wav­ing his hands in front of him and backpedal­ing. Daniel reached out and caught him by the fore­arm. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m a doc­tor. I just need an extra pair of hands and a strong back. You in?”

The man gulped audi­bly and nod­ded. “I ain’t never done any­thing like this,” he said.

“That’s okay,” Daniel said. “I do this all the time. I’ll tell you what to do. Come on.”

They went back to the mini­van and looked at the shat­tered safety glass of the wind­shield. Daniel hopped up on the hood and checked around the edges until he found what he was look­ing for, a two inch sec­tion where the seam had sep­a­rated with the crum­pling of the pylon. He worked his fin­gers into it and started pulling. Once he got about a foot free, he waved Red­skins over. “Grab this and pull as hard as you can,” Daniel said.

They both pulled, and the wind­shield peeled away from the metal like a giant band aid. Once it was free, they cast it aside and Daniel was able to get a closer look at the mother.

It was worse than he’d hoped. The airbag was mostly deflated and it was clear that the woman’s mater­nal instincts worked against her. Her right arm was flat­tened, smashed as she tried to reach back and pro­tect her chil­dren at the moment of impact. Right now the bleed­ing was con­tained by the pres­sure, but they’d have to apply a tourni­quet before pulling her out. She also had a large gash on the side of her head Daniel hadn’t seen before, and it was bleed­ing badly. Great, Daniel though, shouldn’t move her, but can’t afford not to if that head wound is as bad as it looks.

He looked back at Red­skins. “Give me your belt,” he said. As the man started to stam­mer, he added, “I need to use it as a tourni­quet or she’s going to bleed out through her arm when we move her. Come on, now!”

The man quickly pulled it belt out and handed it over. “Good, Daniel said. “Now I’m going to need some kind of stick or rod to tighten it. See what you can find.”

Red­skins bolted off on his quest. Daniel threaded the belt under the woman’s arm and tied it off at the del­toid, mak­ing sure he had a grip on her [arm] artery. Red­skins ran up with a tire iron. “Got this from the pickup” he said.

Daniel grabbed it and slid it through the belt before spin­ning it to tighten the bind, then tied it down with the other end of the belt. It wasn’t the best field tourni­quet he’d ever applied, but it would hold. She might even be able to keep the arm if they got her in surgery fast enough.

“Okay,” Daniel said. “We’re going to have to move her now. Get up here.”

Red­skins climbed up on the hood and looked into the cabin. He gagged. “I never seen so much blood,” he said.

“You’re doing great,” Daniel said. “I couldn’t do this with­out you.” He tried to slide over as much as he could to give the big man room to get a hold, but the Mer­cedes had crum­pled in most of that half of the mini­van. “We need to make sure we grab her by the torso, not the arms, and we need to make sure we cra­dle her head. Her head wound has me wor­ried, so I want to make sure we don’t jos­tle her any more than we have to.”

Red­skins starte3d shak­ing his head. “You sure you don’t want some­one more — ”

“You’re doing fine,” Daniel said. “And I need some­one strong. You’re strong.”

Red­skins nod­ded. He was psych­ing him­self up, Daniel could see it. He was amazed what peo­ple could rise to when given the oppor­tu­nity. He’d seen it before.

“Okay,” Daniel said. “Let’s do this.” He reached in and took hold of the woman under the tourni­quet, guid­ing Red­skins to the other side. “On three, we’re going to lift her out, and keep her head steady.”

He guided Redskins’s hand to the side of her head and showed him how to brace it.

“On three, he said. “One, two, three.”

Daniel and Red­skins pulled and [make sure they undo her seat­belt first] started eas­ing her out. AS soon as her arm cleared the wreck­age, her eyes snapped oven and she screamed.

Red­skins dropped his side and part jumped part fell off the hood to the pave­ment. The woman kept scream­ing, a high keen­ing wail. Daniel reached round and grabbed under her other arm, brac­ing her head with his own while she screamed into his ear. He pulled slow and steady until he had her out of the car and on the hood. Only then did he notice how her lower leg flopped to the side. Her leg was bro­ken, prob­a­bly both [bones in the lower leg], snapped when the Mer­cedes crum­pled the cabin.

Noth­inhg for it now, he needed to get her sta­bi­lized. He pulled her off the mini­van and laid her down int the road, try­ing to make sure he at the very least didn’t make things worse. Her scream­ing died down to a whim­per, then sob­bing. She reached up with her good arm and grabbed Daniel’s shirt.

“Rus­sell,” she rasped, “Elijah…”

Must be the kids’s names, Daniel thought. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he told her. “I’m a doc­tor.” Daniel checked her head wound. it was start­ing to clot, for once some­thing not as bad as it looked. As Daniel pulled back, he saw that the woman had passed out again. he’d rather her stay con­scious until they got an MRI on her head, but frankly, what he still has to do would prob­a­bly be eas­ier with her out.

Red­skins was still sit­ting on the con­crete, shirt stained now with the woman’s blood. He had a blank stare, and Daniel knew he was done. Coura­geous as he may have been, every­one had their lim­its, and Daniel knew the signs all too well. He had to get the kid alone.

With­out another word, Daniel vaulted up on to the minivan’s hood and pulled him­self into the cabin. He reached down and felt for the latch to release the dri­ver seat back, and pulled it for­ward, try­ing to get as clear a shot as he could to the baby. Again he shud­dered when he saw what was left of the lit­tle boy on the pas­sen­ger side. He felt bile rise in his throat and choked it down. Not now, he thought. Plenty of time to freak out later. Crawl­ing over the dri­ver seat, he got a closer look at the baby and felt gen­tly for injuries. He was still out cold, but oth­er­wise he seemed okay. His brother had absorbed all the pun­ish­ment for him, shielded the baby from the worst of the impact. Daniel won­dered if the kid would ever know that as he grew up.

Reach­ing around the car seat, he unbuck­led the seat belt hold­ing it in place and lifted the whole assem­bly. Then he real­ized he couldn’t back out and hold the kid at the same time. “Hey back there!” he called. “Can you pull me out?”

Daniel felt two strong hands grab his ankles and pull him back. He held the car seat as high as he could while he felt the tiny cubes of shat­tered safety glass dig­ging into his thighs through his jeans. “Whoa!” Daniel said. “Careful.”

Sud­denly he was free of the van and back into the harsh sun­light. He turned and handed the carseat with the baby not to Red­skins, but to a uni­formed police offi­cer. “Thank you, patrol­man…” Daniel checked the officer’s nametag. “Fit­sim­mons. Appre­ci­ate the assist.”

The cop nod­ded and put the baby down next to his mother, who was still out. Daniel clam­bered down from the mini­van and stretched. His mus­cles were stiff from tension.

Fit­sim­mons turned to him. “Sir, could I see some ID?”

Daniel nod­ded and dug out his wal­let. “Sure. It’s okay, I’m a para­medic with the 33^rd.”

Red­skins, still seated in the mid­dle of the road, seemed to wake up at this. “Para­medic? You said you was a doctor!”

“I am,” Daniel said. “Sort of.”

Fit­sim­mons con­tin­ued rifling through Daniel’s wal­let. “None of this says you’re a doctor.”

Red­skins popped up. “I swear, that’s what he said. I never woulda touched that woman if he hadn’t said he was a doctor.”

With­out hand­ing back Daniel’s wal­let, Fit­sim­mons turned to Red­skins. “ID, sir?”

Red­skins had his dri­vers license ready and handed it over. “Ran­dall Schlot­sky, your honor.”

“I’m not a judge,” Fit­sim­mons said.

“Sorry, your honor. Any­ways, this guy said he was a doc­tor, and that’s why I thought it was okay to move that woman.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Daniel said. “I am a doc­tor. Or I was. I have an M.D.”

Hand­ing Schlotsky’s dri­vers license back to him, Fit­sim­mons turned back to Daniel. [put the sounds of approach­ing sirens some­where in here] “You’re an M.D., but you work as a para­medic.” It wasn’t exactly a question.

“I just moved here from San Fran­cisco a few months ago,” Daniel said. “I don’t have a med­ical license in the Dis­trict.” He con­ve­niently left out that he had no inten­tion of get­ting another med­ical license.

“Um hmm,” Fit­sim­mons said, hand­ing back Daniel’s wal­let. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you not to leave the scene.”

The ambu­lance finally broke through the last of the traf­fic and pulled up. It wasn’t from Daniel’s sta­tion, and he didn’t know the para­medics who jumped out.

“I have no inten­tion of leav­ing the scene,” Daniel told Fit­sim­mons. “I was the first respon­der here, I called it into 911, and I prob­a­bly saved that woman’s life.” He strode past the cop and addressed the para­medics. “We’ve got a prob­a­ble con­cus­sion to that man,” he said, point­ing at the pickup dri­ver, “and con­cus­sion and crush injuries to the woman. Aside from minor abra­sions, the infant seems fine, and we have two DOAs. A young boy in the van, and the dri­ver of the Mercedes.”

Fit­sim­mons, walk­ing around the scene, said, “Did you say the dri­ver of the Mer­cedes was DOA?”

Daniel walked over. “Of course he is. What, you can’t see him through all the blood?”

“I see the blood,” Fit­sim­mons said. “Just not the driver.”

“Dammit,” Daniel said, almost to the Mer­cedes, “he’s right…

“There.” Daniel stood silent for a moment. The dri­ver was gone.

“What the fuck?” Daniel started run­ning, loop­ing around the car. There was a faint blood trail for a few steps, but then noth­ing. But the man had been impaled. Even if some­one had pulled him out of the wreck­age, there should have been blood every­where. He started scan­ning around at the build­ings adja­cent to the intersection.

And then, despite the heat of the Wash­ing­ton DC sum­mer day, Daniel saw some­thing that made his blood run cold. Walk­ing down a back alley was the Mer­cedes dri­ver, absently rub­bing the still gap­ing hole in his chest. His clothes were still soaked with blood and gore, but he wasn’t spurt­ing or drip­ping, and the size of the wound seemed to be smaller than it had been before. The man glanced over at Daniel, grinned, and dis­ap­peared behind a Dumpster.

Daniel sprinted into the alley and tried to fol­low the man, but saw noth­ing behind the Dump­ster but a graf­fiti scrawled brick wall. He had no idea where the man had gone.

Daniel felt some­one walk up behind him and spun around to see Offi­cer Fit­sim­mons. “Did you see that?” Daniel asked. “Did you see him?”

Fit­sim­mons took a firm grip on Daniel’s arm. “Sir,” I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”