The Assassin

Deckers Memorial Hospital

With anger gnawing at his insides, Billy Denton hunkered down in the supply room and took inventory of the rounds in the Colt he’d stolen from Deputy Pender just before he died in the world’s greatest jailbreak. Six bullets in the clip, one in the chamber. He slipped the gun under his belt next to his sheathed hunting knife, and closed the gray doctor’s smock he wore over both weapons. He was on a mission, one final strike against Justin Graves.

The nameplate on the smock read: Ruskin. He hoped Ruskin wasn’t a black man. One last detail: Billy removed his earrings and the ring in his eyebrow and stashed them into his jeans pocket. Satisfied he’d blend in with the hospital personnel, he commandeered an empty cart, threw a towel over it as if covering his pill dispersals for the night’s rounds, and pulled open the supply room door.

Memorial Hospital wasn’t a big facility: four floors and two wings. This time of night, after visiting hours, he encountered only a janitor while wheeling the noisy cart down the hallway. The reception lobby sat on the main floor between the wings. There he held back, made sure no one was around, then casually pushed the cart to the counter. Sneaking behind it, he flipped through the admissions log, scanned a list of patients, and found the name he was looking for:
Room W214, upstairs, west wing.

Suppressing a grin, he headed for the elevator, the cart wheels rattling with speed.

***

Slowly, Captain Holland became aware of his breathing and noises around him, the whir of a fan, tennis shoes squeaking on floor tiles, and the rhythmic beep of a heart monitor. His chest felt like it had been hit with a pickaxe. Opening his eyes to a dimly lit room, he fought off a wave of panic, knowing where he was but not how he’d gotten here.

“He’s coming around, Dr. Payne,” an angelic voice said.
Holland turned his head toward the voice, saw radiant red hair and a halo, all fuzzy around the edges. He blinked.

She stepped back.

A tall man in a white smock bent over him. “Can you tell me what day it is?”

What day? Tuesday…or maybe...Friday? He couldn’t be sure.
“I don’t know.” The sound that came from his throat gave him a fright. “What happened?”

“Do you know your name?”

My name? Yes. “Justice. I mean...Justin Graves.”

“He’s doing it again,” the angelic voice said. “He kept shouting that name, over and over, when they brought him in.”

“He’s still groggy,” Dr. Payne said. “Captain Holland… Harold Holland. Does that name sound familiar?”

“But I saw him. I saw Justice.”

“You were in shock, delirious.”

“Justice!” Holland shouted. He couldn’t have been wrong about what he’d seen. “Where are you?”

Dr. Payne patted Holland’s shoulder. “Calm down now.”

“Justice!”

“He’s dead,” Payne said. “I’m the one who pronounced him dead. At the old warehouse.”

“No. He’s back. I saw him.”

“The surgery went well,” Payne slipped in, as if he could change the subject. “We removed the slug from your chest.”

“Billy Denton shot me. It had happened so fast.”

“The bullet was lodged under your collarbone.”

“Did they get him? Did they get Billy?”

“You’ll be out of here in a few days.”

Groaning, Holland thought the pickaxe had turned into a bulldozer parked on his chest.

“Get some rest,” the angelic voice said. The room went dark.
Pain rifled through Holland’s body as if the anesthesia had suddenly worn off, the horror of the jailbreak and the gun battle now returning to his memory in all its bloody terror. He wished he’d never heard the name Billy Denton.

A single wedge of light from the hall angled through the doorway, across the floor, and up the wall. Holland struggled to get comfortable, to cope with the damage the bullet had done to his body. He wished he could sleep, but that vision in his mind wouldn’t let him rest. With his own eyes he’d seen Justin Graves. The image couldn’t have been born of shock or delirium. The wraith was as real as the bullet wound in his chest.

Justin didn’t look like any wavy and transparent Hollywood ghost. He wore his long coat and cowboy hat, as always, but they were dirty and dusty, like he’d just crawled out of the ground. His voice was raspy, and his steel-gray eyes were filled with death. But most convincing, the ghoulish homicide detective smelled like rotting flesh, as if his body had been locked in a car trunk for three days under the blistering Texas sun. That was one smell a cop never forgot.
Justin Graves was back from the dead.

A noise in the hallway caught Holland’s attention. It sounded like one of those rattling hospital carts, probably a nurse coming to wake him up, to check his bandages, poke him and prod him, and otherwise keep him awake, as if he needed any help with that. Maybe now he could ask for a stronger dose of medication.

The cart stopped just outside his door. A shadow invaded the wedge of light on the floor. Holland blinked, craned his neck, and tried to focus on the silhouette of a man now standing in the doorway. He seemed uncertain about entering, looked back and forth.

The angelic voice asked, “May I help you?”

“I’m looking for W214.” The shadow stepped back.

For a split second, before it moved from the light of the doorway, the shadow-maker’s face appeared: a red goatee and a barbed wire tattoo on his neck. Holland’s heart about stopped.

Billy Denton!

His shadow remained cast in the light on the floor.

The nurse’s shadow approached his, their shadows now coming together. “I’ve not seen you around here before,” she said.

“It’s my first night.” The shadow of his hand pointed to his chest. “Ruskin. See?”

Her shadow stepped back. A gasp.”Ruskin is a woman. What are you trying to pull…?”

In a heartbeat, his shadow drew a big knife shadow and thrust it into her belly. He plunged it deep and upward, burying the blade in her heart.

Her shadow went limp, buckled over, and his shadow caught hers in his arms.

Terror pumped through Holland’s body, making the pain in his chest do double-time. He wanted to call out but stopped short for fear of giving away the fact that he’d witnessed the killing.

Billy dragged the dead nurse into the darkness of Holland’s room. Her body hit the floor with a dull thump.

Keeping one eye open just a crack, Holland feigned sleep, hoping the rapidly beeping heart monitor wouldn’t alert Billy to the helpless man in the bed. Or perhaps that was the reason Billy was here, to finish him off after he’d survived the shootout at Deckers City Jail. If that was the case, Holland was a dead man. He didn’t have the strength to fend off a knife-wielding assassin. All he could do was wait in silence and hope the monster in the room didn’t see him.

Instead of approaching the bed, Billy left and wheeled the noisy cart away.

Relief flooded Holland, but his investigative instincts squashed the feeling. If Billy hadn’t come to kill him, why was he here? Who had he come to kill? Christy? Her room was down the hall...at the end of the wing. Holland had to stop him. Somehow. He had to try.

He sat up. Pain slugged him in the chest. Hard. He thought he would faint.

Justice. Where are you...when I need you?

***

Billy moved down the hall, pushing the rattle-wheeled cart, the towel now covering his right hand, the one that held the knife, the one he’d bloodied killing the nurse. If anyone saw that blood, he’d be busted for sure. They’d sound the alarm. Security would come running. He couldn’t afford to be recaptured. Not now. He was too close to his goal, his target, his final blow to Justin Graves.

To Billy’s delight, the hallway was silent as a morgue. He encountered no one. The path was clear to do this thing he’d come to do.

He left the cart in the hall and pushed open the door to W214, just a little at a time, cautiously, without the reckless abandon of his jailbreak. His mouth felt dry as he stepped inside the room, the bloody knife clenched in his right fist. Using the Colt would make too much noise. This would be a silent kill, like the nurse, and then he’d slip away into the night.

Too easy.

In the soft glow of streetlight that beamed in through the window, he could see his victim, comatose, unaware of the rasping ventilator and beeping heart monitor. Every nerve in his body tingled as he approached her bed, quiet like a cat stalking a bird. It would be a quick death.

He raised the knife above her chest, began the plunge, but hesitated to stab those beautiful breasts.

His mind recounted the times he’d violated Justin’s little whore of a daughter. Christy didn’t look so good right now, with all the wires and tubes sticking out of her. But she’d been a fine bitch, before she chose her father over her boyfriend. He didn’t know how she’d survived the hail of bullets at the old warehouse. Luck he supposed. He’d shot her in the back, twice. Whatever the case, he was about to rectify the situation.

This time he placed the knife tip on her left breast, prepared to plunge it home, but a stirring in his loins stopped him. Maybe first he should cop a feel: one for the road, for old time’s sake. She’d never know. She couldn’t stop him. What the hell could it hurt?

Reaching for the bed sheet, Billy felt a rise in his jeans and a rise in his heartbeat. He threw back her covers and took hold of the hem of her hospital gown. Slowly he lifted it, revealing raven-black pubic hairs glistening in the glow of the street-lit window. He licked his lips and pulled her gown higher, exposing the white skin of her belly, then her rounded breasts, slack nipples, and more wires. His heart rate doubled. He began to salivate. This could be better than ever, the final disgrace. He’d violate her one more time before killing her. Justin’s failure as a father would be complete.