Now or Never Read Free Page A

help?”
    Harry waved his hand dismissively as he sped round the corner. “Not your department, doc. At least, not yet.” His face grew grim as he thought of the implications of what he had just said. Dr. Blake was head of pathology at the hospital and a medical examiner for the Boston PD.
    The Nursing Sister at the desk knew Harry too. “First floor, trauma ward, last on the right,” she said, when hepaused in front of her. “They’ve given her fifteen pints of blood. She’s comatose and critical. And no, I don’t know if she’s going to make it.”
    Harry’s bleak eyes met hers. “Jesus,” he whispered.
    The sister crossed herself quickly. “Believe me, she needs Him.”
    Skirting the crowd waiting for the elevator, Harry took the stairs two at a time. He paused at the top. He took a deep breath and ran his hands through his uncombed hair. He closed his eyes for a moment, steadying himself.
    The smell of hospital corridors still got to him. The only time he had ever been an inmate was when he was five years old and had had his tonsils and adenoids removed. They had fed him a steady diet of ice cream for a week. He couldn’t remember being traumatized by it, but the childhood fears still stuck.
    He swung through the fire door and it whooshed silently shut behind him.
    Rossetti was leaning up against the wall, arms folded, one leg crossed lazily over the other. His glossy black hair was slicked flat, his white shirt was immaculate and his black trousers had a fresh crease in them. He was filing his nails and whistling
“Nessun dorma”
through his perfect teeth. He looked like the early version of John Travolta ready for a night on the town instead of a Boston homicide detective on duty at 5:25 A.M.
    Despite the tough circumstances, Harry grinned. Carlo Rossetti was thirty-two years old, long jawed, dark-eyed, and a serious ladies’ man. He had probably come direct from the previous evening’s rendezvous but he looked as though he had stepped straight from his good Italian mama’s house: clean, well-fed, and ready for action.
    “She’s not gonna make it,” Rossetti said flatly.
    Harry looked startled. “How d’you know?”
    “I’ve seen her. Seen that look before, that otherworldly thing.” He shrugged. “Take a look for yourself.”
    A uniformed cop stood guard outside the door. He saluted and said good morning, standing aside to let Harry in.
    Harry took in the scene at a glance: the nurse hovering over the machinery, the monitors flickering in the corner, and the young woman lying motionless on the narrow bed with IVs pumping fluid into her arms. Her bandaged wrists were propped stiffly out in front of her on top of the sheet. And her young face was pale as death beneath the halo of shorn hair.
    The nurse glanced at him. “She’s in shock. Maybe she’ll come out of it,” she said softly.
    Harry wanted to believe her and not Rossetti. “Any chance she might wake up and be able to talk to us?”
    “If she does wake up, the last thing she’ll want to do is talk to
you.”
    “We need her. She’s our only hope of catching the killer. She might have seen his face. Maybe she even knows him.”
    The nurse sighed. She had heard of the mutiliation of the other young victims. “He didn’t cut off the nipples this time.”
    Harry stared at the young woman with the tubes in her arms, at her severed wrists and bloodless face. The memory would stay with him forever; or at least until he had done his job and the killer was caught. He turned and walked out the door.
    Rossetti had finished filing his nails. He was sipping black coffee from a paper cup. He held a second one in his other hand and offered it to Harry.
    “So? What d’you think?”
    “I think we had better start praying.”
    They sipped the coffee silently.
    “What’s with the fishermen?” Harry asked finally.
    Rossetti shrugged. “Local police took a statement, faxed it through to the boss. They said they didn’t seenothin’ that