Motol Hospital, Prague, Czech Republic
November 28
The corpse tipped into a black body bag, joining errant rainwater that was skirting off the roof into the alley. The workers, heavy masks strapped tight to their faces, tossed it around callously, their shoulder-long black gloves squeaking from the effort. Two of them stood impatiently above the other victim, blood long since drained.
Sobotka took one last look, stood up, and they moved in for disposal, this time with yellow plastic. A sticker was glued to the head and toe, detailing the type and strength of the virus found in the body.
The body bags were lazily added to a pile of other corpses, all colour-coded, waist-high and exposed to the elements. Further down, the pile of yellow bags was being loaded into a flatbed truck. It would take several trips to clear that stack, as tall as it was.
Sobotka walked down towards the mouth of the alley and joined Crew, who was interviewing a bruised old woman in bloodied clothes. Her eyes darted between them, but never at them, like she was talking to ghosts and not people.
“A brown cloak?” Crew asked, tapping his pen on his notepad. “Anything else?”
The old woman nodded furiously.
“Yes! Yes, a dark face! Like a fly! He had no eyes! No eyes and no soul!”
Crew smiled a bit, jotted notes. Sobotka checked his scribblings, put a hand to the woman’s shoulder.
“Did he hurt you, ma’am?”
“No. No no no, not me. Only Franz and whashisname. The one with the kids. They’re upstairs, you know. He talks about them all the time.”
“I’m sure. So this dark-faced man… did he say anything to you?”
“No, no words, not to me. Though I heard a woman’s voice. She spoke something… I can’t say what. It was foreign.”
“Have you heard it before?” Sobotka asked, checking back at the crime scene.
“Yes. Yes, I have. I’m sure I have.”
Crew stood a bit straighter, frowned at the woman.
“Where?”
“In my nightmares. It was the devil. The devil! I’m sure of it!”
Sobotka rubbed the woman’s grimy shoulder, and kindly lead her back to her campsite off the side of the hospital.
“That’s good, ma’am. Thank you. You’ve been a big help.”
Crew was kicking over a bottle of antiseptic into the bloodstains when she got to him. She looked at the large metal doors against the concrete facade, the piles of trash everywhere.
“What do you think?” she asked, not making eye contact.
“Same thing you do. It’s gotta be.”
Sobotka’s phone buzzed quietly, and she flipped it out, put it to her ear, taking a step back out of the rain.
“Sobotka,” she grunted. “Yes sir. I think it is, sir, yes. A Healer. It matches the description perfectly. No face, the cloak, the bloodbath.”
Crew’s jaw set tightly.
“Yes sir,” Sobotka nodded. “We understand. Completely, yes. Not a problem. We’re on it.”
“So the Cap’ agrees?” Crew asked as she shut the phone, “We’re good to go?”
“It wasn’t the Captain, it was Director Sestak. And we’re not good to go, he’s telling us to leave it alone.”
“Alone? We’ve got two dead bodies here, and who knows how many more coming! We can’t just ignore it!”
“Are you kidding me? It was an order, Crew! And he’s right. Healers are untouchable. If anyone found out we were even looking at investigating a Healer, the bunch of us would be called up on charges by sundown. The rules come from too high up. Higher than us, higher than Sestak—”
“What, God himself?” Crew smirked. “Look at you. All for defending the peasants, until the peasants meet some Chinese butcher, and then you’re fine with it?”
“Of course I’m not fine with it!” shouted Sobotka, and the nearby crowds turned to stare. She lowered her voice, growling. “But this is a fight you can’t win, Crew. Without the law on our side, at best we’re on even footing with a Healer. At best. And everything I’ve heard says he’s got almost supernatural powers. You really want to go up against that?”
Crew grinned.
“I do. I really do.”
“Look, I hate being pulled in a thousand directions as much as you do, but that’s what we get for not retiring with everyone else. We have to cover extra ground… ground we don’t want to cover. But what we don’t do is go looking for trouble where there isn’t any!”
“This is trouble!”
“You know that’s not true!”
“You heard that woman! The Healer was talking to someone… some woman. Here in the hospital. That means he’s got an accomplice. The President himself might be watching the Healer’s back, but there’s nothing that says we have to let a Czech citizen call him in! To me, that’s betraying your own. That’s treason.”
“You’re insane. We’ll never find a woman in a hospital of thousands, and we’ll damn sure never be able to arrest her for talking to someone who is technically doing nothing wrong.”
“You have no faith in the power of the badge, Sobotka.”
She growled, turned away, staring into the rain. The flatbed truck’s gates clanged shut, its cargo full.
“Know what I’m thinking?” Crew called to her. “This isn’t a coincidence. This joker shows up in the last days of November, right after we get that note.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“What? It’s beyond them? After this? After Russia? After what they did in their own backyard?”
“It’s the wrong MO. It doesn’t fit, and you know it. We can’t waste time on something like this when there is a real threat out there that needs our attention.”
“Listen. He’s already put two more in the pile. I’m not letting him add any more.” Crew motioned to the pile of yellow body bags. The truck chugged to life and started away, off to the incinerator. There were still hundreds of yellow body bags stacked in the road. Sobotka shook her head, slumping her shoulders.
“You’re a fool.”
Crew shrugged.
“You with me, or do I do this alone?”
Sobotka shook her head, annoyed.
“We’ve got enough on our plates with the girl. That’s our job. That’s what we’re paid to do. Sestak is waiting for results there. And it’s a real public safety issue, Crew. This? This is just glory-hunting.”
“So I do it alone, then.”
“Damn right,” she said, burying her fists in her jacket pockets. A cold wind blew across the alley, whipped her hair in her face. She clenched her teeth to keep the shivers at bay. Crew stared at the ground, kicked at the dirt.
“You can’t take the car if it’s not official business,” Sobotka grumbled. “You’re on foot. You’re going to be out in the snow, looking for a ghost. You sure you want that?”
“It’s not going to snow,” he said, pacing away from her, arms folded and chin out. “It’s only November. It’ll slush a bit. I’ll survive.”
Sobotka watched him go, shaking her head to herself.
“I’m not so sure,” she said.
