He was interrupted by Johnson’s loud clapping, his fat hands crashing together inches above Trey’s unresponsive face.
‘Wake up!’ he shouted. ‘Tell us who did this to you. TREY!’
‘Mick, come on—’
‘I said, WAKE UP, DIPSHIT!’ Johnson bellowed. ‘Open your GODDAMN EYES!’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Grabbing him by the shoulders, Goodman pulled Johnson back. ‘Stop it. Leave him alone. What the hell is wrong with you?’
Johnson turned, and for a moment looked as if he were about to punch his partner in the face. But before he had a chance, Trey suddenly opened his eyes and let out a panicked scream.
‘I don’t know!’ he yelled, his arms twitching manically. ‘Please! Oh God! I DON’T KNOW!’ His head was tossing from side to side. He screamed again and then an awful gurgling sound began from somewhere deep in his throat. Even Johnson looked alarmed. One of the machines started beeping and a stream of nurses and medics ran into the room, as Trey slumped back, unresponsive, onto the bed.
‘Who let you in here?’ one of the interns barked at Goodman and Johnson. ‘This is medical personnel only. Get out!’
Johnson hesitated, but only for a moment. He followed Goodman out.
Out in the corridor, Goodman turned on him. ‘What in God’s name was that? We could get prosecuted! What if the kid’s family make a complaint?’
Johnson laughed. ‘What if they do?’ There could be no mistaking the racist undertone in his words. The unspoken implication that nobody would listen to the likes of Marsha Raymond, a poor, black single mother from Westmont. Not for the first tame, Goodman felt a surge of real dislike for the man he was forced to work with.
‘Where are you going?’ he called after Johnson, who was already headed for the exit.
‘Back to the precinct,’ said Johnson. ‘The boy’s clearly not gonna make it, so that ship’s sailed. Still, at least we now know one thing for sure.’
‘We do?’
‘Sure we do. It’s the same killer. Assuming Trey dies, that’s two victims inside of a week, both attacked and dumped the same exact way.’
‘OK,’ said Goodman, not sure why this obvious fact seemed to please his partner so much.
‘So you tell me,’ Johnson spelled it out. ‘Who’s the one person that connects both of the victims?’
The penny dropped.
It pained Goodman to admit it. But this time, Johnson was right.
As far as they knew, Lisa Flannagan and Trey Raymond had only one thing in common.
They were both close to Dr Nikki Roberts.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Earlier that morning, Nikki Roberts sat bolt upright in bed, gasping for breath. Her sweat-drench
ed T-shirt clung to her body and she was shaking, shivering, as if she’d just been pulled out of icy water. Her bedside clock said 4.52 a.m. Wearily she sank back against the pillows.
It was the same dream she’d been having for months, or a variant of it anyway: Doug was in danger, about to die, and was screaming out to Nikki, begging her for help. But she didn’t help him, and he died, and it was all her fault. Sometimes he was drowning and she stood and watched from the beach, letting it happen. Sometimes he was in a car, careening out of control, and Nikki held some sort of remote control that could activate the brakes, but she refused to use it. In tonight’s version, they’d been walking along the clifftop path at Big Sur and Doug had somehow lost his footing and slipped off the edge. He was reaching out to Nikki, pleading for her hand to pull him back to safety. But this time, instead of simply refusing or ignoring him, she’d actively peeled off his clinging fingers one by one and pushed him to his death, watching as he was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. She’d murdered him. And the worst part was, in the dream, the act had left her with a sense of elation, a tremendous feeling of power.
A few hours later, an emotional Nikki met her friend Gretchen Adler for brunch on Melrose.
‘I had the dream again,’ she said as the two women sat down at Glorious Greens café.
‘The Doug dream?’ said Gretchen.
Nikki nodded. ‘Only this time it was worse.’
Nikki filled Gretchen in on her latest nightmare while a handsome waiter hovered over them. Nikki ordered her usual poached eggs, toast and triple-shot latte, while Gretchen went for a vile-looking kale-and-beetroot smoothie and a bowl of something involving sprouted grains. Gretchen was Nikki’s oldest friend – they’d known each other since high school – and a sweetheart of the first order, but for most of her adult life she’d been fighting an on-off battle with her weight. As far as Nikki could tell, she rarely got any thinner, but was always raving about some new diet or other. At the moment it was raw-vegan.