CHAPTER TWO

LaGuardia Airport

"So do we have any idea where they're at?" He stepped off the plane, throwing on a pair of sunglasses with his free hand as he adjusted the cell phone next to his ear. "She's where? Queen of Mercy, got it."

The sun was bright. He put a hand up to his face, already feeling dizzy. "Yeah, okay. And he's where?...Where? Yeah...okay." He hung up, and met the car. "Change of plans. I need to get to the medical examiner's office." He got into the back of the Bentley.

"The morgue, sir?" the driver asked him.

He nodded. "I need to go pick up a friend."


Dr. Sid Hammerback had seen a lot of unusual things in four thousand some-odd cases.

But this was a first.

"Upon first examination," he explained to Hawkes, "I assume you noticed the large lack of blood or injury to his body."

Hawkes nodded. "I knew something seemed out of place at that crime scene."

"The only visible wound is the stab wound to the chest," Sid said, clicking his glasses together. "However, when I pulled the stake from the wound..."

Hawkes could see it before Sid explained. "There's no wound, no entry hole." Hawkes looked up at Sid in confusion.

"Precisely," Sid said. "It healed over in a matter of seconds."

"So our vic has...what, some kind of super healing condition?"

"Never mind the fact that something like that shouldn't be functioning, considering he's deceased. I took some blood and send it up to DNA. I'm curious to know what Adam finds on it." Sid said.

"This whole thing is weird. You heard about the woman on life support, didn't you?"

"I did," Sid admitted. "I find this whole situation quite fascina-excuse me, sir, you can't be in here."

The gentleman who came into Autopsy was tall, with long brown hair. He was very pale with blue eyes. He was wearing a long black duster, blue jeans and a maroon t-shirt.

"I'm sorry," he apologized easily. "I was supposed to meet a friend here in New York...they told me at his place he'd been attacked." He looked down at the body on the metal table with a wistful look. "I wish I'd gotten here sooner."

"Sir, who are you?" Hawkes demanded.

"Sorry," he apologized again. He offered a hand. Hawkes took it, shivered at his cold grip. Then, that may have been the room temperature. "I'm Mick St. John. Josef Kostan is an old friend."

"We'd like to talk to you about your friend, if you have time," Hawkes said.

Mick nodded. "Sure, of course. Whatever I can do to help you find the guy that did this."

"Did Mr. Kostan have a lot of enemies?"

Mick smiled at an old memory. "More enemies than friends," he admitted. "Look, there was a woman at the house. Josef's sister."

"She is currently at Queen of Mercy, we have one of our detectives there processing her." His sister...with a different last name? No sign of a wedding band.

"Is Sarah alive?"

Hawkes nodded. "They managed to get her back on life support, before too much damage was done."

Mick's phone rang, interrupting. Mick looked at the caller ID. "Gentlemen, if you'd excuse me. I need to take this one. Finish with your autopsy, I'd like to know what you know."

"Sir, unless you're next of kin-" Sid began, but Mick held up a hand as he answered his phone.

"I'm a private investigator in Los Angeles." He looked at the two doctors. "Please. I'd like to know what you know. I might be able to help."

He left the room before Hawkes could say anything. "Might be a good idea to let Mac know about that Mick St. John fellow," Sid told Hawkes.

Hawkes nodded. Yes, Mac would definitely want to know about this.


Queen of Mercy Hospital

Room 414

"What can you tell me about Sarah Whitley?" Stella Bonasera asked Dr. Daniels.

The young doctor pushed his glasses up on his nose before consulting the woman's chart. "Miss Whitley has been in a coma, it appears, for quite some time."

"How long are we talking?" Stella asked.

"Based on a preliminary examination-" the doctor said, sounding as if he couldn't quite believe it himself- "about fifty years."

Stella's jaw dropped. "Fifty years?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Stella looked at the young woman...young being the operative word. For someone who should have been seventy or eighty...well, Sarah Whitley didn't look any older than about thirty.

"Do you know what caused it?"

The doctor nodded. "We think so." He led her over to the woman, who for all rights and purposes just looked asleep, and gestured to her neck. "See the two puncture holes, there?"

Stella nodded.

"We ran some of her blood downstairs. Her blood contains an unusual toxin, one I've never seen before."

"You think whatever it was got in through those holes?"

The doctor nodded. "We haven't been able to identify it as of yet, though we rushed a sample to the CDC in Atlanta once we discovered it."

"This toxin...it put her in the coma?"

The doctor shrugged. "We don't know. I find it remarkable that it somehow has kept her from aging the past fifty years. It's nothing like I've ever seen before."

He looked up. "Sir, can I help you?"

Stella followed his gaze to the door. A young man, looked to be about thirty, was standing in the doorframe. He had curly brown hair, blue eyes, and was wearing a long black coat. "Yes, you can. My name is Mick St. John; Josef Kostan was a friend of mine. They told me I could find his sister Sarah here." He looked at Sarah Whitley, a sad look on his face. "Is she going to be all right?"

"Well, she's still in the coma, if that's what you mean," Dr. Daniels replied. "But her vitals are all strong."

He let out a breath. "Good. Good, that's good."

"Sir, I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about Miss Whitley," Stella cut in. He looked at her, deciding.

"Sure. Anything you want to know," he said. "Do you mind if I have a few moments with her?"

"Yes, of course," Stella said, then realized she'd just spoken for herself and the doctor. She looked at Dr. Daniels, who nodded his agreement. The two left the room.

Stella's phone sounded in the hall. "Thank you, Dr. Daniels. Bonasera," she answered the phone. "Mac. No, I just got done...I'm waiting for a friend of Sarah Whitley's brother to come out here so I can ask him some questions...He said his name was Mick St. John."

"Mick St. John?" a voice asked, but it wasn't Mac's.


Crime Lab

Sheldon Hawkes had just stepped into Mac Taylor's office when he heard a familiar name come from the speaker phone. "Mick St. John?" he asked aloud.

Mac turned to him. "You know him?"

Hawkes nodded. "Yeah, well, sort of. He was down in the morgue talkin' to Sid and I. He's a friend of Josef Kostan's- our vic? He was supposed to meet him here in the city today." He looked at Mac. "Told us he was a private investigator in Los Angeles."

"This Mick St. John is turning up everywhere when it comes to this case. I don't like it," Mac said aloud to the two of them. "Stella, find out exactly what he's doing here in New York. If he knows something, I want to know what he knows."

"And if he doesn't know anything?"

"I don't believe in coincidence. He's here and it's connected to our case, and I don't think he's just here to visit a friend."

"Mac, I'm putting a uni outside Sarah Whitley's door, just in case that guy tries to come back," Stella said. "And then I'm going to go talk to Mick St. John."


Queen of Mercy Hospital

Stella hung up on Mac and Hawkes, and explained the plan to the doctor in charge. Then she headed into the hallway...where there was no sign of Mick St. John.


New York Medical Examiner's Office

Later that night

The morgue was dark and silent. Normally, that would seem like a bad joke, but what it really meant was that Dr. Sid Hammerback and his staff had done their duty for the day and done it well. It also meant that at least for the mment, the City That Never Sleeps was temporarily snoozing.

The door handle jiggled a few times, shattering the silence. There was a metallic scraping at the lock- one of the last departments where you were issues a key instead of a key card. Finally, the door slid open and someone stepped into the room. The hum of the computers and the lights from recharging surgical instruments were now intermingled with the sound of a pair of tennis shoes scraping across the tile. The intruder made his way over to the tall built-in coolers and stopped. He listened again for the faint tapping coming from the drawers that only he could hear. Finally pinpointing which drawer, he popped the drawer open. It slid open with a hiss and a metallic roll.

Josef Kostan's eyes stared up at his best friend. Then he propped himself up on one elbow and glared at Mick St. John ."'Finish with your autopsy'?" he demanded.

Mick grinned. "Oh, suck it up," he said. "At least you managed to get some sleep outta the deal. I've been up for twenty hours straight, was working a homicide with Beth when you called."

"Well, we are royally screwed," Josef said as he sat up. "Not a single vamp on this morgue staff to cover the fact that I kept healing during the part where the doc was supposed to be slicing me to mention the fact that my blood is in the system somewhere now." Mick handed Josef a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt. Josef eyed them warily. "These are so from the back of your closet," Josef said.

"Your clothes are in an evidence locker," Mick pointed out. "It's bad enough I'm stealing a body. I'm not adding evidence to the list."

"This day just sucked," Josef proclaimed as he got dressed. He'd just zipped the jeans when he thought of something. "Mick...Sarah?"

"She's fine," Mick replied. "She's at Queen of Mercy. Back on life support. Although...the doctor there did notice that she hasn't aged in fifty years. He's chalking it up to a foreign antibody in her blood."

"The venom. Aw, hell. Damn it, call Ryan, tell him to get my guys out here. Someone's got to break into the lab, get my blood sample, someone's gotta get any workup they did on Sarah...We can get Sarah on a jet back to LA, skip town before the damned CSIs figure anything else out."

Mick rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right. As if the fact that you healed on the autopsy table, got staked through the heart and the fact that Sarah hasn't aged isn't enough to figure it out already." He looked at Josef in confusion. "You don't want to stay, find out who did this to the two of you?"

"No," Josef said flatly. "I want to get Sarah and me the hell out of Dodge. That's your job." He hopped off the drawer and into a pair of borrowed tennis shoes. "God, does this outfit clash," he griped.

"Next time I'll remember the three-piece suit," Mick groaned. "Let's get out of here."


They'd just gone out the doors and were headed down the sidewalk to hail a cab when someone stepped out of the Chinese restaurant across the street, a carton of fried rice and egg rolls in her hand. Someone Josef recognized from the house earlier that day, remembered looking at her through unseeing eyes.

Detective Jessica Angell's jaw dropped. And then, the shock wore off and she drew her gun. "Hold it!" she yelled. "Don't move!"

Josef and Mick took off at a run. Angell sprinted after them.

"Josef, we're goin' up," Mick said as they skidded into an alley.

"Damn it...remember what happened last time-"

"No choice."

"We could just snap her neck and-"

"And have the entire NYPD on our asses? No way," Mick said, and jumped...eight stories onto the rooftop.

Josef looked up. He looked back, saw the detective bearing down on them. "Aw, hell," he said, for what seemed like the thousandth time that day, and leapt.

Jessica Angell saw them. Couldn't believe what she'd just seen, but saw them.