CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kim had stayed behind at the field office to coordinate with the local units responding to the scene at the reservoir.
Vic drove while Miles made calls to the hospital, trying to get information about the victim's condition and whether she would be able to speak with them.
The answers had been frustratingly vague, but the keyword kept repeating: alive.
And as far as Miles was concerned, that was the most important part.
The smell hit Miles immediately. Antiseptic and floor cleaner, with underlying notes of coffee and something vaguely medicinal that he couldn't identify.
The overhead lights were bright but somehow managed to make everything look washed out and pale.
A janitor pushed a mop bucket past them, moving with the slow deliberation of someone who had hours of work ahead and no reason to rush.
Miles and Vic approached the intake desk and showed their credentials to the woman behind the computer.
"We're here about Lisa Anderson," Miles said. "She was brought in about an hour ago from the Silver Lake Reservoir."
The woman checked her screen. "She's in the ICU on the fourth floor. I'll call up and let them know you're coming."
They took the elevator, which smelled like stale coffee and carried a handwritten sign taped to the wall requesting that visitors keep voices down.
The doors opened on the fourth floor to reveal a nurses' station bathed in the blue glow of multiple computer monitors.
Two nurses sat behind the desk, one reviewing charts while the other spoke quietly into a phone.
A doctor intercepted them before they reached the station. She looked to be in her early forties with dark hair pulled back in a clip, and her scrubs showed the wear of a long shift. An ID badge identified her as Dr. Rachel Okonkwo.
"You're the FBI agents?" she asked.
"Yes," Vic said. "Agents Stone and Sterling. How's Ms. Anderson?"
"Alive, which is remarkable given what she went through.
She hit the water, yes, but from what I can tell, she free-fell for at least five hundred feet.
" Dr. Okonkwo gestured for them to follow her down a hallway lined with patient rooms. Most had their doors closed, but a few stood open to reveal the glow of monitors and the sleeping forms of patients.
"She has three fractured ribs, a hairline fracture in her left femur, and severe lacerations around her mouth.”
"Is she conscious?" Miles asked.
"She is, and she's insisting on speaking with law enforcement despite my very strong recommendation that she rest." Dr. Okonkwo stopped outside a room near the end of the hall.
"I'm allowing you ten minutes maximum. She's on pain medication and she needs to conserve her strength for a surgery she’ll be heading into in about two hours. "
"We understand," Vic said.
Dr. Okonkwo pushed open the door and led them into the room.
Lisa Anderson lay in the hospital bed with her upper body elevated at a slight angle.
An IV line ran into her left arm, and monitors beeped softly beside the bed.
Her face was pale and drawn, with dark circles under her eyes.
The lacerations around her mouth had been cleaned and treated, but Miles could see the raw, angry wounds where something had cut deep into her lips.
Despite everything, Anderson's eyes were alert and focused when they entered the room. Dr. Okonkwo made a quick round of introductions and as she turned for the door to leave, she eyed Miles and Vic one more time and repeated: “Ten minutes.”
When the door was closed, they approached Lisa’s bedside.
"Ms. Anderson, I'm Special Agent Miles Sterling and this is Special Agent Victoria Stone," Miles said. “We're investigating the attacks involving weather balloons…as odd as that may sound.”
“Not…not the only one?” Lisa managed to ask.
“Believe it or not, no,” Vic said. “Are you able to answer some questions?"
"I can talk," Anderson said. Her voice was hoarse and slightly slurred from the pain medication, but comprehensible. Miles was sure that her lips were aching terribly, too. The gash on her bottom lip looked to have gone quite deep. "I want to help catch this guy," she added defiantly.
Vic moved to stand on the opposite side of the bed from Miles. "Can you tell us what happened tonight? Do you know everything that happened?"
Anderson took a careful breath, wincing slightly as she nodded.
"I finished training at the climbing gym around seven and headed to my car. A guy approached me in the parking lot…started asking questions about climbing equipment. I thought maybe he was hitting on me at first, but he seemed…” She stopped and took a shaky breath here before continuing on.
“…seemed genuinely interested in the sport. "
“Climbing gym?” Miles asked.
“Rock walls. I’m training to climb El Capitan…”
So heights once again, Miles thought to himself.
"What did this man look like?" Vic asked.
"He was a white guy, maybe mid-thirties.
Sandy-colored hair, kind of thin. Average height, probably around five-ten or five-eleven.
He wasn't particularly muscular, but not skinny either.
Just average build." Anderson paused to wet her lips carefully and again winced.
"He had a friendly face. That's what got me.
He looked like someone's nice younger brother or a high school teacher. Nothing threatening about him at all."
"Any distinguishing features?” Miles asked as Vic typed all of the information into her phone. “Any scars, tattoos, or unusual characteristics?"
"Nothing that stood out. That's what made him so forgettable. If I passed him on the street tomorrow, I might not even recognize him."
"What happened after he approached you?" Vic asked.
"We talked for a few minutes about climbing gear and outdoor climbing.
I was drinking from my water bottle while we spoke...
been drinking on it all night." Lisa’s expression darkened.
"Then I started feeling dizzy. He told me he'd dosed my water bottle about an hour earlier while I was inside the gym.
He said he was impressed it took so long to affect me. "
“He actually told you?” Miles asked.
She nodded, and Miles instantly began to think about security cameras in and around the gym.
Miles felt anger coil in his chest at the casual cruelty of it. The killer had drugged her water bottle and then waited, watching her climb for an hour before approaching. He’d even told her what he’d done when he knew it was too late for Lisa to do anything about it.
"Do you remember anything after that?" Vic asked.
"He caught me when I collapsed. That's the last thing I remember until I woke up in the air.
" Anderson's voice shook slightly. "The wind was so loud and I was rising fast. I looked down and saw him standing in the parking lot, and he looked disappointed.
Like I'd ruined something by waking up too early. "
"How high were you when you woke up?" Vic asked.
"High enough that buildings looked small, but low enough that I could still partially see him below.
Maybe a few hundred feet, I don't know exactly.
The balloons were pulling me up. After about a minute or so, I realized I was drifting toward the reservoir.
" She shifted in the bed, grimacing with pain.
"I realized if I could break enough of the balloon strings, I might survive a fall into the water.
So I used my teeth." She laughed in a way that made it sound more like a whimper and said, “And I guess my lips took the brunt of that.”
Miles looked at the lacerations around her mouth with new understanding. She had chewed through ropes while suspended hundreds of feet in the air, knowing that breaking too many would send her plummeting to her death. He couldn’t imagine the courage such a thing would take.
"That's incredibly brave," Vic said quietly.
"It was survival," Lisa said. "I broke through five ropes before I fell. The impact still almost killed me, but it was better than waiting to drift over solid ground."
Dr. Okonkwo appeared in the doorway. Miles was pretty damned sure it had been less than ten minutes. But that was fine; he felt they had all they could get. "Time's up,” the doctor said. “Ms. Anderson needs to rest now."
Miles nodded and saved his notes. "We'll likely have more questions later, when you’re well-rested. But for now, you've given us crucial information. Thank you."
Lisa only nodded, but Miles could see determination in her eyes. She was a fighter, that was for sure.
They followed Dr. Okonkwo back into the hallway, and the door closed softly behind them. The nurses' station remained quiet, the staff moving through their routines with the subdued energy of a hospital in the small hours of the morning.
"She's lucky to be alive," Dr. Okonkwo said. "Most people wouldn't have had the presence of mind to do what she did."
"Most people aren't professional rock climbers," Vic said. "I imagine the strength in her forearms and abs made it easier for her to get to those ropes than your average person.”
Miles looked back at Lisa Anderson's room.
They finally had a description of the killer, even if it was frustratingly generic.
White male, mid-thirties, average in almost every way.
It wasn't much, but it was more than they'd had an hour ago.
And more than that, Lisa had survived. That changed everything.
The killer had failed, and failure would make him angry and desperate.
And if that were true, based on everything he knew of criminal profiling that meant the killer was now more likely to make mistakes.
"Let's get back to the field office," Miles said. "Kim needs to hear all of this, and we need to start building a composite sketch based on Lisa’s description."
They walked back to the elevator, leaving behind the hushed corridors of the ICU. The night was far from over, and Miles was already starting to wonder how the killer was going to react when he learned that his third victim had survived.