“If I were you I’d put that away,” the cop said. “That flashing light’s liable to make our friend here lose his happy thoughts.” He was still wearing his tinted aviator specs, despite the fact that he was now underground. “You put our boy here in an agitated state, it’s gonna get ugly in a hurry.” Without waiting for Jolie to reply, he looked over at Mike. “Which way we headed, chief?”

“That way,” Mike said in a voice that, to his own ears, sounded lost amid the unexpected flurry of activity. He hadn’t learned anything about the man on the stretcher, or why Jolie would want to take his picture, but he had finally gotten a clear look at the prisoner’s face in the elevator. It made him feel cold all over. Though the man still wore no expression, he could feel the green eyes watching him, drifting away and coming back again with the lazy watchfulness of a predator sizing up his prey.

They pushed the stretcher past the vacant X-ray and fluoroscopy suites, the waiting room, and a CAT scan whose door stood open to reveal the green glow of the control panel shining across the tile floor. The long hall ahead was empty except for a broken wheelchair and a stack of cardboard boxes. Mounted to the wall was a digital punch-clock, and Mike swiped his badge without breaking stride.

“Through those double doors.” He pointed with his chin. “There’s a button on the wall.”

One of the cops hit the button and they wheeled the litter into a larger space whose dimly lit perimeters receded into darkness. Monitors and computer equipment lined the walls, and Mike heard the low hum of climate-control systems cycling fresh air through the ventilation ducts. Thirty feet in front of him, behind a square of tinted glass, was the scan room, the six-foot bore of the 1.5 Tesla Philips magnet gaped like an open mouth.

He dropped his backpack on the floor and kicked it aside, out of the path of the stretcher.

“What’s this?” The sunglasses cop reached behind a desk and pulled up an aluminum baseball bat. “You and Florence Nightingale play ball down here when it gets slow?”

Jolie shook her head, pointing through the glass. The entire entourage paused to look at her. “There’s twenty miles of copper wire coiled up inside that bore that holds a constant electrical charge,” she smiled broadly, clearly happy to have everyone’s attention. “And the guys that installed the emergency vent were more interested in my chest than getting the shaft put on straight. If the chamber ruptures and the backup vent fails, we’ve got three seconds before helium gas fills the room. That’s where Mr. Louisville here comes in.” She pantomimed someone swinging a bat toward the glass.

The cop leaned over toward Jolie, and Mike was just close enough to hear him speak into her ear. “I can sympathize with those guys who installed the vent.” He took off his sunglasses. “You got a boyfriend?”