“I can’t remove the restraints. I cannot do anything to abet your escape.” As she says this she leans over me to punch some buttons on a machine and the scenic area beneath the neck of her shirt opens over my face, giving me a noseful of Covet. Her contortion also nuzzles one of my restrained hands inside a pocket in her lab coat, where it encounters a cell phone. “Unfortunately, I cannot be confident in your neurological function and so I cannot at present approve any questioning or removal from hospital care. Given the urgency of the police investigation, however, I will have to return shortly to examine you again. I’d say you have an hour.”

Before she turns in a graceful whirl of lab coat and long hair and Hesperidean mystery, I get another pinch in an area that leaves little doubt about its flirtation. Frantically I start keying in a text message to Herk, the scent-memory of Covet still blooming in my nose.

Herk to the Rescue

Herk to the Rescue

It’s unclear, even to me, what Herk will do to spring me. He’s too big to execute any kind of sneakiness, and as witnessed by the Schermer break-in, he’s as much of a criminal mastermind as I am. Maybe he’ll sic an entire school of Goldfish on the cops. Maybe he’ll flex his biceps and make them faint. Maybe he’ll just loom.

But he doesn’t. He shows up in the reflection from the window of my door, dim and glossy like a figure from a rain-slicked Arntzenius, steamrolling down the hall dressed in scrubs and holding a doctorish clipboard. At first it looks like he is going to perform some kind of con, but when one of the cops holds up a hand to deny him entry and says, “Only Dr. Zandi—” Herk, barely breaking stride, jabs the metallic edge of the clipboard violently into his throat. The cop goes down like a fainting goat. The other one reaches for his gun but doesn’t get it. Herk has already hit him in the face with a hard, sinking hook. His shoulder is in it, and the guy’s head snaps back onto the metal doorjamb and he, too, slumps to the floor.

This all transpires so quickly I don’t have time to say anything until Herk drags the cops into the room and dumps the bodies behind the gurney, out of sight.

“What the fuck?” I manage.

One of the cops is groaning and making a dreamy sign language with his hands. Herk—who still has not looked at me or spoken a word—wraps a forearm around the guy’s neck and squeezes until his face goes as red-black and engorged as a raspberry’s drupelets. After some muffled snarfing of air and spittle, the cop goes horribly silent. Herk lets him drop.