Franklin seemed barely to register Evan’s approach. His skin had a gray, stoned pallor. Stubble fuzzed his cheeks and neck. A needle dangled from his left arm just below the cinched rubber strap, the tip still embedded in a swollen vein. Vials neatly lined a metal medical tray at his side.

Evan set the heavy coat on the neighboring mattress. “What is all this?” he asked.

The doctor’s chapped lips moved, but no sound came out.

Evan grabbed one of the vials. Fentanyl. He threw it across the room. That brought the life back into Franklin’s eyes.

“What is all this?” he said again.

Franklin’s slender hands spread open as if bestowing grace. “This is René’s secret garden.” He smiled. “It’s how he’s fed.”

“Fed. He transfuses himself with this blood? For what?”

“Studies. There are studies…” Dr. Franklin’s gaze loosened, and he drifted off.

Evan cuffed him across the face.

The elevator shaft conveyed raised voices from above, distorted shouts and radio static.

Evan looked at all those bags, all those donor names. “He kills these people?”

“No, no. Unless…” A smile flickered across Franklin’s face, an inside joke. “Unless there are accidents.”

His eyelids fluttered. Evan traced his dilated pupils to the ancient brick fireplace across the basement. Beneath the log holder, mounds of dark ash.

Only now did Evan feel the cold of the room seeping through his skin, sinking into his bones. Crossing the space on deadened legs, he dropped to his knees on the hard concrete before the fireplace. He swept a hand through the ash. Came up with a metal hoop the size of a silver dollar.

A gauge earring.

He thought about the black smoke he’d seen pouring from the chimney two days before.

Evan drew his hand through the heap one more time, let the ash sift between his fingers like sand. A dental bridge remained on his palm.

He wished now that he had killed David for helping lure the victims here.

It was not, however, too late for Franklin.

Half turning, Evan unleashed a volley of rounds at the refrigerator units, shattering the glass and ripping through the IV bags. Shards and red droplets filled the air, raining down on the concrete floor. He shot up the equipment next, riddling the oversize units, sending forth showers of sparks. Only the safe remained impervious, the bullets pinging off the chrome exterior.

From his languid recline, Franklin watched Evan approach.

A clanking echoed down from above, the guards up in the spa forcing open the elevator doors. Evan could hear René’s men monkeying down the shaft.

He stood over Franklin, backlit by the dim glow of the shot-to-shit unit behind him, his shadow falling across the doctor’s face. A drop clung to the lower lid of Franklin’s left eye, but he didn’t look sad. He looked relieved.