15 Signs Of Murder (Fifteen thrillers) Read online

  “Sir, can we come in?” he asked. The lady beside him gave me a sympathetic smile. “Sure,” I said, my voice sounding shaky.

  They followed me in, and I walked into my kitchen. I grabbed a glass of water and downed it. No matter how much I drank, the taste of dry tongue didn’t dissipate.

  “Sir, are you okay?” the male paramedic asked, sidling up next to me. He was a big black guy, looked charming enough. He had a sympathetic way about him, yet looked as if he was capable of beating the shit out of any unruly patients. The woman on the other hand, was dainty, yet pretty. She appeared washed-out but had a hard exterior. She looked a little more menacing. I could tell she wasn’t impressed by me. I could see she was thinking what the guy was thinking.

  This guy must be on drugs.

  “I’m not okay,” I said, putting my glass down on a wooden surface that looked surprisingly clean. I could see my face in the sheen. “I think I’m dead,” I said, fully aware of how stupid I sounded.

  “Sir, you’re not dead. I’m standing next to you, and, trust me when I say this, I’ve seen plenty of dead people. You aren’t one of them,” the male paramedic said. He cupped my shoulder and smiled. The lady paramedic put her big medi-kit bag on the work surface next to my TV. She took out some instruments and a book. She started to write stuff down.

  “Have you taken anything, sir?” she said out of the blue.

  “No, but I know I’m dead. I don’t have a pulse. I checked! People have left messages on my answer machine, telling me they will miss me. I can’t be dead, though. I’m here, right?”

  The male paramedic took his hand off me. He turned around and started rummaging through his bag. “I’m sure you’re just fine. You may be experiencing a panic attack, sir. It’s very common, and there is nothing to worry about. I have a stethoscope in my bag. I’ll check you out. I bet that thing is racing in your chest. It’s causing you to feel panicked. Trust me, everything will be just fine.”

  I just stood there and watched both paramedics get to work. The woman was writing down some stuff. I couldn’t make out what she’d written, but whatever it was, I bet it had the phrase “idiot patient” jotted down somewhere.

  “Now I’m going to need you to take a few deep breaths. Inhale and then exhale on my command. I am going to listen to your heart. I need you to be still.”

  I nodded my head. “But I know I’m dead. I checked. I have no pulse,” I said, as if they hadn’t heard me the first time. I clenched my fists in anticipation.

  “Sir, don’t worry. Just relax. Have you had any chest pain? Shortness of breath?” he asked.

  “No, I haven’t,” I replied.

  He moved closer to me, wielding his stethoscope. He popped the buds into his ears and held the round apparatus with his left hand, lifting my shirt with his right.

  “Damn, that’s a nasty bruise there,” he said, noticing my purple sternum. “How did that happen?”

  “That’s when they shocked me back to life…but I’m still dead,” I said.

  I was feeling delirious. Something was making me slur my speech. I wasn’t sure if it was the heightened sensations I was feeling or the lack of understanding about my situation. Whatever was going on, the paramedics thought I was tweaking or something.

  “You suffered a heart attack recently?” the man asked, putting the stethoscope onto my chest.

  “Yesterday…I think.”

  The guy gave me a look and then gave his partner that same expression. “Yesterday? You should be in the hospital,” he said.

  “I was, but I died and woke up in the morgue. Please, tell me this is a dream,” I pleaded.

  “Sir, everything will be just fine,” he said to me as he moved the apparatus around my chest. He looked puzzled and pulled another weird face. “I can’t seem to locate the patient’s heart,” he said out of the blue.

  “What do you mean? Your stethoscope’s not picking up a beat?” his partner asked.

  “Nope, it’s strange. I think it’s busted,” he said, putting the scope down on the table next to my empty glass.

  I started to shake my head. “I’m dead — aren’t you listening?”

  Both paramedics looked at me in confusion. “Sir, you aren’t dead,” the woman said, reaching into her bag.

  “Check his pulse,” she said.

  The man grabbed my wrist and searched for a pulse. His confusion continued. He pulled another face, and this time I saw his pupils dilate. He was looking a tad nervous.

  “I can’t seem to locate a pulse,” he said, sounding sheepish.

  “What’s wrong with you?” the woman said, putting down her notepad and gently pushing past him. “Sorry about this,” she said, touching my left wrist with two fingers. She gripped the other side of my wrist with her thumb and pressed down with her index and middle finger. She remained idle for a little while, her face slowly growing pale.

  “Maybe he has a weak pulse. Are you an athlete, son? You look ripped,” she said.

  “I’m a runner. I collapsed yesterday at a half-marathon.”

  Both paramedics looked wide-eyed at my response. The woman turned to her partner, who looked shocked at what I had just told them.

  “You’re that Derrick guy, the Olympic hopeful,” he said.

  “Grab the ECG,” the woman paramedic said, snapping her partner out of his daze.

  A few seconds passed, and I grew even more impatient. I didn’t want to believe I was dead, but reality was proving me wrong. I decided it must be a dream. This couldn’t be real. No way was this possible. I was having a dream.

  “I must be asleep. This can’t be real,” I found myself confessing, to the agreement of the paramedics.

  “Well, you have us stumped, buddy,” the woman said, taking a little black box off her partner.

  She took a deep breath and exhaled. It looked like she was second-guessing something. As if she didn’t believe what stood in front of her.

  “You have to excuse me, I’m feeling a little flustered,” she admitted.

  “You and me both,” the male paramedic said from behind her.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to lie down on the sofa over there while I hook you up to this device. It reads the electrical output of your heart and will help us determine a diagnosis for what you are experiencing. Should you need medical attention, we will take you to the nearest hospital.”

  We moved to the sofa, and I lay down on it. I could feel the fibers underneath me caress my back. It was the first time since I woke up that I could feel anything. I started to smile.

  “What’s so funny?” the male paramedic asked, grinning a little at the absurdity of the moment.

  “I must be waking up. This will be all over soon,” I said.

  The woman hooked up the wires to my chest. Six wires in total. They pricked against my chest hairs. I smiled again. I was feeling sensations in my chest. I must be okay. It was only a matter of time before I woke up and this whole nightmare would be done with.

  “Stand by,” she said, turning on the little black gizmo thing. She waited for a second or two as an LED screen flashed. It flickered a few times, and she pressed a button.

  “Okay, we’re all set. Just relax — we’ll know what’s going on in a jiffy.” She smiled.

  I waited. She waited. He waited.

  We all stared at the little LED screen as it booted up. A beep sounded. Then another beep.

  “Just loading,” she said.

  A whining noise came out of the little black box. And then a long monotone sound went off.

  “It can’t be,” she said.

  “What? What’s going on?” I asked.

  She reset the little black box without saying one word. The box did the same thing.

  Bam. Another long monotone whine went off.

  “What? What the hell is wrong with me?” I shouted.

  They both looked at me, perplexed.

  “It can’t be — it’s just not possible. I mean, what are the odds that both
the stethoscope and the ECG would fail on us?” she said.

  “We need to take him downtown,” the man behind her said, looking a little pale.

  That was when my life changed forever. Or rather, my death changed forever. Whichever way you look at it.

  Seven

  We pulled up to the California Hospital Medical Center, in downtown Los Angeles. I was in the back of the ambulance. On the way there, they had attempted to get another reading on my vitals using the instruments in the back. They failed to find my pulse and couldn’t get a blood pressure reading. I was near the end of my tether. I was ready to blow my damn brains out, I was so scared. I was slowly coming to the realization that I wasn’t well. Maybe this wasn’t a dream, and I needed to watch what I said or did. God knows what sort of freak I’d become if people knew about me, about my lack of vitals, which effectively made me invincible. I was still walking, even though I had no pulse. Did that mean I was the savior of the world? Probably not, but it did mean that my life was about to change in a big way. How big? I wasn’t sure, but if I knew what lay ahead of me, I would have thrown myself into a pit of molten lava, and been done with this once and for all. Unfortunately, I hadn’t had my head screwed on properly. I just wanted to know what was happening to me and why.

  They say that everything has a logical explanation. I was getting out of the ambulance in search of mine. Fingers crossed, I made the right decision in calling for help. I’d soon know if my quick thinking had landed me in more quicksand than I was in before. The thing with quicksand is that the more you struggle, the more quickly it drags you to your doom. The same can be said about life.

  “Am I going to make it?” I asked as I was being stretchered out of the ambulance. For some reason they had insisted on me being carted around on a gurney. I could walk just fine; it was my insides that were not doing so well.

  “You seem to be doing okay. I’m not going to lie. This whole situation is a bit scary. To say that I have seen patients like you with no active pulse would be a lie — well, I’ve seen plenty of people dead with no active pulse. None living, though. I don’t know what’s wrong with you. I don’t know why you’re still breathing. The best we can do is find out what’s wrong. You might have something called bradycardia, which is a very low heart rate. It could explain your symptoms,” the male paramedic said as he loomed over me. He was pushing the gurney as the woman beside him continued to search for vitals.

  “What symptoms explain no pulse?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

  The man just continued to push the gurney as we entered the hospital, and I was greeted by a sea of white ceiling tiles above me. The hospital smelt of disinfectant and sparkled in the dim light of the setting sun. A loud hum of life burst into my ears as we entered the place. I could hear everything, from kids crying to the janitor mopping the floor. It all rattled in my brain like a fireworks display, sounding off as my head began to ache.

  “Hello? Anybody listening to me?” I shouted.

  Suddenly, the man stopped pushing me and looked down at me. “Look, sir, your symptoms are exceptional. I have never seen symptoms like yours. If you will let me do my job and get you to the ER, then I would appreciate it.”

  I didn’t say anything else. I just waited as the shadows on the hospital walls drifted past us. I could see my shadow being pushed along with the two not-so-friendly paramedics who were accompanying me to my fate. We rushed past sick children. We rushed past people who looked like they needed a doctor, but they were filling out forms. I guess that was the sort of world we lived in. Insurance first. Health second.

  “Your insurance, please?” the lady asked, as if on cue to my wandering thoughts about medical care.

  “In my wallet,” I said.

  “Left pocket?” she asked.

  “Yeah, It’s just a big wallet. I’m not that happy to see you,” I quipped.

  The big paramedic pushing me gave me a wink. “She likes the big ones,” he said.

  “I don’t mind a fat wallet.” She smiled at me.

  We reached a desk; they plopped my wallet down onto the counter.

  “We have an emergency. Patient needs medical attention. Suspected bradycardia. We attempted to read the patient’s BP and heart rate at his house, but both our stethoscope and ECG were non-operational. Possibility that the patient suffered a myocardial infarction a day ago. The patient is delirious and thinks he’s the living dead,” the lady paramedic said to someone behind the desk.

  I heard a slight chuckle from the confines of the desk. “Who knows these days? We could be a few years off from a zombie pandemic. You saw that guy who munched on that other guy a year or two back. Policeman put eight shots into the bastard, and he didn’t die. Maybe we have another,” the person behind the desk said. He sounded overweight and had a rather obvious breathing problem. Big, raspy breaths with every syllable.

  “I’m not a zombie,” I said from the stretcher. I couldn’t see the guy’s face from my position, but I saw him give me a thumbs-up.

  “Case solved. Get him to ER, then. I’ll sort out the paperwork.”

  “For a life-threatening ailment, you guys sure are taking your sweet time,” I said.

  I didn’t get any responses from my Speedy-Gonzales team of medical personnel. They raced up a hallway and pushed me through two large double doors. A different smell hit me this time. It was the smell of sulfur. Sulfur and copper. Whatever went on this room, it was serious business.

  “Here we go, then,” I muttered as they stopped the stretcher.

  “On three,” the lady paramedic said.

  They lifted me up off the stretcher and onto another stretcher-like bed. A few more faces gathered around me, all of them wearing surgery gear. Faces covered up with white masks and hands covered in black gloves.

  “Hello,” one of the faceless new people said to me as they all stared at me from above.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Everything will be just fine. We’re just going to do a few procedures and find out what the problem is,” the man said as he put a breathing mask over my face.

  Eight

  “I don’t believe it,” the man in the mask said as he looked at the monitor beside me.

  I scrunched my eyes a little as I saw the sea of faces glance from the reading on the LED screen to me. They had expressions of wonder on their faces. I could tell they were stumped. “Two broken ECG machines are unlikely,” someone said as they put their finger on my neck. “Still no pulse. This man has no damn pulse!” he exclaimed.

  I stared up at the confusion that surrounded me. Everyone was in complete shock at what was transpiring. I was ready to throw up…if only I was able to. Nothing seemed to feel real. The world around me felt disconnected, it was as if I wasn’t supposed to be there. Like a ghost, but made out of flesh. I started to scream hysterically.

  “Oh, God, please help me!” I shouted.

  The doctors and surgeons around me gave sympathetic looks. I could see that none of them had a clue what was going on.

  “Calm down, sir,” one of them said.

  “Fuck this — I’m out of here!” I screamed. I ripped at the cables attached to my chest.

  A few of the doctors tried to hold me down, but they didn’t succeed. I jumped off the gurney and got to my feet. I nearly fell to one knee, my legs almost giving out on me.

  “What the hell is this?” someone said.

  “This isn’t possible. He’s a fucking alien or something!” another person jeered.

  “I’m not an alien. My name is Derrick James Smith, and I want some answers!”

  The group of doctors surrounded me like animals at the zoo. They gave me looks of anger, looks of terror, and a few looks of awe. When it came down to it, they were all thinking the same thing.

  “What the hell are you?” one of the surgeons said.

  I wasn’t sticking around. I needed to get out of there. I needed to find the people I loved.

  “Get out of my way,” I said, gr
abbing one of the surgeons by the scruff of his scrubs.

  “Cole, call security. Inform them that a madman is on the loose.”

  One of the surgeons ran out of the room and down the hall. Seconds later, an alarm sounded. I decided I had to act fast. Enough was enough.

  I punched one of the surgeons in the face. A few stepped aside, fearing the same treatment. I noticed how my strength was far greater than it was before. I could feel something channeling through me. It was like a primal instinct to survive. It was an instinct that told me to not let them imprison me. Somehow I convinced myself if that occurred, and they managed to keep me in captivity, it would bring the world as I knew it to an end.

  I didn’t question those instincts. I knew that if it was possible for me to have no pulse and still live among the living, then I needed to listen to them. They were all I had. Everything else was gone. Everything else was flat-lined.

  Nine

  I ran down the hospital hallway. Behind me I heard the thunder of footsteps, all gaining on me. I could see the shadows those footsteps possessed dancing off the walls, nearly grabbing and swatting at me. I pushed through a few sick people. One of them fell onto the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized, rushing down the hallway, making my way to the exit.

  As I neared the exit to the hospital, I saw somebody standing in the doorway, holding a gun. It was an LAPD officer, and he was ready to shoot me at any second. I didn’t care. I wanted to end it anyway. I was tired of this feeling of fear that constantly surrounded me. It was choking me, and I was ready to breathe freely. I closed my eyes and continued to run toward the officer in blue. I could hear him shout at me as I came closer.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!” he bellowed.

  I took three massive strides, getting closer and closer to the door in front of me. With my eyes still locked tightly shut, I could feel the heat coming from the open door. It was sunny outside. That nice heat you get near dusk. The sort that is comforting. The heat touched my face as I got within inches of the officer.