The Face

times in the back.
        When Hokenberry hit the floor, the bungalow shook.
        The big man’s fall was much louder than the shots because the pistol was fitted with a sound suppressor that Corky had purchased [357] from an anarchic survivalist with deep ties to an aggressive group of anti-veal activists who manufactured the suppressors both for their own use and as a fund-raising activity. Each of the shots made a quiet sound like someone pronouncing the word supper with a lisp.
        This was the weapon with which he had shot Rolf Reynerd’s mother in the foot.
        Considering Hokenberry’s intimidating size, Corky hadn’t trusted the ice pick to do the job.
        He moved closer to the beef and shot him three more times, just to be certain no punch remained in Rocky and Bullwinkle.

CHAPTER 52
        
        TWO WINDOWS PRESENTED A SOLVENT SKY and a city dissolving in drips, drizzles, and vapors.
        Most of the large records room at Our Lady of Angels was divided into aisles by tall banks of filing cabinets. Near the windows lay a more open area with four work stations, and people were busy at two.
        Dr. O’Brien settled at one of the unused stations and switched on the computer. Ethan pulled up a chair beside him.
        Inserting a DVD into the computer, the physician said, “Mr. Whistler began to experience difficulty breathing three days ago. He needed to be put on a ventilator, and he was moved into the intensive care unit.”
        When the DVD was accessed, WHISTLER, DUNCAN EUGENE appeared on the screen with Dunny’s patient number and other vital information that had been collected by the admissions office.
        “While he was in the ICU,” O’Brien continued, “his respiration, heartbeat, and brain function were continuously monitored and sent by telemetry to the unit nurses’ station. That’s always been standard procedure.” He used the mouse to click on a series of icons and numbered choices. “The rest is relatively new. The system digitally records data collected by the electronic monitoring devices during the patient’s entire stay in the ICU. For later review.”
        [359] Ethan figured they kept a digital record as evidence to defend against frivolous lawsuits.
        “Here’s Whistler’s EEG when first admitted to the ICU at four-twenty P.M. last Friday.”
        An unseen stylus drew a continuous line left to right across an endlessly scrolling graph.
        “These are the brain’s electrical impulses as measured in microvolts,” O’Brien continued.
        A monotonous series of peaks and valleys depicted Dunny’s brain activity. The peaks were low and wide; the valleys were comparatively steep and narrow.
        “Delta waves are the typical pattern of normal sleep,” O’Brien explained. “These are delta waves but not those associated with an ordinary night’s rest. These peaks are broader and much lower than common delta waves, with a smoother oscillation into and out of the troughs. The electrical impulses are few in number, attenuated, weak. This is Whistler in a deep coma. Okay. Now let’s fast-forward to the evening of the day before his death.”
        “Sunday night.”
        “Yes.”
        On the screen, as hours of monitoring flew past in a minute, the uncommon delta waves blurred and jumped slightly, but only slightly because the variation from wave to wave was minuscule. An hour of compressed data, viewed in seconds, closely resembled any minute of the same data studied in real time.
        Indeed, the sameness of the patterns was so remarkable that Ethan would not have realized how many hours-days-of data were streaming by if there hadn’t been a time display on the screen.
        “The event occurred at one minute before midnight, Sunday,” O’Brien said.
        He clicked back to real-time display, and the fast-forwarding stopped at 11:23:22, Sunday night. He speeded the data again in two quick spurts, until he reached 11:58:09.
        [360] “Less than a minute now.”
        Ethan found himself leaning forward in his chair.
        Shatters of rain clattered against the windowpanes, as though the wind, in wounded anger, had spat out broken teeth.
        One of the people at the other work stations had left the room.
        The remaining woman murmured into her phone. Her voice was soft, singsong, slightly spooky, as might be the voices that left messages on the answering machine that served Line