Nightwatcher Sample Chapter

Charles Wilson

author of
Nightwatcher (excerpted here)
and
National Best Selling
EXTINCT

S e e sample chapters of Charles Wilson's National Best Selling EXTINCT, coming to NBC-TV -- "Where Jaws meets Jurassic Park in the year's most exciting thriller."

"Eminently plausible, and highly entertaining straight through to its finale." -- Dean A. Dunn, PhD in Oceanography and Paleontology, and former shipboard scientist for Glomar Challenger expeditions in both the Pacific and western North Atlantic.

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C H A P T E R O N E

It was an unsettled night at the John H. Douglas State Hospital for the Insane, the smell of an impending storm in the air. Staff nurse Judith Salter, hurrying along the sidewalk between patient dormitories at the forty acre complex, wondered if she would complete her evening medication deliveries before the rain began.

Suddenly the horizon erupted with the flashing of a dozen nearly simultaneous lightning bolts, the sky behind the jagged streaks of energy turning a bright yellow, the rain clouds bleaching to a soft fluffy blue. She smiled at the beauty of the scene.

Then, as the night became dark and forbidding again, her smile quickly faded at the reminder of how her life had deteriorated: quick, bright, beautiful moments she enjoyed so much and couldn't resist now always ended in a black, fearful darkness.

She did not know when she had lost control of the game or how, only that she had. Now, no matter what a man appeared to be when she started an affair, no matter what he promised, the ending was the same--he trying to force her into going farther than she enjoyed, past fantasy into real danger.

She shook her head as she hurried up the steps to resident unit R-14 and pushed the admittance buzzer. It would be different in New Orleans. She would start her life over there, find a good church-going father for the twins and not take any chances this time; she'd keep her marriage normal from the very beginning.

She pushed the admittance buzzer again. After waiting another minute she began repeatedly jabbing her finger against the button.

The door finally opened.

A lanky, pencil-mustachioed security guard stepped back to let her enter. He had a fixed smile on his narrow face and was clumsily affecting a nonchalant attitude--his head tilted slightly to the side, most of his weight on one foot.

"Evening," he said.

Irritated at how long she had been kept waiting, she didn't return the greeting, walking on past him to the cabinet at the side of the short entrance hall.

* * *

Opening her carrying case she began removing bottles of medicine from it, arranging them on the cabinet's shelves. When she finished and turned toward the guard, her face still reflected her irritation.

"Dr. Adams wants me to look in on Ben Rodgers," she said.

The guard nodded and stepped to the glass-paneled door leading to the patient quarters, unlocking it.

"Sorry I took so long," he finally said. "I was inside checking on a patient."

"Where's Jerry?"

The guard grinned but didn't answer.

She snapped her case shut. "Dammit, am I the only one around here who doesn't goof off?" She shook her head as she came around the desk. "You skipped out last night."

The man's mouth gaped open, as if astonished she had said such a thing. "No, I didn't. I ran to get a pack of smokes. When I got back Jerry told me you had just left."

"Bull. Just keep it up. One of these nights a patient's going to teach you why there's supposed to be two of you on duty."

He smiled and patted the mace and billy club which hung from his belt, then touched the handle of his holstered revolver. "No problem."

Judith frowned. She didn't like his flippant reply. She didn't like his cocky smile. And she especially didn't like patient security being entrusted to the type of guards the hospital employed: mental cowboys in wrinkled uniforms who probably couldn't find a job doing anything else.

She looked at the big, chrome-plated revolver he wore at his side. She knew patients at the hospital she would better trust with the responsibility of carrying such a weapon.

"And you're not supposed to take a gun inside around the patients," she said, and strode into the living quarters.

The guard quickly locked the door and hurried after her. "Would you rather I leave it in the office, so one of 'em can sashay in and swipe it while you're gone?"

She stopped and turned to face him. "It would be smarter if..." She could smell the liquor on his breath. Worse were the dilated pupils. "Never mind," she said, disgust crossing her face. "Which room is Rodgers in?"

The guard pointed down the hall past a group of milling patients. "Room 12."

Judith glanced at her watch, then shook her head. "It's nearly ten-thirty. I'm never going to finish packing."

"Still gonna leave, huh? I been hearing Dr. Salter's gonna let the kids come back."

"Court order," she said.

"When you taking off?"

"First thing in the morning. I've had enough of this place."

"I hate that you're leaving. I'll sorta miss you around here."

His tone was sincere and Judith caught herself giving him a smile.

"Where you headed?" he asked.

"New Orleans, stay with Daddy awhile. Haven't made up my mind whether I'll work in a hospital down there or not. Well, let me go see about Rodgers."

* * *

As she turned and moved down the hall the guard stared after her, the tip of his tongue moistening his lips. To the side of the hall a pair of R-14's patients stood in the doorway to their room, their eyes also following the young nurse's tightly uniformed figure.

Judith quickly determined there was nothing wrong with Ben Rodgers. If you considered chronic depression and delusions of persecution as nothing wrong, she thought. But that was why he was here in the first place. At least he wasn't physically sick, and that was what Dr. Adams had wanted her to check. Glancing at her watch she shook her head and walked from the room, moving back down the hall.

The security guard stepped from the linen room at the end of the hallway and hurried to let her out. His pupils were even larger now.

"What do you expect," she mumbled to herself, shaking her head.

"What?"

"Nothing." Quid pro quo. The hospital pays the guards next to nothing--it gets what it pays for. The patients might as well be guarding themselves. One of these days something terrible was going to occur. It was just a matter of time.

It wasn't her problem, though. Nothing to do with the hospital was her problem anymore. And her other problems would be behind her, too, after tomorrow. Screw men, and screw their threats, too.

Hurrying through the night's shadows once again, she was back at the pharmacy in ten minutes.

Glancing at her watch she noted her check-out time on the duty roster, forty-five minutes after her shift was supposed to have ended.

"Bet when fat-face Johansen okays my check she'll screw me out of the overtime," she said to the pharmacist. "Well, bye. You were one of my few favorite people here--very few."

"Good luck, Judith. I'll miss you."

At the curb she paused in the dim light from the street lamp, staring at her antique MG--a present from her father, Brandon Richards. Daddy, she thought, maybe it's your fault I expect so much from men. You shouldn't have spoiled me so.

The rain had begun to fall as she stopped her MG beside the guardhouse at the hospital's main gate. The security guard waved her through without stepping outside.

A hundred feet down the highway she turned onto the blacktop road which circled back alongside the hospital perimeter fence. A few hundred yards farther she drove into the cluster of rent-subsidized staff cottages adjoining the hospital complex.

She spent a frenetic half-hour finishing her packing, leaving out only what she would be wearing during the drive to New Orleans. She then moved to the kitchen and used white icing to cover the cake she had baked that morning. Selecting blue icing, she scrawled a happy message on top of the white, then stepped back and smiled down at her work.

* * *

After putting the cake in the refrigerator she hurried toward her bedroom, unbuttoning her uniform as she walked.

Fifteen minutes later she was through with her bath. Using a towel to rub her hair briskly, she stepped naked from the bathroom back into her bedroom.

She sensed the figure who moved from the wall behind her rather than heard it. Too late to run, her scream was cut off by the gloved hand covering her mouth.

Hard blows chopped repeatedly into the side of her neck and she went limp; her form slid down the intruder's body to the floor.

The figure stood a moment, breathing heavily. Then it stooped and gathered her in its arms, carrying her across the room and roughly depositing her backward onto the bed.

Reaching into its right pocket it removed a small dark vial which it placed on the bedside table. Fumbling in its left pocket it produced a contraceptive packet. Undressing quickly, the figure stripped naked except for its socks. Finally, it tore open the contraceptive packet and prepared itself.

Climbing onto the bed, it moved astride Judith's waist. Its knees sunk into the mattress on each side of her body, the figure's thighs hugged her ribs as it sat back on Judith's soft abdomen, resting a moment, staring with cold eyes. Then it moved its fingers to her heavy breasts, able to feel their warmth even through the thin surgical gloves covering its hands.

Judith moaned, her eyes slowly opening.

"Hello, bitch."

Even in her dazed condition she recognized the figure; her shock registered in the terrified expression which contorted her face. She tried to raise her arms to protect herself, but they were pinned against her sides by the clasping legs.

"No," she softly begged, tears starting to seep from her eyes. "Please, no. Please don't do this. Please."

The figure raised a clenched fist--

"No!"

--and slammed it hard into the side of Judith's face.

"Bitch!"

Another blow.

"Dirty bitch!"

Another blow.

"Dirty damn bitch!"

Then another, and another, and another, and...

* * *