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Another hallway ceiling, and then through the doors and back into the procedure room. David's hands hovered protectively around the protruding shard. The pain was rising through him in waves, deepening the lines of his face.

Snapping on a fresh pair of gloves, Carson turned to one of the nurses. "Another two mgs of morphine," he said.

"I don't think that's really necessary," David said.

The nurse paused, needle near the port of David's IV.

"Another two mgs of morphine," Carson repeated, ignoring David.

David smiled weakly. "Congratulations, Dr. Donalds," he said. "You are now acting like a physician."

After the second morphine injection, David felt only pressure when Carson gripped the shard firmly with two gloved hands. Had David been less drugged, the sucking sound it made upon being extracted would have been disagreeable.

He lay back, watching the walls slide around as the nurses irrigated him with sterile water. "Don't even think about ducking out on the sutures like you usually do, Dr. Donalds. You're going to tie every last one of them if it kills me. Which it might."

Carson had gotten through the deep tissue sutures and was working on the superficial ones when Yale and Dalton arrived.

David smiled at them sloppily.

"We're getting awfully tired of running around after you and picking up the pieces," Dalton said.

"Yes," David said, grimacing as Carson slipped with the needle. "I can imagine it's quite trying for you." He pointed into his open wound. "Try to approximate the edges better. There you go. Perfect." He glanced back up at Dalton, who was beginning to look a bit green. "Did you catch him?"

"We have thirty units sweeping the area, but he seems to have disappeared on us again," Yale said. "The Tibet protests had our traffic units tied up at the Federal Building, so it took over ten minutes to get a unit to the scene. The Captain's apoplectic, the Mayor's foaming at the mouth, and Clyde is gone, baby, gone."

Dalton hitched his pants, his grimace indicating that the gesture took considerable effort. "My guess is, he's still in Westwood, holed up somewhere. We've locked down the Village pretty well and are beating the bushes. Some of the boys are starting to go door-to-door. Oh, and we found your painting in his trunk. The mangled naked lady. Looks like she got a bit more mangled in transit."

"That's fine." David tried to grin. "It was my mother's. I've grown less trusting of her taste."

Carson continued to work on David's side industriously.

"You want to fill us in here, Evel Knievel?" Dalton said.

"I went out to Venice to show Clyde's photograph around some other places I thought he might have gone. Gas stations, 7-Elevens." David's head was reeling from the morphine, but he fought his thoughts back into focus. "I stopped by to take another look at the Pearson Home. I discovered he's been back there, hanging out in that scorched car in the lot. I found what I think are recently smoked cigarettes in the glove box, mashed together in twos like Clyde smokes them."

"The fucker was right there," Dalton said. "I don't believe it."

"You should be able to determine how old they are, right? The cigarette butts?"

"I'd imagine." Yale nodded at Dalton. "We'll get some SID guys over there."

"I think he was watching me there," David continued. "He sent me an emergency page-Diane's number-from the phone booth right around the corner from the Pearson Home. Then he followed me and tried to run me over the minute I got out of my car."

"From the looks of his vehicle, he's been hiding out in it the past few days," Yale said. "We're not sure where, but we found an unusual white gravel stuck in the tires' tread. Same type of rock he used to weight the sock he hit the guard with when he attacked Dr. Trace. Looks to be fake quartz."

Hurwitz, Gregg

Do No Harm (2002)

With the morphine, David's face felt loose. "There's a storage facility called Poppy's at Lincoln and Venice. It's got a white gravel lot. Look around there." Carson looked up at David reverently, but David gestured at his wound with his head. "Get back to work."

Dalton removed his notepad from a back pocket and, with a self-conscious glance at Yale, jotted down some notes.

Yale touched the end of his nose with a knuckle. "Are we gonna keep pretending you're gathering all this information yourself?"

"Yes."

Dalton broke the resultant pause. "You were wrong about him leaving all the DrainEze behind at the apartment. He kept a spare in the trunk."

"Well, he doesn't have it anymore," David said. "And at least no one got hurt."

Dalton's eyes traced over the gash in David's side. "Right."

"Clyde's been slowly deprived of his necessities," Yale said. "Pushed out of his apartment, forced to leave behind his car. He has no drugs, no alkali. That makes him more desperate. He's out of resources, so he'll have to steal or surface. A car, meds, some food, something, and we'll nab him then."

"Do you have men on those people I red-flagged?" David asked.