"Forensics go over him?"

"Yeah. Scraped his fingernails, vacuumed his clothes, the works." t

"He's beep Miranda'd?"

"About three times, in front of witnesses."

"And he hasn't asked for an attorney?"

"He hasn't even asked to take a pee. He don't speak and don't do a goddam thing you tell him to, but watch this."

The cop pulled Lom to his feet and he stood there without moving. He pushed him back into the chair and he stayed seated. He got Lom up on his feet again and pulled him forward. After a couple of stumbling steps he began to walk in a straight line. The cop let him go and he kept on walking, right into a wall. Then he stopped walking and stood with his face against the wall.

"Guy's a fucking robot."

Renny didn't argue. He had Kolarcik bring Father Ryan down from the doctors' lounge.

"This him?" he asked the priest when he arrived.

Father Ryan's gentle features twisted into a snarl.

"You filthy—!

He lunged for Lom's throat and it took everything Kolarcik and the other uniform had to hold him back. Lorn didn't even flinch.

The cop was right: Lorn was like a fucking robot.

"I'll put that down as a positive ID," Renny said. "In the meantime, Father, would you mind returning to the lounge?"

As the priest was led away, Renny turned to the uniform.

"Take our friend down to the emergency room and have them give him the once-over. I don't want anyone saying we didn't see to his medical needs while he was in custody."

He glanced at his watch. Two A.M. Christmas already. And he hadn't called Joanne yet. There'd be hell to pay for that.

He hurried to a phone.

The ER doc caught up to Renny in the hall about half an hour later.

"Hey, Lieutenant—"

"It's sergeant."

"Okay—Sergeant. Where the hell did you find that guy?"

This doc was young, in his thirties, had long dark hair, an earring on the right, and a neat beard. Looked like a rabbi. The name-tag on his white coat said A. STEIN, M.D.

"Lorn? We've got him for attempted murder. Maybe murder, too, if we ever find his wife, so… Why are you shaking your head?"

"There's no way your Mr. Lorn is going to stand trial for anything."

Renny's stomach gave a lurch at the note of finality in Stein's voice.

"He died?"

"Might as well have. He's as good as brain dead."

"Bullshit! He's faking it, acting like he's got that disease, cata—cata-something."

"Catatonia. But he's not catatonic. And he's not faking. You can't fake what he's got."

"So what's he got?"

Stein scratched his beard. "I'm not sure yet. But I'll tell you one thing: His neurological exam puts him on a level somewhere between an earthworm and a turnip."

"Thanks, Doc," Renny said acidly. "You've been a big help. Now find me a specialist, one who knows that a guy who walks around ain't brain dead. Maybe then I can get a real exam done."

Stein's reddening face told Renny he'd scored with that one. Stein grabbed him by the arm.

"Okay, wiseass. You come with me. I want to show you a few things."

Renny accompanied him to a curtained-off cubicle in a rear corner of the ER where Herbert Lom lay on a gurney. Alone.

"Where's Havens?"

"The cop? I sent him for coffee."

"You left a suspect here alone?" Renny said angrily.

"Mr. Lom's not going anywhere," Stein said. He pulled a penlight from his coat pocket and stepped around to the far side of the gurney. "Come on over here and take a look at this."

Renny stepped closer and looked down at Lom's impassive face.

"Look at his pupils. Look how wide they are." Stein flashed the beam of his penlight into each eye, back and forth, one and then the other. "See any change in them?"

The pupils didn't move a hair.

"Fixed and dilated," Stein said. "Now watch this."

He touched his finger to Lom's left eyeball. Renny flinched but Lom didn't. He didn't even blink.

"You don't need a medical degree to know that's not normal," Stein said. "Now check this out. Watch his eyes."

He grabbed Lom's head with both hands, one at the chin and one at the crown, and rotated it back and forth a few times, then moved it up and down like a nodding marionette. Lom's eyes never moved in his head; his gaze remained fixed straight ahead, staring whichever way he was turned.

"We call that 'doll's eyes.' It means his brain's in deep shit. He's got no higher brain function—nothing above the brain stem, if that much. He's a turnip."

"And he couldn't be faking it?" Renny said, although he already knew the answer.

"No way."

"How about drugs? What'd the blood tests show?"

Stein looked away. "We didn't do any."

"You mean to tell me you've got a guy you're calling brain dead and you haven't checked to see if he's full of H or blow or ice?"

"We couldn't get any blood out of him," Stein said, still looking away.

An icy-fingered hand began a slow walk down Renny's spine.

"Oh, shit. Not another one."

"You know about the kid too?" Stein said, looking at him now. "I guess everybody in the hospital's heard. What the hell's going on, Sergeant? Somebody brings in a bloodless mutilated kid who can't be anesthetized, and you cops bring in this… this zombie with no pulse, no blood pressure, no heartbeat, yet he sits, stands, and walks. I couldn't find any blood anywhere in him—I even stuck his femoral artery, or at least where I thought his femoral artery should be. We cathed his bladder for urine but wound up with a dry tap. This is getting scary."

"Maybe he's brain damaged," Renny said, shaking off the chill. He'd heard enough Twilight Zone bullshit for one night. "Can't you X-ray his head or something?"

Stein brightened.

"We can do better than that. We can get an MR—and we can get it stat."

Renny stayed with the inanimate, staring Lorn while Stein rushed off to set up the MR or whatever it was.

"You're not fooling me, pal," he whispered as he leaned over him. "I'm going to break up your little game and see that you pay for what you did to that kid."

Renny almost jumped back when Lom's mouth twisted into a toothy grin.

Renny was still shaky as he sat outside the Magnetic Resonance Imaging room. Lom's grin had lasted only an instant before collapsing back into the slack expression he'd worn all night, but that had been long enough to convince Renny that he had a supreme con artist on his hands here.

Which was just great. As if this case weren't already twisted enough, he had to have some Houdini-type trance artist as a prime suspect.

Stein came down the hall and dropped into the seat next to him. He was carrying a pair of X rays. He didn't look so good but he managed a smile.

"Standing guard?" Stein said.

"Actually, I'm sitting."

Renny had stationed himself here when Lom was wheeled in and he'd sit here until he was wheeled out again. There was only one way in or out of Magnetic Imaging and this was it. He was here to see to it personally that Lom didn't pull anything cute—like a disappearing act. Renny would have been inside, right next to the MR machine, except that they'd wanted him to remove anything that contained any iron and leave it outside. Something about warping the magnetic field or something. That meant stripping off his pistol and his badge; they'd even told him he'd have to leave his wallet outside because the field around the MR machine would scramble the magnetic strips on his credit cards.

Sounded like Star Trek stuff to Renny, but he wasn't going anywhere around Lom unless he was fully armed. So he'd camped outside.

"I'm telling you, Sergeant, Mr. Lom is not going to take a walk. Anywhere."

"And I'm telling you he grinned at me. He's playing you for a sucker, Doc."

"Uh-uh. That was a random muscle twitch."