The antiseptic smell of the hospital was different from the smell of the archives. In the basement, the air tasted of death that had already settled—dust, paper, and forgotten things. Here, in the intensive care unit of St. Jude's, the air tasted of death that was still in the process of happening. It was sharp, chemical, and suffocating.
Leo sat on the edge of a plastic waiting room chair, his hand heavily bandaged. He had refused a hospital bed, settling for a tetanus shot and a lecture from a nurse he hadn't listened to. His eyes were sunken, two green stones set in a face of marble. He hadn't slept, but the collapse had forced a hard reset on his nervous system. He was vibrating with a low-level tremors that he hid by burying his hands in his jacket pockets.
Alex stood by the window, watching the rain lash against the reinforced glass. He held the digital voice recorder they had found in the archives. He hadn't played it yet. He was waiting for Leo to be present enough to hear it.
"A locked room, Alex," Leo said, his voice a dry friction. "The nurses checked the door at 3:00 AM. It was bolted from the inside. At 3:15 AM, the vitals monitor at the station went flat. When they kicked the door in, the room was empty. Just the patient. And the ball."
"It wasn't empty," Alex corrected. "The killer was there. We just haven't figured out how he became part of the furniture."
They moved toward Room 412. The hallway was cordoned off, but the usual bustle of the hospital continued just beyond the yellow tape. People were dying and being born three doors down while they prepared to inspect a slaughterhouse.
Inside the room, the scene was eerily clinical. Unlike the Sterling mansion, there were no signs of a struggle. No streamers, no shattered glass. The patient, a man in his late sixties who had been recovering from minor heart surgery, lay back against his pillows. His hands were crossed over his chest in a perfect, peaceful repose.
If it weren't for the jagged, ear-to-ear grin carved into his throat, he would have looked like he was napping.
Leo approached the bed, his boots squeaking on the linoleum. He looked at the incision. It was precise. This wasn't the work of a madman swinging a blade. This was the work of someone who knew exactly where the carotid was, someone who knew how to minimize the spray.
"He didn't stand in the blood this time," Leo noted.
Alex was looking at the bedside table. Nestled between a plastic cup of water and a box of tissues was the third Smileball. This one was painted with a deep, royal purple. The smile was smaller, almost modest.
"It's a mercy killing," Alex said. He didn't move toward the body. He stayed in the center of the room, his eyes scanning the ceiling tiles, the vent grates, the gap under the bed. "Look at the posture. The killer didn't just kill him; he tucked him in. He's mimicking the way a nurse or a doctor would handle a body after a 'peaceful' passing. He thinks he's providing a service."
"Some service," Leo growled. "Carving a man like a pumpkin isn't mercy."
"To the killer, the smile is the release," Alex said. "He believes the city is in pain. He's 'curing' it, one patient at a time. The Sterling kid was the 'fever.' This man was the 'stagnation.' He's follow a medical logic, Leo. A twisted one, but a logic nonetheless."
Leo pulled the voice recorder from Alex's hand. "Let's see what the 'doctor' has to say for himself."
They stepped into the small, private bathroom attached to the room to avoid the prying eyes of the CSU team entering the hall. Leo hit the play button.
For the first ten seconds, there was only the sound of a ventilator. Hiss. Click. Hiss. Click. The rhythmic breathing of a machine. Then, a voice emerged. It didn't sound like the raspy grit from the radio at the mansion. This was smooth, educated, and terrifyingly calm. It sounded like a man reading a bedtime story to a child he intended to never wake up.
"Leo," the voice said. "I watched you sleep in the archives. You looked so much like her when you were unconscious. The same vulnerability. The same inevitable drift toward the end. You spent forty-eight hours looking for a pattern in the past, but you're looking at the wrong map."
Leo's grip on the recorder tightened until his bandaged palm began to seep red through the white gauze.
The voice continued, dropping into a whisper that seemed to vibrate inside their skulls. "You think death is a tragedy, but that is your father's lie. Life is the tragedy. Life is the long, slow rot of a body that doesn't know it's already dead. I am not a murderer, Leo. I am a gardener. I am pulling the weeds so the soil can breathe again. Do you want to know what your mother's last thought was? It wasn't about you. It was the realization that the silence wasn't her enemy—it was her only friend. I simply gave her what she was too afraid to ask for."
The recording ended with a wet, clicking sound, like someone smacking their lips after a heavy meal.
Leo threw the recorder against the tiled wall. It didn't break; it just clattered into the sink. He leaned over the basin, splashing cold water onto his face, trying to wash away the sound of the man's voice.
"He was there," Leo choked out. "He was at the hospital when she died. He's not mimicking the '88 Slasher. He is the '88 Slasher. Or he was his apprentice."
"Leo, look at me," Alex said. He stepped into the small space, forcing Leo to face him. Alex's red eyes were intense, focused. "He's trying to make you insane. He wants you messing up because when you're pissed off, you don't notice the details. He's baiting you with your mother because he knows it's the only thing that breaks your logic."
"He said she wanted to die, Alex! He said the silence was her friend!"
"He's a liar," Alex said firmly. "He's a killer who needs a philosophy to justify his boredom. Don't give him the satisfaction of believing he's right."
Leo took a jagged breath and nodded. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and stepped back into the hospital room. He needed to be a detective again. Not the boy on the plastic chair.
"Who was the patient?" Leo asked a uniform officer entering the room. "We need a name, a history. Why him?"
The officer looked at his notepad. "Name is Arthur Gable. Retired. He was admitted three days ago for a routine valve replacement. No known enemies. No criminal record."
Alex was standing by the bed again. He wasn't looking at the body anymore. He was looking at the patient's chart hanging from the foot of the bed. His eyes moved rapidly, his calculating mind scanning the dates, the signatures of the attending physicians, the history of the man's care.
"Leo," Alex said. His voice had a different quality now. It wasn't the calm anchor. It was sharp, like a blade hitting bone.
"What? Did you find a connection?"
Alex didn't speak. He simply pointed to the 'Primary Care Physician' line at the top of the chart.
Leo leaned in. He read the name. Then he read it again. He felt the world tilt, the same way it had on the ladder in the archives.
The name wasn't Arthur Gable. That was the victim. The name of the doctor who had been overseeing Arthur Gable's care—the man who had been in and out of this 'locked' room for the last three days—was Dr. Silas Vane.
Leo's breath hitched. "Silas Vane."
The name was a ghost from his past. It was the name on the medical reports he had memorized as a child. It was the name on the death certificate he kept in a shoe box under his bed.
"Vane was the head of oncology twenty years ago," Leo whispered. "He was the one who told my father there was no hope. He was the one who turned off her machines."
"Where is Vane?" Leo shouted at the officer. "Find Silas Vane! Now!"
The officer looked confused. "Sir, Dr. Vane... he hasn't been seen since the shift change at midnight. We thought he was in the breakroom."
Leo didn't wait. He bolted out of the room, his bandaged hand throbbed in time with his heart. He ran toward the surgical wing, Alex right on his heels. They pushed through the double doors, past startled nurses and gurneys.
They reached the Chief of Surgery's office.
The door was slightly ajar. Leo kicked it open, his gun drawn.
The office was dark, illuminated only by the blue glow of a computer screen. The smell of vanilla frosting—the same smell from the Sterling mansion—hung heavy in the air.
At the desk sat a man in a white lab coat. His back was to them.
"Vane! Hands in the air! Don't move!" Leo screamed.
The chair slowly rotated.
It was Dr. Silas Vane. He was in his late seventies now, his hair a thin silver fringe. But he wasn't reaching for a weapon. He couldn't.
His hands were stapled to the armrests of the chair. A yellow rubber ball had been shoved into his open mouth, forced so far back that his jaw had unhinged. His eyes were wide, fixed in a permanent stare of agonizing realization.
Across his white lab coat, written in the same blood-mixed paint, was a single sentence:
THE DOCTOR IS OUT.
But that wasn't what stopped Leo's heart.
On the desk in front of the dead doctor lay a small, velvet-lined box. It was open. Inside, resting on a bed of white silk, was a second necklace—an exact, identical replica of the one currently hanging around Leo's neck.
Beside it was a note in elegant, surgical script: "One for the mother, one for the son. I'll be seeing you soon, Leo."
Leo reached out to touch the necklace, but Alex grabbed his wrist. "Leo, don't. Look at the wall."
Leo looked up. Behind the doctor's head, pinned to the corkboard where his diplomas used to hang, was a series of photographs. They weren't photos of the victims.
They were photos of Leo as a child, taken from inside his own house, through the windows of the silent home he thought was safe. And in every photo, a yellow ball was visible in the background, hidden in the shadows of his own bedroom. The killer hadn't just started this.
He had been there the whole time.