Paul Cleave - Joe Victim

“That ambulance shouldn’t be there,” Dr. Hearse says. “What is-” he starts, then stops when he notices Hutton is holding a gun.

“Stay here,” Schroder says to the doctor, then skirts around the cars and, staying low, makes his way over to Hutton. “What’s the situation?”

“Not sure. But it has to be the one, right? I’ve called it in. AOS is ten minutes away.”

Schroder doesn’t think they need to wait. The Armed Offenders Squad is going to arrive only to find an empty ambulance. Still, they need to be cautious. “We can’t wait that long.”

“I know,” Hutton says. “That’s why I called you. I’m going to go in.”

Schroder nods. “And if somebody comes out? What do you want me to do? Shoot them with my fingers?”

“Why don’t you use Kent’s gun? I saw you take it.”

Schroder nods. Fair point.

They approach the ambulance. It’s clear there’s nobody in the front. Hutton stands at the back and gives Schroder the go signal, then Schroder rests Kent’s gun in his sling, uses his good arm to pull the door open, and at the same time he jumps back and grabs Kent’s gun. Hutton points his gun inside and a moment later lowers it. Schroder puts Kent’s back into his pocket then calls out to Dr. Hearse, who comes running over. He looks inside the ambulance.

“Jesus,” he says. “That’s Trish. And where. . Oh, shit, Jimmy,” he says, looking at the second body, then climbing in.

The back of the ambulance is a mess. There are supplies littered over the floor. Blood. A nurse’s outfit. The man has been stripped down to his underwear. Hearse checks Trish for a pulse, then quickly turns toward Schroder.

“She’s alive,” he says. “Get some people out here,” he says, and pulls off his security tag and hands it to Hutton. “Quickly,” he adds, and Hutton runs toward the doors.

Schroder looks at the clothes. Melissa showed up in nurse scrubs, then changed into the clothes the naked victim was wearing. Hearse checks for a pulse on the second victim, then puts the side of his face against the man’s chest, then checks for a pulse again. “It’s weak,” he says. “What the hell happened here?”

“This was used in the escape,” Schroder says. Dressed in the nurse scrubs, Melissa would have found it easy to be given a ride. Then she probably pulled a gun on them. She could have ordered the scrubs from any work-uniform shop online. Or she got them from a nurse. If she got them from a nurse, then she might have gotten ID cards to open the doors to the hospital too.

“Help me with the gurney,” Hearse says, and between them they get it onto the ground, Schroder using his only good arm. Then they get the woman loaded onto it. There is blood around her face and her hair is matted in it. Blunt force trauma to the head. Schroder has seen enough of it to diagnose the condition and knows if she survives there can be some serious ongoing problems. The second paramedic has no signs of violence at all. He looks like he’s just fallen asleep. Hearse starts pushing the woman toward the door they came out of. He’s almost there when it’s thrown open and four doctors come running into the parking lot. Two of them take the gurney with Trish, and the other two come back to the ambulance with Hearse and another gurney. The second victim is loaded onto it, then for a moment it’s just Hearse and Schroder.

“You’re looking for the person who did this, aren’t you,” Hearse says.

“Yes.”

Hearse nods. “I can’t do this for you, but you see that plastic drawer up there?” he asks, nodding toward a whole stack of small drawers along the inside of the ambulance. “The one with the green handle?”

“I see it.”

“You’ll find something for your arm in there. It’ll give you a few hours. You won’t feel much, but you won’t feel any pain either.”

He chases after his colleagues and Schroder climbs into the ambulance and opens the drawer with the green handle. There are half a dozen syringes in there-all identical, and all loaded with some type of clear fluid. He uses his teeth to pull off the protective lid, then plunges the needle into his arm. He doesn’t know what’s inside it, but by the time he puts the cap back on the needle and tosses the empty syringe onto the floor, the pain starts to fade. He takes a second syringe and drops it into his pocket. He figures what the hell, and takes a third too. He steps out of the back just as Hutton arrives.

“I’ve canceled the call to AOS,” he says, “but forensics are on their way.”

“Look at that,” Schroder says, pointing to a blood patch on the wall.

“It’s not from the paramedic,” Hutton says. “Doesn’t fit in with the other blood patterns.”

“It’s from Joe. He sat down here and leaned against the wall. There are plenty of blood drops leaving the ambulance, and here too,” he says, pointing at the ground. “Melissa switched vehicles.”

“She probably had one here ready rather than stealing one,” Hutton says.

“Exactly. Quicker and easier,” Schroder says. He looks up around the parking lot. “No cameras,” he says.

Hutton shakes his head. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he says. “It’s part of the upgrade. Cameras are getting installed in all the entranceways, and soon in the parking lot too.”

“Soon doesn’t help us.”

“No, it doesn’t, but the camera at the entrance there might,” Hutton says, and points toward the public entrance. “It’s designed to see people coming and going, but it does point toward the parking lot. Maybe if we’re lucky. .”

Lucky. He wonders how that word is defined. Joe was lucky because he escaped. Schroder was lucky he got out of the car before it exploded. So that means there has to be a balance. For each piece of good luck there has to be bad luck. That’s the thing about Christchurch. Good luck for Joe and Melissa, bad luck for Rebecca and Jack and for Raphael too.

“Let’s check it out.”

“Listen, Carl-” Hutton starts.

“Hey, look, this is a hospital, and this is a broken arm,” he says, “which means I’m going back in there anyway. You’re going in there too-no reason we can’t both go the same way.”

“Carl-”

“You’ve let me come this far, Wilson. No reason to stop now. All I’m asking is to look at the security footage. That’s all. Even that may lead to nothing. Then I’ll get my arm fixed, and then I’ll come into the station and maybe I can help.”

A patrol car pulls into the parking lot. It comes to a stop next to them. Hutton goes over and talks to them about securing the ambulance, then the two of them head back into the hospital, circling their way around to the front and going into the main entrance. Hutton shows his badge to a woman behind a reception counter and tells her they need to talk to somebody about the security cameras. The woman looks excited. She’s putting two and two together and coming up with an answer that suggests all the commotion on the other side of the hospital is linked to something these two cops are looking for. She nods, tells them it’ll be just a minute, then makes a phone call. They say nothing to each other as they watch her, as if their focus can make her speed things along. It works because it takes only half the predicted time. She tells them somebody is on their way.

That somebody is Bevan Middleton-no relation to Joe Middleton-so he tells them as he shakes Hutton’s hand and then stares at Schroder’s broken arm. As he leads them to the security office he tells them he wanted to apply for the police force, but because he’s color-blind he wasn’t allowed. “I thought it was all about the thin blue line,” he tells them. “I thought police work was going to be about shades of gray, but it’s the reds and greens that fucked me.”