Catherine Coulter - Backfire

Sherlock asked Officer Mancusso, “What about Hughes and Milton? How badly are they hit?”

Officer Jay Mancusso said, “Deputy Milton’s head wound looked bad, but they always do. I heard one of the doctors say it was only a scalp wound, though. Eddie Hughes-he got it in the arm, through and through. The orderly who got shot in the leg went right off to the ER.”

A nurse, still looking on, called out, “Doug was pressing on his leg wound himself. You’d better believe he was hollering for the trauma team. He’ll be all right.”

Jay said, “Both Eddie and I got two shots in the Kevlar, but we’re okay. We didn’t get hammered like Deputy Barbieri.”

Savich said, “Eve, tell us what else you remember.”

“Jumping on Ramsey, covering him as best I could, screaming at the orderly to take cover. There was so much gunfire after a second or two, most of it from our guys, shooting wildly upward through the thick smoke, and then there wasn’t any more return fire. The shooter was gone.”

Sherlock patted her arm. “Yeah, he got out, but guess what? I’ve got some good news I haven’t told you-one of you wounded him. I saw some blood drops on the top of the elevator car, bloody handprints on the shaft ladder, and a couple of drops on the roof and in the stairway. Then he must have managed to get himself bandaged enough so he didn’t spill anymore. That means we can spot him on the security cameras, see how badly he’s hurt, but best of all, we’ll have his DNA.” She cocked her head to one side. “Or Sue’s DNA.”

“Excellent,” Savich said. “At last we’ve got a break.”

Harry cupped his elbow around Eve’s arm and said without looking at her, “You think you got any broken ribs?”

“They feel like they’re in splinters. Don’t worry, I’ll get it checked out.” She knew she wouldn’t be up for smelling the roses for the next couple of days. Bruises would cover her back. She prayed no ribs were cracked. She wondered who’d managed to nail the shooter. DNA. Dillon was right, at last they’d caught a break.

The last people Eve wanted to see here came running up in the next moment. She walked toward them, away from the elevator, and said quickly, “Emma, Molly, Ramsey’s all right. The doctors took him back to his new room. He wasn’t hurt, I swear. He’s okay.”

Emma clung to her mother and swallowed, but she couldn’t stop shaking. Neither could Molly. Emma stared at Eve and the drifting dirty smoke, and then she looked toward the elevator. “How can everything be okay, Aunt Eve? I can see the blood.”

“I’m not lying to you, Emma.”

Emma still stared into the bloody elevator.

One very old man called out from a doorway, “Is Judge Dredd dead?”

Emma turned on him. “Don’t you say such a thing! My daddy’s fine.”

Eve said, “Some people were hurt, Emma, but not your dad. I promise.”

They looked up to see Dr. Kardak walking toward them. He said, more to Emma and Molly than to them, “Judge Hunt is well. We’re all a little shaken, but we’ve checked him out thoroughly, and he wasn’t injured. We’re settling him in his new room.” He gestured toward Molly. “I suggest, Mrs. Hunt, that you and Emma stay here a while longer before you come back.

“As for you, Deputy Barbieri, I understand you were injured. You need to come with me.”

Once they stood in an empty hospital room, Dr. Kardak said to Eve, “Take off the vest, Deputy Barbieri. Let’s see the damage.”

When Eve and Dr. Kardak came out a few minutes later, three pairs of eyes fastened on them. The doctor said, “She won’t be having much fun for a couple of days; there’s going to be a lot of bruising from the impacts. I didn’t feel any cracked ribs, and that’s good. We’re going to get an X-ray to be sure.” He pulled a pad out of his coat pocket and wrote a pain prescription for her. A nurse trotted over and handed her a pill. “Take this, it’ll help.” She closed her hand over Eve’s wrist. “Thank you for saving Judge Hunt.”

San Francisco General Hospital

Hospital security chief Ron Martinez walked into the small security office off the hospital lobby, where Savich, Sherlock, Harry, and Eve sat in folding chairs waiting for him. He loaded a disk into the office computer and almost immediately paused it and pointed. “We think this is our guy, based on when and where he left, but we can’t be sure. I had the tech start this at the beginning, where we think he came in, because, unfortunately, that’s most of what we got. He walks straight to the two elevators on the right, no hesitation, like he knows exactly where he’s going. Less attention from anyone at the reception desk that way.”

Martinez reversed the disk and paused it where the camera got a close-up.

They stared at a man of indeterminate age wearing loose pants, sneakers, a loose navy Windbreaker, dark sunglasses, and a Giants ball cap.

“Bingo,” Harry said. “He fits the description of the guy we’ve been looking for.”

“He’s well disguised,” Eve said. “He knows you’re getting him on film. He’s not even trying to avoid the cameras, and I’ll bet he knows where every one of them is. He looks middle-aged to me. What do you think?”

“Maybe older,” Harry said. “Thin, maybe about five-foot-nine. I can’t see his face or his hair with the sunglasses and the pulled-down cap, but we get a glimpse there of part of his neck-does his neck look saggy to anyone?”

“An elderly assassin?” Martinez’s eyebrow shot up.

Savich said quietly, “Listen, it might even be a woman.”

Martinez’s other thick black eyebrow shot up. “A woman? In a shoot-out like that?”

Savich said, “Since we’ve got DNA, we’ll soon know everything about him or her, including the time of birth. That is, if he’s in the system.”

“Or about Sue,” Eve said.

Chief Martinez pressed the play button again. “Sorry, guys, but we don’t have cameras on the roof of the hospital where he accessed the elevators.” He fast-forwarded. “The next time we have him on camera, he’s exiting the west stairwell into the lobby and waltzing out of the hospital. This is within a couple of minutes of the shooting.” A new camera angle showed the shooter walking quickly out of one of the hospital entrances on the west side.

“But look at this. He’s holding his arm. That’s got to be where they hit him.”

Sherlock said, “Yes, and the Windbreaker covers any blood.”

Chief Martinez told them the security people, SFPD officers, and deputy marshals were showing hard copies of the photos of the shooter to everyone who might have seen him, questioning the garage attendants, even people on the street. It was plain to see no one held out much hope of that happening, but on the other hand, it was worth a try.

They left Martinez singing a happier tune about what the DNA might show, and all returned to Ramsey’s room. They passed a deputy marshal and an SFPD officer sitting on each side of the door, talking about Deputy Marshal Allen Milton’s head wound. “The bullet slicked along the side of his head. Allen’s blaming his head, said if it wasn’t so big he could have tucked it inside his vest where it belonged.”

The big corner room-the Taj-looked north toward the city. It was blessedly quiet now, with only six people and Ramsey. Molly and Emma were standing on either side of Ramsey’s bed, not speaking, merely holding his hands, staring down at him. Two deputy marshals had positions by the windows, and Dr. Kardak and a nurse were speaking in low voices, reviewing Ramsey’s chart.