Lewis Perdue - Perfect killer

You and me. Gabriel thought about this. He recognized the horrors of war, and he certainly knew the arrogant hypocrisy of the antimilitary, anti-any-war people who were willing to take advantage of freedoms that could be maintained only by the very force and establishment they defamed and despised.

You and me.

Gabriel encountered a new line here and worried about stepping across. He wished Braxton had never told him about this. The knowledge burned like acid, ticked like a bomb.

You and me.

The General had made good points about necessity. War was a messy ethical morass that usually rewarded action over contemplation.

You and me.

Gabriel considered resigning. Walking away before he learned any more. But he had nowhere to go, no career, no job. He had left his wife-the Army-and he had nothing, no one to rely on. The press would also have a field day with the resignation. It was something he would never live down; he'd live the rest of his life in shame.

You and me.

Perhaps the General was right. He had seen a lot more action, had needed to make more tough decisions, and had more experience weighing them all. You and me.

Gabriel knew he had to cross the line with the General. It would just take some time to come to grips with this new reality.

Relief arced through me in a great electrifying wave when I realized the blood on Jasmine's white silk blouse had come from someone else.

Jasmine didn't see me at first, as I studied her holding the hand of a woman with a severe head wound lying on the gurney From all the blood on Jasmine's blouse, it appeared to me she had cradled the wounded woman's head in her lap. My ears picked up the strong, calm tones of Jasmine's voice as she tried to reassure the woman on the gurney The woman blinked her eyes and looked to Jasmine for strength.

More police and EMTs came through the double doors bringing more casualties. One casualty had both hands cuffed to the gurney and his feet bound with shackles. The echoes of too many excited voices jammed the corridor. I followed Claiborne and Tyrone Freedman as they headed for one of the young men dripping blood onto the floor. I pressed the thumb and middle finger of my right hand to his neck and found no pulse.

"Quiet!" Clifford Scarborough's deep, authoritative voice resonated in the corridor. "Heads up, people!" Talking ceased as if a switch had been flipped. A sucking chest wound filled the brief acoustic vacuum with ragged wet noises; the woman next to Jasmine groaned quietly.

Scarborough looked around and asked for a triage roll call along with an injury assessment from each of the medical personnel surrounding the wounded. The presentations were quick, concise, professional, and, sadly, reflected the extensive practice all the medical personnel had, even those not formally assigned to the emergency room. I did not remember Greenwood as being a dangerous place and wondered when it had become so.

There were seven cases in all. When it came time, Tyrone Freedman spoke for our patient. When Jasmine's eyes met mine, her jaw dropped and her gaze widened. I offered her my best smile.

Scarborough and the triage nurse then directed patients and trauma teams into treatment bays.

"Dr. Stone," Scarborough called. "I'd like very much if you'd take a look at the head wound in C-2."

I doubted "Good Samaritan" laws would protect me for treating this woman. I had no license to practice medicine in the state of Mississippi and knew the trial lawyers who had the entire country by the gonads would surely sue the hell out of me for the slightest and most irrelevant of provocations regardless of whether I was volunteering to save this woman's life or not.

But a life was in the balance here. I'd worry about the lawyers later.

"Yessir," I said.

Scarborough gave me a smile, then turned to a rotund woman with short brown hair. "Helen, please find another nurse and assist Dr. Stone."

"Right away." Helen pulled another woman over and wheeled the gurney into the treatment area. When a policeman tried to pry Jasmine away, the woman on the gurney launched into terrified hysterics. Scarborough shook his head at the cop, then nodded at Jasmine.

"Don't worry," Jasmine said as she bent over the woman's head. "I won't leave you." The wounded woman calmed immediately. "And don't you worry. The best brain surgeon on the planet is going to take care of you." Jasmine turned her head toward me and smiled.

Scarborough glanced at Jasmine, then gave me a questioning look. I shrugged as we all made our way into the treatment area proper. "What happened?" I asked Jasmine as we made our way into the treatment bay.

"Lashonna-" She looked down at the woman on the gurney. "Lashonna's my paralegal, my right hand, my right arm. She's my main contact with Talmadge's lawyer. The guy won't talk to anyone else." Jasmine stopped and fixed my eyes with hers. "We're sunk without her. Anyway, she was outside the office taking a cigarette break with the others when the shooting started." Jasmine's voice carried a case-hardened toughness.

"…felt like a hammer," said Lashonna. Her voice slurred more than just moments before, and her gaze flickered like a bad television signal.

"Then I fell… hit head." She closed her eyes. I bent over and saw that above and to the right of her eye was a pronounced depression roughly shaped like an inverse pyramid.

"Did she hit her head on the corner of something?" I asked.

"Uh-huh. Brick planter."

"Nuts." I gently opened each of Lashonna's eyelids in turn and found her right pupil more dilated than the left.

"Okay, folks, let's get her relaxed and intubated," I said as I bent over Lashonna's head and moved her long hair around to get a look at her wounds. "Helen, what do you think about her weight?" The woman looked surprised to have someone ask her opinion.

"About fifty kilos."

I nodded. "What do you think about giving her about five milligrams of pancuronium for the endotrach and two milligrams of morphine sulfate in her IV?"

Helen smiled. "I'd say you were right on."

"Then let's do it."

She and the other nurse moved swiftly to sedate Lashonna.

While they prepared the anesthetics, I examined Lashonna and located a long, horizontal scalp laceration running through the hairline over her left eye and disappearing into a small, almost invisible hole above her ear. I felt Lashonna relax beneath my probing fingers as the drugs worked quickly. Jasmine stepped out of the way and stood with her back to the wall.

Helen announced that Lashonna's heart rate and blood pressure were steady; her breathing was steady. She was stable. For now.

When I looked up, Tyrone stood there with an endotracheal tube. "I came to watch the master work his magic," Tyrone said. "We called the other guy about a minute ago."

"I don't think you'll find any magic, but I'm happy to have help." I stepped back to let him do the work, "The gunshot was tangential and appears to have penetrated the cranial cavity. There is no exit wound."

Tyrone expertly worked the plastic airway tube into the woman's throat.

"Nice," I said quietly to him, then louder, "We'll need a CT to determine the extent of the projectile's damage, but I think the immediate issue is this parietotemporal injury." I looked at Tyrone, then pointed to the indentation in the woman's forehead. "Since her arrival, the patient has deteriorated from a group one prognosis to group two, which lowers her survival rate from about ninety percent to maybe sixty-six percent. I think her condition is clearly indicative of significant mesencephalic compression, likely from herniation of the ipsilateral uncus of the temporal lobe through the tentorium."

I looked at Tyrone. "Is there an OR ready?"