The head rested on the steering wheel, along with the left hand, while the right rested in his lap. Blood had sprayed all over the inside. The man was still breathing, which surprised the officer. Clearly a shotgun blast, it had obliterated the metal and fiberglass of the Scout’s body and hit the victim’s head, neck, and upper back. There were several small holes in the exposed skin, and these were oozing blood. The wound looked as horrible as any he had seen on the street or in the Marine Corps, and yet the man was alive. That was sufficiently amazing that Monroe decided to leave his first-aid kit closed. There would be an ambulance here in minutes, and he decided that any action he took was as likely to make things worse as better. Monroe held the kit under his right hand like a book, looking at the victim with the frustration of a man of action to whom action was denied. At least the poor bastard was unconscious.
Who was he? Monroe looked at the slumped form and decided that he could extricate the wallet. The officer switched the first-aid kit to his left hand and reached in for the wallet pocket with his right. Unsurprisingly, it was empty, but his touch had elicited a reaction. The body moved a little, and that wasn’t good. He moved his hand to steady it, but then the head moved, too, and he knew that the head had better stay still, and so his hand automatically and wrongly touched it. Something rubbed against something else, and a cry of pain echoed across the dark, wet street before the body went slack again.
‘Shit!’ Monroe looked at the blood on his fingertips and unconsciously rubbed it off on his blue uniform trousers. Just then he heard the banshee-wail of a Fire Department ambulance approaching from the east, and the officer whispered a quiet prayer of thanks that people who knew what they were doing would shortly relieve him of this problem.
The ambulance turned the corner a few seconds later. The large, boxy, red-and-white vehicle halted just past the radio car, and its two occupants came at once to the officer.
‘What d’we got.’ Strangely, it didn’t come out like a question. The senior fireman-paramedic hardly needed to ask in any case. In this part of town at this time of night, it wouldn’t be a traffic accident. It would be ‘penetrating trauma’ in the dry lexicon of his profession. ‘Jesus!’
The other crewman was already moving back to the ambulance when another police car arrived on the scene.
‘What gives?’ the watch supervisor asked.
‘Shotgun, close range, and the guy’s still alive!’ Monroe reported.
‘I don’t like the neck hits,’ the first ambulance guy observed tersely.
‘Collar?’ the other paramedic called from an equipment bay.
‘Yeah, if he moves his head … damn.’ The senior firefighter placed his hands on the victim’s head to secure it in place.
‘ID?’ the sergeant asked.
‘No wallet. I haven’t had a chance to look around yet.’
‘Did you run the tags?’
Monroe nodded. ‘Called ’em in; it takes a little while.’
The sergeant played his flashlight on the inside of the car to help the firemen. A lot of blood, otherwise empty. Some kind of cooler in the backseat. ‘What else?’ he asked Monroe.
‘The block was empty when I got here.’ Monroe checked his watch. ‘Eleven minutes ago.’ Both officers stood back to give the paramedics room to work.
‘You ever seen him before?’
‘No, Sarge.’
‘Check the sidewalks.’
‘Right.’ Monroe started quartering the area around the car.
‘I wonder what this was all about,’ the sergeant asked nobody in particular. Looking at the body and all the blood, his next thought was that they might never find out. So many crimes committed in this area were never really solved. That was not something pleasing to the sergeant. He looked at the paramedics. ‘How is he, Mike?’
‘Damned near bled out, Bert. Definite shotgun,’ the man answered, affixing the cervical collar. ‘A bunch of pellets in the neck, some near the spine. I don’t like this at all.’
‘Where you taking him?’ the police sergeant asked. ‘University’s full up,’ the junior paramedic advised. ‘Bus accident on the Beltway. We have to take him to Hopkins.’
‘That’s an extra ten minutes.’ Mike swore. ‘You drive, Phil, tell them we have a major trauma and we need a neurosurgeon standing by.’
‘You got it.’ Both men lifted him onto the gurney. The body reacted to the movement, and the two police officers – three more radio cars had just arrived – helped hold him in place while the firefighters applied restraints.
‘You’re a real sick puppy, my friend, but we’ll have you in the hospital real quick now,’ Phil told the body, which might or might not still be alive enough to hear the words. ‘Time to roll, Mike.’
They loaded the body in the back of the ambulance. Mike Eaton, the senior paramedic, was already setting up an IV bottle of blood-expanders. Getting the intravenous line was difficult with the man face down, but he managed it just as the ambulance started moving. The sixteen-minute trip to Johns Hopkins Hospital was occupied with taking vital signs – the blood pressure was perilously low – and doing some preliminary paperwork.
Who are you? Eaton asked silently. Good physical shape, he noted, twenty-six or -seven. Odd for a probable drug user. They guy would have looked pretty tough standing up, but not now. Now he was more like a large, sleeping child, mouth open, drawing oxygen from the clear plastic mask, breathing shallowly and too slowly for Baton’s comfort.
‘Speed it up,’ he called to the driver, Phil Marconi.
‘Roads are pretty wet, Mike, doing my best.’
‘Come on, Phil, you wops are supposed to drive crazy!’
‘But we don’t drink like you guys,’ came the laughing reply. ‘I just called ahead, they got a neck-cutter standing by. Quiet night at Hopkins, they’re all ready for us.’
‘Good,’ Eaton responded quietly. He looked at his shooting victim. It often got lonely and a little spooky in the back of an ambulance, and that made him glad for the otherwise nerve-grating wail of the electronic siren. Blood dripped off the gurney down to the floor of the vehicle; the drops traveled around on the metal floor, as though they had a life entirely of their own. It was something you never got used to.
‘Two minutes,’ Marconi said over his shoulder. Eaton moved to the back of the compartment, ready to open the door. Presently he felt the ambulance turn, stop, then back up quickly before stopping again. The rear doors were yanked open before Eaton could reach for them.
‘Yeow!’ the ER resident observed. ‘Okay, folks, we’re taking him into Three.’ Two burly orderlies pulled the gurney out while Eaton disconnected the IV bottle from the overhead hook and carried it beside the moving cart.
‘Trouble at University?’ the resident asked.
‘Bus accident,’ Marconi reported, arriving at his side.
‘Better off here anyway. Jesus, what did he back into?’ The doctor bent down to inspect the wound as they moved. ‘Must be a hundred pellets in there!’
‘Wait till you see the neck,’ Eaton told him.
‘Shit…’ the resident breathed.
They wheeled him into the capacious emergency room, selecting a cubicle in the corner. The five men moved the victim from the gurney to a treatment table, and the medical team went to work. Another physician was standing by, along with a pair of nurses.
The resident, Cliff Severn, reached around delicately to remove the cervical collar after making sure the head was secured by sandbags. It took only one look.
‘Possible spine,’ he announced at once. ‘But first we have to replace blood volume.’ He rattled off a series of orders. While the nurses got two more IVs started, Severn took the patient’s shoes off and ran a sharp metal instrument across the sole of his left foot. The foot moved. Okay, there was no immediate nerve damage. Good news. A few more sticks on the legs also got reactions. Remarkable. While that was happening, a nurse took blood for the usual battery of tests. Severn scarcely had to look as his well-trained crew did their separate jobs. What appeared to be a flurry of activity was more like the movement of a football backfield, the end product of months of diligent practice.
‘Where the hell’s neuro?’ Severn asked the ceiling.
‘Right here!’ a voice answered.
Severn looked up. ‘Oh – Professor Rosen.’
The greeting stopped there. Sam Rosen was not in a good mood, as the resident saw at once. It had been a twenty-hour day for the professor already. What ought to have been a six-hour procedure had only begun a marathon effort to save the life of an elderly woman who’d fallen down a flight of stairs, an effort that had ended unsuccessfully less than an hour before. He ought to have saved her, Sam was telling himself, still not sure what had gone wrong. He was grateful rather than angry about this extension to a hellish day. Maybe he could win this one.