by CJ Murphy
Chance pulled at the Velcro straps around his torso, then grabbed the scissors Jax had brought with her and cut through the shoulder straps so the vest could be lifted off. She cut his uniform shirt off and found his white undershirt covered in blood. She leaned close to his ear and whispered. “Kenny, you fight. We’re with you. You keep fighting, dammit.”
“We need to look for an exit wound. Feel around his back, Chance.” Jax grabbed the stethoscope and put it to his chest, moving it all around. “I’ve got no breath sounds on that right side, and his trachea is deviated. That lung’s down.”
Chance looked up and saw Taylor running back to her. “Scene’s secure. No one around.” She grabbed her mic. “Comm Center. Scene is secure. Tell the ambulance to pull directly up to us.” Taylor knelt beside Chance. “How is he?”
Chance met her eyes and relayed all Taylor would need to know with just a look. “We’ve got to get him out of here. How far out is the helicopter?”
“I’ll find out.” Taylor got up and walked away.
Chance felt across Kenny’s back for any of the things she’d been taught in EMT class. “DCAPBTLS,” she murmured, as her hand found no deformities and no penetrations. The rest of the acronym relied on visual observations that would take rolling him over and light to see clearly. Currently, they were working with a streetlight and the headlights of the vehicles around them. She could hear the sound of a federal siren that indicated one of the ambulances had arrived. Sarah jumped from the cab and reached into the side door, grabbing a large trauma bag before running to them. More police units were arriving. Chance listened, as Taylor began to give orders and coordinate the incident.
Sarah slid in beside her and looked at Jax, who was trying to start a second line in his other arm. “Jax, what have we got?”
“Single gunshot under his right arm. I think it must have hit a lung. His pressure’s bottoming out. Chance did you find an exit wound?”
“No. I can’t really see anything back here. I didn’t feel one.”
Sarah pulled out her radio. “36 to Comm Center.”
“Go ahead, 36.”
“How far out is the chopper?”
“Three minutes. Landing zone is ready.”
She depressed her mic again. “Tell them to stay hot, we’re going to load and go.”
“Ten-four.”
“Jax, did you get that second line?” Sarah put her hand on the carotid artery point.
“Just did. I’ve got two large bore’s running. Good thing I’ve had a lot of practice starting these. His veins are crappy. We’ve got to go. His trach is deviated, and I don’t have anything to get that lung back up.”
A new voice broke into the mix, as Faith ran up to them. “I do. Let’s get him in the ambulance.” Faith looked at Jax. “What’s his condition?”
Jax relayed everything, as they loaded Kenny up on the cot. Chance tried to take in everything going on around her and assessed the current issues. Kenny was shot and the shooter was on the loose. Marty’s truck was there, but he was nowhere to be found. Two separate problems were somehow tied together, she needed to figure it out, yesterday. She looked down at her hands. They were covered in her officer’s blood. She’d sent him on a welfare check. Kenny was well trained and very dedicated to his job. She walked back to the area where they’d found him. There was no weapon on the ground, and she couldn’t remember seeing one in his holster. She looked over to see Kenny being loaded in the ambulance. Her current lover, her former lover, and her best friend were moving around in the box.
“Fuck!” Chance screamed at the insanity of everything and shut her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she jogged to the ambulance before they closed the door. She had a few things she needed to figure out. “Is his gun in his holster?”
No one acknowledged her, while they hooked Kenny up to monitors. Faith was doing something to his chest with a needle.
Chance yelled into the enclosed ambulance body, “Hey! Is his gun in his holster?”
Sarah’s eyes flashed with anger.
“It’s important. I need to know if he drew his weapon or not. If he was shot under the arm, I’m assuming he had them up. I need to know if they were up like this,” she formed a shooters stance, “or like this.” She moved both hands up in the air. “I don’t see his gun on the ground, and Tyson bit someone. Now look at his holster, please, and I’ll get the fuck out of your hair.”
Sarah shifted up the cot, felt around his gun belt and shook her head at Chance. “No gun.”
Chance slammed the ambulance door and walked back to Harley and Taylor. She grabbed a flashlight out of Taylor’s Yukon and went back to the blood-soaked ground. She trained the beam in front of her in a sweeping pattern. She found what she was looking for, then walked to Kenny’s vehicle. The ambulance took off, and Chance heard a radio transmission confirming the crew was headed to the landing zone.
Harley stepped to her side. “What are you thinking?”
Chance pointed to the area right at the driver’s door. “Those are Kenny’s boot prints. They’re his issued work boots. The tread pattern matches mine.” She walked over close to where Kenny had been. Most of the prints were obscured right around where they’d found him. She trailed the beam of her flashlight over to the right. “This set of prints comes from over there. I want them blocked off and casted.” She trailed the beam back to another area of the ground, just before the gravel started. There in the dirt, was the imprint of a weapon. She wasn’t sure if it was Kenny’s or whomever he’d pointed his weapon at. There were boot prints near the weapon’s imprint.
“I think Kenny pulled in on something, and he pulled his weapon.” Chance moved into a shooter’s stance with her hands in position. “I’m betting there was more than one of them. Someone from over there,” she pointed to her right, “shot him here.” She indicated the blood stain on the ground and pointed to herself where the bullet had entered Kenny’s body above his vest. “His weapon is gone; his holster is empty. We’ll have to check his hands for residue to see if he fired or not.”
Taylor walked up to them. “I didn’t want to say this with Jax in hearing distance. There’s some blood by Doc’s truck. Did you pick her up here or at her house when you headed to Fairmont?”
Chance spun, noticing for the first time that Jax’s dually was missing. “We left her truck here.” She walked quickly to the old Ford parked at the front of the clinic. She was careful to avoid disturbing anything near the truck. Footprints would be impossible to see in the gravel unless they were bloody. There on the ground, three feet from the door, was a line of blood and several cast-off drops. “Shit, what the hell happened here?”
Taylor shook her head and ran her hand through her sandy-blonde hair. “This is all speculation but, what if someone called Doc about an injured animal to get him here. Once he showed up, they struggled,” she pointed to the disturbed gravel, “and someone got injured. Doc’s gone, and so is Jax’s truck.”
“It’s all plausible, but from what Jax said, he doesn’t normally drive after dark. The porch light to their place wasn’t on. That tells me whatever call came in was before dark, and he intended to be back. Taylor, get in touch with the Comm Center and have them contact the phone company. See if there were any incoming calls this afternoon or this evening. We’ll have to check with Jax to see if anything valuable is missing from inside. Finding out what the hell he came back here for is priority one. Check Kenny’s dash cam see if there is anything on it. Get those boot prints protected right now before someone stumbles over them.” Her mind was racing.
“You got it, Sheriff.”
Harley stepped to her side. “We both need to wash up. Come over to my cruiser. I’ve got baby wipes and hand sanitizer.”
Chance looked at her hands and rubbed them together. The tacky residue made her sick. “Harley, whoever did this better hope they can grab a space shuttle off this planet, because that’s the only way they don’t end up in Kenny’s cuffs or dead.�
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Chapter Eighteen
JAX SPREAD HER FEET wide to absorb the movement of the ambulance. Faith temporarily relieved Kenny’s breathing issues. Now Jax sat in the airway position and controlled the tube in his throat while she squeezed an Ambu bag to deliver oxygen. Faith and Sarah were securing the intravenous lines she’d managed to start.
Faith looked up at Jax, admiration showing in the determined look on her face. “I don’t know how you got those started. His pressure was damn near nonexistent.”
“Twenty-five years of putting lines in animals of all sizes pays off. Some of the veins are so small, you can barely see them.”
Faith nodded. “I know some really good techs who couldn’t have gotten that stick. Getting those fluids in him pulled him out of that downward spiral. His BP is much better.” Faith looked through the cab to the front of the ambulance. “We’ve got about three minutes to the landing zone. I didn’t get a good look. How much blood was on the ground?”
“I’d say he lost at least a couple of liters. No telling how much he’s losing internally.” Jax rhythmically squeezed the bag.
“Sarah, we need to keep all his clothes, I’m sure Chance will want them as evidence. Anything in here we can use to bag them up in, so they won’t get thrown away?” Faith adjusted the flow of the running IV line.
Sarah reached into a compartment and pulled out a few clear plastic bags. “With these, they’ll be able to see what they are. I’m sure there will be a law enforcement presence over at the landing zone. I’ll pass them on to an officer.” She began gathering the remnants of the uniform they’d cut off Kenny.
They’d made quick work of checking for any hidden injuries. Kenny lay completely naked on the cot, covered by a sheet. Faith ran an EKG strip and attached it to the run form. “Can you remember what his vitals were on scene?” Faith was filling in the bottom part of the form.
Jax rattled off her findings, and Faith’s pen scratched along the sheet on the clipboard. “He’d had about 250 milliliters of lactated Ringer’s before you guys got there.”
They’d already changed out one bag halfway into the trip. The sheet beneath their patient was crimson, as blood continued to ooze out of the wound in his chest.
Sarah finished collecting the clothing and looked up. “We’re here.”
The next few moments were a blur, as Faith and Jax relayed everything they could to the flight crew, who began to package Kenny for the trip. Within minutes, Kenny was being loaded into the helicopter. One of the flight crew looked at Faith. “He’s pretty unstable, want to tag along?”
Faith nodded and climbed in, pulling on a helmet they handed her. She looked out at Jax. “Tell her I’ve got him.”
Jax nodded and ran back to the fire truck that sat a safe distance from the helicopter, Sarah right at her heels. She knew the takeoff would throw rocks and dirt. Once the massive machine lifted into the air and headed toward the hospital, they walked back to the ambulance.
“I need to give someone his clothes. I think I saw one of the troopers where we parked the ambulance,” Sarah said.
“Okay, I’ll wait for you there. Can you take me back to the scene so I can find Chance? Uncle Marty is still missing.”
“Of course. Let me take care of this and we’ll go.”
Jax looked at the ambulance. Long continuous tracks of blood covered the floor, where the gurney’s wheels had traveled through the pool. Packaging for the supplies they’d used lay strewn on the floor and seats. It looked like a war zone. The reality that she’d had a part in giving Kenny his best chances for survival gave her a chill. Her love would always be with the animals, but being a paramedic allowed her to touch the fringes of human medicine. Tonight, she’d made a difference for the two-legged kind.
She climbed in and gathered the discarded trash, making sure that none of it was evidence. She shoved it all into a biohazard bag. Sarah came back, pushing the gurney they’d transferred Kenny from. She loaded it herself, with the assistance of the motorized wheelbase. Once inside, she grabbed Jax’s hand.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“A little shell-shocked,” Jax admitted. “It’s been a while since I was this close and personal with a serious trauma. I haven’t ridden an ambulance in years. Most of the time, I handled field care on the rescuers from our group and acted as a tactical medic for the SWAT team. I can only hope I didn’t screw up.”
“Jax, you probably saved Kenny’s life. I’d ride the bus with you any day. You did great under pretty rough circumstances. Thank God for your jump bag. I’d like to get you signed up as a volunteer for us. You don’t necessarily have to do any ambulance duty. With the affiliation, any care you give would be under our medical license as well. I know you fall under the equine squad, with this, all your bases would be covered.”
“I’ll think about it. Right now, all I can focus on is the fact that Uncle Marty is gone, and I have no idea where he is.”
“Every law enforcement agent in the county is going to be looking for him. Even if they weren’t, you’ve got the very best officer on it, with the biggest reason to find him. She’ll do it for the woman she loves.”
Sarah stepped out to find the driver. Jax thought about the fact she’d worked with both Faith and Sarah to save Kenny’s life. There’d been no time to be awkward with Chance’s ex-lover. Faith was on a helicopter headed to the hospital, and the elephant in the room hadn’t had time to trumpet. The door opened and Sarah climbed back in to sit on the bench beside Jax.
“Let’s get you back to the scene. Faith will text me with any updates.”
“Okay.” Jax sat quietly and cleaned off her hands as best she could with antiseptic wipes. Sarah doused them with hand sanitizer. Jax would clean up at the clinic, if they’d let her. Part of her brain kept trying to come up with some idea of where her uncle might be. The other part was busy trying to figure out how best to comfort Chance over her injured deputy. Like any good commander, Chance would be taking the responsibility all on herself. She remembered watching Taylor in those hours after Chance’s injury and the juggling act she’d tried to perform. Chance had two major incidents going that were tied into one, an officer down and a missing person. Jax wanted to scream at her own feelings of guilt. Uncle Marty was covering for me. If I’d just waited until Saturday to get the truck, maybe none of this would have happened. Nope, had to get it today. The truth is, I wanted some time with Chance. My libido made me ask a retired man in his eighties to do my fucking job.
Sarah put a hand on her arm. “Hey, what’s going on in that head?”
Jax swiped her face with her hands and accidentally got the alcohol residue in her eyes. “Damn, that burns.”
“Do you need me to flush it?”
Jax held her eyes tightly together and forced them to water. “No, it’s okay. It’s mostly gone now.” As she clinched her eyes, she was able to hide some of the anguish in the tears brimming behind her lids. Sarah ran a comforting hand across her back.
“Chance will find him. You know she’ll move heaven and earth for you.”
The choking emotions Jax felt were like someone having their hands around her neck. She couldn’t speak and only nodded an acknowledgment. It felt like hours before they pulled back into the scene and exited to stand outside the crime-scene tape.
Chance came over, took Jax’s hand, and looked to Sarah. “How’s he doing?”
Sarah pulled out her phone. “Faith just texted that they’re rushing him to surgery. He’s lost a lot of blood. They took a quick X-ray, and the bullet is sitting close to a major artery.”
Jax watched, as Chance visibly tamped down the growing anger.
“Taylor’s going to head to his house, pick up his wife, and take her over to the hospital. I’ll get over there as soon as I can. We’ve got two sides of this investigation that need attention. For now, it’s all one. Harley and her troopers are going to head up Kenny’s shooting, while we concentrate on finding Doc Hendricks. We’ll be coordina
ting everything as a joint command.” She stopped and pulled Jax to her. “We’ll find him. Right now, I need you to come with me and see what, if anything, was taken from the clinic. Be careful and step only where I do. Sarah, keep me updated please and—”
Sarah held up a hand. “I know, tell Faith thanks. I’m going to see if Kristi can head to the hospital. She’s friends with Becky.”
Chance held up the tape, allowing Jax to duck under. “Taylor’s planning on picking up Penny. Becky might need a babysitter for the kids. Maybe Kristi could offer that instead.”
“Good idea. We’ll handle it. You two go on. We’ve got another crew taking county calls, so we can stay here in case you find Doc in need of medical attention.”
Jax grasped Sarah’s hand. “Thanks, Sarah.”
Chance escorted Jax to the clinic. “Be careful. Do you have your keys for the side door? We’re trying to avoid that front entrance where there are tracks we want to preserve.”
Jax reached for her keychain. “I do.” Once they were inside, she looked around.
Chance put a reassuring hand on her back. “I want you to pay close attention to anything that’s out of place. Let me know if something looks disturbed, that’s open and should be shut, or unlocked when it should be locked.”
Jax nodded and looked around. The pet-safety display was knocked over. She pointed that out to Chance. She closed her eyes for a second and tried to picture if she’d hit it when she ran in for supplies. “I can’t remember if I knocked that over running in for my jump bag or not.”
“Okay, anything else in here?”
Jax looked around trying to focus. “Lindsey’s office chair is overturned.”
Chance took out a notebook from her back pocket and made a notation. They walked along the edge of the room, careful to stay out of what would be the normal paths of travel, to catch anything out of place. They walked down the hallway toward the exam room. Chance stopped and pointed to an open door.
Jax saw it too. “That’s the pharmacy and sterile supply room. It shouldn’t be open. I didn’t go in there. I pulled things out of the small exam room.”