The Bedroom Killer

by Taylor Waters

  "Megan! Hold on!" John said.

  Andy pulled his radio again and shouted, "We have two officers shot. Detective Ash has been shot! We need paramedics for two wounded officers!" Even as he said the words, Andy knew he only needed help for one. There was no hope for Bell. He didn't have the slightest clue how he was going to explain it all. He wasn't sure himself what he'd just witnessed. All he knew for sure was that he'd just shot and killed the man he'd called his boss for the past six years. And as he thought about it, he found that he felt very little guilt, which in a way should have made him feel enormous guilt. But it would have to wait. John was hunched over Megan, a red bloom growing on her white blouse. She'd been hit—but by who? It all happened so fast. Andy was pretty sure it was from Bell's gun. To the best of his memory, Andy saw and heard two shots from Bell, to his…what?

  How many shots had he fired?

  He didn't know.

  He reached for his gun to check the bullets, but found nothing but shirt where his holster used to be.

  "We have to get her outside," John said as he stood, lifting Megan off the floor. "We have to get closer to the paramedics." John walked briskly, carrying Megan back the way they had all come in.

  Andy followed, turning back to the officers. "Tape it off," he shouted.

  "Where are you going?" the officer holding Andy's gun shouted.

  "With Detective Ash," said Andy, and then turned and passed John to clear a way out.

  Up ahead, Detective Kennedy was running toward them. At the same time, a female voice shouted, "Detective!" Andy and Kennedy turned in unison to see the officer holding the Bedroom Killer twenty feet behind them. Andy turned and ran four quick steps and yanked Isaac from her hands.

  "I got him," he said and quickly shoved Isaac at Kennedy, who grabbed him by the cuffed arms. Andy kept running, then stopped and yelled back at Kennedy, "He's Megan's collar. You got it? Megan's collar. Make sure everybody knows."

  Kennedy nodded his head, his mouth slightly agape. All he could utter was, "What happened?" But he got no answer.

  Andy kept moving, passing John and shouting, "Out of the way, make room! Get out of the way!" As though an ant hill had been kicked, blue uniforms were pouring in through the warehouse door. It seemed that all of the Greenwood Police force was there. It made sense. An 11-99 call went out.

  Officer down.

  There isn't a cop in the country that doesn't break every speeding law when they hear that call.

  CHAPTER 80

  "Is that Nurse Carrie?"

  The young paramedic, his name tag said Mike, nodded yes as he held the ambulance phone to his ear to relay Megan's condition to Greenwood Memorial's emergency room. The nearest ambulance had been parked four miles away, at a 7-Eleven. It took them a long time to find a way inside the rail yard, and even longer to work their way back to the warehouse. John—knowing that time meant everything—lifted Megan up, carried her outside, and down the long asphalt road between the warehouses to meet the ambulance. They quickly loaded her inside, and John jumped in with them. They threw a blood pressure wrap around Megan's left arm and took her pressure.

  Low.

  John called for fluids, and Mike the paramedic pierced Megan's right arm and hung a bag. And now the ambulance had left the rail yard and hit the city streets, trailed by a phalanx of cop cars, which quickly surrounded it, their lights flashing and sirens wailing.

  "Give it to me," John demanded with an outstretched hand. Mike didn't question it as he pushed the phone into John's hand and turned his focus back to Megan, lying bloodied and semiconscious on the gurney next to him.

  "Carrie!" John shouted, his eyes wide and his doctor's brain kicking in. "We've got one female, late thirties, gunshot wound to the upper chest, between the third and fourth rib. Bullet passed through, losing blood. BP ninety over fifty-five and dropping, pulse shallow, breathing labored. Possible hemothorax. IV fluids. ETA is…" John glanced at Mike.

  "Ten minutes," said Mike.

  John's heart sank. Ten minutes. Too long. He needed to get inside her now.

  "Ten minutes! Be ready," he said, then shoved the phone back to Mike. He turned back to look at Megan and noticed her pale, clammy skin. He brushed her hair back out of her eyes and whispered in her ear.

  "I'm here. I'll save you. Just hold on."

  He ripped her blouse open and once again turned back to the paramedic and thrust out his hand.

  "Shears!"

  Mike reached into his bag and produced a pair of trauma shears. John snatched them from his hand, and then grabbed and lifted Megan's bra at the center, swiftly cutting through the thick fabric between the cups without a hitch. The bra split in two and John pushed each half to one side, exposing Megan's breasts and revealing the half-inch bullet hole below her left breast created by Gerald’s Greenwood Police Department, Homicide Division, service-issued Glock. John remembered Bell shoving the same gun against his temple and how he'd wondered then if Bell was crazy.

  He had his answer.

  "You fucking prick," he said to no one, then turned again to Mike and said, "Gimme some iodine and something to clean away the blood."

  Mike quickly handed John dry gauze and another soaked in iodine. John swiped away the blood with the dry gauze and a new dribble of deep red blood immediately flowed over the edge of the hole and leaked down Megan's side. He then swiped the whole area again with the iodine. John shook his head.

  "This can't wait. Gimme a scalpel!"

  Mike pulled a scalpel from his kit and shoved it handle first toward John. John's hand clasped around it and he lowered the scalpel just above the bullet wound and said very calmly, "Cut me a one-foot length of quarter-inch tubing and find a container. We’re going to drain her chest cavity—and tell the driver to slow down, and have him notify me whenever we approach a dip in the road."

  Mike stared at John a brief moment, then stood and moved forward to relay the message to his driver. Seconds later the ambulance began to slow, and with the ambulance siren wailing outside, at a pitch much like a referee whistle, or an air horn, or possibly a child's scream, Dr. John Randall prepared to make an incision on a patient for the first time in over a year. A patient he loved very much. It would be his first medical procedure since the night he watched his son die, when all the love and surgical knowledge that he could possibly summon…just wasn't enough. He took a deep breath, exhaled, pressed the scalpel firmly against Megan's pallid skin at a forty-five degree angle, and cut her open.

  CHAPTER 81

  While John was carrying Megan to the ambulance and Andy was organizing a police escort, the abandoned warehouse went into lockdown as the scene of an officer-involved shooting, and Marcus Cash was sprinting down the back side of the building carrying his backpack, which contained his camera and the video card. The card contained the only video recording in existence of the capture of the man known as the Bedroom Killer, in addition to the officer-involved shootings of Homicide Detective Megan Ash by Detective Gerald Bell and of Detective Gerald Bell by Detective David Anderson.

  As he ran, Marcus envisioned Morry watching and listening to the video…and one word kept ringing in his head. Marcus let the word escape, as he ran with one arm held out from his body gripping the backpack tightly, the other swinging wildly as he spotted the hole under the fence, still at least a hundred feet away. But his excitement was matched by his fear, for as he drew closer to the hole, he also came closer to the end of the building and the gaggle of police officers shouting and scurrying just around that corner. When he reached the hole, he spoke the word even louder, knowing he was going to make it. He dropped to his butt, tossed his bag under the fence, threw his feet under, and scooted and shimmied on his back speaking the word over and over again, even as the sharp bottom tangle of the chain-link fence caught against his chest, ripping his shirt and cutting into him, he never stopped uttering that word.

  "Kabanga. Kabanga. Kabanga…"

  CHAPTER 82

  The ambulance w
as less than two miles from Greenwood Memorial. Carrie and Danny alerted the trauma team to prepare the surgery room. Danny called in Steve and had him deal with a dislocated right patella in Station Room Four—a twelve-year-old soccer player named Bud. Carrie pulled in Maggie to assist Steve and then told her that as soon as she finished, she was to come to Station One and be ready. They all knew who was coming in. They had been watching the live newscast in the waiting room lobby, joining the families waiting for their loved ones. All of them were riveted to the screen. They had watched the aerial helicopter shot showing scores of cop cars, the SWAT team van, and the news vans spread out inside and outside the train depot compound, bathed in the powerful bouncing spotlight beams of the hovering police helicopters.

  They listened as news announcer Sabrina Clark relayed details of the chase, the surrounding of the warehouse, and the fact that the police had the Bedroom Killer trapped inside. Word of the chase, capture, and police shooting spread quickly through text, email, cell phone, landline, and Twitter. And now, all of Greenwood knew that Dr. John Randall was inside the ambulance with Detective Megan Ash.

  Sabrina Clark said, "Again, it is reported that Detective Megan Ash of the Greenwood Homicide Division was shot earlier tonight during the apprehension of Isaac Graham, the suspected Bedroom Killer. It is unknown at this moment whether she is still alive. We can only presume that Dr. Randall is actively working to stabilize her."

  They had been following the ambulance from above, tracking it toward Greenwood Memorial. Sabrina Clark continued, recounting how Dr. Randall, the former Bedroom Killer suspect, was last seen the previous morning when Channel 9 showed him escorting the reportedly exhausted Detective Ash from the scene of the Bedroom Killer's latest murder.

  Carrie and Danny knew John's diagnosis. A hemothorax. Blood in the chest cavity. And they knew the procedure that needed to be performed before the ambulance arrived if her life were to be saved. John would have to cut into Detective Ash. Between the ribs. Through tough muscle and thick chest cavity wall. Insert a tube. Let the blood drain out. Relieving pressure on the lungs. If not, her blood would accumulate in her chest cavity, pushing her lungs toward her back and denying them room to expand and fill with life-giving oxygen. Detective Ash would slowly suffocate…drown in her own blood. Danny and Carrie each wondered if it was happening.

  The procedure:

  Chest Tube Placement

  Partly Open Thoracotomy

  If John wasn't performing the procedure at that very moment, Detective Ash would certainly be dead on arrival.

  CHAPTER 83

  John cut into Megan while she was still conscious and it would hurt like hell. She tried to cry out, but her shallow pulse and the building pressure in her chest cavity gave her little room to breathe. Her cry was little more than a squeak. But John heard it, and said a silent I'm sorry to Megan while he continued cutting. Except for the moving ambulance, John was surprised at the familiar feel of his movements. The scalpel felt native. Not foreign. Like a familiar pen that fits perfectly into one's hand and writes smoothly—with little effort.

  "Intersection!" the driver yelled back. Mike turned from where the voice came and stared back at John. While the ambulance slowed to a crawl he saw John pull the scalpel out of the cut and tilt the blade upward as the ambulance slowly rolled into the swale built to catch and direct rain water where the two streets met. The ambulance bounced on heavy springs, rose up into the middle of the intersection, and then dipped down again into the next swale. It rose again on the other side where the road flattened out, and the ambulance once again picked up speed. John lowered the scalpel and continued cutting.

  "You have that tubing?" John asked without raising his head.

  "Yes," said Mike. "One-foot-long, quarter-inch-diameter. You want it now?"

  "Not yet. Keep it in your left hand. When I say now, you shove it at me."

  Mike gripped the tubing and held it tightly in his left hand, his eyes focused on John, watching him cut into the detective's chest.

  "Greenwood Emergency," a female voice came from the radio. It was Carrie.

  Mike grabbed the phone and answered, "Go ahead Greenwood."

  When he lifted the handset, the radio went from speaker to headset and John could not hear what was being said. He didn't need to and didn't want to. He knew what he had to do and he was already doing it. He was down to the cavity wall, a sinewy fabric of tissue, thick and hard, and he was cutting into it. He didn't want to overhear because he knew why the call was coming. They weren't sure anything was being done to help Detective Ash. They weren't sure of his—mental capacity. But they didn't know that John had already made a decision. And just like the decision he'd made to kill himself, he didn't weigh the pros and cons. It came quick, with no forethought. But the decision didn't come after the sound of a child's scream. It came after the sound of a gunshot and the look of stark terror in Megan's eyes—the eyes he'd come to love, as she lay on the warehouse floor. The decision became final the moment he looked down and saw her white blouse turn red. That was the moment he told himself…Not again.

  Blood suddenly shot up from Megan's chest, hitting John on his nose. John's right hand reached out toward Mike…

  "Now!" shouted John.

  CHAPTER 84

  Marcus drove through Greenwood, speaking in short bursts, his Bluetooth stuck to his ear.

  "Yes, yes…the whole thing, Morry. Yes, the confrontation, the gunshots, every damn thing. It's on video. It's not great—wasn't a lot of light, but I think it will—what? How? I'll explain when I get there. Oh, and get Jackie, I'm gonna need her help downloading and cleaning it up. She's good at that stuff. Yes, sir. See you then."

  Marcus stabbed a finger to his ear to close the call and swung the steering wheel hard to the right, cutting the corner tight, catching his right rear tire on the curb, bouncing the back of the car into the air, and causing the backpack, which was sitting in the passenger seat, to jump a foot up into the air. He sucked air into his lungs as he caught the pack and brought it back down to the seat. He immediately slowed down.

  ***

  Across town, Karen Sharp was fixing a pork chop dinner, when she heard Katie scream from the living room.

  "Moooooom!"

  She dropped her tongs and ran around the corner and into the exact room where John, Paulette, and Trevor used to play Chutes and Ladders before bedtime. Katie stood there now, in front of the television, remote in her hand and a mixture of fear and happiness across her face.

  "Mom, they caught him! They caught him!" Katie yelled as she began to cry.

  Karen gasped, reached for Katie, pulled her into her arms, and held her tightly. "Turn it up. Turn it up," she said.

  Katie unwrapped her arms from her mother's waist, pointed the remote at the TV like a laser, and pounded the volume button with her thumb. The volume jumped louder until the voice of Sabrina Clark boomed from the speakers.

  "…is turning into the hospital parking lot now. Most certainly the hospital staff has been notified of the detective's condition by phone or radio from inside the ambulance."

  "What detective?" Karen asked.

  "I don't know," Katie replied.

  Sabrina said, "The police are clearing the way, the bystanders have completely filled the lot. The ambulance almost can't make it to the emergency entrance. Okay, it's coming to a stop now."

  Karen sat down on the edge of the coffee table, and Katie sat on the floor beside her. Katie placed her hand on her mother's knee and Karen took it in her hand and squeezed. They watched as the hospital staff reached the back of the ambulance, opened the doors, and immediately pulled a gurney out.

  "And there's Detective Megan Ash…"

  "Oh no!" said Karen.

  The camera zoomed in and caught a figure stepping out of the ambulance.

  "…and there's Dr. John Randall who was reportedly with the detective when she was shot during the apprehension of…Isaac…the man named Isaac Graham who, at this point,
is highly considered the Bedroom Killer."

  "Oh good Lord! Please, don't let her die."

  Katie stood and pulled her mother up and they hugged each other tight.

  "They caught him, Mommy. They finally caught him!" Katie burst into tears again and hugged her mother even tighter than before. Karen held her only daughter and they shared the moment of relief, knowing their nightmare was coming to an end.

  A moment later Karen broke away, wiped her eyes, and sniffed her nose and said, "Get your shoes on. We're going to the hospital."

  CHAPTER 85

  Danny and Carrie had watched the event unfold on television and now stood side by side as the ambulance pulled to a stop. Bystanders were arriving on foot from every direction, like kids pushing their way through a concert parking lot before the show. They all wanted a glimpse of the Bedroom Killer show. The crowd of bystanders began cheering and yelling, Bless You Detective and Thank You, Detective, as Megan was lowered out of the ambulance. John dropped to the ground and grabbed Danny.

  "We have to find the bleeder."

  The chest tube placement had worked. The excess blood that had accumulated within Megan's chest cavity had drained out. Her breathing was better, but her blood pressure was still dropping. John ran alongside the gurney and shouted over the din, "Who's in for surgery?"

  Danny shouted back, "Keating."

  Bill Keating, thought John. His nerves were shot and he was relieved to hear that Keating was the man in surgery today. In any other situation, it would further irritate him. His poker-playing colleague who won, some say cheated, a two thousand dollar pot. But not now. Keating was a damn good trauma surgeon—the best. John wouldn't want it any other way. He needed the best for Megan. The cheers rose to a crescendo as they approached the double doors and settled into a loud hum as the doors closed behind them.