by Randall Wood
—THIRTY-TWO—
The state of New York holds 65,198 inmates in its prisons.
Approximately 43,682 are repeat offenders.
“...and the final report is a total of nine people wounded in yesterday’s bombing attack on a Ku Klux Klan leader at a rally here in Memphis. The leader of the Klan, Thomas R. Curtis, was giving a speech, when a bomb hidden in a speaker went off on the stage. Initial police statements claim that the bomb was homemade in nature, and contained nails to maximize its killing power. Seven members of Tennessee White Pride were also injured in the blast, as well as one police officer, all with minor injuries. Mr. Curtis is listed in serious but stable condition today at a local hospital. In other news, the city’s proposal to widen Parkland Lane is up for a vote...”
Sam thumbed the off button in disgust. He was pissed. His homemade bomb had failed, and the bastard was still alive. He had been watching the news all night and again this morning. The pictures were of the scene, with police crawling all over the place, several of them bagging nails, others standing on ladders to pick them out of the overhead roof. All that shrapnel and he had missed! The skinheads that were injured had not concerned him. They had made their decision just as Curtis had. Screw ’em. The cop’s injury was minor, he’d be all right.
“Goddammit!” Sam yelled. What was he going to do now? He paced around the small hotel room. He had switched to a more upscale room on the opposite side of town from the first. He had hit traffic as he drove across town, and the radios announced roadblocks at various points leading out of the city. An additional night’s stay seemed like a good idea. He needed the rest anyway. After forcing himself to bed last night, he had woke this morning to watch the morning news reports. Now he was just fighting the ache in his gut that seemed to be more persistent. It was time to call Paul. He rooted around in his bag till he located the cell phones. Selecting the right one, he dialed. Paul answered on the first ring.
“About time, how are things going?”
“Shitty, and for once I mean it. Can you believe this?”
“Slow down. I’m doing shitty, too, by the way.”
“Sorry,” Sam answered. “I forgot. Just pisses me off. I had two sticks and two boxes of nails in that thing. Tamped it with some plate steel and fused it from the middle. It should have been more than enough. I don’t know what happened.”
“From the looks of it on the TV, the majority of it went into the ceiling. Did you aim it right and make sure it didn’t move after you placed it?”
Sam thought about it for a minute as he paced. Could the bomb have shifted? The wrench he had used to prop it up hadn’t been taped in place. Maybe it fell and the bomb was more flat than when he had placed it? It was a possibility, he had to admit.
“I don’t know, maybe. All I know now is the guy is still alive in a hospital room somewhere, and they have roadblocks set up around the city.”
“Those won’t last another day, and then you can leave. You’re gonna be late for your appointment again if you don’t get out of there by tomorrow.”
Sam was silent for a moment while he thought about what he was going to say next. There was no way around it.
“Jack’s here.”
“I know. I saw him on the TV,” Paul replied.
“He was here yesterday. I saw him in the crowd not twenty meters away.”
“What? How did he know what your target was?”
“I don’t know. He can’t know it’s me or you wouldn’t have answered the phone when I called. My face would be on television and my fifteen minutes will have begun. Jack’s a smart guy. Somehow he made it happen.”
Paul’s mind raced as he took in the information. This had to be more than a coincidence. How the hell did they know? They had been very careful up to now. Everything set up beforehand. Multiple identities. Code phrases. Communications.
Paul pulled the phone from his ear and looked at it in horror. A pre-paid cell from a major chain, they had always bought them in pairs. Could they possibly be tracing them?
“Okay, listen. From now on no names on the phones, no talk about what you just did or where you’re going next. Keep the same passwords and above all, keep the conversations under a minute. Got all that? I’m hanging up.”
“What?...All right, I’ll check in later.”
The phone went dead. Sam looked at it while he thought about what Paul had said. Reaching the same possibilities, he thumbed the button to turn it off.
* * *
“Gut check answer, are we gonna get anything from this?”
Sydney looked up at Jack from her position on the ground. Jack had been pacing around the scene all morning while she and her team collected evidence with the help of the local crew. It was a slow process, and Jack was getting impatient.
“I don’t know, Jack. It’s too early to answer that.”
“Come on, Syd. What do you think based on what we have?” Jack spread his arms to encompass the whole area.
She sighed and then frowned at him. She hated being put on the spot like that. Pulling a stray hair out of her face, she looked around. The cell phone remains had already been traced to a popular model sold everywhere. The explosive was yet undetermined, but her nose said it was dynamite. The packaging was fiberglass. All very common.
“Well?” Jack pressed.
“Slim,” was her answer. Jack didn’t like it. He turned away for a moment and then came back.
“We’re leaving. Where are Larry and Dave?”
“Still at the hospital, I guess.”
“Find Eric, and let’s go see how they’re doing.” He turned and stalked away.
“He’s not happy,” Eric said as he approached.
“No, he’s not, and Jack doesn’t get mad,” Sydney answered as she watched Jack duck under the tape and storm off to his car. “We were close. Now we have to catch up again. That’s what’s got him mad.”
“Are we leaving?”
“Yeah. Make sure you bag and tag everything before you leave. I’ll meet you at the car. Don’t forget the equipment.”
“Okay. Gimme ten minutes.”
* * *
Sam watched the news again and the story was repeated every half hour. It was like they were taunting him. The young blond with the perfectly coiffed hair delivered the news, good or bad, with her perky smile, never missing a beat. He turned the box off again. He was getting restless. He still had the stuff in the storage unit. Toying with the idea for a moment, he got up and grabbed his jacket off the chair. The keys were in his pocket.
A twenty minute drive later and Sam was in the parking garage across from the hospital. It was dangerous, hospitals were full of cameras, but Sam just couldn’t leave it alone. He watched as the ambulances pulled up to the emergency room bay and unloaded their patients. Other hospital personnel also used the entrance, all types: nurses, maintenance, clerical. It just happened to be the closest entrance to the parking garage, and also a way to avoid going through the crowded emergency room waiting room. He pulled the powerful spotting scope to his eye and watched another person punch in the code on the entrance pad. He couldn’t see the actual numbers, but he got a good idea of where their fingers were going.
“They can’t be that stupid.” He shook his head in amazement. Was this worth a try? He returned to his car and changed into his coveralls and hat. He checked the items in his tool box before setting out for the ambulance entrance.
As he exited the parking garage, he noticed a higher volume of foot traffic. Shift change was evidently occurring. He adjusted his stride to arrive at the door alone. He eyeballed the keyboard before punching in the numbers.
9-1-1.
The door opened with a hiss and he walked inside without trouble. He ignored the bustling emergency room and followed the signs till he was clear. Rounding the corner, he found a bank of service elevators. Punching the down button, he was rewarded with a ding as the door opened. He found himself all alone in the oversized car.
Selecting the button for the sub-basement, he was quietly on his way. When the doors opened, he exited into a rather plain tiled hallway. Bins of linen lined the wall, and the smell of bleach was in the air. Following it to the left, he was rewarded with the sound of the hospital’s large washing machines. He paused at the door and listened to several women having a loud conversation over the noise. He jumped when a bin appeared at the door being pushed by a small woman. Since he had no option, Sam waited till she saw him.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t see around this thing,” she said.
“That’s all right. I’m a little lost. Can you tell me where the locker room is?”
“Oh, you’re way off, honey. Up one floor and all the way across. It’s next to the pool. Just follow the signs and the chlorine smell. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem. Good luck.” She shoved the bin in line with all the others before returning to the humid room.
Sam eyeballed the bin. Towels. He looked in the second one, the same. The third one held scrubs. Sam pawed through them until he had a set of extra-large. They were quickly stuck in the tool box, and he was on his way.
He located a flight of stairs and was up one floor. The signs said Faculty Gym, with a corresponding arrow. Sam did as instructed. He passed a pharmacy with cameras outside the door, keeping his head down so the hat would shield his features as he passed. His nose indicated a kitchen of some sort, and he soon saw it through a window. Once past that, he detected the faint smell of chlorine. Following it, he soon found the pool, with a separate entrance to the men’s locker room. Entering it, he found row after row of lockers, some with people changing, but most empty. Following the rows, he eventually came to the bathroom facilities. Here he made a show of checking the toilets and sinks. Some personnel came and went. Sam listened to a large group of men changing their clothes a row over. Not so much to them, but to the locker doors. He only heard two slams out of a group of six voices. They soon strode by on their way to the pool. Sam picked up the tool box and walked past the row. Several lockers were open with clothing hanging off the doors and on the benches. He continued on to the next row, and seeing it empty, quickly returned to the first. A quick search gave him three choices. He took the badge with the picture that resembled him the most. Fixing it to his lapel, he reversed it so the front didn’t show. It was something he noticed his nurses did when he was in the hospital. When he asked why, he was told that some patients were hostile, especially in the ER, and the nurses hid their names so as not to be singled out and targeted. He doubted he’d be asked by anyone to show his badge. What he really wanted was the barcode on the side of it. He looked like a maintenance man and they were everywhere. With the badge he should have access to every coded entry. He left the locker room and traveled the hallways, getting familiar with the layout of the building, and testing his pass on a couple of doors. At an information booth, he snagged a map from the stand, and then found a bathroom in which to consult it. He quickly located the ICU and all the exits from it. Quietly as possible, he changed his clothes until he wore the scrubs underneath the coveralls.
Now with a plan and the building layout committed to memory, he exited the bathroom and headed for the stairs. After four flights, he was on the ICU floor. He looked through the window to see a U-shaped row of rooms with glass walls. A nurse’s station sat in the center with several monitors hanging from the ceiling. Sam was surprised to see only two people in the room. He knew there was a nursing shortage, but this was not what he expected. A third nurse appeared to grab a chart, and just as quickly left. After watching for ten minutes, Sam concluded that they alone were the night shift. He squinted to read the names of the patients on the doors. The third one read “Curtis” with his doctor’s name written below it. The glass door was half open and the curtain was pulled.
How was he going to pull this off?
* * *
Jack sat across from Larry in the hospital cafeteria. Curtis was still under sedation and it would be some time before he was able to talk. Larry had tried with the younger Curtis, but had been told to go to hell in so many words. Sydney and Eric were off on a search for Mountain Dew. Something they had discovered they both had an affinity for.
“What now Larry? I’m out of ideas.”
“Well, I’m not sure. We can look at some of the names we came up with. Hope for some forensics. Can you pull that magic trick you did again?”
“Not for a couple of days,” was all Jack could say. Larry took the answer without question. They sat in silence.
“Why do you think he chose Curtis?” Larry asked. “I mean, the man was tried and found not guilty once. Then he was re-tried and found guilty in the civil suit. He hasn’t really escaped justice as our shooter said in the letter. As far as I know he’s never even pulled the trigger himself for any of the crimes he’s been tied to. I’m not sure I understand why our guy put him on his death list.”
“That’s the problem with vigilantism. Some targets are black and white to most people, some aren’t. I’m sure nobody is going to shed a tear for Ping, but pretty soon they get very debatable. Like Curtis here. Is he a criminal? Probably. His file has him tied to drug gangs and weapons runners. But has he actually committed a crime? His hate speech may boil your blood when you hear it, but when you get right down to it, it’s just that, it’s a speech, just one man making his personal feelings heard in a very public way. Like it or not, in this country we don’t jail people for that. Protecting his right to do so is one of the things we safeguard the most.”
Larry thought about it for a moment before replying. “You think the system is broken like he says?”
“I don’t know what he means by broken. It all really has to do with his view of how it’s working. You have to remember, we are some of the most under-policed people in the world. The average American spends his whole life with little or no contact with the police outside of the TSA or maybe a traffic ticket. Most see the police as something they like to have around, yet they avoid contact with us at all cost. It’s like we’re the enemy right up until they need us. It’s that silence that lets the men like Curtis get as far as they do. Nobody calls them out until it gets to the point that it affects them. If the people are complacent while bad things happen right in front of them, then who’s to blame then?”
“We have hate crime legislation now. Isn’t that a step in the right direction?”
“I was never really in favor of it, to tell you the truth. So we can tack on a few years if it fits the court’s definition of a hate crime. I don’t think it really does anything to deter the crime in the first place. A murder is a murder. A crime is a crime. The judge should be able to decide what the person gets at sentencing. I guess I just don’t like the way we are now adding jail time based on what someone was thinking. Do you think our shooter has committed a hate crime yet?”
Larry shrugged. “Hard to say really. More like a reverse hate crime.”
“Exactly. I was talking with Dr. Wong about it. He stressed that we understand that the shooter’s goal is to make a statement about the justice system, not to deliver justice to those who he thinks need it. I’m trying to think like our shooter and it’s becoming more difficult. Who deserves to die? It doesn’t matter what I think, it only matters what the shooter thinks.”
“The perils of the vigilante.” Larry sighed.
“You can say that again. Think along these lines, the public seems to be split on the subject don’t they? If this produces a bunch of copycats we’re heading for real trouble.”
“What if he turns out to be a cop?” Larry ventured.
“Even worse. The half that stayed with us may jump over to the other side.”
They both nursed their coffee while they contemplated such an outcome. Jack broke it with another insight.
“He’s getting bolder,” Jack stated.
“Yes, he is,” Larry echoed.
“Overconfidence, or just plain
balls?”
“Don’t know. There’s a third possibility, too, you know.”
“What’s that?”
“Maybe he just doesn’t care anymore,” Larry offered.
“Don’t go there. My day’s been bad enough.”
* * *
After another ten minutes, Sam had his idea. He used his pass card and entered the room, striding purposefully up to the desk. The nurse was writing furiously in a chart with what looked like others stacked up next to her. She glanced up at his presence.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I’m here to check the calibration of your oxygen ports, should only take a few minutes,” Sam explained. He held his breath. Would she buy it? It sounded good to him.
“All right, just put a mask on when you go into six. His immune system is compromised. Make sure you glove up, too.” She was already back into her paperwork.
Sam looked around until he saw boxes of gloves hanging on the wall. He grabbed a pair of large and slipped them on. He walked past room three on his way back to one and could see Curtis inside, his head, face and chest heavily bandaged. His eyes were closed. Sam entered the first room and found an elderly man on a ventilator. His heart rate was erratic and his color was gray. Sam opened the tool box and pulled out the Ruger Paul had made silent a few weeks ago and stuck it inside his coveralls. After making some noise he hoped was appropriate, he exited the room and entered two. The nurse didn’t even look up. Inside he found another elderly male with a large surgical scar across his abdomen. His color was poor also, but he appeared to have a regular heart rate on the monitor and was sleeping comfortably. Sam traced the wires from his chest up to the monitor. He read the screen carefully and found the alarm icon. It was green. Sam knew from his own hospital stays that if one of the wires was disconnected, the alarm would sound. He saw a mask lying on the counter and put it on. With the tool box in one hand, he quickly yanked two wires off with the other. There was a pause, and then a loud beeping could be heard out at the nurse’s desk. Sam exited the room to see the two nurses moving in his direction.