by JA Schneider
He gave the nurse Jill’s number. Stepped back as MacIntyre switched places with him to finish suturing.
Ruthie stood just out of the surgical field with the phone to her ear. “I’m ringing,” she said worriedly. “Dr. Raney doesn’t answer.”
David moved completely out of the surgical field. Yanked off his gloves, mask and surgical gown, and took his phone back.
“I’ll keep trying,” he said.
Until this moment, his overburdened mind had kept him from realizing where Jill might be...had to be. “Kill you and THAT FREAKAZOID KID!” He heard it loud and clear; prayed that he was right, and pressed re-dial.
Then his phone beeped.
“We’ve found her,” Pappas said. “Cops and Security outside the newborns said they saw her go in.”
David gave Pappas Jill’s number for them to patch through. “I just called,” he said haggardly. “She doesn’t answer. Maybe can’t answer.”
“We’re coming,” Pappas said tightly.
David headed for the O.R. double doors.
Akers was getting frantic. “Will you please take my goddamn gun?” he practically howled. “I gotta stay to make the pelvic cast.”
David shook his head. “Can’t. Not where I’m going.”
He gave another order to the nurse, who made a quick trip to a cabinet, and crossed back to hand him something.
“Fingers crossed,” he told the others gravely, and left.
39
The eyes behind the painted-white circles burned with hatred. Through Jessie’s cylinder the distorted, scrub-suited figure breathed fast. Moved a green shoulder out a little; Jill saw one of his shoes, a white Adidas with black stripes.
Then her phone vibrated.
What to do? She struggled with the urge to reach into her pocket and answer. What if Mask got enraged and shoved over Jessie’s cylinder? Dashed it to pieces, killed Jessie? No! She couldn’t answer!
At least the whooshing ventilators had muffled her phone’s soft buzz.
The voice behind the mask changed a little. Now cooed, “So? Don’t you think I was clever? To get here first?”
Jill’s mind unfroze, just a little. Enough to realize that she was standing behind isolettes; he couldn’t see below her waist. Stealthily she moved her trembling hand; flicked her phone back on. In case…please...anyone was listening...
Her phone buzzed softly again.
“Well?” commanded the voice impatiently. “Don’t you think I’m clever?”
Standing among the isolettes put the babies in greater danger, Jill realized. She quickly stepped away from them, out into the front aisle and closer to the horrid-masked figure.
“So? Clever or not, bitch?”
The monster wanted praise.
Try, try to play him, even though her mind careened sickly.
Jill gambled. “Yes and no,” she breathed hoarsely. Her heart banged so hard she was afraid he could hear it.
Angry silence. The scrub-suited figure shifted behind the cylinder. She was maybe five feet away, heard his breathing getting heavy, faster.
“Yes and no because of two reasons,” she continued, in desperation finding herself suddenly able to lie like crazy.
“First, you’ve trapped yourself in here, which is a pity - just when you had all that money coming to you.”
Startled: “What money?” The distorted figure stilled.
“The drug money. Over two hundred thousand.” She’d just picked a number; made a guess about drugs since so much pointed that way. Even if she was wrong, money would appeal, wouldn’t it? “We found the cash, then felt guilty,” she said, shaking. “It’s yours if you just leave these babies alone.”
Silence stretched for long seconds. Then: “Lying bitch. It was more.”
She blinked, surprised and newly frantic. Now what?
“That’s all we found,” she improvised desperately. “Anyway, you were searching in the wrong place.”
Surprise or anger? A sharp intake of breath behind the mask suddenly erupted into…a cough. Deep, junky-sounding. Phlegm starting in your lungs, Psycho? The bug had gotten a serious head start. Psycho’s mask would cover his breathing, thank God. Can’t have those bugs in here.
Hell, he’s as good as dead, this coward creep! Rage surged as Jill stepped closer. This maniac, who had horribly brutalized three defenseless women, now hid behind a defenseless two-pound preemie in a room of defenseless little preemies!
She wanted to kill him; felt irrational enough to wonder how she could. Forget the Mace with him behind that mask. She was cold with terror, but forced herself on. Time to play her second card.
“The second reason you weren’t so clever is because you’re feeling sick, right?” she said more strongly. Swallowed hard. “Fever, weakness, chest pain getting worse? You probably subdued your cough with cough suppressant, lots of codeine, right? But it’s not working anymore, because you’ve got a really bad, galloping bug, resistant to antibiotics.”
The eyes in the mask wavered, looked torn only briefly, then changed and glared murderously at her.
“Lying fame whores, both of you,” the voice said venomously. Then coughed again. “You destroyed everything we worked for, just so you could get the headlines, the money. You’re the ones who deserve to die! You first!”
Another cough, deeper still…while Jill gave a start: Did he just say ‘we?’
He heaved himself out, lunged for her.
In the blur of that instant she caught and straightened Jessie’s cylinder as it started to topple. That made it easy for him to yank her around, and press his gun to her head.
40
“Well? Don’t you think I’m clever?”
They all listened. David, hunching with a SWAT team just outside, his phone to his ear; Fallon, the lead SWAT cop who’d been patched through to Jill’s phone, others assuming positions. Now they knew where the assailant was. More were still coming from other posts.
David watched them, in their helmets and black flak jackets, crouched quietly on both sides of the dimmed corridor. They had arrived in seconds and now waited, their fingers tense on their triggers.
“Problem is,” he told Fallon. “You can’t go in. What are you gonna do? Storm a preemie nursery?”
“I know,” Fallon whispered tightly. “This is bad.”
David looked past the SWAT bunch down the hall to Pappas, Brand, and uniformed cops with them. Every face said the same: This is bad. This is the worst, it’s never happened. They looked stoically frantic, every one of them.
Jill’s voice came to them again.
“You’ve trapped yourself in here. A pity. Just when you had all that money coming to you.”
Fallon said low, “She’s playing him.”
“Yeah, for how long?” David hunched into his phone. In just his scrubs, inched closer to the newborn nursery door. He looked so vulnerable.
“It’s also a pity because you’re feeling sick, right? Fever, weakness, chest pain getting worse? Fatal unless treated.”
Jill, he thought, his mind careening. With a nauseating chill he knew the guy must have a gun. He’d use it on Jill if he saw the uniforms; maybe…oh God…shoot up the nursery too. The cops knew that. Hell, the maniac just wanted to kill the two of them, so how at least to get alone to her? To him? Try his hand alone at confronting the maniac?
Fallon nudged him; again pushed a flak jacket at him. “Put it on,” he urged.
David shook his head. “No,” he said, as quietly and simply as he had the first time. The assault gear looked too cop, too provoking. Maybe if he just…what?
“Listen,” he told Fallon. “If you have to come in, pull your visor down.” He looked back at the others. “All of you,” he whispered hoarsely. “Visors down.”
“Will do.” Fallon’s hand unconsciously went up to his visor.
And David’s hand went up to the newborn door.
“Stop, you’re a dead man!” Fallon pleaded low.
Da
vid said nothing, his lips tight. He started to push the door open.
“You’re the ones who deserve to die! YOU FIRST!”
The others heard too, and stiffened for assault.
David was up and through the door. “Stay,” he told Fallon. “No guns in there.”
Except – no! - for the automatic he saw pressed to Jill’s temple. He’d torn past the newborns into the preemie nursery. Stopped dead when he saw Jill, her eyes wide with terror, an exotic-masked scrub gripping her in a chokehold.
Delight filled the eyes behind their painted-white Os. “Well, lookee here!” the voice said. “Nice to see you too! I was afraid I’d have to shoot up the hospital looking for you.”
Mask glanced down for a second. “And what have we here? My, what a pretty bracelet,” he mocked, ripping Jill’s Velcro-strap Mace from her wrist and tossing it. “Now where was I?” The leering eyes found David again. “I’m just tickled you dropped in! Ready to die? Get your goddamn head blown off?”
David said nothing. Jill’s eyes squeezed halfway shut, her body rigid beneath her captor’s grip. Preemies whimpered. Jessie was awake, looking round-eyed in his cylinder.
David went to the cylinder, tapped and smiled in reassuringly. Jessie’s tiny features relaxed. Keeping his hand on the cylinder, David turned to the mask, and let his instincts lead.
“So, are you happy?” he asked. “You’ve got all three of us together. Does it make your day? I hope so. With that bug making you sicker, you don’t have many days left.” He’d spoken slowly, a soft, deliberate calm to his voice. Whimpering stopped in the isolettes.
Outside, cops listened.
“Jesus,” said a cop who’d moved close to Fallon. His trigger finger itched on his MP5.
Fallon groaned, “A shooter in a preemie nursery. With newborns next door.”
“We can’t do anything,” said the other cop.
“We may have to. Wait. Listen.”
Inside, Mask coughed. Over Jill, who squirmed her head away; seemed trying to hold her breath. The white-circled eyes sneered. “If that’s bug’s so bad, she’s dead too.”
David cocked his head as if thinking about it. “Probably not,” he said. “We appreciate your wearing a mask, plus we’ve found one antibiotic that seems to work.” He paused. “Sound interesting to you? Fair warning, it’s a horrible death. Makes you less and less able to breathe. Can you imagine? Not being able to inhale?”
Mask coughed again, bending paroxysmally this time but keeping his grip and his gun on Jill, who struggled under his contortions.
“He…said…‘we!’” she managed, sounding half strangled.
Mask said, “Yeah,” thinner-voiced, his grip tightening on Jill. “There are two of us. This hospital’s toast.”
David tried to keep his voice even. “How nice for your pal,” he said. “You die and he gets to keep the money and the headlines. If he shoots up the hospital, you won’t even get mentioned. Talk about someone else spoiling your work.”
Something changed in the room. Mask’s elbow lowered. His gun’s pressure eased a bit on Jill’s temple.
“There are cops outside, aren’t there?” His voice sounded sicker.
“Yes,” David said, clearly struggling for control. This had to be played just right. “It does seem unfair, losing all the credit.” He shook his head. “If I were in your shoes I’d feel the same.”
Silence. Ventilators whooshed. Mask’s breathing labored.
“That drug really works?” Almost plaintive.
“Yes,” David said, dragging the word out slowly. “If you catch it early enough.”
“How can I keep the money and get better?”
Deeply insane. Delusional. But David played it straight.
“First,” he said, “Let go of Dr. Raney. The medical part is ours. Legally, I don’t know. Leave these babies and just come out. Tell the cops who your shooter pal is – quick - and you can maybe plead yourself down.”
Outside, hearing that, Fallon breathed, “He’s good. This just could work…for here.”
“Maybe,” said the cop next to him, his phone in one hand and his gun in the other. “Irrational, y’know. They flip.”
Further down the hall, Pappas and Brand and other cops also listened, grim-faced. A second shooter? They had their phones ready, already crackling. Where to send a second SWAT team? They held their breaths, waiting…
Inside, the eyes behind the white holes showed turmoil; moved from the now-quiet preemies back to Jessie in his cylinder, asleep again. The eyes’ turmoil turned to rage. The chest labored like heaving bellows.
And the hand holding the gun raised up again, pressed the muzzle to Jill’s temple.
“It’s not fair,” Mask said low, self-pityingly. The eyes glistened. “These babies get all the love and care in the world. They won’t get knocked around, their arms broken, their faces kicked by drunk whore mothers. It’s not fair,” he said again.
And let Jill go.
Her left knee buckled. She stumbled, raised her hand to her head, and fainted at his feet.
Mask ignored her. He was weeping, with his gun now pointed at David’s face.
“There is no second shooter,” he wailed. “You killed him, you sonofabitch! Now it’s you who’s gonna die!”
41
Pappas had his second phone to his other ear, incredulous at what the cop voice was telling him.
“The prints they took from outside that second apartment? Haig and Kirka, supposedly? They’re from one guy! There is no second guy!”
Pappas frowned, motioning away a frantic-looking trio of house staff from his crowd of uniforms. The scrubs protested, he got testy, and was immediately sorry as he watched them back reluctantly away. It was almost two in the morning. The hall was dim, tense, eerily quiet: cleared of hospital staff, of patients too who were sleeping.
He said into his phone, “Raney and Levine said they heard two voices arguing. There’ve been neighbor complaints about two guys arguing.”
“So this guy was arguing with himself? He sure doesn’t live with a ghost, there was only one set of prints on that door, and the name is an alias. Belonged to an orderly found with his throat cut six months ago outside a Miami bar, crime never solved. He’s the latent we found. This guy you got in there faked his ID, his resume, everything. Don’t hospitals check, for God’s sake?”
“Apparently not.”
“There’s more. Big, bad surprise about who this guy really is. His prints match-“
“There is no second shooter. You killed him, you sonofabitch!. Now it’s you who’s gonna die!”
It came over Pappas’ other phone. “Gotta go,” he said, wincing, watching with shocked Brand as the SWAT team tore in, pulling down their visors.
A shootout in a preemie nursery? This could not be happening. Maybe it still wouldn’t. He prayed. He felt sick as he had never felt before…
She’d fallen just so, with her right hand by her ankle where she pulled free her scalpel and, grasping tight, plunged it with all her might through his Adidas.
“Take that, Psycho!” she said as Mask screamed in pain.
His gun fell. David lunged, grabbed it, and slid it to Fallon. For an instant he gaped at the scalpel in the guy’s white shoe turning red. Jill had plunged it clear through to the floor. The maniac was pinned.
That’s what the rest of the SWAT team saw, six of them running in behind Fallon. “Oh jeez,” one said behind his visor. A sickening pool of blood spreading from some weird-masked guy’s running shoe, with a dagger or something sticking up in it.
And he was pulling it out!
They stopped, guns drawn, watching him bending, whimpering, pulling at it with one hand as his other arm flailed at Levine.
“Wait.” David shot a glance to them. His not-struggling hand held a syringe. “Pentothal,” they heard him tell Raney, who was crawling past him on her knees; seemed to be looking for something. He got the creep into an almost-choke and injected the s
yringe. Plunged it into the first skin area clear to him, the neck near the shoulder - then yanked off the mask as the guy…slammed him away.
And the syringe.
Sandy Haig howled and wrenched the scalpel free. Gripped it, limped backward and away from them down the aisle, trailing blood from his shoe. “Didn’t get much of your sleepy juice in, did you?” he sneered at David, at all of them. Then switched his glare to Jessie in his cylinder, his eyes burning with hatred. “If that bitch hadn’t gotten here…That’s the one I wanted! That little fucker’s gotten world attention and for what? Doing nothing?”
Fingers tensed on triggers. Cops hunched in the front aisle between Haig and Jessie’s cylinder, and Haig had no gun.
Just the scalpel, which he now raised over a front isolette. Blood dropped from it onto the closed Lucite lid protecting the child. “Well, which little darling shall I stab instead?” he cooed mockingly, starting to lift the lid. “This one?”
Oh God… On her knees Jill frantically searched for her Mace. She’d heard it drop when he ripped it from her wrist; now with her heart banging out of her chest she scrabbled under machines, wiring, isolettes, and couldn’t find it. At least – she checked - the others weren’t watching her. They were all fixed on Haig…and David, who’d moved a few feet into a side aisle, holding up a desperate hand.
Cops had stopped, frozen-faced. They couldn’t shoot. Even the most skilled target hit would hurl Haig’s body back against other isolettes: knock them over, yank out tubing, IVs, ventilator cords, kill babies just by crashing them down. It was a standoff. They were helpless.
Haig laughed at them, so enjoying this; lurched back further dragging his bloodied foot. He held his scalpel over another isolette. “Or shall I cut this one?”
“Jesus,” one of the cops moaned.
Back, back, Haig limped to the next front isolette. A bit wobbly from the Pentothal David had managed to inject, but his adrenalin was more than fighting it.