by Jan Eira
“We’re about five and a half—maybe six—miles northwest of Supreme Pharmaceuticals.”
“Good job, Sergeant. We appreciate the cooperation.”
“Ten four, Detective. Hurry it up, though, or this kid ain’t gonna make it. Over and out.”
In a few minutes, a helicopter circled over the forest clearing, where five brilliant flares marked the spot. Slowly and carefully, the chopper landed. Two men exited and met the four police officers.
“They’re all unconscious,” yelled a policewoman over the loud noise. “Get them to the hospital right now. They’re critical.”
“OK. Help us load them into the chopper,” said one of the medics.
“Will do. Hurry up.”
One of the helicopter crewmen brought out a stretcher. “Which one is badly wounded?”
“They’re all wounded,” said the policewoman.
“We got radio report one of them is supposedly bleeding bad.”
“Nah. We said not breathing. They’re unresponsive. Check for yourselves. But hurry the hell up, or they ain’t gonna be around for long.”
“Are they dead?”
“They will be soon if you don’t get them to the damn hospital.”
The four cops and the two chopper crewmen got busy loading the four fugitives. Soon, the helicopter became airborne.
The four cops waved good-bye and began their long trek to their police car.
“Which way to our car, Brent?” said one of the female officers into her earpiece, her police uniform a little too big on her.
“It worked beautifully,” said William. “Good thing it was dark out.”
“Yeah, and the chopper rotor was so loud,” said Valerie. “You make a great impersonation,” she said to older Brent. “Ever thought of acting?” She smiled and then tried to impersonate him. “This is Sergeant Linton of the Springfield PD.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better, grown-up Brent,” said Ellie. “Not sure we could have done this without your help.”
“Now, we have to find transportation out of here,” said younger Brent. “They’ll probably figure this out sooner than we think.”
“Head out to your eleven o’clock,” said older Brent. “You’re cleared all the way to Springfield from where you are now. Two police cars are waiting at the edge of the forest. And do hurry, kids.”
“Just asking,” said Ellie. “But is there any hope we can reach the Enoxadin manufacturing lab now?”
“Actually, the container with the tainting drug was destroyed and spilled out completely,” said Valerie. “Can you get us any more?”
“I have more, but Supreme Pharmaceuticals is still heavily guarded, inside and out, and there’s no way you kids can ever reach the manufacturing vat.” Older Brent coughed. “We’ll have to figure something else out.”
“What about my Lexus?” asked Valerie.
“It’s getting towed right now,” said older Brent. “I’ll keep my eye on it, but I imagine they’ll take it to the police headquarters. Maybe you can steal it back from the cops. I’ll guide you to it when I figure out where they’re taking it.”
With older Brent’s guidance, they ran to the edge of the forest and soon reached the Springfield Police squad cars. The teens walked to one of them.
“I’ve been monitoring their transmissions,” said older Brent. “The cops took your car to their impound lot. They’re still pending a subpoena to search it. They’ve requested a CSI team for tomorrow morning.”
“The police car is locked,” said William trying the door handle.
“Not a problem,” said older Brent. “Use the app I showed earlier to unlock the door and the same app will get the car started.”
William nodded his head and smiled. “I assume it’s the one we were going to use to unlock the doors at Supreme Headquarters.”
“Right.”
“Show me the way,” said Valerie behind the wheel of the squad car, once William had gained access into the vehicle and started the engine.
With older Brent’s instructions, Valerie drove the squad to the lot where her car had been secured.
A tall barbed-wire-topped fence surrounded the entire impound lot. A small building sat inside the large gate. The enclosure housed a multitude of parked vehicles, mostly in significant disrepair. The Lexus stuck out like a diamond in the rough.
The ringing phone startled the young man sitting at the desk. He was watching Law and Order on a small TV, with the rabbit ears fully extended.
He answered. “Hello?”
“This is Captain Linton of the Springfield PD. What’s your name, son?”
“Cliff, Captain.”
“Change of plan on that Lexus you just got. Two of my rookies are coming in to take it away to Springfield. They should be there in a few.”
“Detective Sparks said I shouldn’t let anyone near the Lexus. He was very specific about—”
“Detective Sparks is a lieutenant, son. I’m a captain. Do you know the goddamned difference? Do you know which one can do more damage to your career?”
“Yes, sir.” Cliff sat up straighter. He hung up the phone, squinted, and picked up the receiver again. He dialed.
“Sparks, here,” said the man on the other end.
“I got a call from a Captain Linton in Springfield about the Lexus, Lieutenant,” said Cliff.
“What the hell are you calling me for? I don’t have time for this bullshit.”
Cliff looked at the receiver when he heard the click.
Still wearing the Springfield PD uniforms and badges, Valerie and Brent rang the doorbell.
“Sign the logbook,” said Cliff. “Right here.”
Valerie scribbled something down. Within moments, she drove the Lexus off the lot, followed by a Springfield Police squad car.
“Detective Sparks to police chopper, over.”
“This is police chopper. Go ahead, Detective.” The words were barely comprehensible. The background was bursting with the continuous uproar of the chopper blades.
“What’s your status? I’m on my way to the hospital now.”
“We’ve unloaded the prisoners, Detective. The four are now under protective custody in the ER.”
“Did they give you any trouble?”
“No, sir. They were unconscious the whole time. The four of them slept like babies.”
“The four of them are unconscious?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about their wounds?”
“There are no wounds, Detective. They’re just unconscious, as if in a coma.”
“Are they young kids? About fifteen or sixteen?”
“No, sir,” said the radio voice. “The youngest one is in his late thirties, I’d say. The oldest is around forty, maybe forty-five.”
“You gotta be shittin’ me!” Detective Sparks kicked a rock near him and stomped his feet. “Those goddamned—”
“One more thing, Detective. There was a written message addressed to you on one of them. It gave the precise GPS coordinates in the woods for eight people in a coma. The hospital dispatched ambulances to go get them.”
CHAPTER 35
Detective Sparks was furious. He entered the ER looking for someone to be a target for his frustration. But the first person he saw was the last one he would ever have expected to find in this place.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked Dr. Chung.
“I called for you over an hour ago, but headquarters told me you were incommunicado on some kind of a mission.”
“Yes, I was. But what are you doing here?”
“Well, the three dead bodies you were looking for, ain’t.”
“They ain’t what?”
“Dead bodies.”
“Why are we talking in riddles, Doc? I don’t have
the patience or the time for it right now.”
“After dinner, I went to autopsy your dead bodies, like you asked me to. And to my surprise, they actually had a pulse. And they were breathing. One of them started pounding on his reefer drawer to get out. It almost gave me a heart attack. Soon after I got them out of the fridge, they all actually woke up, and they’re all healthy and fine—stoned, but fine. I called 911, and here we are. Your three dead bodies are alive and well in ER rooms ten, eleven, and twelve. The ER doc says they’ve made full recoveries. The only problem with them is total amnesia. They remember nothing of what happened to them earlier today.”
“Any drugs in their systems?”
“Drugs?” Dr. Chung chuckled. “You name it, they took it. Downers, uppers, sidewayers—”
“This has been a pretty disorienting type of day for me,” said Detective Sparks. “I spent my whole day searching for five murders who haven’t killed anyone. I need a cup of coffee.”
Older Brent sweated profusely. Dreadful shivers advanced through him and exhausted every fiber of his entire body.
“Here, take some Tylenol,” said Ellie.
“Do they still use Tylenol in fifty years?” asked Valerie.
“Yes, we do. Good stuff. Thank you.” He drank some water and washed down two tablets.
“Now what?” asked William. “What do we do now?”
“I’ve been monitoring police radio transmissions while you were on your way here. The three men I paralyzed earlier today were thought to be dead.” Older Brent smiled. “The thugs had used all kinds of recreational drugs. No surprise, I guess. Those drugs must have interacted negatively with the neuronal depolarizer and made them stay comatose longer and their vital signs hard to detect.”
“So, all’s well that ends well,” said younger Brent.
“What about Enoxadin? What’s the next move?” asked William.
“Tell us more about the anti-Enoxadin agent,” said Valerie. “Is it harmful by itself?”
“No,” said older Brent. “It’s safe. Why do you ask?”
“Can we put it in the hospital’s water supply? If somebody has a heart attack, the drug is in their body already. If they get Enoxadin, the combo makes Enoxadin useless.”
“I’m not sure they give heart attack patients water to drink before they take them to the Cath Lab,” said Ellie. “Don’t they have to be on an empty stomach?”
Older Brent nodded. “That’s right, Ellie. Besides, we don’t have enough supply to keep the water tainted with enough concentration for that long of a time.”
“What about the air supply?” asked younger Brent.
Valerie frowned. “For the whole hospital?”
“No, just the Cath Lab.”
“Well,” said older Brent. “I can devise a dispenser that releases anti-Enoxadin as a colorless and odorless gas over a year or so. If that were placed in the Cath Lab, potentially the gas could deactivate Enoxadin when it’s administered.” He nodded. “Let me do a computer simulation and see if that would work for us.”
“I have a crazy idea that might work,” said Valerie.
CHAPTER 36
The evening chill was already biting, announcing the end of autumn. Conrad warmed his body next to the burning wood he had assembled under the Forty-Third Street Bridge. He had torn clothes, disheveled hair, and oily and dirty skin. Next to the large cardboard box near him was a shopping cart full of all his possessions.
Tonight, he had a visitor. A young man had brought him some firewater. He barely looked the part. Conrad doubted the boy was homeless.
Conrad shook his head. “Where do you come from?”
“The streets, just like you.”
“Your skin is smooth, no calluses on your hands,” said Conrad. “Your teeth are all there and nice and white. You is no homeless kid.”
The boy raised the paper bag he was holding and dangled it in the air for a moment. “Maybe I is, maybe I ain’t. Will you help me or not?”
Conrad thought a moment. “Give me ma whiskey!”
The boy handed Conrad his recompense, who opened the bag and looked at the bottle. “Tuesday was a good year for whiskey.” He took a swig. “Good stuff. Do you have any food?”
“I’ll git ya some later, ol’ man,” said the boy. “Cold tonight.”
Conrad took another long drink and then another. He dropped the bottle to the ground. It smashed. The remaining booze spread out on the cement.
“Ma chest hurts,” he said. He began to sweat. “I feel sick in the stomach.” He walked away from the fire and the glass shards. When he reached the cardboard box, he dropped to his knees, his right fist clenched to his chest. “I think I’m gonna die. Help me, boy!”
“Conrad,” said the boy. “I’ll git ya some help, ol’ man. Hang tight.”
The ambulance pulled up to the ER bay and unloaded a stretcher.
“His name is Conrad Silvers,” said the boy, his face dirty and his hair ruffled. “I think he’s having a heart attack. Help him! Please.”
Dr. Cleverly turned to him. “Go over to registration and tell them everything you know about Conrad. We’ll take him inside here and see if we can help him.” The boy complied, and the medical team wheeled Conrad into ER-12.
“Get an EKG,” said a nurse. “Do you want me to consult cardiology?”
Dr. Cleverly nodded. He put a stethoscope on the man’s chest.
“It looks like a heart attack. Get me Dr. Rovine on the phone, stat.”
Conrad sat up in bed.
“Hey, what ya doing to me?” he yelled. He grabbed a hold of several heart-monitor wires on his chest and pulled on them.
“You’re in the hospital, Conrad,” said Emma, a resident doctor. She grabbed the old man’s hand. “I’m a resident, and I’m going to help you, along with Dr. Rovine. You’re having a big heart attack. Let us help you.”
“I ain’t havin’ no heart attack,” said Conrad. “I feel better. I got me a hold of some bad booze. Let me go.”
“Call security,” Emma yelled down the hall, holding Conrad’s arm. “I agree with the part about the booze. But there’s no question about the heart attack. You’ll die if we don’t help you right now.”
“Let go of me,” said Conrad, moving side to side on the bed, three people now holding him down.
“This is very interesting,” said Dr. Rovine. “He appears pretty stable, but his EKG is very abnormal. As awful as the EKG looks, I’d think Conrad over here would be quite a bit sicker.”
“Stable?” asked Emma. “You should have seen him twenty minutes ago when he first arrived in the ER and came to.” She shook her head. “Conrad here’s a fighter!”
“Is it alcohol withdrawal?”
“No, he’s pretty boozed up right now. He has a bad case of the nasties and meanness.”
“He’s pretty relaxed right now,” said Dr. Rovine. “What did you give him?”
“The ER doc gave him nitrous oxide. Apparently, he loves the stuff, even though it’s not used much anymore.”
Dr. Rovine nodded. “Yeah, the older doctors love it. Dr. Cleverly is old school, but the results here are pretty phenomenal.”
“Pretty amazing. Maybe we should be using more of this old therapy, huh?”
“Let’s keep the nitrous oxide going through the procedure. It’s doing the trick.”
Technicians and nurses wheeled the stretcher into the Cath Lab and transferred the patient to the table for his heart catheterization and rescue intervention. Personnel moved all about the room, getting everything ready for the procedure.
“I wish we had more Enoxadin,” said Dr. Rovine. “He would be a good candidate for it.”
“The way you talk about Enoxadin, Dr. Rovine, I can’t wait to learn more about it,” said Emma.
“Well, you’ll have to wait until Monday.
As far as Conrad, let’s find out which coronary is occluded and causing his massive heart attack.”
“Heparin was given,” said a nurse.
“OK, let’s do this,” said Dr. Rovine, a long needle in his hand.
The only noise in the Cath Lab was the beep, beep, beep of the cardiac monitor. Dr. Rovine advanced the coronary catheter into the femoral artery and up the aorta, and then he engaged the right coronary artery. He injected dye into the catheter. Everyone watched the fluoroscopy screen.
William hid in the dark as the action unfolded.
“Keep the nitrous mask on Conrad at all times,” Dr. Cleverly had said earlier. “If not, he’ll wake up and start fighting you all over again.”
The orderlies had wheeled the ER bed from ER-12 to the elevator, and someone had pushed the down button. Two nurses and three orderlies had pushed the sleeping patient’s bed along. They had disappeared into the elevator as William entered the stairway.
One floor down, William opened the door a little bit to spy on the ER personnel’s progress. The orderlies wheeled the bed into a large door labeled Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory. Four Cath Lab personnel were waiting at the elevator door, and all disappeared into the inner portions of the place.
Still disguised as the homeless boy, William entered the dim area and searched around. He found a door labeled Observation Area and entered. The room was small and pitch dark room. A large window allowed him to see the lab where Conrad had been wheeled. The reflection from the window also allowed William to see his own dirty face and shirt and disheveled hair. He had used the soot and ashes from Conrad’s firepit to paint dark spots on his face and clothes.
“I’m in place,” whispered William. “I have a great view of the action inside the Cath Lab.”
The personnel in the room remained busy. Wearing sterile, green outfits, Dr. Rovine and Emma were at the bedside. Two nurses circulated through the room.