Dead Wrong

by Allen Wyler

  “Holy cow! Have you heard what just happened?” the receptionist asked.

  List in hand, Sarah glanced at her. “Huh? What?”

  “There was a shooting over at Magnuson a couple of minutes ago. Security’s going nutzo. Called the police and Medic One. Right now there’s a channel five chopper up there,” pointing at the ceiling, “shooting pictures of the building. They even got a SWAT team.”

  A bolt of fear stabbed her. “Magnuson Pavilion?” Suddenly she realized her earlier anxiety was a premonition.

  “Yep.”

  “You sure?”

  The receptionist flashed a gimme-a-break look and nodded at the radio on her desk. “I’m listening to it now.”

  Sarah felt weak. Tom’s office was in Magnuson. Jesus, girl, don’t jump to conclusions. It’s a ten-floor building for christ’s sake, seven and a half of it office space. It could be anybody. But intuition warned that it involved Tom. Oh God, don’t let him be hurt.

  Now she was really scared. She glanced at the list in her hand, then back at the receptionist. “Magnuson Pavilion. You sure?”

  “What’d I just tell you? Here, listen.” She turned up the radio.

  Sarah tossed the list back on top of the pile of paperwork and started running for the elevators. She called back over her shoulder, “Find someone to cover my first patient. I’ll be back soon as possible.”

  She’d known, just known something bad was going to happen.

  Sarah ran from the hall connecting the main hospital to the marble lobby of Magnuson. A uniformed Seattle police officer raised his hand and stepped into her way. “Sorry, ma’am. No one’s allowed in the building.”

  She’d spotted him from down the hall and pretty much suspected his job was to keep people out of the building. Employees included. Aw crap! Police didn’t do to this sort of thing except for dire situations. Panic time.

  She wracked her mind for another way upstairs. To her right was a small café with all the customers cleared out. To the left, an optometrist shop. Closed. Crap crap double crap. The doors to all four elevators stood wide open.

  She turned back to the officer. “But I work here. I left my purse in my office.” She waved the hospital photo ID on a lanyard around her neck.

  The cop spread his stance, hooked both thumbs behind his wide belt. “Sorry, ma’am. No one’s allowed in or out of the building until further notice.” His expression made it clear there would be no negotiations, that not even God would get past him.

  She had to know whether Tom was involved in whatever happened. Not answering the phone now seemed even more ominous. “What happened up there? Anybody hurt?”

  “Sorry, ma’am.”

  She choked back the urge to scream. “But I know people up there. Can’t you at least tell me something?”

  His face softened. “Ma’am, I really don’t know anything more than my orders. Sorry.”

  Through the glass front doors she could see local TV crews clogging the sidewalk in front of the lobby, making it impossible to even see cars driving past. She figured, at this point, her best source of information would be a news broadcast. She turned and started running back the way she came moments ago.

  SEATTLE POLICE CAPTAIN DeLeon Franklin assimilated Sikes’s story of the events taking place in Suite 920 with little questioning. The evidence seemed to support it as clearly as evidence could. A man and woman lay dead from gunshot wounds. The male was, in a way, law enforcement in spite of being military. The person recounting the story was the victim’s partner. These facts cast an immediate patina of credibility over the story. That the alleged shooter, the doctor who occupied this office, had apparently fled the scene in possession of Washington’s weapon could only be interpreted as an admission of guilt—until proven otherwise.

  In Franklin’s thirty-one years on the force, one of the most important lessons he’d learned in conducting manhunts was to supply sufficient force to successfully solve it as quickly as possible. And if that meant sacrificing the prey in order to protect the hunters as well as innocent bystanders, so be it.

  Law enforcement was a lonely profession in that the citizens not directly involved could never understand or appreciate the hours and commitment policing required. That solidified a brotherhood among LEOs that, when it came right down to it, transcended agency jealousies and petty turf battles. Before him lay a fallen comrade. Somewhere in this building his cold-blooded murderer, Thomas McCarthy, hid. Franklin vowed to hunt the mad dog down as quickly as possible, and in the process, remove any chance for him to escape Old Testament justice through slick legal maneuvering by an unscrupulous defense lawyer. Whatever it took, McCarthy was now a dead man walking.

  14

  MCCARTHY LANDED FLAT footed on a tar roof three feet below the one he had just jumped from. The bone-jarring impact buckled both his knees, slamming his hands and knees onto the hard surface. Too frightened to appreciate the pain, he sprang back up and glanced frantically around for a hiding place.

  Dead ahead a large, corroded aluminum ventilation duct crossed six feet of sweltering tar before entering a brick wall. It would provide good temporary cover. He dove behind it, paused to orient himself, and collect his thoughts. He had a general idea of the roof layout from having peered down countless times from ninth-floor hall window of the elevator alcove. Problem was, he never really paid attention to its details because he never dreamed of actually setting foot here. To his right a rusty steel fire ladder ascended a wall to the roof of an older wing. But where did the roof go? Did it really matter? Any place seemed better than being a sitting duck here.

  He ran to the ladder, grabbed a metal rung, and started up. The sunbaked metal burned his hands but didn’t slow him down. At the top, he rolled over a two-foot wall onto more tar roof and crouched below the edge of the protecting parapet. Had they seen him climb the ladder? He listened for someone clamoring up after him but heard only a jet overhead.

  Crouching, he jogged a narrow boardwalk to a metal fire door—and was relieved to see it propped open with a sand-filled coffee can of cigarette butts. Chalk one up for the smokers.

  Then he was inside, flying down stairs, still unsure of where he could go to be safe. At the moment, his only goal was to move as far from the roof as possible.

  Two flights down, he recognized the stairwell. The male surgery dressing room was on the next floor down. He ran to the dressing room door, punched in the five-number combination, heard the metallic snap of the lock, and was inside. With the door closed and relocked, he slumped against the wall, sucked down two deep breaths, and wiped both hands on his shirt. Jesus, he was sweating like a pig and his heart was about to explode. But the good news was he’d made it to a place safe enough to call for help.

  The room was crammed with row after row of impossibly narrow gray metal lockers interspersed with, long single-plank benches; a few laundry hampers and the floor were littered with discarded scrubs. On the wall to his right, floor-to-ceiling shelves were piled with fresh scrubs and boxes of disposable surgical masks, booties, and hats. He saw no one else around. A short hall, connecting to the operating rooms, contained four dictation booths. He took the first one and dialed the operator.

  Jim Atkinson, an anesthesiologist, passed the booth, did a double take, stopped, and whistled. “Good Lord, man, what happened to you?”

  The question struck Tom as so absurd he almost laughed. But Atkinson was staring now. At a loss for words, McCarthy stared back, thinking how stupid he must appear.

  The line clicked. “Hospital operator.”

  Raising a hold-on-a-second finger to Atkinson, he blurted into the phone, “I need security, STAT.”

  “Hold please.”

  Heart still galloping, breaths still ragged gulps, he stared at Atkinson and listened to the dead hollow of telephone limbo. Atkinson grew increasingly uneasy with the sight but seemed unwilling to simply walk away.

  A wave of paranoia swept over McCarthy. Why was the operator taking so long
? Any second now Sikes could come busting through the door and he’d be dead. He could see it happening, like one of those nightmares where everything turns to shit while you are unable to move.

  “You okay?” Atkinson now seemed puzzled or frightened, or both. Or maybe he realized he’d just stepped on a pile of two-day-old dog shit. Like, maybe Tom McCarthy had gone postal.

  McCarthy said, “Some guys just—” The connection clicked through, so he held up an index finger to Atkinson. “Security?”

  A woman answered. “Yes.”

  “Call 9-1-1. I need paramedics to my office STAT. Nine-twenty Magnuson.”

  “What do you mean, call 9-1-1? You can do that. Who are you?”

  “No, I can’t. I’m calling from an in-house-only phone. My name’s Tom McCarthy, and you need to send them to my office right away, room nine-twenty, Magnuson Pavilion. Two people have been shot.”

  After a moment hesitation she asked, “Doctor McCarthy?”

  “Yes. Listen to me, two men killed my receptionist and tried to kill me …”

  Jesus, I must sound psychotic. His mind blanked.

  She said, “Hold please.”

  “No, damn it!” He slapped the wall with his free hand. “This is an emergency. Didn’t you—”

  CLICK.

  Elevator music.

  “Fuck!” Tom glanced at Atkinson, “Goddamned security. When you need them …” What could he say?

  Atkinson backed up a step. “Sure you’re all right?”

  Tom’s temples felt as if they were about to explode. Sweat slid down his face. He realized he probably looked like hell. “Jesus Christ, Jim, didn’t you just hear me? I’ve just been through—”

  CLICK.

  A man asked, “Where did you say you are?”

  Finally! “The surgery dressing room.”

  “I’m dispatching an officer immediately.”

  What? “Wait, wait, you mean here or my office?”

  “We already have officers at your office. I’m sending one to meet you. You’re in the surgery dressing room, you say?”

  “Yes. But hurry, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  At last! He dropped the phone back into the cradle and slumped against the acoustic tile wall ready to finally answer Atkinson—but he was gone. In fact, the whole area felt empty. Tom walked to a bench, sat, wiped the sweat from his face, and inhaled deeply, relieved that at least he’d been able to summon help for Maria. An act of futility, he suspected. She was probably already dead. But at least he’d done something to help her. Now, as soon as an officer arrived he could start dealing with that whacko, Sikes. Someone had gotten their wires seriously crossed with disastrous results. It had cost Maria her life.

  You need to do a better job telling the story, pal. Last time you sounded like the one who is whacko.

  And speaking of Sikes, what the hell was he talking about? Classified documents? What classified documents? He’d never seen a classified document in his life.

  DELEON FRANKLIN RECEIVED word of McCarthy’s phone call immediately after a hospital security officer was dispatched to assist him. Which irritated him no end. This was a SPD operation now. Security knew damn well that was the case.

  Too many cooks. Sikes and Hansen. Both believing they had some proprietary claim to the action. And who knew what McCarthy was up to by calling security. His most obvious motive would be to use the officer as a hostage, shield, or some other form of bargaining chip. Without showing his irritation he asked Hansen, “Where is McCarthy hiding?”

  “Surgery dressing room. The male one.”

  “Show me,” he ordered, pointing to the map Hansen had taped to the wall of their impromptu command center. Hansen pointed it out.

  Franklin was relieved to know they still had McCarthy contained within the medical center. He radioed the leader of the hastily assembled SWAT team outside. “Team Leader, this is Franklin.”

  “Copy.”

  “We just received a location on our target.”

  15

  LAKEVIEW MEDICAL CENTER

  BERTRAM WYSE STOPPED pacing long enough to stare at the telephone in an attempt to somehow telepathically will Cunningham to call with news of McCarthy’s death. But the phone didn’t ring. 1:35. What was taking so long?

  Waiting! Too many hours of his life had been wasted waiting. Waiting at departure gates for connecting flights. Waiting in line for a movie. Waiting for his wife to finish putting on her makeup. Stoplights. Elevators. What the hell was happening with McCarthy? Surely Cunningham knew something by now.

  Wyse reached for the phone, but withdrew before touching it, worried that when it did ring Glant, his broker, would be the caller. Cunningham had promised to call when he had news. But he wouldn’t put it past the bastard to keep him dangling for hours, wondering. It was one of those control games Cunningham loved to play. Fuck it. He jerked the phone from the charger and thumbed speed dial.

  Cunningham’s phone rang twice before he picked up. “Yes, Bert, what is it?”

  Wyse hated it when people did that: checking caller ID before answering, then acting smug in the assumption that no one else might call from that number. Of course, they’d be right 99 percent of the time. But he resented the smartass attitude just the same.

  “Any news on McCarthy?” Wyse caught something from the corner of his eye, said, “Whoa, hold, hold on.”

  The TV on the wet bar was tuned to the Northwest News channel with the audio muted. The video was showing live coverage outside a building he recognized as Magnuson Pavilion. McCarthy’s building. Aw, maybe McCarthy has been shot dead by Cunningham’s men. Which should mean Cunningham would have more details than the reporters who apparently didn’t know diddly-shit. He switched on the audio and listened a moment, but it turned out to be the same story for earlier.

  “Sorry,” Wyse said, “Go ahead. What do you know?”

  Cunningham said, “Good and bad. Depending how you look at it. The bad news is your friend McCarthy shot and killed one of my men. The good news is we now have every justification to shoot the cocksucker on sight once we locate him.”

  Whoa, wait a minute. McCarthy killed one of Cunningham’s men and was now on the loose? How the hell did that happen? The reporters didn’t mention any deaths—only that there were multiple shooting victims. Because Cunningham’s men were seasoned operatives, he simply assumed McCarthy was a victim. Had he heard right?

  “What the hell are you talking about, once we find him? Why the fuck don’t you have him now? What happened?” He almost threw the phone at the window.

  Cunningham fired back. “Watch your mouth, Bertram. McCarthy overpowered one of my men, secured his weapon, then killed him in cold blood. In the confusion, he shot and killed his receptionist and managed to escape.”

  Rage ripped through Wyse’s chest. “Please tell me you’re shitting me. How could your special ops guys—the best of the best—allow that to happen? This is their forte. This is what they specialize in.” But, on second thought, escaping from trained operatives would be a classic example of McCarthy’s incredible luck. Fall in a vat of shit, climb out smelling like bittersweet chocolate. The prick.

  On the bright side, having killed an officer meant that every law enforcement officer in the country—federal, municipal, county, whatever—had a free pass to blow McCarthy away on sight. Happened all the time, cop killers shot to death while “resisting arrest.” The thought mollified him. Slightly.

  Plan A had been for Cunningham’s man to snuff McCarthy if he failed to hand over the classified information. Which, of course, would be the case because McCarthy knew nothing about it. But Cunningham didn’t know this because Wyse had fabricated that part of the story. The moment McCarthy asked for Russell’s and Baker’s medical histories, Wyse realized something drastic needed to be done. So he fed Cunningham the bogus story that McCarthy had hacked into his office’s electronic record system and was now in possession of two patients’ records. Not just any patien
ts, by the way. Two of the patients who had undergone the experimental memory transfer. And thanks to Cunningham, those records were now classified. So there you had it: McCarthy was in possession of classified information. He delighted in the brilliance of his little plot.

  Cunningham said to Wyse, “Calm down, Bertram. He’s not going anywhere. He’s dug in somewhere in the medical center surrounded by cops. They have a SWAT team ready to sweep the building. My team has the situation fully under control.”

  He hated it when Cunningham called him by his first name, a name he detested. What parents in their right mind name their kid Bertram?

  “Under control? Jesus, you could’ve fooled me, Clyde. If they had things under such great fucking control McCarthy would be lying toes up on the ME’s gurney waiting to be autopsied.”

  “Don’t go getting all self-righteous with me, friend. And just to keep the record straight, I assume you are familiar with McCarthy’s past?”

  Oy! “What’s with the rhetorical question bullshit? You know McCarthy and I go way back.”

  “I wasn’t speaking about the med school problems between you guys,” Cunningham said, sounding icy. “No, I’m talking about something entirely different. Do you know what he was doing that year he spent in Israel?”

  That was clearly a loaded question, a setup to make him look like an idiot because obviously Cunningham knew something he didn’t. Which meant any answer short of confessing ignorance would be wrong. Yeah, he knew all about McCarthy’s research year at a Tel Aviv medical school. So what?

  He and McCarthy met their first day of medical school orientation at UC–San Diego. Turned out they had a lot in common. Both had been accepted after only three years of pre-med, which was highly unusual. Both had enrolled into the longer, combined MD/PhD degree programs. But most important, both ended up competing for the one UCSD neurosurgery residency spot. Two highly motivated, testosterone-fueled guys competing for one spot was a recipe for nuclear meltdown. Fucking McCarthy got the job so Wyse had to go elsewhere. So, yeah, he knew just about everything important about McCarthy. Down to the type of la-de-da deodorant the prick used.