Almost Midnight

by Paul Doiron

  “Jesus.”

  “We think he’s amped up on something. Adderall or Ritalin. Maybe some designer stimulant.”

  I propped myself up against a couple of pillows. “Sounds like a wonderful way to start your shift.”

  “The commander’s put me on traffic duty, detouring westbound vehicles out through Casco. The main road’s still closed until the wrecks can be hauled off and our guys can finish mapping the site. What’s going on with you? Why are you home so soon? I thought you were going to fish with Charley for a few more days?”

  “Aimee Cronk asked me to go see Billy. She said it was an emergency.”

  “Did something happen to him?”

  “He’s having one of his semiannual freak-outs.” As soon as I spoke the words, I regretted them. “This time, he might have some legitimate concerns though.”

  “Are the wolves after him again?”

  “No, it’s not that. Not this time. It’s hard to explain. Billy has always been his own worst enemy.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.” She sounded distracted. “I know you consider Billy Cronk a friend and all, but you always seem to end up in a dark place after you visit him. I’m sorry your vacation got cut short for no good reason.”

  “Thanks for all the food, by the way.”

  “You’ll be paying me back for it. Don’t worry. And you really do need to clean your house. I am happy to be your dietitian, but I draw the line at being your maid.”

  I let out a laugh. “What were you doing in Ducktrap, though?”

  She hesitated, and I realized she’d been lying about being in the neighborhood. She’d traveled two hours from her apartment for the sole purpose of restocking my refrigerator. It seemed an extravagant gesture, given the casualness of our relationship.

  Suddenly, I heard a loud crunching noise on her end of the phone. Definitely metal on metal.

  “God damn it! Can you hang on a second, Mike?”

  She muted the call.

  While I waited for her to return, I realized how desperately I needed to talk with someone—anyone—about Billy’s paranoid request. But sharing his secret, especially after he’d told me not to, would be an unforgivable violation of his trust. However bad I was feeling, I needed to keep the incident to myself.

  When Dani returned to the phone, her voice had acquired a blunt edge. “I need to call you back. A car just tried to pull a U-turn to avoid the detour and smashed into a Jeep. That’s my life these days: one car crash after another.”

  I knew the feeling.

  4

  Early the next morning, I saw two gray foxes cross my yard and disappear, single-file, into the cedars along the river. A late-breeding pair, I had to assume.

  When I was young, before my mom had grown tired of my dad’s drinking and womanizing and had decided to escape the North Woods for a new life in suburbia, I had once awoken to strange noises coming from outside our cabin. My child’s brain conjured up two little dogs lost in the wilderness.

  Deeply worried, I asked my father what poor animals were making those high-pitched cries, and he told me with a lewd grin that they were mating foxes. He said that the male and the female were inseparable during the spring.

  “Once I caught a vixen in a leghold trap.” His voice had been rough from beer and Marlboros. “But instead of running off, the dog—that’s the male—stayed close to hand. Even when I came right up on them, he wouldn’t abandon his bitch. You should have heard the little bastard growl at me.”

  Bastid was how he pronounced the word.

  “What did you do?” I’d made the mistake of asking.

  “I shot them both, of course.” Then he added, “Although it saddened me to do so.”

  There was Jack Bowditch for you: a death dealer with a heart of gold.

  My dad would have loved running a trapline on this wet, wooded property of mine, so rich with furbearers.

  Like Billy Cronk, he had been a combat veteran—a Ranger in Vietnam—who had come home decorated with scars and medals. But my father’s crimes had never landed him in jail for more than a few weeks. The past was his personal prison.

  At times I wonder if it is mine, as well. Sometimes it seems as if I have escaped. Then I will hear the baying of bloodhounds on my trail.

  Standing there, thinking of those two war veterans, I decided to return to the fenced hilltop in Warren. I wasn’t sure Billy would consent to see me after our argument. But I owed it to him, and my conscience, to learn what had prompted his odd request that I investigate Sergeant Dawn Richie.

  The sun had barely cleared the crowns of the trees. In my neighbor’s field Highland cattle had trod a muddy, manure-strewn path from the barn down to the creek. Steam rose from their nostrils as they stood stupidly in their pasture, their shaggy sides matted with ice.

  Instead of the coastal route to the prison, I chose to take the country road that skirted the western slopes of the Camden Hills. The unlit shoulders of the mountains were cloaked in velvet shadows. Then, below Maiden’s Cliff, sunlight sparkled off the thinning ice on Megunticook Lake. The sudden, unexpected brightness made me grope for my sunglasses.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket.

  “Where are you?” asked Aimee Cronk.

  “On my way back to the prison. I’m not happy with where I left things with Billy yesterday. I’m hoping he’ll tell me what’s really going on with him.”

  “The prison? You need to get to the hospital!”

  My studded tires skidded on the pavement. “The hospital?”

  “Billy was stabbed! I don’t know the details. He’s being taken by ambulance to Pen Bay Medical Center. It sounds bad, Mike. I’m scared. Really, really scared.”

  “I can be there in ten minutes.”

  “I need to pick up the kids from school, and then it’s a three-hour-plus drive if the damned Tahoe doesn’t blow a head gasket. What if he dies before we get there?”

  “He won’t.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because Billy is as tough as they come.”

  “Oh, Mike.” Her voice broke. “You’re so naïve.”

  * * *

  I had installed a two-way radio in my personal vehicle in case I found myself nearby during an emergency and could provide assistance to first responders on the scene.

  When I switched on the radio, a cacophony exploded from the speaker. The chatter was so fractured—so many units were responding at the same time—that I had to piece together the narrative. I gathered that five ambulances had either arrived at or were en route to the hospital from the prison. Whatever mayhem had occurred had involved more people than just Billy.

  I hit the gas along the potholed roads, at one point scattering a parade of turkeys head-bobbing across the asphalt. A car, coming in the opposite direction, flashed its high beams at me. But I sped along, undaunted, until I came to the medical center in Rockport.

  Two ambulances were lined up outside the emergency room as paramedics, assisted by hospital personnel, worked quickly to unload stretchers. The parking spaces outside the ER were jammed with government vehicles: prison transports, squad cars from the neighboring towns, state police cruisers, black SUVs with the Knox County sheriff’s star on their sides.

  Rather than trying to enter the building through that logjam, I continued to the main drop-off circle. I had visited the hospital enough times while I’d been stationed in the Midcoast—both as a first responder and as a patient—that I knew all the shortcuts.

  I clipped my badge, my holstered sidearm, and my cuffs to my belt. Then I dashed through the automatic doors.

  The Knox County sheriff had had the presence of mind to station a deputy in the lobby to prevent curiosity seekers from sneaking down the hall to the ER and surgical wing. Seeing me rushing forward, the lanky officer held out his arms as if we were in a game of red rover. Then his freckled face cracked into a grin.

  “Bowditch?”

  “Skip?”

  I had
n’t seen Skip Morrison in ages, but when I’d been stationed in the area as the district warden, I had considered him something of a friend. We’d gone out for beers and conversation more than once, the conversation consisting of me nodding along to his cracker-barrel monologues. The guy was congenitally incapable of shutting his mouth, but at least he was interesting.

  We’d both risen in the world since those days. Skip was now the chief deputy for Knox County.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “One of the prisoners who was stabbed is a friend of mine. I need to see him.”

  “The sheriff says I’m not supposed to let anyone by except essential personnel. It’s a frigging MASH unit in there, from what I hear.”

  “Do you know what happened at the prison?”

  “Two inmates attacked a couple of COs with homemade knives in the laundry room, and it turned into a bloodbath. One of the guards is dead, another is injured. And a third prisoner managed to get himself stabbed, too.”

  “Do you know the name of the CO who was killed?”

  “I haven’t heard yet. But the one who was wounded was a female sergeant.”

  “Dawn Richie?”

  “That sounds right. Who’s your friend who was stabbed?”

  “Billy Cronk.”

  “I know Billy! That guy could pull your arm from your socket, then beat you to death with it. Everybody in the joint is afraid of him.” Skip’s face darkened. “Do you think he was one of the two attackers?”

  “He wouldn’t assault a guard except in self-defense.”

  “How sure are you of that?”

  “Can you please just let me past?”

  He frowned as if preparing to say no, then surprised me with a smile. “Promise to circle back and tell me what the heck’s going on. You know how it kills me being out of the loop.”

  I started down the carpeted hallway. On the left side of the passage was the ER; on the right was surgery. Seriously injured patients would be wheeled across from one side to the other.

  I hadn’t made it fifty feet before an urgent voice came over the loudspeaker: “Code Silver, Surgical Care. Repeat: Code Silver.”

  The codes that hospitals use are different from the “ten codes” used by police, fire fighters, and other first responders.

  Anyone who has ever seen a TV show set in a hospital knows that a Code Blue is a medical emergency: a patient flatlining.

  Code Red indicates a fire.

  A Code Silver is less intuitive but makes sense when you think of the traditional color of gun barrels.

  Despite the massive law-enforcement presence, someone in the surgical unit had grabbed a weapon and was, presumably, threatening the life of another person. An active shooter was loose in the suite of operating rooms.

  I drew my SIG P239 from its holster, performed a press check to ensure a round was loaded in the chamber, and brought the gun in a two-handed grip up near my chest, ready for whatever might come bursting through the sliding doors between me and the incident scene.

  * * *

  As I neared the first entrance, I heard shouting. Men’s bellicose voices, layered one on top of the other. A Babel of repeated commands for someone to drop a weapon.

  Nothing happened as I crossed the sensor plane of the automatic doors. The hospital must have gone into lockdown mode. I couldn’t see a thing through the translucent panels. The good news was that security had closed off the obvious exits from the surgical wing. The bad news was that I was now cut off from the action.

  My only option was to rush back the way I’d come and circle around the outside of the building to an entrance where a platoon of cops would already be drawn up.

  Or is it my only option?

  The hospital was an older building that had been partly retrofitted with modern technology. The result, I’d noticed on one of my prior visits, was a mishmash of security measures. Mirrored hemispheres on the ceilings contained all-seeing cameras. Certain doors only opened with a swipe of a card, others with a series of numbers punched into a keypad.

  But plenty of old-fashioned doors with old-fashioned locks secured with old-fashioned bolts remained. What I needed to do was locate one of them.

  I ducked into the now-vacated postoperative unit. Before me was an empty desk. Beyond were a series of spaces, some actual rooms, others just curtained enclosures where anesthetized patients normally lay in wheeled beds, waiting to return to consciousness or having just done so. In the lobby the Today show continued to play on a television set to an audience of empty chairs. The hosts were discussing healthy treats to put into kids’ Easter baskets.

  As I rounded the desk, I was startled to find a young woman in scrubs on her knees. She was pressed against the desk the way a frightened dog presses itself against its owner’s leg.

  I’d been wrong to assume the unit had been cleared, I now realized. Nurses and visitors were hiding behind every curtain and closed door. The administration had walled off the ER when they’d initially brought in the prisoners, but the Code Silver had caught them off guard. There simply hadn’t been time for security to evacuate the expansive critical-care wing when the prisoner escaped. It was all they could do to initiate their shelter-in-place procedures.

  “What’s happening?” the woman in scrubs whispered. She had horrible acne and looked too young for whatever job she might have had in a hospital.

  “An armed prisoner is loose. I need to get into the surgical wing.”

  “You keep going down the hall.”

  “The automatic doors are locked. Is there another way in from this side?”

  “No.”

  “Are you certain? Maybe there’s a way you never use yourself.”

  She shook her head no. But I knew she had to be overlooking something. This part of the hospital was a warren.

  Across the room, seemingly in the right direction, I saw a door labeled JANITORIAL.

  As I hoped, it seemed to be a pass-through, accessible to custodians moving between surgery and post-op. The room stank of headache-inducing chemicals and was jammed with custodial carts. The shelves contained neatly folded bedclothes and cardboard boxes containing who knew what.

  I crossed to the opposite door and pressed my ear against it.

  More shouting. The words shapeless. Just noises.

  Then the doorknob rattled. Someone was trying to open it. But the bolt was still shot.

  I reholstered my service weapon. With my left hand, I reached for the lock. It made the softest of clicks. I closed my hand around the knob.

  What happened next took only seconds, yet it unfolded in super–slow motion.

  As I pulled the door inward, I felt movement. A gore-soaked man had pressed himself against the lintel. He had coffee-colored skin and a neck as thick as my thigh, and he was holding a pair of surgical shears to the throat of a woman in scrubs. The cutting edge had already given her a ruby necklace of blood. He must have had his other arm wrapped like a python around her waist.

  Facing both the man and his hostage—and now me—was a semicircle of firearms. The faces of the officers holding them were blurred. The barrels of their weapons were the only things in focus.

  The inmate stutter-stepped as he felt his structural support disappear behind him. Whatever he’d expected, it hadn’t been the previously locked door opening of its own accord.

  He rolled his eyes sideways, trying to catch me in his peripheral vision. I grabbed the wrist holding the shears and gave it a yank, throwing my weight backward. Both the hostage taker and the hostage fell with me through the doorway.

  Time seemed to stop. I became aware of the smell of shampoo in the woman’s hair. I saw the shears still clenched in the prisoner’s hand as the sharp edge slashed within an inch of my eyeball.

  A gunshot exploded, shattering the moment like a hammer breaking a mirror.

  Then gravity kicked in again and we continued our fall.

  The woman knocked the wind from my lungs when she landed on top of me.
A split second later, I felt the considerable weight of the inmate slam my shoulder to the floor. I smelled gun smoke. I even thought I heard the spent shell casing bounce off a hard surface. I turned my head and stared into the ragged red hole in the center of the dead man’s forehead: a third eye already focused on the world beyond this one.

  5

  The prisoner’s name was Darius Chapman. Despite his clothes being blood soaked and half-shredded, his identification tag was still clipped to his shirt pocket. I had never heard of him before.

  But I recognized the correctional officer who’d shot and killed him: Rancic, the dark-eyed man behind the prison body scanner. I watched the guard as he holstered his still-hot weapon. From his self-possession and the hardness with which he returned my gaze, I suspected that Chapman wasn’t the first man Rancic had killed in his life.

  The nurse was lifted off me, then rushed away to be treated for the laceration to her neck.

  Brother officers helped me to my feet.

  A man in physician’s scrubs examined Chapman’s corpse on the floor for a pulse.

  I was escorted to the ER, where another doctor sat me down on a gurney. He instructed me to remove my jacket, which had been contaminated by blood, and toss it into a hazardous-waste bin. Next, my shirt, also stained. I was relieved I got to keep my pants.

  With the help of a nurse who appeared at his unspoken command, the doctor swabbed the gore from my face and applied some sort of neutralizing agent to the potentially disease-carrying brain matter in my hair. He checked me for open wounds. Finding none, he walked off without a word, the silent nurse trailing behind.

  A state trooper told me to sit tight until I could give a statement on what had happened with Chapman, but I got up anyway. I had no intention of waiting there, bare chested and shivering, until the scene commander could delegate an officer to interview me.