by Wally Duff
I heard a noise.
Fertig?
I was fixated on the blood coming out of her leg and couldn’t tell where the sound came from. Removing my hand from her leg, I picked up my gun and pointed it at the door through which Fertig had fled.
If he came out of it, I was going to shoot him.
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There was another noise. It was behind us. I whirled around and came up into a shooting crouch.
A male voice shouted, “Gun!”
Tony stood fifteen feet in front of me. He held his hand out. “Might be a good idea to give me your Glock, sweets,” he said. “Lotta cops here with guns. One of ‘em might get nervous and shoot you.”
“But Fertig is still out there,” I said.
“Might be, but the only gun these cops see right now is yours. Give it to me, and they’ll back off.”
He walked up to me. I handed the Glock to him, handle first. He held it up. “Clear!” he shouted.
He popped the clip onto the floor and jacked the bullet out of the chamber.
Janet ran up to us. “We’ve got it from here. We’ll get Fertig. Let us do our job.”
I turned back around to Alexis’s side. I reapplied pressure to the entrance wound with my right hand. Blood continued to ooze through my fingers.
“Call for help!” I pleaded. “I can’t control the bleeding.”
“They’re coming,” Janet said. “When they get here, you go with Alexis. She’s your friend, and she needs you.”
“What if Fertig comes to the ER to finish what he started?” I asked. “I need my gun.”
“Not happening. This is an active crime scene. Those three patrolmen,” she pointed behind her, “will go with you to the ER. Two other detectives will interview you when they get there. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of firepower if you need it.”
“But…” I protested.
“Enough!” she said. “Stop trying to do our job.”
I opened my mouth again, but she held up her hand. “Which way did he go?”
I nodded toward the doors. “That way.”
Tony and Janet took off running in that direction. Four cops followed them. I added pressure with my left hand on top of my right, but the bleeding didn’t slow down.
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Two ER nurses sprinted toward us, pushing a gurney in front of them. They parked it next to Alexis and locked the brakes. They moved me out of the way and quickly lifted her up on the gurney. As they did, her bloody shoe fell off of her right foot.
One nurse used scissors to slit the suitcoat and blouse sleeves on Alexis’s left arm all the way to her shoulder and then started an IV in her arm and hung a full bag of fluid on a vertical metal rod. She ran the IV wide-open.
At the same time, the other nurse replaced my belt with a medical tourniquet and applied sterile pressure dressings to both wounds. That nurse then took the sunglasses off Alexis’s head and put an oxygen mask on her face.
I wasn’t part of this well-choreographed team, but I wanted to help. I picked up her other black pump off of the floor and put both of her shoes and her big purse on the gurney next to her. Then I slipped her sunglasses into the purse.
Alexis began to shiver, and the nurses pulled a white sheet and blanket over her torso. They rapidly pushed the gurney down the hallway. Two cops ran in front of us. Another one followed behind. They had their guns drawn. I ran with them, staying at Alexis’s side.
“You can let go of my hand,” she said.
“What?” I said. It was difficult to understand her because of the oxygen mask.
“My hand. You’ve been holding onto it ever since they began pushing me on this gurney.”
I released my grip. “Sorry. I feel terrible because I got you into this.”
I began crying.
“Stop that,” she said.
“I can’t help it. You got shot because of me.”
“But I had a chance to catch that miserable creep. I should have used my forehand swing with my purse instead of my backhand.”
“You do have a great forehand.”
“I do, but I don’t think I’ll be playing for a while.”
I didn’t say anything.
She fidgeted around on the gurney. “I didn’t think it would hurt this badly.”
“Getting shot?”
“On TV they never complain about pain from being shot, but this sucker really hurts.” She shivered. “Tell them to turn up the heat. I’m freezing.”
When I touched her hand again, it was frigid. I glanced down and her skin was mottled. She closed her eyes and stopped talking as they wheeled her into the ER.
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The nurses rolled Alexis into a trauma room. The three cops fanned out, one in front of her room, one in the hall we’d been in, and one by the ER entrance. They still had their guns out.
I waited outside her room. Medical personnel elbowed their way past me as they rushed in to help her. I looked down at myself.
I was covered in dried blood and Alexis’s hair.
A nurse going into Alexis’s room looked at me, stopped, turned around, and came back with a fresh set of blue scrubs for me to put on. Before I could go into the bathroom and change, two men in poorly-fitting suits walked up to me.
“Gotta have your clothes,” the taller man said.
“Excuse me?” I asked. “Are you speaking to me?”
“You Tina Thomas?” the shorter one asked.
“Yes.”
“Then we need your stuff,” he said.
“I’m Jelinek,” the taller man said. “He’s Crozier. We’re the detectives Corritore told you would be here.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “I’ll go change.”
“Hold it,” Jelinek said as he waved at a female police officer who stood behind them. “Go with her. Tag the clothes. Get one of our CSI techs to swab her hands and scrape her nails.”
“On it, detective,” she said.
What the heck?
“Am I under suspicion of a crime here?” I asked.
“Lady, somebody was shot, and somebody fired the shot,” Crozier said. “It’s our job to figure out who did it.”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“Only if you have gun powder residue on your hands,” Jelinek said.
Thank God I never fired my Glock at Fertig. The female cop followed me into the bathroom. I changed into the scrubs. She put my clothes in a bag, sealed it, and marked it for identification. We went out into the hall, and a CSI tech swabbed my hands and scraped under my fingernails.
They left. The detectives waited for me. I reached for my cell phone to call my husband before he heard about this mess from someone else, but Jelinek stopped me.
“No phone calls until we get your statement.”
“But…” I protested.
Crozier grabbed my phone, and they led me into an empty exam room. They turned on a recorder and began asking questions.
I wasn’t going anywhere until they finished with me.
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Twenty minutes later, they let me go with the understanding I would meet with them again tomorrow for further questioning and that I would walk Janet through what had happened in the parking garage and hallway.
I ran back to Alexis’s ER trauma room. From the grim look on the trauma doctor’s face, I assumed the results of her x-rays weren’t good.
“You have arterial damage, Ms., um,” he glanced at the chart, “Jakkobsen.”
The oxygen mask on her face had been replaced by plastic prongs in her nose. She now had a catheter in her bladder. A nurse rushed in and hung up a unit of blood. She put it on a rapid infuser. Another nurse traded the empty IV bag in her other arm for a new one.
Alexis’s mouth must have been dry from the medications she’d been given, because she licked her lips before she spoke.
Her speech was slurred. “Which... means... what?”
“Blood is hanging,” he said. “As soon as the OR room is ready, we’re head
ed off to surgery.”
I felt tears begin running down my cheeks. “Please tell me she’ll be okay,” I pleaded.
He turned to me. “Are you a relative?”
“No, I’m one of her best friends.”
“She’ll be fine,” he said, but his face was a mask, and I wasn’t sure if I believed him. “I’ll repair the arterial damage and assess for any nerve or bone injuries. There’s a surgery waiting room outside of the OR. This will take probably three hours. You have time to get something to eat while you wait.”
A nurse wheeled Alexis’s gurney toward the door. Another nurse in green scrubs helped her.
I gave Alexis a hug. “You’ll be fine.”
She had a loopy smile on her face. “Who cares?”
I straightened up. “What?”
“The drugs they gave me in the IV. Wow, do I feel good. No wonder those guys Fertig killed didn’t complain.” She pulled me down. Her blue eyes were hard. “Kill that son-of-a-bitch.”
“I can’t,” I said. “Janet won’t let me.”
“Please,” she whispered. “Do it for me.”
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I finally had the chance to call Carter before he heard about this from one of his reporters.
“Honey, there’s been a bit of a dustup at MidAmerica Hospital,” I said, trying to make my voice sound calm, but Carter immediately knew something was wrong.
“Tina, are you okay?” Carter asked.
I could hear the apprehension in his voice. “Don’t worry. Nothing happened to me, but Alexis wasn’t as lucky.”
“Alexis? What happened to her?”
I told him.
“I’m coming down there,” he said, when I finished.
“You don’t have time. Send someone else.”
The tone of his voice didn’t change. “You’re my wife, and I’m coming down there to make sure you’re okay.”
“To be honest, I could use your help. This is a spectacular end to the story.”
“Considering the email I received this morning, you may need all the help you can get.”
“Brittany?”
“Indeed. She wrote that she has broken the Fertig story and will be home tomorrow morning to finish it. She emailed Fertig early this morning. She wants to meet with him after she lands to discuss his version of the facts. Given the issues we had with Mrs. Warren, our publisher and I will be there too.”
“Then get down here as fast as you can. This story will trump anything Mrs. Warren has.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“A little shaken, but physically I’m fine.”
“I love you, and I will be there shortly.”
“I’m in the ER waiting on the trauma surgeon. Call me when you get here, and I’ll either still be here or in the hospital’s garage. Look for the yellow crime scene tape around space D-11.”
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I wasn’t going to do anything for Alexis by sitting in a waiting room wringing my hands while she was in the OR. I called Janet.
“Crozier and Jelinek told me to meet you in the parking garage to give you the rest of my statement. That seems kind of fishy to me. Did you arrange that?”
“Did you want to see Alexis before she went to surgery?”
“For sure I did.”
“Those two would have taken all night with their questions. I offered to do the paperwork for them if they let you go.”
“Did you find Fertig?”
“No, we lost him.”
“I’m on my way.”
Eleven minutes later, a cop handed me paper booties. I put them on before I joined Janet in the parking garage. We stood outside of the crime scene tape.
“At least you have him cold for shooting Wickham,” I said, before she could turn on her recorder.
“Yeah, except he didn’t leave any fingerprints in her SUV and the hairs aren’t any help. Not sure about any DNA at this point.”
“Not a problem. I saw him shoot Wickham. That should be enough to convict him of murder.”
“Did you see his face?”
I shut my eyes and replayed the entire episode in my head. “I guess I didn’t, but I’m sure it was him.”
“That is not going to be good enough for a jury.”
“Okay, but Fertig shot Alexis. That should be enough to arrest him for attempted murder.”
“That I do agree with.”
“And I can testify that he shot at me in the entrance hallway.”
She turned on a recorder and took out her notebook. “Walk me through it.”
“I was outside that door,” I said. “Fertig fired three rounds at me. Then several more that hit a car and set off its alarm. Then two hit the glass in the door. The next one hit a security camera.”
She made a note. We went under another crime scene tape and walked through the broken door. We stepped around the broken glass.
“When he got to the end of the hallway, he turned left and disappeared,” I continued. “I heard him fire two more shots. Something exploded, and then it sounded like glass hit the floor.”
“Those weren’t the rounds that hit Alexis?”
“No. That came later, and there was only one shot.”
She made more notes. When we got closer to the hallway where Alexis was shot, I stopped and pointed toward the ceiling. “I think that’s what I heard explode.”
The remnants of a security camera dangled from the ceiling.
“And you would be correct. He destroyed the security camera.”
She stopped me before we arrived at the spot where Fertig shot Alexis. The area was still swarming with CSI people and cops. We turned around and walked back toward the garage. “What did the doctor tell you about Alexis?” she asked.
“She’s headed into surgery. She has artery damage in her leg.”
“Will she be okay?”
“The doctor says she will.”
“I hope he’s right, because at this point, she’s our only witness to one crime we can prove Fertig committed.”
Janet and I walked into the parking garage. Tony still worked the crime scene. He stood next to the Lexus.
“None of this woulda’ happened if you had stayed put like Janet told you to do,” Tony said.
“I couldn’t help it,” I said. “Fertig tried to kill me, and I wasn’t going to let him get away with that.”
“Dumb ass thing to do without our backup,” he continued.
“You’re right, and I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again.”
“The hell was Alexis thinking?” he asked. “Didn’t have a gun.”
“She’s probably sorrier than I am. She’s the one who got shot.”
I looked into the driver’s window of Wickham’s Lexus. There was a gaping hole in her chest to the left of where her breast bone and heart used to be. There was no gun.
“This was meant to look like a murder,” Janet said.
“I agree,” I said. “Fertig saw me running toward him. He knew there was no reason to try and make it look like a suicide.”
“Probably why he took the gun with him and shot at you with it,” he said.
“You were the only witness,” Janet said. “He tried to take you out.”
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Carter arrived twenty minutes later. I left Janet and Tony and slipped under the crime scene tape. He saw me, slammed on his brakes, and jumped out of his Toyota.
He took me in his arms before I could say anything. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“Physically I’m fine, but my brains are a little scrambled,” I said. “Fertig murdered a female doctor and then tried to kill Alexis.”
He held me tighter. “Fertig is a madman.”
“You won’t get any arguments from me about that.”
He kissed the top of my head. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”
I struggled to pull free of his embrace. “We can do this later. Right now we have to write this story. You stay here. I’ll go with Janet and Tony to be th
ere when they arrest Fertig.”
