by Randall Wood
“Still at the hospital, I guess.”
“Find Eric, and let’s go see how they’re doing.” He turned and stalked away.
“He’s not happy,” Eric said as he approached.
“No, he’s not, and Jack doesn’t get mad,” Sydney answered as she watched Jack duck under the tape and storm off to his car. “We were close. Now we have to catch up again. That’s what’s got him mad.”
“Are we leaving?”
“Yeah. Make sure you bag and tag everything before you leave. I’ll meet you at the car. Don’t forget the equipment.”
“Okay. Gimme ten minutes.”
• • •
Sam watched the news again, and the story was repeated every half hour. It was like they were taunting him. The young blond with the perfectly coiffed hair delivered the news, good or bad, with her perky smile, never missing a beat. He turned the box off again. He was getting restless. He still had the stuff in the storage unit. Toying with the idea for a moment, he got up and grabbed his jacket off the chair. The keys were in his pocket.
A twenty-minute drive later, Sam was in the parking garage across from the hospital. It was dangerous—hospitals were full of cameras—but Sam just couldn’t leave it alone. He watched as the ambulances pulled up to the emergency room bay and unloaded their patients. All types of other hospital personnel also used the entrance: nurses, maintenance, clerical. It just happened to be the closest entrance to the parking garage, and also a way to avoid going through the crowded emergency waiting room. He pulled the powerful spotting scope to his eye and watched another person punch in the code on the entrance pad. He couldn’t see the actual numbers, but he got a good idea of where their fingers were going.
“They can’t be that stupid.” He shook his head in amazement. Was this worth a try? He returned to his car and changed into his coveralls and hat. He checked the items in his tool box before setting out for the ambulance entrance.
As he exited the parking garage, he noticed a higher volume of foot traffic. Shift change was evidently occurring. He adjusted his stride to arrive at the door alone. He eyeballed the keyboard before punching in the numbers.
9-1-1.
The door opened with a hiss, and he walked inside without trouble. He ignored the bustling emergency room and followed the signs till he was clear. Rounding the corner, he found a bank of service elevators. Punching the down button, he was rewarded with a ding as the door opened. He found himself all alone in the oversized car. Selecting the button for the sub-basement, he was quietly on his way.
When the doors opened, he exited into a rather plain tiled hallway. Bins of linen lined the wall, and the smell of bleach was in the air. Following it to the left, he was rewarded with the sound of the hospital’s large washing machines. He paused at the door and listened to several women having a loud conversation over the noise. He jumped when a bin appeared at the door being pushed by a small woman. Since he had no option, Sam waited till she saw him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t see around this thing.”
“That’s all right. I’m new and a little lost. Can you tell me where the locker room is?”
“Oh, you’re way off, honey. Up one floor and all the way across. It’s next to the pool. Just follow the signs and the chlorine smell. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem. Good luck.” She shoved the bin in line with all the others before returning to the humid room.
Sam eyeballed the bin. Towels. He looked in the second one, the same. The third one held scrubs. Sam pawed through them until he had a set of extra-large. They were quickly stuck in the tool box, and he was on his way.
He located a flight of stairs and was up one floor. The signs said Faculty Gym, with a corresponding arrow. Sam did as he had been instructed. He passed a pharmacy with cameras outside the door, keeping his head down so the hat would shield his features as he passed. His nose indicated a kitchen of some sort, and he soon saw it through a window. Once past that, he detected the faint smell of chlorine. Following it, he soon found the pool, with a separate entrance to the men’s locker room. Entering it, he found row after row of lockers, some with people changing, but most empty. Following the rows, he eventually came to the bathroom facilities. Here he made a show of checking the toilets and sinks. Some personnel came and went. Sam listened to a large group of men changing their clothes a row over. Not so much to them, but to the locker doors. He only heard two slams out of a group of six voices. They soon strode by on their way to the pool. Sam picked up the tool box and walked past the row. Several lockers were open with clothing hanging off the doors and on the benches. He continued on to the next row, and seeing it empty, quickly returned to the first.
A quick search gave him three choices. He took the badge with the picture that resembled him the most. Fixing it to his lapel, he reversed it so the front didn’t show. It was something he noticed his nurses did when he was in the hospital. When he asked why, he was told that some patients were hostile, especially in the ER, and the nurses hid their names so as not to be singled out and targeted. He doubted he’d be asked by anyone to show his badge. What he really wanted was the barcode on the side of it. He looked like a maintenance man, and they were everywhere. With the badge, he should have access to every coded entry.
He left the locker room and traveled the hallways, getting familiar with the layout of the building, and testing his pass on a couple of doors. At an information booth, he snagged a map from the stand and then found a bathroom in which to consult it. He quickly located the ICU and all the exits from it. Quietly as possible, he changed his clothes until he wore the scrubs underneath the coveralls.
Now with a plan and the building’s layout committed to memory, he exited the bathroom and headed for the stairs. After four flights, he was on the ICU floor. He looked through the window to see a U-shaped row of rooms with glass walls. A nurse’s station sat in the center with several monitors hanging from the ceiling. Sam was surprised to see only two people in the room. He knew there was a nursing shortage, but this was not what he had expected. A third nurse appeared to grab a chart, and just as quickly left. After watching for ten minutes, Sam concluded that they alone were the night shift. He squinted to read the names of the patients on the doors. The third one read “Curtis” with his doctor’s name written below it. The glass door was half open and the curtain was pulled.
How was he going to pull this off?
• • •
Jack sat across from Larry in the hospital cafeteria. The pilots couldn’t fly again until tomorrow, so Jack had decided to see if the target himself knew anything. Unfortunately, Curtis was still under sedation, and it would be some time before he was able to talk. Larry had tried with the younger Curtis, but had been told to go to hell in so many words. Sydney and Eric were off on a search for Mountain Dew. Something they had discovered they both had an affinity for.
“What now Larry?” Jack said. “I’m out of ideas.”
“Well, I’m not sure. We can look at some of the names we came up with. Hope for some forensics. Can you pull that magic trick you did again?”
“Not for a couple of days,” was all Jack could say. Larry took the answer without question. They sat in silence.
“Why do you think he chose Curtis?” Larry asked. “I mean, the man was tried and found not guilty once. Then he was re-tried and found guilty in the civil suit. He hasn’t really escaped justice as our shooter said in the letter. As far as I know, he’s never even pulled the trigger himself for any of the crimes he’s been tied to. I’m not sure I understand why our guy put him on his death list.”
“That’s the problem with vigilantism. Some targets are black and white to most people, some aren’t. I’m sure nobody is going to shed a tear for Ping, but pretty soon they get very debatable. Like Curtis, here. Is he a criminal? Probably. His file has him tied to drug gangs and weapons runners. But has he actually committed a crime? His hate speech may b
oil your blood when you hear it, but when you get right down to it, it’s just that: it’s a speech—one man making his personal feelings heard in a very public way. Like it or not, in this country we don’t jail people for that. Protecting his right to do so is one of the things we safeguard the most.”
Larry thought about it for a moment before replying. “You think the system is broken like our vigilante says?”
“I don’t know what he means by broken. It all really has to do with his view of how it’s working. You have to remember, we are some of the most under-policed people in the world. The average American spends his whole life with little or no contact with the police outside of the TSA or maybe a traffic ticket. Most see the police as something they like to have around, yet they avoid contact with us at all cost. It’s like we’re the enemy right up until they need us. It’s that silence that lets the men like Curtis get as far as they do. Nobody calls them out until it gets to the point that it affects them. If the people are complacent while bad things happen right in front of them, then who’s to blame then?”
“We have hate crime legislation now. Isn’t that a step in the right direction?”
“I was never really in favor of it, to tell you the truth. So, we can tack on a few years if it fits the court’s definition of a hate crime. I don’t think it really does anything to deter the crime in the first place. A murder is a murder. A crime is a crime. The judge should be able to decide what the person gets at sentencing. I guess I just don’t like the way we are now adding jail time based on what someone was thinking. Do you think our shooter has committed a hate crime yet?”
Larry shrugged. “Hard to say, really. More like a reverse hate crime.”
“Exactly. I was talking with Dr. Wong about it. He stressed that we understand that the shooter’s goal is to make a statement about the judicial system, not to deliver justice to those whom he thinks need it. I’m trying to think like our shooter, and it’s becoming more difficult. Who deserves to die? It doesn’t matter what I think; it only matters what the shooter thinks.”
“The perils of the vigilante.” Larry sighed.
“You can say that again. Think along these lines. The public seems to be split on the subject, don’t they? If this produces a bunch of copycats, we’re heading for real trouble.”
“What if he turns out to be a cop?” Larry ventured.
“Even worse. The half who stayed with us may jump over to the other side.”
They both nursed their coffee while they contemplated such an outcome. Jack broke it with another insight.
“He’s getting bolder,” Jack stated.
“Yes, he is,” Larry echoed.
“Overconfidence, or just plain balls?”
“Don’t know. There’s a third possibility, too, you know.”
“What’s that?”
“Maybe he just doesn’t care anymore,” Larry offered.
“Don’t go there. My day’s been bad enough.”
• • •
After another ten minutes, Sam had his idea. He used his pass card and entered the room, striding purposefully up to the desk. The nurse was writing furiously in a chart, with what looked like several more stacked up next to her. She glanced up at his presence.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I’m here to check the calibration of your oxygen ports,” Sam explained. “Should only take a few minutes.” He held his breath. Would she buy it? It sounded good to him.
“All right. Just put a mask on when you go into six; his immune system is compromised. Make sure you glove up, too.” She was already back into her paperwork.
Sam looked around until he saw boxes of gloves hanging on the wall. He grabbed a pair of large ones and slipped them on. He walked past room three on his way back to one, and could see Curtis inside: his head, face, and chest heavily bandaged. His eyes were closed. Sam entered the first room and found an elderly man on a ventilator. His heart rate was erratic and his color was gray. Sam opened the tool box and pulled out the Ruger Paul had made silent a few weeks ago, and stuck it inside his coveralls. After making some noise he hoped was appropriate, he exited the room and entered two. The nurse didn’t even look up.
Inside, he found another elderly male with a large surgical scar across his abdomen. His color was poor also, but he appeared to have a regular heart rate on the monitor and was sleeping comfortably. Sam traced the wires from his chest up to the monitor. He read the screen carefully and found the alarm icon. It was green. Sam knew from his own hospital stays that if one of the wires was disconnected, the alarm would sound. He saw a mask lying on the counter and put it on. With the tool box in one hand, he quickly yanked two wires off with the other. There was a pause, and then a loud beeping could be heard out at the nurse’s desk. Sam exited the room to see the two nurses moving in his direction.
“I’m sorry. I caught some wires on my tool box!”
“I’ve got it. Just get out of the way.” The nurses shoved past him.
As they entered room two, Sam stepped into room three. Stepping to the monitor, he hit the button that silenced the alarm. He quickly pulled the pistol from his coveralls and aimed it at the prone figure on the bed. He was rewarded by Curtis opening his eyes. They focused and widened just before Sam pulled the trigger, sending a round through his open mouth and into his brain. The cough of the silenced round was drowned out by the alarm next door.
Sam returned the pistol to his coveralls and left the room for the exit in the opposite direction. He was just leaving when the nurse called after him. He ignored her and headed for the elevators. The doors closed, just as the nurse entered the hallway. Lucky for her, she was too late.
Sam rode the elevator down three floors before getting off. He kept the mask on as he strode the length of the floor and entered the stairs on the opposite end. Descending to the next landing, he then stopped to remove the coveralls. He tossed them in the corner along with the toolbox. The pistol was shoved down the front of his pants where it was covered by the bulky scrubs. He took the stairs down at a normal pace.
• • •
Jack was still sitting in the cafeteria with Sydney, Larry, and Eric, when the overhead announcement came on.
“Attention security. Code Black. Repeat, Code Black. Monitor channel two.” It was repeated three times. Jack spun around until he saw two security men eating at the next table.
“Hey.” Jack held up his badge. “What’s a code black?”
“Emergency request for Security. We have a bunch of codes: pink for stolen babies, red for fire. It’s always a drill.”
Jack was watching the other man’s face as he listened to the radio he’d put to his ear. His expression changed, and Jack got to his feet.
The man looked up at all of them watching him. “It’s for real. Somebody just shot the Klan guy up on six. He’s dead. A maintenance guy: white, six foot, brown coveralls. We’re supposed to secure all the exits. No one leaves.”
“Let’s go,” Jack said. “Where’s the maintenance entrance?”
“Uh, there isn’t one really. Closest thing would be down in the basement, next to the loading dock and the emergency generators.”
“Show me!” Jack ran after the men. He turned and pointed to the rest of them. “Find the other exits, and help secure them!”
Larry looked after Jack. There was no way he could run fast enough to catch him. He turned around to see Sydney and Eric looking at him for guidance.
“Okay. Syd, you take the bridge to the parking garage, and Junior and I will take the ER entrance. Stay in touch, and don’t do anything by yourself!”
“Okay.” She turned and ran toward the employee entrance, pulling her gun as she ran. She remembered to move her badge out where everyone could see it. She didn’t want to get shot by a nervous security guard.
• • •
Sam exited the stairwell and turned the corner, heading toward the loading dock. He expected the regular entrances to be guarded by now, but the load
ing dock most likely wasn’t. A guard was no doubt on his way, though, and Sam was hoping to beat him.
As soon as he rounded the corner he knew he was too late. An older security guard was strolling the dock. He spun around when he heard Sam approach.
“Hold it, young man. I can’t let you leave.”
Sam stopped. “I was hoping to get out before the lock down. If I’m late again, she’s gonna kill me. Aren’t you sick of these drills?”
The man relaxed a bit, but not much. His name tag read Charlie. Charlie had some gray showing in his afro.
“Word is this one’s for real. Somebody up on six finished off the hate monger.”
“No shit? Well, I just want to go home. How about letting me out?”
Charlie looked Sam over, as if considering the request. His gaze fell on Sam’s boots. Odd, Charlie thought. Nobody wore boots like that up on the floors. It was all tennis shoes. For all the time they spent on their feet. Charlie felt something was wrong.
Before Sam could react, Charlie pulled his gun and had the drop on him. Sam didn’t move he just slowly raised his hands. He could see the Marine Corps tattoo on Charlie’s forearm. The man seemed very comfortable with his sidearm.
They stood in silence for a moment until Charlie broke it with a question.
“You the guy in the paper, sniping all those criminals?” The gun didn’t waver.
Sam decided this was a bad time to lie.
“Yeah.”
Some more silence. Sam was about to speak when Charlie cut him off.
“My daddy had to deal with those Klan sons-of-bitches his whole life. It’s why I became a soldier and then a cop.” He let the statement hang. Sam just nodded. The gun stayed trained on Sam’s chest. Some more silence.
“The door behind me leads to the loading dock,” Charlie said. “From there, it’s out the gate on the left and into the parking garage. You should have cover there till you come out a block down the street. You hear me?”
Sam just nodded.
Charlie lowered the gun and stepped aside. Sam walked slowly past him to the door. He stopped and looked back at Charlie.
