Tuesday. 10:30 P.M.
McCabe watched the EMT work from his perch in the back of the ambulance. The man placed an oxygen mask over Sophie’s nose and mouth. He wrapped what looked like an Ace bandage as tightly as he could around Sophie’s wound and resumed applying pressure against the artery above the wound. He looked competent. There was no conversation.
Up front, the driver radioed the ER dispatcher at Cumberland Medical Center. ‘Cumberland, this is Gray Emergency. We’re coming in, lights and siren. We’ve got a woman. Gunshot wound. Left arm. Arterial bleeding. Kind of shocky. We’ve got one line normal saline, wide open. Hundred percent O2. BP soft.’
‘Eighty-five over sixty, pulse one ten,’ shouted the man in the back.
The driver relayed the information. ‘ETA seventeen minutes,’ he added. ‘Please advise.’
The voice from the hospital crackled from a speaker above McCabe’s head. ‘Open a second line if you can. The trauma team will be ready and waiting. Give us your one-minute ETA.’
‘Roger that.’
McCabe leaned back as best he could. He looked like an accident victim himself, covered with Sophie’s blood. He pinned his shield to his bloodied shirt and used his cell to call Maggie.
‘McCabe, what’s going on? I thought you’d be back by now.’ He could barely hear her through the scream of the siren.
He filled her in on the shooting, omitting anything he didn’t want the EMT to hear, which was most of it.
‘I’ll meet you at the hospital,’ she said. ‘I’ll call Jane Devaney and get her over here before I leave.’
McCabe hesitated, trying to figure out if that was the best way to keep the bases covered. He hated waking Jane in the middle of the night but, in the end, figured that was the best solution. ‘Alright. Can you bring me some clean clothes? I’m a little unsightly at the moment.’
‘Anything in particular?’
‘No. Underwear’s in the dresser. Shirts and pants in the closet. Bring some kind of jacket.’ She said okay. ‘Also please call Bill Fortier and have him coordinate the search with the staties. Ditto the crime scene people. I want Jacobi working that SUV.’
‘Sure. Have you had anything to eat?’
McCabe had to think about that for a minute. ‘No. Not really. Everything good there?’
‘Yeah. Casey’s a little nervous. She just went to bed, but I don’t think she’s sleeping. You want to talk to her?’
‘Not from here. Just tell her everything’s fine, I love her, and I’ll see her tomorrow.’
They were on the turnpike now. Sophie seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness.
‘BP softening to seventy-five systolic, pulse up to one twenty,’ the EMT called to the driver. ‘I’m inserting the second line.’ The ambulance slowed and pulled over to allow the man in back a steady platform to insert the needle for the second IV. He put it in above the first in Sophie’s good arm.
He taped the needle in place. ‘Okay, go!’ he shouted.
The ambulance started back on the road and roared south on 95. What little traffic there was pulled to the right to let them pass. They cut across Washington Avenue and then south on 295. About half a mile north of the Congress Street exit, the driver again spoke to the hospital. ‘Cumberland, this is Gray. Second line open full. One minute from touchdown.’
‘See you when you get here.’
One minute later they pulled into the ambulance bay at the Cumberland Medical Center ER. The ambulance crew grabbed both sides of the stretcher and exited the vehicle at a run. McCabe followed. Twin automatic doors burst open, and they hurried Sophie directly into the hospital’s brightly lit trauma room. A full reception committee, at least ten doctors, nurses, residents, and students, stood in position, ready to receive.
The EMTs and a pair of residents lifted the sheet under Sophie and used it to transfer her to the trauma room stretcher. Someone in scrubs called out, ‘Trauma room three!’ They headed where she was pointing.
As they went, a serious-looking young woman, thin with a long horsey face, checked Sophie’s IVs and oxygen, then addressed one of the EMTs. Her plastic badge identified her as Dr. Maloney. ‘Give me what you’ve got.’
‘Gunshot wound to the left arm. Pulsatile bleeding with a lot of blood at the scene. Seems to have missed the bone. BP seventy-five on the way in. Two lines full out. She’s taken two liters normal saline.’
McCabe waited while she called out to her team, ‘Okay, start another line in her right groin. I want four units O-negative stat.’ A group of residents and nurses began to make it happen.
‘Are you the husband?’ A man in his forties addressed McCabe, who’d come into room three right behind the EMTs.
‘No.’ McCabe indicated the badge pinned it to his bloody shirt. ‘I’m Detective McCabe, Portland PD. Who are you?’
McCabe could hear the young woman’s voice directing her team from the head of the stretcher. ‘I want blood sent out for type and screen.’
‘I’m Dr. Kennedy, emergency attending. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait outside, Detective.’
McCabe shook his head. ‘I’m not going anywhere. This woman is a key witness in a murder case and somebody’s trying to kill her. She needs protection.’
The doctor paused only a second or two. ‘She’ll be alright in here.’ His tone was friendly. ‘We’re trying to save her life, not end it. There’s no room for extra bodies in the trauma room. She’ll be going up to surgery in about ten minutes.’ Dr. Kennedy indicated McCabe’s blood-covered clothes. ‘In the meantime, you can shower in the doctors’ locker room. Do you know the patient’s name?’
‘Put her into your system as Jane Doe, and tell your folks while she’s here she’s under protective custody of the Portland PD.’
The doctor nodded. He turned to a young man, a medical student, McCabe guessed. ‘Get Detective McCabe some scrubs to put on and show him where to clean up,’ he said. ‘You can join her in the ICU recovery room on five when she gets out of the OR, which won’t be for two or three hours. Until then she’ll have about ten reliable people around her at all times. I’ll let you know.’
The young man found a large plastic bag for McCabe’s clothes and a smaller one for his wallet and keys. He then led him to a small locker room with a row of shower stalls. McCabe stripped down and stuffed the clothes plus his gun and holster into the larger bag. He tied a knot in the bag to seal it and took it with him into the shower stall. He wasn’t going anywhere unarmed tonight, and he wasn’t leaving any guns lying around untended. As the hot water hit him, rinsing Sophie’s blood off his face and arms, he watched the reddened water swirling around and down the drain. The shower scene from Psycho played in his mind.
Sophie was in surgery on the fifth floor. About thirty feet from the doors to the OR, along a partially darkened corridor, McCabe sat in a plastic chair in the otherwise empty ICU waiting room. He was dressed in scrubs. He pinned his shield to the blouse. He debated whether to strap his. 45 over or under and opted for under the loose-fitting garment. He hooked his cell phone to the gun belt. His hand rested loosely on the weapon.
According to the doctors, the sniper’s bullet passed cleanly through her left arm about five inches below her shoulder. It missed the bone but ruptured the brachial artery. A vascular surgeon was working now to clean out the damaged tissue and reconnect the artery itself. McCabe got a little lost in the medical jargon, but the terms ‘de-bridement’ and ‘anastomosis’ stuck in his mind.
The surgeon said it would take about two hours to repair the arm but she’d probably be just fine, not lose any function. He also said the biggest threat to Sophie’s life was infection. McCabe didn’t bother telling the doctor that really wasn’t the case.
McCabe extinguished the lights and muted the TV, allowing its colorful silent images to remain the only movement in the room, their glow the only illumination. He stared silently through the glass wall at the hallway in front of him. There were few passersby. A couple of nurses, an elderly man pushing a bucket and mop, a young man in scrubs. He watched each for signs of threat. A bank of three elevators stood directly across the corridor from the waiting room. McCabe kept his eyes on the little lighted numbers above the doors, watching for one that might stop at five, though he doubted the shooter, if he was coming, would choose such a direct route.