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.
31
Tuesday. 11:00 P.M.
The shooter figured it’d take him about six hours to walk back to Portland. Finding a vehicle he could requisition might prove a little tricky, but he’d keep his eyes open. Where he could, he’d travel cross-country, avoiding the roads. He assumed the cops would be scouring the area, starting where they picked up the woman and working out from there. He wondered if they’d bring in dogs. His scent’d be all over the damaged Blazer. He didn’t know if they’d pick up any prints. He’d tried to be careful about that, but he didn’t have time to wipe anything down before he flew out the door. He touched his face where he’d banged it against the steering wheel trying to duck when the cop unloaded that shotgun. Then the air bag whacked him again. Fuck it. Too late to worry about that now. Left his favorite Pierotucci leather jacket in the backseat. That pissed him off. It was practically new and set him back four hundred bucks. Looked great, too. He didn’t think there was anything in the pockets. Other than that, just a couple of old Billy Ray Cyrus CDs and a DVD of an old movie, Day of the Jackal. He’d already seen it a couple of times but was planning to watch it again tonight. Now that was all fucked up.