The shooter exited the stairwell on three and looked down the hall toward the open elevator doors. Pure chaos. Even better than he hoped. Doctors, nurses, and security guys all shouting and running toward the open elevator with Charles’s body in it. Even the cops left their posts. One ran from the door of Sophie’s room toward the crowd, then stopped ten feet down the hall, his back to the room, looking toward the commotion. The second cop stayed by the door but was out of his chair, watching the action, his back to the shooter.
From what he could hear, it sounded like Charles was still alive and they were treating him for a broken neck. Tough little bugger. That snap should have finished him off. The shooter grabbed an abandoned meal cart and rolled it toward Sophie’s room. He pulled to a stop at the door. As quietly as possible, he opened the door and pushed the cart in. As he closed it, he heard the cop outside the door shout, ‘Hey, where do you think you’re going?’ The shooter left the cart in the middle of the room and slipped behind the door, pulling the Blackie Collins knife from its ankle sheath. He snapped it open.
McCabe reached the third floor a full flight ahead of Maggie. He could see people milling around the elevator at the end of the hall. Midway down on the left, Comisky, in a crouch, gun drawn, was entering room 308. The door closed. McCabe sprinted toward the room, pulling his .45 from its holster.
He kicked open the door, holding the automatic in front of him. Kevin Comisky lay writhing on the floor, hands clutching at his neck, trying desperately to hold back gushers of blood spurting from a slashed carotid artery, his life running out. A man in scrubs stood over him, a short-bladed, bloody knife in hand. Surprise registered on his face at McCabe’s intrusion. Surprise turned to rage. ‘Too late, asshole.’
The man rushed for Sophie’s bed, driving the knife toward her comatose body. McCabe’s bullet struck the moving target high, hitting the right shoulder, shattering a bone, driving the shooter backward. Blood spurted out. Like an enraged bull, he turned toward McCabe, managing somehow to hold on to the knife.
McCabe slammed into him, grabbing the wounded arm and twisting it, pushing it back, away from Sophie and toward the wall. The man bellowed in pain. Even wounded, he was as strong as an ox. He turned his body into McCabe and chopped his left elbow hard into McCabe’s kidney once and then again. There was a startling explosion of pain and McCabe went down, unable to breathe. The man advanced, now sure of his prey. McCabe raised his arm to fire again and was surprised to find his gun hand empty. Somehow he’d dropped the .45 going down.
He looked around frantically. Left. Right. There. By the bed. He reached for the gun. The shooter was too fast. He kicked it away, turned, and with his good hand grabbed McCabe by the hair. He pulled his head back hard, exposing his throat to the blade. He raised the knife, barely able to hold it with the wounded hand. McCabe made a desperate grab and missed. He was sure he was going to die. Then a sudden explosion, deafening in the confined space, and, to McCabe’s amazement, a small black hole, like a ragged ink spot in a Rorschach test, appeared in the shooter’s forehead where there had been none an instant before. In the split second it took the shooter to die, a look of utter disbelief spread across his broad face.
A nurse and two white-coated residents ran into the room and began working frantically, kneeling by the still-breathing, bloody form of Kevin Comisky. McCabe’s eyes moved to the door, where Maggie was still standing, like Grace Kelly in High Noon, still holding her weapon in a two-handed stance, still pointing at the dead man sprawled in the middle of the floor, ready to fire again, as if she couldn’t quite believe he was really dead. McCabe fought off waves of pain.
As the medics worked, he felt a tremor of hope that Kevin Comisky might make it. That the doctors might have gotten to him in time. He even found himself praying for it – but his prayers weren’t answered. It only took a minute or two for the doctor, who looked to McCabe like he was fourteen years old, to look up, shake his head, and announce, ‘He’s gone.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Shit.’
Sophie still lay silently on the bed, breathing evenly. She’d missed the whole thing. McCabe looked back at the body of the shooter. ‘Too bad we couldn’t have taken him alive,’ he said, as much to himself as to Maggie.
‘Fuck you,’ said Maggie, who’d finally lowered her outstretched arms. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. ‘If you have anything at all to say right now, McCabe, just make it a simple thank-you.’ The words came out tight and controlled. He knew she’d never fired her weapon at a human being before. He knew it wasn’t easy.
‘Thank you.’
35