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The Sikorsky helicopter thundered through the icy February night, its blades chopping against wind gusting off the Ohio River. In the rear-facing passenger seat, Dr. Cassandra Hart swallowed hard to keep down the chilimac she’d eaten earlier. Wishing it was only motion sickness, she tugged at her safety harness. There was no room to breathe, not enough air.
Motion sickness she knew how to fix. Irrational claustrophobia was another story. A curse, a weakness she refused to reveal, forcing her to mask her panic.
The view outside Cassie’s window wasn’t helping. The helicopter’s blades tore into the low-hanging clouds, shredding them into tattered, ghostly remnants. Rain pelted the scarred Lexan windows, ricocheting like shrapnel.
Typical of Pittsburgh, a city constantly teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, few of the buildings they passed were lit. The ones that were, such as the Cathedral of Learning and PPG Place, stood like sentries in the dark, guarding against a pre-dawn invasion.
She bit down against another wave of nausea, her pulse drumming through her ears in time with the rotor blades. Across from her, Eddie Marcone, her flight paramedic, lounged in his seat, playing a hand-held computer game, oblivious to her distress and their impending doom.
A blast of wind catapulted the Sikorsky skyward. Cassie’s restraints tightened against the sudden motion, squeezing against her chest. Gravity yanked them back down with a jolt strong enough to snap her jaws together.
“Weather’s moving in fast,” Zack Allan, their pilot, said. His voice reverberated through her headset. “Might have to turn back, doc.”
Turn back? Cassie rubbed her clammy palms on the legs of her Nomex flight suit. Right now the landing pad at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Medical Center seemed like a distant Nirvana. A Nirvana that would have to wait. The patient they were flying to retrieve, a girl found in the frigid waters of the Ohio River, couldn’t.
“Ten minutes,” she told Zack, denying the fight or flight instinct raging through her, every muscle quivering with the desire to escape. “We’ll scoop and run, just give me ten minutes.”
The Sikorsky bucked again. “They can send her by ground,” Eddie said, his glare reminding her that her decision affected all of them, not only her patient.
“It’ll take too long. This girl doesn’t have that kind of time.”
That was the problem with living in a city built around three rivers and several mountains. Tunnels, bridges and roadwork conspired
against the rapid transport of trauma victims.
Zack’s sigh resonated through her headset and she knew she’d won. Hah. If you could call being locked inside this flying death trap winning.
“You’ve got five minutes,” he said.
They flew lower. The turbulence decreased from head-swimming, stomach-flipping to mere filling-rattling. The Sikorsky shuddered then landed on the last intact slice of macadam remaining at the on-ramp of the West End Bridge. Rotor wash overturned several orange PennDOT barrels, sending them skittering across the broken asphalt. Sleet pounded the helicopter. Cassie didn’t need to look; she knew Zack was scowling.
“Hey, Hart,” he shouted over the rumble of the engine, “one second late and I swear—”
Cassie ignored him as she wrenched the door open, stepped out into the night and moved away from the rotors, ducking her head until she cleared the blades. Straightening, she turned into the westerly wind and stole a moment to breathe.
Her fear drained away, replaced with the adrenalin of anticipation. A rescue squad sat at the entrance to the bridge, its lights aimed down the embankment that led to the Ohio River. At the water’s edge two medics struggled to roll a small, pale form onto a neon orange backboard. Her patient.
Eddie joined her and they scrambled down the gravel slope. “Why do you have to always push the envelope? You know the pilot’s got the
final call.”
“Zack’s a worrier.” Her gaze focused on the medics, and the girl’s unmoving body.
“There’s nothing wrong with that. Not when it’s my ass on the line.” He slipped in the wet scree and fought to catch his balance. “What makes this patient so important you’re willing to risk my life?”
Cassie ignored him, rushing forward as one of the medics slipped, almost dumping her patient into the river. She reached out to help stabilize the backboard, splashing icy water over her boot tops while Eddie arranged their gear on a pile of torn-up paving bricks.
“What’ve we got?” She raised her voice to be heard above the wind whistling through the bridge girders as they sloshed their way onto solid ground. A dark, tangled curl whipped free of its barrette. She twisted it behind her ear where it joined the rest of her rain-frizzled hair dripping down the back of her neck.
“Don’t know. Could be a jumper,” one of the medics shouted.
The girl was maybe fourteen, fifteen tops. Her lips were blue, her face pale, her blonde hair waterlogged. For a long moment Cassie couldn’t find her pulse. There. Slow, thready, but definitely there. Good girl. Don’t give up now.
“Severe hypothermia.” Mud squished beneath her, revealing sharp rocks below it as Cassie knelt at the girl’s head. “She’s apneic. I need to tube her.”
“We don’t have time,” Eddie said.
“Just give me a second,” she muttered, her attention focused on her patient. The girl’s skin felt cold, waxen. Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.
Cassie’s fingers parted her patient’s blue-tinged lips. It was a difficult position to maneuver in, but she slid the endotracheal tube into place in one smooth movement. She reached for the ventilation bag to force oxygen into the girl’s starving lungs.
“Slick,” Eddie said in grudging admiration as he secured the tube with a few quick wraps of tape.
“Now or never, Hart,” Zack shouted down from the helicopter.
She acknowledged the pilot’s words with a nod but did not alter the rhythm of her hands. The February wind burnt her face as she leaned over her patient, trying to shelter the girl. Cassie couldn’t spare a hand to wipe the rain away, so she ducked her face into the shoulder of her bomber jacket.
The acrid, smoky smell of wet leather jolted through her, and suddenly she was twelve again, standing in icy water, clutching her father’s hand. She shook her head, chasing the errant memory back to its proper place.
“Slow now,” she told Eddie and the medics. “Don’t jostle her.”
Severe hypothermia, trauma from a possible fall, cold-water immersion, shock—the odds against her patient were overwhelming. They slogged their way up the steep, muddy hill, zigzagging around broken pieces of asphalt and other debris left behind by the PennDOT crew.
“Give us a hand already,” Cassie called to the policemen huddled beside their cruiser, supposedly directing traffic through the urban wasteland of deserted warehouses and road construction. Not that there was any traffic in the
predawn hours of a Monday morning.
With the extra manpower they were able to quickly haul her patient up to the waiting Sikorsky. Cassie jumped in and positioned herself at the head of the stretcher.
“Hang on, it’s gonna be a rough ride,” Zack announced.
The helicopter’s powerful engine revved. Cassie’s heart slammed against her rib cage as the craft shook. After an initial upward lurch, winds began to buffet them without mercy.
A coffin, she was riding in a metal coffin.
She squelched the thought, forcing her attention onto her patient. The girl’s oxygen level was marginal, heart rate low, blood pressure non-existent. Cassie slid her trauma scissors along the seams of the girl’s Pitt sweatshirt, tugging the heat-stealing sodden cotton away. A shower of small green tablets spilled from a plastic bag tucked into the girl’s bra.
She scooped up the pills, examining their unique triangular shape. “FX. Looks like it’s the real thing, too.”
Fentephex, or FX, was the drug industry’s latest “miracle” analgesia that had crossed over from hospital use to street abuse. Already this year, the drug had killed six of Cassie’s patients. She wasn’t about to lose a seventh.
Eddie finished securing the IV line. He ran his fingers over the purplish raised needle tracks lining the girl’s thin arms. “She’s been shooting it.”
“Push the Narcan. I’ll set up a drip.” There were at least two dozen pills twisted into the baggie. How had the girl gotten her hands on that
much FX? Cassie shoved the bag of drugs into her pocket and reached for a syringe.
Without warning, the helicopter dropped. Gravity grabbed Cassie, tearing her away from her patient. Her stomach somersaulted, and she scrambled for a handhold. She looked up. One of the pinnacles of the PPG Tower rushed toward them. Normally, the glass tower with its fairytale spires stretching toward the sky was one of her favorite Pittsburgh landmarks. Tonight it seemed a nightmarish dagger.
The Sikorsky lurched. “Damn it, Zack!” Eddie’s voice sounded through her headset.
Cassie couldn’t tear her gaze away from the gleaming lights of the tower. They pulled at the helicopter, a siren song beckoning them to their doom. The helicopter pitched to the right. She squeezed her eyes shut.
A blink of an eye. A split second. If anyone knew how fast a life could change, it was Cassie. Who would come to her funeral? She had no family left.
How careless of her to lose everyone like that—how foolish of her to be the last one standing.
The helicopter climbed, then dropped once again, engines screaming in protest. Acid scratched at the back of Cassie’s parched throat. She forced her eyes open. The tower filled her window. Thirty years weren’t enough, she decided. Not nearly enough. Her mind filled with a vision of twisted steel, smoke and fire. Would there be anything left to bury?
Focus on your patient. You’re not dead yet. Neither is she. Cassie reached for her patient’s wrist, her fingers automatically feeling for
the pulse. It was stronger now that they had fluids going, but there were a few irregular beats. And the girl’s skin was still deathly cold. All this jostling around wasn’t helping her over-stressed heart.
The glass tower loomed over them. With a shriek and a final howl of its engines, the Sikorsky righted itself, swerving away from disaster.
A few minutes later, the lights of Three Rivers Medical Center came into view. Before they could land, the shrieking of monitor alarms filled the cabin.
“V-fib.” Cassie reached for the girl’s carotid artery. “No pulse.”
“Hell.” Eddie began chest compressions.
Cassie charged the defibrillator. She forced air into the girl, squeezing the bag valve mask. The defibrillator buzzed, signaling its readiness.
“Clear!” Cassie planted the paddles on their patient’s chest. Electricity shot through the girl’s chest. “Nothing.” She exchanged the paddles for the epinephrine and injected the heart medication into the IV.
The helicopter thudded down onto the landing pad. The doors slid open, and helping hands reached in to move their patient. Cassie took over chest compressions. She wove her fingers together and pistoned her palms against the girl’s breastbone. The wind hurled wasp-stings of sleet against her skin. Cassie ignored it, pausing only to fling her hair out of her face with an impatient shake of her head. The barrette that once restrained it was long lost, probably at the bottom of the river.
Damn it, Cassie thought in rhythm with her chest compressions. You are not going to die. Not on my watch.
If Detective Mickey Drake closed his eyes, the rain pounding against the dumpster lid sounded a lot like gunfire from a modified TEC-9. Splat-patta-pat-pat. Not as loud as the movies made it out. Less bang, more pop.
Drake didn’t close his eyes. Instead, he kept them riveted on the third floor window of the East Liberty apartment building where Lester Young was rocking the night away with his woman.
The wind did little to dissipate the stench of urine, rotting chicken, and sour milk that clung to the alley. Gray mist swirled past Drake in tatters as transparent as promises from old lovers.
He shifted his weight, crammed his bare hands deeper into the pockets of his navy peacoat, and tried to ignore the thud of the rain against garbage bags overflowing with moldering, dirty diapers. The only light on the block came from the apartment’s naked window and one overworked street lamp whose yellow glow struggled to make it as far as the pavement below.
Yesterday was Drake’s first day off in two weeks. But when Lisa Dimeo, the straitlaced prosecutor working with the Pittsburgh Police Bureau’s FX Taskforce, called to tell him she’d finally convinced her boss that they had enough probable cause to go for a warrant, he had joined in the hunt. No way he was going to let a little thing like sleep stop him from bringing in Lester Young.
Drake had scoured all of the drug dealing, murdering, sonofabitch’s hideyholes until, about one in the morning, he tracked Lester to his strawberry’s Ruby Avenue apartment. Drake had been a good boy, called for backup, and waited for Kwon to arrive with the warrant. Lester wasn’t walking on any technicality. Not this time.
“You need some help out there, DJ?” Janet Kwon’s voice drilled through his earpiece. “Thought you went to take a leak. That was twenty minutes ago.”
Her voice was good humored, but colored with concern. Not solely concern about his well-being. Kwon’s concern was that he’d done something to screw up. Again. Which was why he stood out here, freezing his butt off, instead of trapped inside the Intrepid with Kwon and her discerning glances.
“Found a better vantage point,” he said into his radio.
“I think we should go in now. Nothing’s moved up there in the last half hour, good time to catch them sleeping.”
“Or with their pants down,” interjected Summers from his position at the rear of the building. He sounded excited by the prospect, but then Summers was young, his gold shield so fresh it squeaked.
like one of those monks up the mountain in Loretto. It was all part of getting his life back together. Seeing Lester get what he deserved was a big piece of that. But still . . .
“There’s a kid in there,” he told the others. With his binoculars he could see a red jacket, too small for an adult, hanging on the back of the door. Beside it was a backpack emblazoned with the iridescent green figure of the Incredible Hulk.
“What kid?” Summers asked. “I didn’t see any kid.”
“If there is a kid,” Kwon put in, “he’ll be in the rear bedroom. We can contain him.”
“Too risky. We wait.”
“Could be fucking forever,” Summers muttered.
“Don’t worry, Eric,” Kwon assured him. “Lester’s got to come out for more Viagra sooner or later.” The caffeine and adrenalin jazzed cops chuckled.
Drake was silent. He waited, rain puddling under his wool peacoat, soaking his jeans and canvas high-tops until he couldn’t move without squishing. He watched, despite the fact that he’d been averaging less than four hours of sleep a night and his eyelids scratched like fifty-grit sandpaper.
He blinked against the sting of sleet against his face. Lester’s window blurred then refocused once more. Lester left the front bedroom and walked naked in front of the curtain-less window.
Yes, come on down, Drake urged. Time to play the Price is Right. Or better yet, Truth or Consequences. Because he had a little truth for good ole Lester—you didn’t shoot at a cop, miss him and hit a van full of kids and walk away on a technicality without sure as hell paying the consequences. Damn, would feel good to nail Lester. It was the drug dealer’s third strike and he was O-U-T.
Lester stepped into his pants. Drake raised his radio. “Actor’s getting dressed. Looks like show time.”
Kwon and the other team members acknowledged. Drake crept through shadows to the end of the alley until he stood directly across from the tenement. His gaze never left the window. Lester reached for his shirt, his jacket.
Come on, come on.
Lester jerked upright, his mouth open, calling to someone as he fumbled through his jacket pockets.
Lester’s strawberry sauntered from the bedroom, wearing only an unbelted chartreuse kimono. Her expression went from seductive to fearful in one quick blink. The words “double cross” and “whore” filtered down to the street. The woman was speaking rapidly, backing away. Lester struck her with an open handed slap, and she went down. He hauled her up, shook her, hit her again; blood flew from her nose. Lester twisted his fingers in her cornrows, drew his gun and pointed it at her face.
A little boy in Superman PJ’s came out of the hallway, rubbing his eyes. He saw the woman and ran over, tugged on Lester’s arm, his
mouth open in a scream.
Drake flew across the street, pounding through the puddles, ran up the stairs leading into the building. He took the slippery concrete steps two at a time, shouldered through the heavy glass door, shouting into his radio for backup.
His chest was tight, his grip on his Glock sweaty as he raced up the steps to the third floor apartment. Drake braced himself, waiting to hear a gunshot, certain that once again he was going to be too late.
“Wait for backup! Damn you, Drake!” Kwon’s voice shouted from the radio, loud enough to be heard over the pounding of his heart and his feet. Drake skidded to a stop outside the apartment door, and caught his breath.
There was a kid on the other side. And a woman. And a man with a gun.
SOP in a hostage situation was to call in the boys from Special Response. Unless there were civilians in imminent danger. Drake leaned against the wall, straining to listen. He heard a woman crying—or was it the little boy? Sounded like imminent danger to him.
He’d love to bust in and shoot the bastard, take him out of the game permanently. But Lester was his only lead to the source of the FX flooding the streets. Drake needed him alive.
Kwon reached the top of the steps. She put a hand on Drake’s shoulder while she murmured into her radio, checking on the rest of the team’s positions.
A woman’s scream pierced the flimsy door, cut short by a heavy thud. The sound of breaking glass followed.
“Where is it, bitch?” Lester bellowed.
It was totally against regs, but there was one sure way to draw Lester’s attention away from the civilians. Lester had a hard-on for Drake. He knew Drake was behind his impending downfall. If he busted through that door, there was no way the dealer would refuse the bait.
“I’m going in,” he told Kwon. He squeegeed the water dripping from his hair out of his eyes, wiped his hands on a dry patch of T-shirt, and adjusted his Kevlar.
“No. We wait.” Kwon was meticulous, almost always as by the book as Dimeo.
“When I go in, Lester will turn on me. You get the kid and mom out.”
For once, Drake was thankful for the Housing Authority’s penny pinching. The door was so cheap, Lester’s shouting had it rattling in its frame. Drake raised his Glock, nodded to Kwon, and popped the door open with a well-placed kick. It dangled crooked on its hinges and scraped across the pine floor as he pushed through. Kwon followed him.
“Lester, old buddy, old pal,” Drake called out, focusing the drug dealer’s attention and gun on him, while Kwon moved behind him. His gaze raked across the room. The boy looked to be okay, huddled in the far corner, crying. The woman was down, but breathing. He stayed near the door, giving Kwon more room to work so she wouldn’t be at risk of crossing his line of fire.
The room reeked of marijuana and Southern Comfort. White gleamed all around Lester’s pupils, and the overhead light bulb reflected off sweat beading across his forehead. Lester was smiling, a dopey grin, all teeth, that made Drake wonder if he’d broken his rule and sampled some of his own product.
“Neighbors complaining about you making too much noise.” Drake’s focus narrowed to the few feet separating him and the drug dealer, alert to the slightest shift in Lester’s weight, tightening of his muscles, flick of an eye. He forced his smile to mirror the drug dealer’s.
Lester stumbled toward Drake, ignoring the bloody woman Kwon dragged out of the line of fire. He was definitely high on something. Lester was crazy enough to take potshots at a cop on a crowded street when he was stone cold sober. How would he act now? Drake’s finger curled around the Glock’s trigger guard, prepared to send Lester to the morgue if he had to.
“Drake, you lil’ fucker. Been a while. Thought they finally fired your drunken ass.”
Lester waved his cannon of a gun, aiming it at intimate parts of Drake’s anatomy. Drake swallowed back his joke about the size of a man’s weapon. In the state Lester was in, he might take it the wrong way, but watching Lester lovingly stroke the chrome barrel of the Taurus, it was damned hard to resist.
“You wear that thing to bed? What happened to the TEC-9 you used to carry?”
The drug dealer’s smile widened. Dudes loved talking about their guns. “Jammed on me one time too many. ‘Sides, I’m a big man, got big needs, know what I mean?”
Kwon closed the bedroom door. The civilians were safely behind it. Her own weapon now aimed at Lester. Drake could hear the rest of the team running up the steps behind him. He didn’t turn to look. Lester and his foot long, bad boy revolver had his complete attention.
“Guess’n maybes you don’t,” Lester continued, his voice slurring. “Heard how your bitch died on ya.”
Enough of this shit. Slowly, Drake holstered his weapon, extended his hand, palm up, toward Lester. “C’mon Lester, you can insult me all you want on the ride over to the House.”
“Don’t think so.” Lester raised his gun, his hand shaking so badly Drake was surprised he didn’t drop it. The Taurus weighed a good three and a half pounds. “You’re a hard mo’fucker to kill, Drake,” he said, his words strangled, difficult to understand. “Guess I’ll hafta do it myself.”
“What the hell? Drop the gun, Lester. Unless you wanna die. That your game—you too chicken to come talk to me? I thought you were the big guy on the streets. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’ve got a boss, someone who scares the shit out of you.”
As he spoke, Drake tried to keep the drug dealer’s attention and gun focused on him. He edged forward and to one side. Lester looked
confused, his mouth clamping down in a frown as if he was having a hard time understanding Drake. “That how it is, Lester?”
When he was in range, Drake rushed forward, crossing Kwon’s line of fire, and grabbed Lester’s arm. The Taurus went off, the boom of the .45 Magnum deafening at such close range. Lester pitched forward. Drake elbowed him hard over the kidney, and sidestepped as the man fell to the ground. He yanked the Taurus from Lester’s slack grasp.
Drake ignored the fist-sized hole the bullet had punched through the hard wood floor, safed the long-barreled revolver, and turned to Kwon. She glared at him. Her hands trembled as she holstered her own weapon and yanked the Taurus from him.
“What kind of idiotic stunt was that, moving in front of me? I could’ve shot you,” she said as Summers and the rest of the team swarmed into the room.
“Glad you didn’t.”
“Too much paperwork. You’re not worth it.”
Lester was still face down. Summers was reading him his rights when his body began convulsing as if possessed. Summers jumped off the dealer.
“Fucking A! He pissed himself.” Summers flicked the fluid from his hand, the grimace on his face making him look younger than the twenty-something he was.
“Turn him over, check his breathing.” Drake squatted to help Summers roll Lester’s writhing body. He smelled the rank odor of human feces. Lester’s eyes were rolled in the back of his head, the whites of his eyeballs blossoming with the scarlet plumes of broken blood vessels. His lips were blue and his mouth was
open, but no sound came from it.
“Judas H.” Drake tried to hold Lester’s head still long enough to open his airway, but the force of the seizures kept bouncing it off the hardwood floor. Then everything stopped.
Summers was straddling the drug dealer, still doing CPR when the paramedics arrived several minutes later.
“Give it up. He’s dead, man,” they told the detective.
Drake watched as Summers did a backward scuttle, placing as much distance as possible between himself and the dead body. Summers, a lean, six-two black man, looked as if he might throw up. Drake gave him a break and ushered him into the hall before he added to the mess in the crime scene.
“I never seen anything like that. I mean I’ve seen DB’s before, some of ‘em really rank, but that . . .” Summers trailed off, wiped his hands on the seat of his jeans.
Drake leaned against the wall, rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, caught a good whiff of himself, and grimaced. He felt soggy, bruised, ancient.
He rammed his hands into the sodden fabric of his jacket pockets. Ice-cold water slid under his collar and down his spine as he stared impassively at the drug dealer’s body. Leave it to Lester to die without telling them what he took or where the hell he got it. Selfish bastard.
With Lester dead, Drake was out of leads. And if there was more of this shit out on the streets, they were in big trouble. ...
