Closure (Jack Randall) (33 page)

“Well?” Jack pressed.

“Slim,” was her answer. Jack didn’t like it. He turned away for a moment and then came back.

“We’re leaving. Where are Larry and Dave?”

“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 and 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. Other hospital personnel also used the entrance, all types: 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 room 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, I just can’t see around this thing,” she said.

“That’s all right. I’m 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 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 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 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. 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? 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 boil your blood when you hear it, but when you get right down to it, it’s just that, it’s a speech, just 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 he 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 justice system, not to deliver justice to those who 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 that 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 others 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, should only take a few minutes,” Sam explained. 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 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.