Fallen (2 page)

Outside, Atlanta’s North Street was a barrage of honking horns and car engines, radios turned up loud on a Friday night. Noise that had masked the gun’s discharge, not that it had made much sound. Even in the encroaching haze, Nate’s trained mind noted the silencer on the barrel.

The barrel that remained pointed at him.

His body convulsed at the entrance of the second bullet. This time he felt no pain, just a slicing coldness and a pressure in his chest like a ten-pound dumbbell had been dropped onto his sternum. He wanted to speak to Kristen, tell her he loved her and beg for her forgiveness. Weakly, he raised his hand, attempting to bargain.

No, don’t. Please.

God help me.

The third bullet sent him hurtling into darkness and the unknown.

Chapter One

“GSW, two minutes
out!” Jamaal Reeves made the booming announcement from behind the ER admittance desk at Mercy Hospital. His words put medical personnel on alert, including Dr. Lydia Costa, who stood in the jaundiced glow of the light box, reviewing chest films for an eighty-two-year-old with suspected pneumonia.

“It’s a ten-double-zero, people,” he added, using police code that over time had slipped into the level one trauma center’s vernacular.

Officer down.

A momentary hush fell over the staff before the beehive of activity resumed, leaving only Lydia frozen. Gunshot wounds were always nasty injuries, but it was the ten-double-zero that caused anxiety to pool in her stomach. There were hundreds of police inside the city, she reminded herself. Still, leaving the X-ray hanging, she shouldered her way through the scrubs-clad crowd. Reaching Jamaal’s desk, she asked, “What else do you know about the incoming?”

He slurped from a Varsity cup. “Multiple bullets to the chest and abdomen, intubated by paramedics on scene—”

“Do you have a name? A precinct?”

“What? Uh, uh—didn’t ask.” Jamaal shrugged, his eyes returning to the stack of paperwork in front of him, information forms for the three dozen or so coughing, vomiting or otherwise miserable-looking people who waited in rows of vinyl-covered chairs for treatment.

“Plainclothes, though,” he murmured as an afterthought, scribbling directives onto one of the forms.

Lydia felt her knees weaken. Still, her inner voice spoke to her, pointing out that she was one of the attendings on a busy Friday night. She moved briskly toward the automated, sliding glass doors that led inside from the ambulance bay, joining the assembling team and preparing to take charge of whatever faced her with the paramedics’ arrival.

“Get trauma room three set up,” she ordered, raising her voice to be heard above the din. “We’re going to need an echocardiogram. Have a crash cart and thoracotomy set ready.”

All the while, a mantra repeated inside her head. It was more like a prayer, if she believed in such things. She used to, but didn’t anymore.

Please don’t let it be him.

Behind her, she overheard Roe Goodman, one of the senior floor nurses. “You’re a jackass, Jamaal. Her ex-husband’s a cop. A detective.”

“Notify OR to stand by!” Lydia shouted as the flashing red lights of an ambulance stained the vestibule’s walls. Her heartbeat quickened, dread filling her as she stood with the rest of the waiting staff, watching as the paramedics opened the vehicle’s double doors and removed the gurney, snapping its legs into place and rolling it into the building. The back of one of the emergency workers obscured her view, making it impossible to get a look at the victim.

“Multiple GSWs, two to the chest and one to the abdomen. Only one exit wound,” Ravi Kapoor, the lead paramedic, rattled off as he strode in at the head of the gurney. “Systolic is down to sixty-two, pressure’s been dropping in the rig. Probably has a bad internal bleed. Worsening acidosis, hypoxia—”

“Blood type?” someone asked.

“O-negative.”

“Type and cross-match,” Lydia said, finding her voice. “Call up to the blood bank and tell them we need six units of O-neg, stat.”

She nearly stopped breathing as the victim came into view. He was cyanotic, his skin bluish and pale, the ventilation bag’s mask concealing his features. But one look told her it wasn’t Ryan on the gurney, his shirt ripped open and blood covering his chest. The victim was stockier, his hair inky black, where Ryan’s was a light brown. Lydia nearly went limp with relief.

But that relief was fleeting. Lydia
did
know him. Nate Weisz. He was a colleague of Ryan’s, from the same precinct, although Nate was a Narcotics and Vice detective, while Ryan worked Homicide. Lydia knew his wife, Kristen, from APD picnics and softball tournaments. Events that were no longer a part of her life.

Shrugging off the shock, she snapped into action. “Get him into trauma three.”

Lydia jogged alongside the gurney, knowing it was a matter of minutes before the ER would be swarming with blue uniforms. News about the shooting was no doubt already infiltrating the ranks, spreading down from zone commanders to captains, detectives and beat cops. The turnout from the zone five precinct in particular would be heavy. There would also be television news crews on the scene.

“Coming through!” Ravi shouted, bumping into a staggering male in a gold and black Georgia Tech T-shirt. The man—more of a lanky kid, really—appeared intoxicated and held a wad of gauze against his bleeding forehead.

Lydia called to an intern as they passed. “Lonigan, get that guy out of the hallway! He’s got a head lac and needs sutures.”

They moved into the trauma room, wheeling the gurney around until it was parallel with the table.

“On my count. One-two-three,” Lydia instructed. The trauma team made the transfer to the table, the room becoming a well-timed choreography as lead wires and sensors were attached, IV poles and drips set up.

“Let’s get a pulse ox—”

“Where’s the O-neg? We need a central line, now!”

“I’ll do it, Dr. Costa,” an eager resident offered.

“I’ve got another run. Good luck, Lydia,” Ravi said, knocking three times on the door well’s metal frame. His eyes met hers through her safety glasses as the paramedics receded into the corridor.

“Blood’s here, Doctor.” A nurse hurried into the room with a bag of platelets.

“Hang it. Let Radiology know we’re going to need a C-spine, chest and belly films.” Lydia frowned as the heart monitor sent out a sharp, electronic wail. She studied the EKG lead, her stomach dropping.
Damn it.
“We’ve got v-tach! Power the paddles and start compressions.”

A second-year resident, a large male named Kevin Rossman, stepped forward and began pumping Nate’s chest hard enough to crack ribs. It had to be that forceful to work. Lydia felt a trickle of perspiration roll down her back as she took the paddles. “Charge to two-sixty.”

A few seconds later, the defibrillator’s high-pitched whine filled the room. “Clear!”

Rossman halted the compressions and stepped back, palms lifted. Lydia pressed the paddles against Nate’s chest, his body jerking with the electrical charge. Her eyes moved to the monitor. No change. “Two-sixty again! Stand by!”

Come on, Nate.

“Clear!” The second shock regulated the heart rhythm. Lydia suspected the reason for the ventricular tachycardia. “I need a ten-blade.”

Someone handed her the surgical scalpel. Counting between the ribs, she made a careful incision into the pleural cavity. Blood spurted out, staining her scrubs as she pushed the chest tube through the opening to re-inflate the lung. Air hissed from the tube, followed by more blood and fluid.

“Give him an amp of atropine, an amp of epi. Turn him over and we’ll close the external bleed. As soon as he’s stable enough he’s going up to Radiology and then surgery.” Lydia knew they didn’t have much time. He was losing blood through the exit wound, and Ravi was right— probably through internal perforations. Bullets had a way of ricocheting around inside the body, creating a vicious path of destruction. “Alert Dr. Varek that we’re on our way up.”

Several minutes later, Lydia and Rossman accompanied the gurney down the hallway toward the elevator. A small group of law enforcement had already begun to gather, a handful of uniforms and men in suit pants and dress shirts.

“Lydia.”

She heard Ryan’s voice. Turning but still moving down the hallway, she looked into his handsome, somber face. He appeared tired, his blue eyes troubled and questioning. He glanced at Nate’s still form, at the blood on Lydia’s scrubs, then followed in the gurney’s wake. “Is he going to make it?”

Lydia didn’t reply, her gaze communicating the severity of the situation. Ryan shoved his hands into his pockets. The sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up, his tie loose and hanging around his neck. He wore a shoulder holster, his shield clipped to the belt at his waist.

“Where’s Kristen?” Lydia asked.

“She’s the one who found him. They wouldn’t let her in the ambulance. A unit’s bringing her in now.”

She gave a faint nod. His eyes held on to hers as the elevator bell chimed. Lydia helped roll the gurney inside. She felt emotion engulf her after seeing Ryan. It always did. Once the doors slid closed, she looked again at Nate. Rossman pumped air into his lungs with the manual vent as they made the journey upstairs. The only chance was to get him on a rapid infuser, find the bullets and try to repair the damage.

It could have been Ryan, Lydia thought. No matter what had happened or the time they’d been apart, the realization still tore at her.

*

APD Det. Ryan Winter sipped lukewarm, bitter-tasting coffee from the hospital vending machine, part of the growing sea of law enforcement milling around outside the closed doors of the surgical ward. Except for Nate’s partner, Mike Perry, and the zone five precinct captain, the private waiting room across the hall had been left open for arriving family. The air around Ryan hummed with low conversation centered on Nate.

He was a colleague and friend, one of their own. They all knew the job had its risks, but things like this never got any easier.

Leaning against the corridor wall, Ryan could see inside the room that contained upholstered chairs and two couches, as well as laminated end tables topped with fanned-out stacks of magazines. Kristen Weisz sat huddled in one of the seats, red-eyed, clutching a tissue and looking as if she was barely holding it together. Ryan’s heart tugged. Lydia sat with her.

“Lydia cut her hair.” The statement came from his partner, Mateo Hernandez, who had been pacing the hall before finding a spot next to Ryan against the wall. He also stared into the room. “It looks nice.”

“Yeah,” Ryan agreed quietly. He’d been watching Lydia since she had entered a few minutes earlier. She was talking to Kristen, her hand placed comfortingly on the other woman’s back. Lydia’s dark hair that had once been below her shoulders was now cut in a shorter, blunt style that fell just past her jawline. Ryan had been surprised to see the new look, but he had to admit he liked it. The hairstyle set off her delicate features and worked well with her petite frame. She looked up, her cocoa-brown eyes meeting his as she saw him outside the room. Ryan’s hand tightened imperceptibly on the foam cup, and he lifted it to his mouth, taking a sip.

“I just talked to Darnell. He’s in charge of securing the crime scene,” Mateo said, referring to Darnell Richardson, another detective with the APD. “There’s no security camera in the condo’s parking garage, and so far no one’s claiming to have seen or heard anything.”

Ryan scowled. “No one heard a gunshot in a busy area? No one heard
three
of them?”

“My guess is a silencer.” Mateo scratched his cheek. “He still had his wallet, so it doesn’t appear to be a robbery.”

“It could have been a collar, looking to get even.” Nate had more than a few enemies, they all did. It came with the territory. Some recent arrest or an ex-convict Nate had helped put away. There was any number of possibilities.

“Here’s the thing.” Mateo touched Ryan’s shoulder, guiding him a few feet away from the crowd of police. He lowered his voice. “There was an off-duty uniform shot dead six weeks ago outside a package store on Howell Mill Road where he moonlighted as a security guard. He had just gotten off for the night and gone around back to his car.
Also not a robbery.
He worked out of the zone two precinct—”

Ryan remembered. “John Watterson.”

Mateo nodded. “Darnell looked at the shell casings from the parking deck where Nate was shot. They’re from the same type of bullets as the ones used to kill Watterson. Coincidence?”

Ryan pressed his lips together. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“It’s something to think about though, right? I’m going over to the scene as soon as we get some word on Nate.”

“I’ll go, too.” Briefly, he massaged his closed eyelids with his fingertips. It had been a long day, and he’d been on his way home when he had learned of the shooting. He had turned the car around and headed toward Mercy Hospital, feeling the need to stand vigil with his fellow officers. But he’d also been aware that Lydia might be here, since she often had the Friday night shift. Ryan reopened his eyes as a staccato of high-pitched beeps came from the waiting room. Lydia checked her beeper, then embraced Kristen before departing.