Fatal Trauma Read online

  As he neared his home, Mark was deep in thought, wondering if he should call Kelly or wait for her to contact him. He was startled when a dark-colored vehicle sped through a stop sign on his left, heading directly for his car. Mark jammed on the brake, turned the steering wheel hard to the right, and barely managed to avoid a collision. The speeding vehicle skidded around a corner and disappeared before Mark could focus on it. He’d been intent on avoiding a T-bone crash that would have put the front of the other vehicle into his lap. He wasn’t even certain if it was a car, an SUV, or a pickup. And as for getting a license number, forget it.

  Mark pulled over and stopped his car. He’d wait until his heart quit racing before moving forward. In normal circumstances, he might have figured he’d simply had a close call avoiding an accident with a driver who wasn’t paying attention. But Jackson’s warning came back to him all too clearly: “These people have a strange concept of revenge . . . You might want to be extra careful.” He had supposed that meant that he’d have to be more aware of his circumstances in the future. But if this was what he had to look forward to . . .

  Before he could start his car rolling again, his cell phone rang. Kelly was calling.

  “Mark,” she said. “I need to tell you something. Can we get together this afternoon?”

  “Sure,” he said. “When and where?”

  They arranged a place and time, then Mark put his car into gear and drove away. Perhaps this call from Kelly was a sign. Maybe it was time for him to let her know the feelings that overwhelmed him when they were held at gunpoint.

  ***

  Outside the abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Drayton, a single vehicle rumbled down the crumbling macadam road. It was an older pickup with two men perched on the side panels in the back. From time to time, the truck would stop, one of the men would jump down, inspect what was piled at curbside, and hand a bit of salvage up to the man in the pickup bed where a table, two chairs, and an empty filing cabinet were already stowed. Then the vehicle moved on.

  The action was repeated every half hour or so by a different vehicle carrying different men, but always with the same purpose. This was a typical Sunday afternoon activity in this neighborhood, and no one seemed to pay any attention to it. Likewise, the two pickups sitting in the otherwise empty parking lot at the side of the warehouse stirred no suspicions. One appeared to have been repainted by hand, dark blue except where red paint showed in a spot or two the brush had missed. The other pickup was a dirty white, had a cracked windshield, and tires that were almost bald. Its left rear fender had been painted with gray primer.

  Inside the empty warehouse five men squatted in a far corner, smoking and conversing in low tones. A sixth man, armed with an assault rifle, stood near the door. Illumination was provided by rays of sunlight passing through several broken skylights, with a lesser amount filtering through the dirt and grime covering the intact ones. The men spoke in English, although there were sometimes pauses as they translated words and phrases in their heads.

  “I have been able to confirm that Hector died in the emergency room. Nacho was shot by a policeman and is also dead.”

  The speaker was the oldest of the men, probably early fifties. Whereas the men to whom he spoke were dressed in dirty, wrinkled jeans and tee shirts, his clean khaki pants and shirt had sharply pressed creases. His engineer boots were shined. He was clean-shaven. His dark hair, although longer than current styles dictated, was clean and neatly combed.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We do what El Jefe has told me to do, what the Zetas always do.” The leader’s voice dropped to a near whisper. “We show everyone that we are in charge. And to do that, we kill the people responsible for the deaths of our brothers.”

  “I heard that the policeman who shot Hector was also killed in the same gun battle,” said another man. “Maybe Hector was already dead when his brother brought him to the emergency room?”

  One of the younger men piped up. “Perhaps. But then again, perhaps the doctor didn’t want to put too much effort into saving the life of one of our people.”

  “The policeman who shot Nacho is already dead. Where are we to exact our revenge?”

  “We will take the lives of everyone who was in that room with Nacho,” the leader answered. “We start with the doctor and nurse.”

  “Do we have the names?”

  The leader shook his head. “We don’t know yet, but I expect to hear more soon from our source in the hospital where this took place.”

  “And when we find out—?”

  The leader put his hand in front of him and slowly closed it into a tight fist. “We snuff out the lives of everyone involved.”

  “So we kill them all?” another man asked.

  The leader grinned, but there was no mirth in it. “Sí.”

  ***

  Kelly looked at the clock in her kitchen. Mark had said he’d come to her house about half past two that afternoon, and it was already two forty. Had he changed his mind? Last night it seemed the most natural thing in the world for the two of them to fall into each other’s arms for mutual support as they recovered from being held at gunpoint. Maybe he’d decided that he wasn’t ready to talk again.

  Tracy had been right, of course. Mark deserved to know about Kelly’s feelings for him. But was this the right time to bring that up? Last night there’d been a couple of occasions when it seemed that Mark was also on the verge of saying something important, but each time he lapsed into silence, then changed the subject. She wondered if perhaps he’d made the same discovery she did—that losing her would leave a hole in his life he couldn’t contemplate.

  Kelly started to walk into the living room, turned around twice before going to the refrigerator, opened the door, then couldn’t recall why she’d done it. She looked at her watch. two fifty—Mark was already twenty minutes late. She wondered—

  The ringing of her doorbell interrupted Kelly’s thoughts. She hurried to the front door, where, through the peephole, she saw Mark standing on the porch. He held a small white paper sack in one hand, two cans of Diet Dr. Pepper in the other. She opened the door, and he handed the sack and one soft drink to her.

  “Sorry to be a little late. I remembered that Kroger’s deli usually bakes cookies about this time each afternoon, and thought you might like some.” He held out the sack like an offering. “They’re still warm. Chocolate chip, your favorite.”

  “Thanks, Mark,” she said, struggling to keep her tone light. “You always know the right thing to do.”

  They gravitated to the sofa and sat side by side. “I’m not so sure about always knowing the right thing,” Mark said. He popped open his soft drink and took a long swallow. “I’ve been thinking about what I did last night.”

  Kelly frowned. “You’re still upset because Sergeant Purvis was killed aren’t you? It wasn’t your fault. He—”

  Mark stopped her with an upraised hand. “That’s not it. The more I think about what happened, the more I realize that setting things up the way I did and hoping Ed would come to our rescue was about all I could do.”

  “And you handled it well,” Kelly said. “I knew that if the gunman discovered that the wounded man was already dead, he’d go on a rampage and kill us all. That’s why I yelled that the patient might be going into cardiac arrest. And you picked up on it immediately. You did exactly the right thing.”

  “That’s . . . that’s not really true,” Mark said. He reached toward the sack of cookies on the coffee table in front of them, then pulled back his hand. “Yes, I picked up on what you started, and it turned out to be the only way we could stay alive until Ed took out the gunman. But that wasn’t my immediate reaction.”

  Kelly paused, her hand halfway to her mouth with her can of soda. Was this going to be the time when Mark said he discovered he couldn’t live without her? Did their near-death experience make it clear to him that he was in love with her? “Go on.”

  He half-turned, looking towa
rd the blank wall to his right. “My initial thought wasn’t about saving everyone else.” He kept his gaze averted. “My initial thought was about my getting out of there . . . even if I left everyone else behind to die.”

  ***

  It was two-thirty in the afternoon when Tracy Orton closed her locker, gave one final look in the full-length mirror on the door, and walked into the operating room of Memorial Hospital. The first person she saw was the charge nurse for the day shift. “Want to give your report?”

  “Sure,” Barbara Scott said. “Pretty quiet, even for a Sunday. We had a couple of emergency cases earlier today, but they’re finished. I haven’t heard of anything brewing, but you never know.”

  “Well, I understand there was some excitement last night. Sorry I was off and missed it.”

  “I heard about it from the nurse who scrubbed on the case. About ten last night the ER called and said Dr. Baker was coming up with a policeman who’d been shot. Sandy and Candace were still here, so they set up.” It took Barbara five more minutes to relate the story, and when she finished, she looked at the clock and said, “I guess it’s all yours now.” And with that, she disappeared into the locker room.

  The three to eleven shift on Sunday could be an absolutely dead time, since there was no elective surgery scheduled, or the people working it might be kept hopping for eight straight hours or more with emergencies. Tracy preferred a mix—maybe a couple of appendectomies, a compound fracture or two—just enough activity to keep her busy, but not so much that she went home exhausted.

  “Ready for this?” Carl Ortiz, the new surgical tech, flashed her a smile. Like Tracy, he was dressed in scrubs, with rubber clogs on his feet.

  “Hope it’s quiet,” she said, adjusting the head cover she’d wear for the next eight hours.

  “I understand there was some excitement here last night.” Carl leaned against a doorframe, apparently ready to talk before getting down to the boring task of stocking the rooms for Monday morning’s cases.

  “Barbara told me it happened about ten o’clock.”

  “Tell me about it. What was it, who did the surgery, how did it come out?”

  When Tracy finished her recitation, Carl shook his head. “Sorry they couldn’t save him.” He looked at the clock. “Well, time to get to work. Let’s hope it’s a quiet evening.” He hesitated. “Oh, I forgot something in my locker. I’ll be right back.”

  A moment later, when Tracy walked by the door to the men’s locker room, she was certain she heard Carl’s voice. She grinned. Forgot something. Yeah, right. He was making a phone call and didn’t want her to hear it. It was probably his girlfriend. Tracy turned back to the list of supplies she needed to round up.

  ***

  The words of Mark’s confession were out, but they seemed to hang in the air and echo in his head. My initial thought wasn’t about saving everyone else. . . . My initial thought was about my getting out of there . . . even if I left everyone else behind to die.

  He started to say something more, but Kelly held up her hand. You can sort out your emotions later. Right now, focus on saying the right things. “Mark, in the heat of the moment, there’s no telling what we’ll say or do. So you were thinking of yourself. So what? What you ended up doing took courage. You bluffed that gunman, maneuvered him into position for Sergeant Purvis to break in and shoot him.” She leaned closer to him. “You saved my life, you saved Bob’s life . . . you saved your own life. It wasn’t a matter of what you thought. It was all about what you did.”

  Mark shook his head. “Nice try, but I can’t get over the fact that my first thought was self-preservation.” He turned his gaze away from her. “At one time, I considered myself a religious person. I was taught that we’re always supposed to think of others, put them before us. But apparently, when the chips are down I still think of myself first.”

  “Mark, listen to me,” Kelly said. “You’re not the first person to ever do something like this when faced with possible death.”

  “Maybe. But all I can think about are the stories I’ve heard about people putting themselves at risk to save others.”

  “Those were the end results, not what the people were first thinking.” Kelly put one hand on Mark’s shoulder. “Listen, I know you’re not much on the Bible, and I guess that’s a conversation for another day. But I can think of a story in there of a man who betrayed God himself, yet became one of the most revered saints in history.”

  “I know. You’re talking about Peter’s denial of Jesus. But that was thousands of years ago,” Mark said, without looking up. “I’m talking about me. I didn’t measure up when the chips were down.”

  “None of us do,” Kelly said. “We all fall short.”

  Mark rose. “Thanks for trying, Kelly. But right now, I don’t feel very good about myself. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do—about myself, about my relationship with others . . . even where I stand with God. Until I get a lot of that sorted out, I don’t think I’m ready to be in a relationship with anyone.”

  Kelly started to speak, but Mark stopped her with an upraised hand. “I don’t think we should go on dating . . . at least, for now.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I hope you understand.”

  With that, he turned and hurried out the front door, leaving Kelly blinking away the tears forming in her eyes.

  5

  As Mark approached his house, he saw a black-and-white SUV parked at the curb in front. Even before he could read the wording on the rear, Mark identified it as a police vehicle from the light bar atop the cab. He pulled his Camry in behind the SUV and waited. Two uniformed officers emerged and approached his car, moving away from each other as they came near. The officer headed for Mark had his right hand on the butt of his service revolver. The other policeman veered toward the passenger side of Mark’s car, his hand hovering near his holster.

  Mark placed his hands atop the steering wheel and waited. The policeman stopped several steps away and called through the open driver’s side window, “Are you Mark Baker?”

  “Yes, I’m Dr. Baker. How can I help you?”

  “Please step out of the car, doctor. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Mark complied. He noticed that the second policeman edged toward the front of the car, keeping the engine block as a shield between Mark and him. Both policemen had the retaining snaps of their holsters undone, although the guns remained undrawn. “May I ask what this is about?” Mark asked.

  “Yes, sir, but first, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see some ID. If it’s in your wallet, please reach for it slowly and bring it out with two fingers.”

  Mark did.

  “Now remove the driver’s license and hand it to me.”

  Mark complied. “I can assure you that I’m Dr. Mark Baker, if that’s who you’re looking for. The question remains, why?”

  “If you don’t mind, sir, let me ask: are you carrying a weapon?”

  “No, but feel free to check.” Mark had seen enough TV programs to know what position to assume, and he did.

  After a brief, impersonal, but reasonably thorough pat down, the first policeman handed him back his driver’s license. “You can relax, sir. Sorry for the inconvenience, but you’ll see in a moment why we’re being cautious with everyone we approach about this case.” He moved closer. “Would you like to talk inside your house or perhaps sit in our vehicle?”

  Mark stowed his license in his wallet, which he returned to his hip pocket. “I think, until I know what this is about, I’m fine to stand right here, in full view of the neighbors, one of whom is probably already looking through her window at this little scene.” Mark glanced to his left, and sure enough, there was an asymmetric tenting of the blinds in the front window of Mrs. Gordon’s house. Good. If anything went down, she’d be a reliable witness.

  The first policeman pulled a notebook from his hip pocket, flipped a couple of pages, and studied what was written there. Then he looked at Mark. “Doctor, are you acquainted with Dr. B
uddy Cane?”

  “Yes. Dr. Cane and I work at the same hospital, although I don’t do surgery, so we don’t work together. He’s an anesthesiologist, and I—”

  “How well do you know him? Do you see him and his wife socially?”

  “Not really. Dr. Cane and I went to the same med school, so I knew him there. It was nice to find him on staff at Memorial Hospital when I came here, but we don’t see each other outside the hospital environment.”

  The policeman looked back down at his notebook. “Can you account for your whereabouts for the past six hours?”

  Mark looked at his watch: five fifty in the afternoon. “I was up late last night—”

  “Just tell us where you were from before noon today to now.”

  “I was awakened this morning by a phone call from a Detective . . . Jack something . . . Jackson. Detective Jackson. I guess if you want to know what he told me—”

  “That’s okay. We’ll check with him. What about after that?”

  “After that, I had some coffee, ate breakfast, dressed. A little before noon, I went to Sergeant Purvis’s home to pay my respects.”

  “Can anyone corroborate that?”

  Mark remembered the glare Purvis’s son directed toward him. “Well, Mrs. Purvis and her son should remember me.” He thought a bit. “And maybe the Drayton Chief of Police. We passed each other as I left the house.”

  If the policeman was surprised, he didn’t show it. “And after that?”

  “I drove around for a while.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Just thinking. Finally, I stopped for some cookies and took them with me when I went to visit a friend.” He thought a bit. “If you’ll let me reach into my pocket, I have the receipt for the cookies. I’m sure it has a time-stamp.”