On shaky legs and pretty much everywhere else, I practically fell down the stairs and ran into the ladies' locker room, struggling into my parka and making a break for the outdoors until I could breathe again. My camcorder needed changing again, and I inserted a fresh tape, acting purely on reflex. Words I could barely hear, let alone understand, were free-roaming around my brain in absolute hysterics. I knew that Nick got corralled by one of the police on the scene, Jules was still in the bathroom being sick when I left, but I didn't know where my doctor, Rick, or Doctor Cunningham were.
I have to know what's going on. I have to know why this happened.
"So Wheatley has been smuggling the illegal drug into the US for desperate epileptics, just like you figured." The captain was no doubt thinking the same thing I was.
"Yes, Sir, but one of those was himself." Ellison's voice.
"How long has this been going on?"
"He'd been smuggling the drug in for nearly ten years from Mexico. He's already planning -- and no doubt his lawyer will instruct himm to plea -- to give up his accomplices."
"Why the hell didn't the hospital catch it before now?" That was something I wanted to know.
"Even though the thefts occurred at almost regular intervals, no one caught it because the missing drugs weren't ones that were normally stolen. The clerks just figured it was a miscount."
"Something like morphine would have been noticed, Simon." Sandburg's voice.
"Besides, Wheatley had been an attending physician at that time; it was hardly unusual for him to sign out drugs himself rather than authorizing a nurse to do it." Ellison paused. "If Woods' story was accurate--"
"And we'll have to look into that." Captain Banks must really want to dot his Is and cross his Ts. Leaving no stone unturned, and all that good stuff.
"We will." Sandburg.
"Perhaps the incidents were related." Ellison. "If there had been a theft shortly after the girl's death... Well, we know that the anticonvulsant causes excruciatingly painful headaches. Maybe the pain had distracted Wheatley into making a fatal error, which he must have tried to cover up. How he might have done that, I don't know."
And it looked like I would never find out.
The outside world, impossibly, was even more hysterical than inside the hospital. Unbridled chaos. Hell, chaos is galloping around, bucking gleefully like a rodeo bronc, and rolling in the mud. Cops, paramedics, reporters, other cameramen, patients, families of patients, families of employees, rubberneckers, second cousins to most of the free world, everybody. I rolled some tape of the mad throng, just to show how wild it is outside the crime scene, and resist the evil urge to flaunt my insider footage to the news crews. Captain Banks, who was on the news last night, was probably going to be on tonight's news as well; I could see him standing in front of the news crews giving a statement of some kind. For some more nice closure, I rolled some tape of his conference myself.
Someone grabbed my shoulder, and I whipped around, prepared to take my assailant's head off somewhere below the waist. Rick Vasquez stood there, then backed off, arms outstretched, his camera tightly held in one hand. "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you." I honestly don't think he expected to find me so wound up, otherwise he wouldn't have made such a stupid move.
Remembering what he'd been saying to me for the past forty-eight hours, the urge to pound his face is real hard to resist. However, knowing that the news crews would undoubtedly get it on tape forced me to stay my hands. "That was not easy, you said it would be easy." I hold out the hand not holding the camera, letting him see how I'm still shaking. "Some lead pipe cinch this job turned out to be."
He gave me an odd look, and I knew he was wondering what I meant. The phrase is a New Hampshireism, something I've only heard my uncle -- New Hampshire, born and bred in a family of woodworkers, like I've mentioned -- say. It's a plumber expression, from way back when water and other pipes were made of lead. Lead is a soft metal, so working with pipes and patches made of the material was easy. A lead pipe was easy to cinch off with a wrench, so the saying 'lead pipe cinch' referred to something that was easy to accomplish, something that could be completed with very little effort.
Still, where there was a cinch involved, that meant there had to be a leak somewhere in the piping. That thought made me think... how was Woods able to keep security out once he got them where he wanted them? Did he have someone on the inside, someone he trusted, someone who trusted him, to lock them out of the area?
At any rate, figuring all this nonsense out isn't my job so I'm not going to deal with any of it. Bad enough that I just know all of us have a date with a detective or two -- hopefully, it'll be Ellison or Gorgeous, Sandburg... I think his name is, hell, why can't I ever remember it -- to go over everything a few dozen times and then write it all down in triplicate. Probably, if it comes to that, we'll also have to come back for court.
Rick's voice broke in on my thoughts. "It was easy."
"Someone was shooting at us!"
"No one was shooting, Annie -- that was popcorn. One of the detectives moved a microwave near one of the rear doors and set off a bag of popcorn." He grinned widely. "He figured it'd flush the gunman out."
Popcorn... it figured. I hate popcorn, and now I know why. It doesn't sound like real gunfire, I know, having grown up with rifles and handguns in the house. Still, it'd been just enough to rattle all of us. It felt different than shooting at the firing range with my dad on weekends, but I'd never been the target. That gave me a new perspective. I couldn't help shaking my head over it, though, so I'd have to watch the tape later. It did sound like something Ellison and Sandburg would think up, if what I'd overheard was any indication. As if thinking their names brought them back into existence, Ellison's voice came into my ear, rich with satisfaction.
"Miss Sedgewick, please try to refrain from bugging police detectives in the future." I felt myself flush faintly, but he didn't sound upset. Well... not terribly upset. He sounded more amused than angry. "And if you wanted Sandburg's phone number, you only had to ask."
"Hey!"
"Just try not to pinch him anymore or he'll have to spend some time in the hospital from a butt sprain." Yeah, definitely amusement.
"Dammit, Jim, I am just a simple country anthropologist!"
"Look at that sky, will ya?"
Rick's voice was unexpected, and my laughter almost bubbled out of my mouth. Accepting the end of my illicit conversation, I turned to the east, and the horizon was ablaze in reds, golds, and blues, tinted with violet and the hazy shade of smog. It was lovely and, despite my own anxiety and restrained homicidal frustration, somewhat calming. While I'd like to say that all the jittery shakes I'd been having suddenly drained away under the soothing influence of nature's own balms, that wasn't what happened. What really happened was that I still felt jittery but that I got film of that smashing sunrise.
"It's nature's way of telling us that a new day has dawned, we've triumphed over our long journey through the dark night...."
I glanced at Rick, but his expression gave away nothing. "You still got the Harlequin romance you stole that from?"
"Why?" He asked, too innocently. "You want to read it?"
Sometimes I have to wonder why I put up with this, but I know why. Like it or not, Rick Vasquez is a good friend, the kind you could call at 3 a.m. on a weekday and beg for a ride home from the middle of nowhere. He's also a brilliant editor, something I could plan out on paper but I could never cajole the wretched machines into behaving the way I wanted them to act. Rick can make those truly expensive machines sit up and sing the blues, while I couldn't even make them acknowledge my existence.
Before I could pose an appropriate insult, a police officer in working blues approached us. I'm glad I still have tape left, since that seems to be the only thing going for me tonight. "Ma'am, Sir, I need both of you to come down to the station to give statements of what happened here tonight."
"We won't need lawyers or anything, will we?"
"No, ma'am." The officer looked almost apologetic. "We just want a clear picture of what happened as soon as possible." Yeah, definitely apologetic. He knows it's dawn and that we've been up all night, but he and his superiors want to put this case to bed.
I can relate.
Looking beyond the uniformed officer, I could see Detective Gorgeous leading a handcuffed and crying Woods out through the mob. They probably looked as tired as I felt. Detective Buffed followed them with Doctor Wheatley, who didn't look cuffed but merely resigned. My uneducated guess was that he was just being brought in for questioning. "Okay. Can you or a colleague give us a ride there?" Naturally, I have no inhibitions about answering for Rick. He'd have done the same for me, if I hadn't spoken up first. Based on what little I've seen of policework -- plus what I've learned from television --- they're going to love me for the taped confession and other information gained by interview. Hopefully, they'll be satisfied with a copy, since we have to get these tapes in the mail tomorrow to the editors. Our bosses will either love us, for snaring what promises to be a juicy and exciting episode of Trauma Room, or hate us, for embroiling them secondhand in a hostage situation and for thus holding up production because the master tapes are evidence.
At this point, though, I don't much care anymore. I just want to get the hell out of Dodge.
Dodge. Cascade. Same diff.
Rick must have seen the expression on my face, and he patted my shoulder in something like sympathy. "Don't worry about it, Annie. A little bird told me they might be sending us to Anchorage next week." A sigh made its way up from my chest, where it had no doubt been lodging since this whole mess started. Anchorage in winter? The resulting mental image alone made me shiver in sympathy. The only thing that would make me consider such a job is that I have friends in that city, and Vasquez knows it. Plus, he's probably told his 'little bird" -- one of the secretaries to one of our bosses who decide our shooting locations, with whom he went to high school -- the whole story. "We might have to stick around for a few days until we get our next assignment."
He knows that I know all of this, and I know that because he's grinning in that cocky selfsure way he has that drives girls wild. I'm not one of them, though. That charming smile doesn't work on yours truly.
Still, I suppose I can survive a few more days in Cascade.
I mean, what else could happen?
Anything else would defy the laws of nature.
The character of Doctor Cunningham was borrowed from Hephaistos and Mackie with their consent; thanks, ladies! Thanks to Melissa Beattie for her medical assistance and to Chance for constant encouragement. Thanks to everyone who tirelessly betaed multiple drafts of this story, without whom it wouldn't have been nearly as good. Special thanks to Cindy for cracking that whip and keeping both my spirits up and my Muses mostly on the narrow path.
Like this episode? Email the writer: evermore@tiac.net
Want to comment on production? Contact Black Panther Productions: bpproductions@wildmail.com
Stay tuned next week when after Jim and Blair ignore procedures one time too many and Simon decides his best detective team needs to be taught a lesson in "Proper Procedure" an all new The Sentinel.
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