shoulders started to shake.
Jayne reached for him then, turning him and pulling his head to her chest, feeling his exhalations, hot and damp, on her shirtfront. She automatically began rubbing his back and her words came out despite her defences. ‘I know, I know.’ She said them over and over until she was murmuring them into his hair, which muffled the words into noises only for them to resurface as kisses that landed on his ear, his brow, damp cheek, and then his arms were around her, tightening when his mouth found hers.
TWENTY-ONE
A single glance was all it took for Chesterton Police Officers Cobb and Hayden to know that the man on the stretcher was not ‘one of theirs’, as the security guard had announced when he had called the station minutes earlier frantically shouting, ‘Officer down! Officer down!’ But he could have been from another substation. The paramedics would not let them speak to the barely conscious man so Cobb had let the ambulance leave for the hospital after they had searched the man’s pockets and not found any proof of identity.
While Hayden took a statement from the security guard, who was sitting on the curb, Cobb searched the dark blue sedan for the officer’s identification. There wasn’t a single item in the body of the vehicle. He opened the trunk and looked in the dark interior. It was lined with several layers of heavy duty clear plastic. This struck Cobb as unusual but not outside the range of possibilities for an undercover unit. The only step he could take to determine who owned the vehicle was to run the license plate number through the NCIC hook-up in his cruiser.
NCIC listed the owner of the Georgia license plate but the plates were registered to a different car than the one illuminated in Cobb’s spotlight. Plates can be moved from vehicle to vehicle but Vehicle Identification Numbers pose more of a problem, so Cobb walked back to the dark sedan and leaned in to read the VIN from where it was screwed into the dashboard on a metal plate. He transcribed the 17-digit number on to his pad, double-checked it, and returned to his cruiser.
When Cobb saw that there was an All Points Bulletin out on that VIN, it triggered a distant memory of a BOLO that had gone out earlier that night. But it was the APB information that caused his blood pressure to spike. The driver could be armed and dangerous and must be detained. His immediate thought was to race after the ambulance but he couldn’t leave his partner on the side of the road with the witness. He radioed the station and hurriedly told the duty desk to dispatch a unit to Chesterton General to intercept the ambulance on the way to or at the entrance of the emergency room. Then he radioed a colleague on another floor of the station and asked him to enter an NCIC response report that the wanted vehicle had been recovered, along with an unconscious man who may or may not have been the driver.
Tripper had been careful to respond to the paramedics with enough vital signs to get them to relax about his condition but not so many that they were going to start asking him questions about his identity. They correctly deduced that he’d suffered a mild concussion, which he was coming out of, but they had no concerns about a cracked skull or fractured ribs that could cause major complications. They were driving with lights but not siren and not at great speed. He could hear the two of them at the front of the ambulance, joking about the construction site security guard and discussing where they would eat on their break: fast food or an all-night place called Rick’s.
Tripper lifted his head. His eyesight was blurred but the blood that had been flowing from his nose was drying. He could feel clots deep inside his nostrils and the symptoms of a massive headache. Squinting down his body, he could see the seatbelt-like straps crisscrossing the ruined police costume and keeping him attached to the stretcher as the ambulance moved. It was easy to undo the straps but leave them looking as though still clipped into place. What he did next would depend on where the paramedics pulled in at the hospital: the emergency room or a main entrance. He waited, fighting the desire to close his eyes against the headache and fall into delicious sleep.
The ambulance coming to a stop jolted him into full consciousness. He stayed prone until he heard both paramedics jump down from the front of the ambulance and walk to the rear. He knew they had arrived at the main entrance; otherwise emergency room staff would already have opened the ambulance doors. In one swift movement, Tripper sat up on the stretcher and the searing pain in his head flared up, accompanied by flashes of white light in his peripheral vision. He pushed the straps clear of his body and swung his legs on to either side of the stretcher.
When the paramedics, still chewing the fat, opened the rear doors, he catapulted himself out on to the ground and ran toward the darkest part of the street he could see. He heard their startled ‘Hey!’ but knew he had the advantage of surprise and as he ran, he felt every sense in his body sharpen while his legs and arms began to pump in perfect time, the blood clots in his nose clearing as he breathed deeply, the pain in his head masked by the adrenalin released by his body for this very purpose.
Eric didn’t immediately respond to his supervisor’s query about ‘civilians’. Turner had to be referring to Jayne and Steelie, but who had told Turner that the women had even been at the freeway site? The Highway Patrol officers wouldn’t have gone over Scott’s head and the Critters had no reason to talk to Turner. And what did this have to do with Franks over in Atlanta? How could he have known about Jayne and Steelie? It just didn’t add up.
Turner looked up from his sheet when Eric didn’t respond. ‘I’ve looked into this. They were not only at the crime scene but here in the building. You authorized SA Weiss to log two scientists from an outfit called Agency Thirty-two One into the building as visitors yet he took them up to the tenth floor. That’s reading like a potential violation of chain of custody protocols. Clarify it.’
‘Sir, those scientists assisted us with gaining leads on this case.’
‘Dammit, Eric, those body parts were supposed to be en route to the LA Coroner’s Office, not being pawed over by every Tom, Dick, and Harry while in our custody.’
‘At no time did the scientists come into physical contact with the remains, sir.’
Turner looked at him with interest. ‘Can anyone back you up on that?
‘Absolutely. Tony Lee.’
‘OK. Get him in here.’
Eric went to reach for the phone but, at that moment, the computer behind him emitted a beep. He whipped around in his chair, scanned through the green binary code on the old monitor, and quickly interpreted it. There had been a hit on the APB for Wayne Spicer’s car. The responding agency was Chesterton Police Station in Atlanta, Georgia.
‘I need to make a call to a PD,’ Eric said, reaching for the desk telephone.
‘Put it on speaker-phone, SA Ramos.’
Eric paused momentarily but he did it and they heard the southern accent of the man who answered.
‘Officer Lake, Chesterton PD.’
‘Officer, this is FBI Special Agent Eric Ramos. I’m the originator of the APB you just responded to. Can you give me further details, please?’
‘OK, Agent Ramos but I gotta tell ya, it ain’t such good news.’
‘Just give it to me.’
‘Well, we’ve got your vehicle all right, but the unidentified man who was driving it is AWOL.’
‘Wait. Your response says the driver was taken to hospital unconscious.’
‘Apparently, the boys on the scene thought he was unconscious or as good as. Maybe he just regained consciousness. Either way, by the time our units caught up with the ambulance at Chesterton General, the man had absconded from the stretcher and they’ll be damned if they can work out where he went. He
‘And no one got an ID?’
‘No, but the vehicle was wearing plates registered to a male, name of King, DOB nineteen sixty. I’m faxing you the sheet now.’
Eric almost got goose bumps. He spoke rapidly. ‘I need you to put out a BOLO on that individual with whatever descriptions you have and I need it to maintain that he is armed and dangerous.’
‘You got it, Agent Ramos. I already had a BOLO underway. We sure are sorry about this but we’re on top of it.’
