I hit the gas along the potholed roads, at one point scattering a parade of turkeys head-bobbing across the asphalt. A car, coming in the opposite direction, flashed its high beams at me. But I sped along, undaunted, until I came to the medical center in Rockport.
Two ambulances were lined up outside the emergency room as paramedics, assisted by hospital personnel, worked quickly to unload stretchers. The parking spaces outside the ER were jammed with government vehicles: prison transports, squad cars from the neighboring towns, state police cruisers, black SUVs with the Knox County sheriff’s star on their sides.
Rather than trying to enter the building through that logjam, I continued to the main drop-off circle. I had visited the hospital enough times while I’d been stationed in the Midcoast—both as a first responder and as a patient—that I knew all the shortcuts.
I clipped my badge, my holstered sidearm, and my cuffs to my belt. Then I dashed through the automatic doors.
The Knox County sheriff had had the presence of mind to station a deputy in the lobby to prevent curiosity seekers from sneaking down the hall to the ER and surgical wing. Seeing me rushing forward, the lanky officer held out his arms as if we were in a game of red rover. Then his freckled face cracked into a grin.
“Bowditch?”
“Skip?”
I hadn’t seen Skip Morrison in ages, but when I’d been stationed in the area as the district warden, I had considered him something of a friend. We’d gone out for beers and conversation more than once, the conversation consisting of me nodding along to his cracker-barrel monologues. The guy was congenitally incapable of shutting his mouth, but at least he was interesting.
We’d both risen in the world since those days. Skip was now the chief deputy for Knox County.
“What are you doing here?”
“One of the prisoners who was stabbed is a friend of mine. I need to see him.”
“The sheriff says I’m not supposed to let anyone by except essential personnel. It’s a frigging MASH unit in there, from what I hear.”
“Do you know what happened at the prison?”
“Two inmates attacked a couple of COs with homemade knives in the laundry room, and it turned into a bloodbath. One of the guards is dead, another is injured. And a third prisoner managed to get himself stabbed, too.”
“Do you know the name of the CO who was killed?”
“I haven’t heard yet. But the one who was wounded was a female sergeant.”
“Dawn Richie?”
“That sounds right. Who’s your friend who was stabbed?”
“Billy Cronk.”
“I know Billy! That guy could pull your arm from your socket, then beat you to death with it. Everybody in the joint is afraid of him.” Skip’s face darkened. “Do you think he was one of the two attackers?”
“He wouldn’t assault a guard except in self-defense.”
“How sure are you of that?”
“Can you please just let me past?”
He frowned as if preparing to say no, then surprised me with a smile. “Promise to circle back and tell me what the heck’s going on. You know how it kills me being out of the loop.”
I started down the carpeted hallway. On the left side of the passage was the ER; on the right was surgery. Seriously injured patients would be wheeled across from one side to the other.
I hadn’t made it fifty feet before an urgent voice came over the loudspeaker: “Code Silver, Surgical Care. Repeat: Code Silver.”
The codes that hospitals use are different from the “ten codes” used by police, fire fighters, and other first responders.
Anyone who has ever seen a TV show set in a hospital knows that a Code Blue is a medical emergency: a patient flatlining.
Code Red indicates a fire.
A Code Silver is less intuitive but makes sense when you think of the traditional color of gun barrels.
Despite the massive law-enforcement presence, someone in the surgical unit had grabbed a weapon and was, presumably, threatening the life of another person. An active shooter was loose in the suite of operating rooms.
I drew my SIG P239 from its holster, performed a press check to ensure a round was loaded in the chamber, and brought the gun in a two-handed grip up near my chest, ready for whatever might come bursting through the sliding doors between me and the incident scene.
As I neared the first entrance, I heard shouting. Men’s bellicose voices, layered one on top of the other. A Babel of repeated commands for someone to drop a weapon.
Nothing happened as I crossed the sensor plane of the automatic doors. The hospital must have gone into lockdown mode. I couldn’t see a thing through the translucent panels. The good news was that security had closed off the obvious exits from the surgical wing. The bad news was that I was now cut off from the action.
My only option was to rush back the way I’d come and circle around the outside of the building to an entrance where a platoon of cops would already be drawn up.
Or is it my only option?
The hospital was an older building that had been partly retrofitted with modern technology. The result, I’d noticed on one of my prior visits, was a mishmash of security measures. Mirrored hemispheres on the ceilings contained all-seeing cameras. Certain doors only opened with a swipe of a card, others with a series of numbers punched into a keypad.
But plenty of old-fashioned doors with old-fashioned locks secured with old-fashioned bolts remained. What I needed to do was locate one of them.
I ducked into the now-vacated postoperative unit. Before me was an empty desk. Beyond were a series of spaces, some actual rooms, others just curtained enclosures where anesthetized patients normally lay in wheeled beds, waiting to return to consciousness or having just done so. In the lobby the Today show continued to play on a television set to an audience of empty chairs. The hosts were discussing healthy treats to put into kids’ Easter baskets.
As I rounded the desk,
