بخش 02 - فصل 14

14

An ambulance with its lights flashing is just backing into one of the ER bays. Hodges goes to meet it, pulling out the police ID he still keeps in his wallet. When the paramedic and the EMT pull the stretcher out of the back, he flashes the ID with his thumb placed over the red RETIRED stamp. Technically speaking this is a felony crime—impersonating an officer—and consequently it’s a fiddle he uses sparingly, but this time it seems absolutely appropriate.

Barbara is medicated but conscious. When she sees Hodges, she grasps his hand tightly. “Bill? How did you get here so fast? Did Mom call you?”

“Yeah. How are you?”

“I’m okay. They gave me something for the pain. I have . . . they say I have a broken leg. I’m going to miss the basketball season and I guess it doesn’t matter because Mom will ground me until I’m, like, twenty-five.” Tears begin to leak from her eyes.

He doesn’t have long with her, so questions about what she was doing on MLK Ave, where there are sometimes as many as four drive-by shootings a week, will have to wait. There’s something more important.

“Barb, do you know the name of the boy who pushed you in front of the truck?”

Her eyes widen.

“Or get a good look at him? Could you describe him?”

“Pushed . . . ? Oh, no, Bill! No, that’s wrong!”

“Officer, we gotta go,” the paramedic says. “You can question her later.”

“Wait!” Barbara shouts, and tries to sit up. The EMT pushes her gently back down, and she’s grimacing with pain, but Hodges is heartened by that shout. It was good and strong.

“What is it, Barb?”

“He only pushed me after I ran into the street! He pushed me out of the way! I think he might have saved my life, and I’m glad.” She’s crying hard now, but Hodges doesn’t believe for a minute it’s because of her broken leg. “I don’t want to die, after all. I don’t know what was wrong with me!”

“We really have to get her in an exam room, Chief,” the paramedic says. “She needs an X-ray.”

“Don’t let them do anything to that boy!” Barbara calls as the ambo guys roll her through the double doors. “He’s tall! He’s got green eyes and a goatee! He goes to Todhunter—”

She’s gone, the doors clapping back and forth behind her.

Hodges walks outside, where he can use his cell phone without being scolded, and calls Tanya back. “I don’t know where you are, but slow down and don’t run any red lights getting here. They just took her in, and she’s wide awake. She has a broken leg.”

“That’s all? Thank God! What about internal injuries?”

“That’s for the doctors to say, but she was pretty lively. I think maybe the truck just grazed her.”

“I need to call Jerome. I’m sure I scared the hell out of him. And Jim needs to know.”

“Call them when you get here. For now, get off your phone.”

“You can call them, Bill.”

“No, Tanya, I can’t. I have to call someone else.”

He stands there, breathing out plumes of white vapor, the tips of his ears going numb. He doesn’t want the someone else to be Pete, because Pete is a tad pissed at him right now, and that goes double for Izzy Jaynes. He thinks about his other choices, but there’s only one: Cassandra Sheen. He partnered up with her several times when Pete was on vacation, and on one occasion when Pete took six weeks of unexplained personal time. That was shortly after Pete’s divorce, and Hodges surmised he was in a spin-dry center, but never asked and Pete never volunteered the information.

He doesn’t have Cassie’s cell number, so he calls Detective Division and asks to be connected, hoping she’s not in the field. He’s in luck. After less than ten seconds of McGruff the Crime Dog, she’s in his ear.

“Is this Cassie Sheen, the Botox Queen?”

“Billy Hodges, you old whore! I thought you were dead!”

Soon enough, Cassie, he thinks.

“I’d love to bullshit with you, hon, but I need a favor. They haven’t closed the Strike Avenue station yet, have they?”

“Nope. It’s on the docket for next year, though. Which makes perfect sense. Crime in Lowtown? What crime, right?”

“Yeah, safest part of the city. They may have a kid in for booking, and if my information is right, he deserves a medal instead.”

“Got a name?”

“No, but I know what he looks like. Tall, green eyes, goatee.” He replays what Barbara said and adds, “He could be wearing a Todhunter High jacket. The arresting officers probably have him for pushing a girl in front of a truck. He actually pushed her out of the way, so she only got clipped instead of mashed.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“Yeah.” This isn’t quite the truth, but he believes Barbara. “Find out his name and ask the cops to hold him, okay? I want to talk to him.”

“I think I can do that.”

“Thanks, Cassie. I owe you one.”

He ends the call and looks at his watch. If he means to talk to the Todhunter kid and still keep his appointment with Norma, time is too tight to be messing around with the city bus service.

One thing Barbara said keeps replaying in his mind: I don’t want to die, after all. I don’t know what was wrong with me!

He calls Holly.