Left for Dead

54

8:00 P.M., Monday, April 12

Tucson, Arizona

Eventually, the crowd cleared out. It was a good thing, too. Angel had been manhandling the polisher for hours, and his shoulders were killing him. As the last of the news crews began gathering up equipment, Angel did the same. He unplugged the polisher and rolled up the cord. Then he went outside and moved his van to an empty spot in the front row of the parking lot. Next he rolled his cart and polisher outside and loaded them into the van. When it was time to leave, he would need to leave in a hurry.

He returned to the corridor as the news crew was leaving and as the mother, finished with her interview ordeal, disappeared into her daughter’s room. She came out a minute or so later and headed for the lobby.

Angel was relieved to see her go. That meant there was only the girl and the elderly nurse left. He took a seat in the waiting room, sat down, and waited, all the while wondering how long it would take. Under five minutes later, the nurse emerged. She paused in the doorway, looked around, and then headed for the nurses’ station.

Angel knew he had moments to make this work. As soon as her back was turned, he darted into the room, easing the loaded syringe out of his pocket as he went. He was all the way inside the darkened room and reaching for the form on the bed when the charge from a Taser knocked him senseless.

Someone might have told him to drop it, but Angel couldn’t be sure. When he came back around, the Taser dart was stuck to his chest and his arms were secured by a pair of handcuffs.

“I don’t know who you are,” a woman’s voice said, “but you’re under arrest. What’s in the syringe?”

“What syringe?” Angel said. “I don’t have any syringe.”

The nurse came back then, too. She was smiling and talking on a telephone. “It worked like a charm, Bishop Gillespie. We got him!”

The nurse seemed to think this was funny. Angel Moreno did not, because he knew he was a dead man. If the cops didn’t kill him, Humberto Laos sure as hell would.