Trauma

CHAPTER 42

Braxton Price and Curtis Gantry used the police scanner in the pickup to listen in on the aftermath of Carrie’s accident. The accident drew two fire trucks, two police cruisers, and an ambulance to the scene. The driver was conscious and reported that a red Ford F-150 with Maine plates had driven her off the road.

The APB included no plate number, so Carrie had not seen, or could not recall it. Either way, Braxton was not worried about the police pulling them over. They were driving Gantry’s blue Chevy pickup with Massachusetts plates. Braxton had ditched the Ford on a prearranged side street off Route 1 about ten miles from where the accident occurred. Gantry had picked him up there, per the plan, and together they resumed the drive north. The whole operation had been improvised when they got word Carrie was headed to Maine.

Braxton took the chopper north, secured a car to use, and got behind Carrie’s Subaru with help of the chopper and Gantry, who had tailed Carrie all the way from Massachusetts. Braxton figured on taking her down near Bangor when she left the highway, but Carrie had opted for a scenic detour, so he and Gantry had arranged a different meeting place. It helped that Carrie had stopped for something to eat. Braxton was able to pull ahead and wait for her while Gantry got even farther down the road. The transition from one truck to the other took no time at all.

Gantry was acting like a boy at the skate park — all smiles and pumped full of adrenaline. He loved missions, any missions, but especially successful ones.

“So she didn’t die,” he said. “Does that mean we get a bonus?”

“No, it means we didn’t screw up,” Braxton said.

“What’s the worst thing that could have happened?”

“We’re about to permanently take out Rockwell. We don’t need two docs going dark on the same day from the same hospital who happen to work for the same program. It’s not the sort of coincidence our employers are interested in explaining away. What we did wasn’t optimal, but we had to do something. Besides, she’s still considered an asset to the program — at least, that’s the word from up high. I figured if Rockwell didn’t die after we ran him off a cliff, Carrie could survive a little action in the trees. Maybe we got lucky here, but we did all right.”

Gantry went silent. He seemed almost reflective, though Braxton knew his friend’s thoughts seldom strayed far from guns, sex, and money.

“Good thing we had the bird in the sky,” Gantry said. “I had lost her for a while there.”

“There are no helicopters where we’re headed next. No backup, either. We get caught, we’ve got to go dark ourselves. You carrying?”

From the pocket of his denim jacket Gantry fished out a white pill the size of a Tic Tac and popped it into his mouth.

“Hey, don’t screw around with that!” Braxton snapped.

Gantry hid his teeth and pressed the cyanide capsule between his lips. He flashed Braxton a toothless smile. “I t’ank you’re purty, Braxton. You like me?”

“Get that out of your mouth before you bite it and die.”

Gantry spit the pill into his hand and tucked it back inside his jacket pocket. “Who did you give the money to?” he asked.

“None of your damn business.”

“I’m guessing it’s Jesse.”

“Guess all you want.”

“How long since you’ve seen him?”

Braxton thought a beat. “Maybe five years. Maybe more.”

“So he’s what, fifteen now?”

“Something like that.”

Gantry gave a long, low whistle. “Imagine being that young and getting, what is it, half a million dollars? Just like that? Shit, if I had that kind of money at that age I’d have screwed myself into a coma deeper than Rockwell’s.”

“He’s not going to get the money, because we’re not going to get caught.”

“Maybe I won’t take the pill,” Gantry said.

“Who did you give the money to?”

“My mom,” Gantry said.

“So we get caught, you’re dead regardless, and instead of your mom winning the lottery, somebody other than you will be planning her funeral. Look, Gantry, the poor woman had it hard enough raising your sorry ass. Give her the peace of mind she deserves, man.”

Gantry nodded. He saw the logic in Braxton’s thinking. Always did.

“Speaking of piece, Carrie’s got a great ass,” Gantry said.

“That’s a different kind of piece,” Braxton said.

“Whatever. I’m just saying I followed her on a jog in Healey Park, and she has tremendous assets. I’d love to tag that.”

“That’s how you conduct surveillance?”

“Hey man, I’m just doing my job. Checked out her room, too. Nothing there, but I did have a nice time lying down on her bed and thinking dirty thoughts.”

“Nobody saw you?” Braxton asked.

“Nah, man. Her brother is a drone. He was watching TV and didn’t hear me come in. I think that guy could use the wires, if you get my drift.”

Braxton shook his head dismissively, turned on the radio, and eventually found the local NPR station.

Gantry listened for all of three minutes before he tired of hearing about the struggles of life in Libya and switched to a pop station. “You and your freakin’ NPR. I don’t know how you listen to that crap. We’re like the Odd Couple, man,” Gantry said.

Braxton shot Gantry an annoyed look. “Have you ever even seen that show? I know for sure you didn’t read the play. Do you even know what you’re talking about?”

To Braxton’s surprise Gantry returned a broad, sloppy grin and hummed in perfect tune the opening bars to the show starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman.

“The Internet has everything, asshole,” Gantry said, and he resumed humming. On they drove, speeding into the twilight on their way to Seacoast Memorial Hospital, with Gantry humming The Odd Couple theme as if it was his favorite show of all time.

Gantry pulled into the hospital parking lot a little after nine o’clock. The two-story, mostly brick structure appeared to be undergoing a major renovation, and Gantry drove around until he found a parking space out of the way, near a loading zone. He cut the engine only after making sure that no surveillance cameras were around to record them.

Meanwhile, Braxton maneuvered inside the cramped cab and pulled off his loose-fitting sweats and T-shirt to reveal the green custodial uniform he wore underneath. He had in his possession an employee badge from Seacoast Memorial with his picture on it, but Lee Taggart’s name. The uniform and badge were precautions taken a while back, as soon as they’d known Rockwell would be a patient at Seacoast Memorial for a while. In the shadows of some scaffolding he checked his supplies: a syringe and a vial of clear liquid.

“I’ll be out in ten minutes,” Braxton said as he filled the syringe with liquid to the last marked line.

Gantry winked and blew Braxton a kiss. “Careful, sweetheart. I’ll be thinking of you.”

Braxton ignored him and headed for the main entrance. Inside the hospital, he flashed security his ID and continued on his way. No problems there. Braxton’s badge opened all the doors, a modern miracle courtesy of some supremely competent computer types who worked for his employers. Deep pockets bought a lot more than aerial surveillance.

Braxton walked the halls until he found a janitor’s cart — complete with a broom, cleaning supplies, and a twenty-gallon vinyl bag for trash — tucked away in an unobtrusive nook. He wheeled the cart over to the long-term-care wing on the first floor. The diffused fluorescent lighting, powerful stench of cleansers, beeps of various machines, and unpleasant stale air reminded Braxton of the VA. All hospitals were essentially the same, and the people who came to them were the same as well: They got better, got worse, or got dead.

Braxton went in and out of several rooms, emptying the trash and wiping down furniture. The two duty nurses did not give him a second look. He was the help, one of the invisibles who worked behind the scenes to keep the place clean enough to cure.

“Good evening,” Braxton said to a stout nurse who sat behind a desk covered with monitors.

Same shit, different location.

“Evening,” the nurse said. She gave Braxton only a cursory glance before her focus returned to those monitors.

Braxton wheeled his cart into Sam Rockwell’s room. For a guy who had been in a coma for so long, Rockwell actually looked pretty good. The bruises and cuts had mostly healed, and he appeared to be sleeping peacefully.

With practiced skill, Braxton injected succinylcholine intravenously and titrated the flow to speed up induction. Beneath the skin, invisible to the eye, Rockwell’s muscles had begun to twitch and spasm. Almost immediately Rockwell’s heart rate accelerated to help get oxygen to the brain. But the neuromuscular blocker, widely used by anesthesiologists and easy for Braxton to procure, would stop that heart in short order.

A patient as injured as Rockwell would not be subjected to an autopsy, Braxton had been told, and there was little chance of discovering the breakdown product, succinic acid.

Braxton counted to thirty before he wheeled his cart out of Rockwell’s room and over to the nurses’ station. “I’m no doc,” he said, “but that guy in there looks like he’s having a real hard time breathing.”

As if on cue, an alarm sounded. The nurse leapt up from her chair as though it were on fire, and rushed into action. Braxton heard the code call come over the loudspeaker. A moment later, a crush of doctors and nurses headed for Rockwell’s room like galloping racehorses.

Braxton became invisible again as he wheeled the janitor’s cart nonchalantly down the hallway, whistling the tune from The Odd Couple as he went.