Close Encounters (3 page)

“Who did we get?” one of his men asked.

“Is it one of Willey’s men?” Barbara asked, as she and several other undercover officers hurried forward with their guns drawn and aimed.

For the moment Lee was speechless. He watched the slow spread of a small circle of blood beneath the prone body. He reached out to check for a pulse. “It’s… a woman. Black. She’s alive.”

Someone ran a flashlight beam along the ground, first over the dead dog and then over the woman’s dark form.

Lee glanced briefly at the dead animal. He saw the leash on the ground, its lead still attached to the collar. His gaze returned to the woman, to a face drawn in pain. He stared into dark eyes that blinked at him in bewilderment. His stomach muscles tensed violently.

He was momentarily transfixed by the woman’s confusion. It was a blank disorientation that pulled him up short and made him catch his own breath. And it registered very quickly that his twenty years of hands-on street experience had
not
prepared him for this moment.

“Oh, shit,” Barbara said succinctly, voicing exactly what Lee was feeling.

S
HE WASN’T DEAD.

She could feel her heart beating too fast. There was a terrible burning in her breast, as if she’d been kicked very suddenly and very sharply and something inside of her had torn. The pain seemed to be spreading outward. And it hurt to breathe. A draft seemed to have found a way inside her body and was freezing her, one inch at a time. She couldn’t move. There was something wet on her skin, beneath her jacket and sweater. Sticky and warm. Every time she breathed it felt like someone was driving a knife deep into her chest.

What in God’s name has happened?

Carol couldn’t figure out why she was on the ground. Or where Max was. Or why this white man, dressed in dark blue, was bending over her. She couldn’t see his face very well, and the details blurred as he kept moving. It made her dizzy and nauseous.

He held a gun in his hand, pointed at her.

Oh, my God…
Carol thought, helpless to protect herself.
They’re going to kill me.

For a terrible moment there was not a sound except her own moans as nearly a dozen men stood staring down at her. Then one man touched her, roughly running his hand up and down her legs, her arms. He searched through her pockets and pulled out her keys and ID folder, passing them to the man who had reached her first.

“She’s clean.”

“My… dog…” Carol tried to say, but no one was listening.

“I don’t believe this…” an officer said, finally breaking past their immobility.

Someone’s belt radio squawked to life. Lee holstered his gun and searched for his cellular to call in a request for a medical unit. The others turned their attention back to their own business and walked away from the woman.

But not Lee. He watched as she drew a deep, shuddering breath. She tried to focus her eyes, tried to talk.

“What?” Lee frowned and leaned closer to hear.

“Mmmmaax…”

“Max? Don’t worry about Max. Stay still,” Lee ordered her. “You’re going to be okay.”

She was agitated, trying to sit up even though the effort was costing her tremendous pain.

“No, no… don’t move. You just lie still.” He put his hand out to force her to be still. Her coat was wet with blood, and it smeared on his hand.

“Lieutenant? Any change of orders?”

He made a fist of his bloody hand. “Check with Sergeant Sheridan and Detective Woods.”

“I don’t get it,” Barbara said just behind Lee. “What the hell happened? Where did
she
come from? Who is she?”

Lee had already asked himself those questions and had no answers. He only hoped for now that the woman didn’t die.

Barbara leaned over the victim. “What’s your name? Can you hear me?” she asked loudly.

“Caro—”

“Carol,” Lee finished for her.

Carol nodded and closed her eyes, exhausted.

“Carol? Is that it? The ambulance is on the way, Carol. Okay?” Barbara turned to Lee. “She’s probably a lookout,” she murmured before walking away to converse with several of her colleagues.

Lee kept his opinion to himself. There was nothing about the woman that would connect her to the dealers they’d had under surveillance for nearly six months. She wasn’t even dressed properly for the cold, which suggested she hadn’t intended to be outside for very long. She carried no beeper or cellular, and she did have identification. Street crews on drug deals did
not
carry ID.

Lee flipped open her ID folder and grabbed the arm of a passing officer.

“Let me use your light.”

“Sure.” The officer pulled a small flashlight off his utility belt, twisted it on, and handed it to Lee.

Lee shone the light on the plastic sleeves. There was a medical insurance card, so she must have a job somewhere. An ATM bank card. Membership cards to MoMA and the Studio Museum in Harlem. A driver’s license. He stared at the square image digitized on the card. A smiling young black woman with shoulder-length hair that framed her face.

Carol Taggart.
She lived only a few blocks away.

Lee closed the folder and glanced at the dead dog, then back to the woman, a clammy sweat breaking out as he considered the implications of what he’d discovered. He was relieved when he spotted the ambulance. He signaled his position and the vehicle pulled to a stop.

Lee stood aside and watched the emergency team go swiftly through its routine, checking her response and vital signs, determining the seriousness of her injuries. Then they strapped Carol onto a back board and transferred her to the ambulance.

“Max…” Carol cried out when she realized she was being moved. She reached out to grab Lee’s hand but couldn’t hold on. He made no attempt to respond.

“Max? Who’s Max?” the attendant asked as he pulled her arm free of the jacket she wore. “You got someone else out there?”

Lee merely shook his head.

The EM worker spoke to Carol. “Don’t worry about Max. These guys are taking care of him.” He signaled to his partner to speed things up and turned to Lee. “Anybody coming with her?”

“Yeah,” Lee said. He beckoned to one of his men. “You go along. Get a statement if you can. Find out what the doctors have to say. Call back if anything important comes up. Someone will relieve you as soon as we’re finished here.”

He watched as the officer climbed into the back of the ambulance.

“Her name is Carol Taggart,” Lee informed the paramedics. “I’ll have someone get the rest of her information to you ASAP.”

“Right. Someone’s got to notify the family…”

The door was slammed shut and locked, and the vehicle drove away.

Lee turned around, viewing the men and equipment as if from a distance. He felt oddly detached, fully aware of what had happened but feeling as if it had happened to someone else. As if he had stepped out of his skin to be a witness.

His men reported that they’d apprehended six suspects, but none of them was Earl Willey or Mario.

“I called in the crime scene unit to seal this off,” Barbara said, falling into step next to Lee. “The captain’s on the way.”

He nodded, not particularly surprised. Everyone’s first consideration after establishing that no officer had been hurt was to ascertain whether there had been a misuse of firearms.

“What are we going to tell him?” Barbara asked.

“The truth,” Lee said caustically.

“Right,” she said. “Right after I make sure my ass isn’t on the line.”

Lee thought of the black woman in the ambulance and knew there were bound to be repercussions. It could get messy.

He turned his attention thoughtfully to Detective Barbara Peña, always focused and coolheaded. Even after eight years of working with her, Lee was still struck by how beautiful she was. That someone with her looks would want to hide them under a police uniform had never made sense to him. On the other hand, inside she was something else. Every time Barbara opened her mouth, what came out was the slang of Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn, somewhere around Sunset Park. She had the built-in defense mechanisms of a person who had grown up on the streets, and she took no shit from anybody.

Again and again she had proved she was good at her job. Except that she got into bed with it, people said behind her back. But Barbara could hold her own, and gave as good as she got. She was known as “Barbwire” in the department. There were other nicknames that were not as affectionate, but she knew nothing of them. And she was willing to take the same risks everyone else did.

“The good news is that all of our people are okay, and we got the buy money back,” Barbara commented.

“And the bad news…” Lee prompted.

“Willey got away and we don’t know what happened with Mario, right?”

He quirked the corner of his mouth. Barbara was one of the best partners he’d ever worked with, but she didn’t think the same way he did.

“Right,” Lee answered.

“Looks like a clean chest entry, back side exit. Not a lot of external bleeding…”

The attendant once again checked Carol’s blood pressure, listened to her pulse with a stethoscope, looked into her eyes and kept talking to her.

“How’re you doing?”

“It… hurts… burns,” Carol whispered as the EM worker opened her jacket and lifted the sweater to look at her wound.

“Yeah, I bet,” he said, ignoring the sharp intake of her breath as he probed and palpitated around her left breast. A neat little hole was visible through a small pooling of blood. The bullet had entered the top of the mound. She moaned, writhing beneath his examination.

“Am I… dying?” Carol asked.

The attendant, distracted by his instrument readings, pursed his lips and shook his head. “Dying? We don’t use the D word on my tour.

“Radio that they’re going to need a trauma resuscitation. We got a gunshot. Female. ETA less than three minutes. I’m reading eighty over forty. The pulse is a fast one-twenty. Decrease breath sounds on left side…” He leaned forward to speak directly to his driver, calmly but firmly. “Come on… are we there yet?”

In two minutes the ambulance reached the hospital, where an emergency team stood waiting in the arrival bay.

“What have you got?”

“Female, black. One gunshot wound to the upper chest. Internal bleeding. Her pressure’s dropping.”

“What happened?”

“Undercover operation. That’s all I have. There’s an officer with her waiting for news.”

“Suspect or victim?”

“Don’t know that either…”

Carol realized they were trying to help her, but it felt like another attack. Gloved hands and cold metal prodded and probed. She stared up into lights and faces wearing Lucite goggles. She was beginning to feel numbingly cold. And very sleepy.

“Can you hear me?” one of them said loudly.

“Yes,” she slurred.

“Are you having trouble breathing?”

“It hurts.”

“We’re going to fix that right now. Your name is Carol? Okay, Carol, you have a collapsed lung. We’re going to insert a chest tube and get the lung inflated again. You’re going to be fine…”

Her coat was being cut off and the ruined leather tossed aside. And then her sweater, wet with something reddish brown. Carol twisted and groaned in protest. She raised an arm to her chest, but it was pulled down.

“Don’t move. Do you know what happened to you?”

She could only shake her head. There was the sharp prick of a needle being inserted into her arm, followed by the sudden warm rush of something flowing into her body. Whatever it was made her feel relaxed and safe. Her vision began to blur, and all the faces bending over her started to move in a circle above her.

She was rolled gently to her side.

“Here’s the exit wound. There’s internal bleeding. We got a tension pneumothorax here. Let’s get that tube in, fast.”

Carol’s left arm was lifted, and she felt a sharp stinging sensation near her armpit. They were forcing one end of a tube into the incision, but she couldn’t really feel it. She was naked. Wet and cold. Sleepy. She closed her eyes…

The voices began to fade. The burning in her chest suddenly didn’t seem to hurt so much. She stopped listening to the words.

“Tube’s in…”

“She’s forty over palp…”

“We gotta do something…”

“Then do it,
now
!”

The pain went away completely. She felt light, no longer cold. It didn’t matter that she lay bare for all to see. She seemed to pull free of her body… gently, as if she were shedding a garment. She could hear the voices all below her now and could see everyone working frantically over her where she lay perfectly still on the table. There was a hole in her chest, just above her breast. There was a tube coming from a similar hole in her side under the arm. The other end was attached to a bag, and murky brown fluid was draining into it through the tube.

She felt as if she was getting further and further away from what was happening. She was warmer now… above it all. Out of pain. Calm and peaceful. Something was beckoning to her. A light that drew her attention. She watched it with a sense of wonder and curiosity, feeling like a child again. It was so bright and warm. Calling her. In the middle stood a figure, silhouetted by the illumination.

“Mommy?”

Her voice sounded younger and frightened. She wanted to walk toward the light, that person, to find out for herself who was there. And then… she began to sink. She tried to reach out to the receding figure…

“Mommy…”

The light grew dimmer and dimmer, and disappeared. She began dropping swiftly. The voices surrounded her again. The cold returned. The pain was back with a throbbing intensity. She wanted to plead with them to please make it stop, but she couldn’t talk or open her eyes. She took a shuddering breath and groaned softly.

“She’s back. I have a reading. Pressure’s going up.”

“That was close…” someone muttered.

“Carol, can you hear me?”

“Pulse is one-ten. She’s looking good.”

Carol slowly nodded her response.

“We’re in business again.”

“All right, let’s get her stabilized.” A young doctor leaned over her and patted her arm. “You’re going to be okay.”