Do No Harm (61 page)

"Stop fighting me!" David shouted through clenched teeth. "Stop--"

Jenkins and Bronner crashed through the doorway, shouting, their Berettas finding Clyde like compasses pointing north.

"Don't move!"

"Back away from the--"

A shot rang out, spinning Jenkins around. He knocked against the door, a growing spot of blood darkening his sweatshirt at the shoulder, and sank to the ground. His legs stuck out before him like a doll's, his pistol hand rendered useless by the shoulder wound. He tried with his good hand to take the pistol from his limp hand, but could not reach.

Bronner's pistol wavered; David was in his line of fire. Stutter-stepping forward with his pistol aimed, Bronner freed his cuffs from the case on his belt with an adept jerk of his hand.

Clyde's hand felt up David's side beneath his shirt and found his wound. A fat finger pried through the stitches. David felt a hot flash of pain and then his skin giving way. He relaxed his grip on Clyde for a split second, and Clyde hurled him off his throat. Ablaze with pain, David rolled into the far wall and knocked his head. Through a drunken haze, his cheek pressed to the floor, he watched Clyde find his feet and start to stand.

Bronner was already mid-dive across the room. He caught Clyde with a staggering right and fell on top of him. He was fighting to angle the pistol barrel at Clyde's chest, but Clyde bit his gun hand, tearing a mouthful of flesh from the fat muscle at the base of his thumb and spitting the pink plug on the floor. Bronner cried out, dropping his pistol. David tried to crawl to it, but was paralyzed with pain.

Clyde and Bronner struggled and rolled, and Clyde's pistol fired, blowing out a chunk of wall. Bronner managed to land on Clyde's back. Clyde's gun hand was pinned beneath his body, and Bronner grabbed his other arm and twisted it back, snapping a handcuff around the free wrist.

Clyde bucked and spun, whipping the loose handcuff around his wrist. The sharp edge bit into Bronner's temple, splitting the skin. Clyde wormed his other arm free. Tightening his fingers around the pistol, Clyde punched Bronner in the mouth with it, knocking him off. Bronner fell to the floor, unconscious, and Clyde scrambled to his feet and flashed past Jenkins.

Though his wounded arm did not move, Jenkins's hand contracted around the pistol, angling it up at Clyde and firing. By the time the report echoed through the empty room, Clyde was out the door into the hall. There was the sound of a door splintering--maybe being smashed in--and then silence.

David and Jenkins regarded each other from their respective slumped positions. Jenkins's head was tilted forward so his chin rested on his chest, his breath fluttering the tattered fabric at the edge of the gunshot hole in his shoulder. His arm lay limp--the shot to the shoulder must have compromised the brachial plexus.

The floor was icy cold against David's cheek. He willed his lips to move. "Do you have an exit wound?" he asked.

His face stretched in a grimace, Jenkins reached behind his shoulder and patted his back. "Not that I can reach," he said. "How's Bronner? Peter?"

"Peter will be fine." David pushed himself up onto all fours. The pain in his side spread quickly through his abdomen, but he started to crawl toward Bronner anyway. Though it was bleeding heavily, the gash above Bronner's temple was superficial. David grabbed the otoscope off the floor, raised Bronner's eyelids, and shone the beam of light into his pupils. They constricted nicely. "Equal and reactive," he said. The wound on Bronner's hand was fairly deep and would need to be treated for infection, but it was not bleeding badly.

Still slumped against the door, Jenkins grimaced again and spoke. "We responded to the wrong location. Six units across the street. Me and Bronner saw the light and came to check it out."

"It was my fault," David said. "I should've thought to clarify which building." He was just about to speak into his mike when he saw Jenkins fumbling for his portable with his good hand. Jenkins held it close to his lips. "Eight Adam Thirty-two. Officer down. Officer down. Officer down. Shots fired. Ten eight hundred block Le Conte. Third floor. Where the fuck am I?"

David looked up from Bronner's hand. "Ten eight seventy-five Le Conte."

"Be advised it's Ten eight seventy-five Le Conte." Jenkins's words were slowing down. When he spoke again, it was little more than a mumble. "Roll an RA. Suspect possibly still in the building . . . considered armed." He released the button on his portable, and his good hand slapped to the floor. His breath came in jerks.

David pulled himself to his feet. A sticky band of blood ran down his side, pooling at the top line of his pants. For a moment, he thought he might faint, but then his adrenaline kicked in, granting him clarity and a momentary relief from the pain.

He trudged over to Jenkins. Jenkins's eyes flickered to the door. "Go get him," he said.

David crouched over Jenkins and pulled him slightly forward off the door, causing him to cry out. There was no exit wound. David pulled the stethoscope from his jacket pocket, balled up the jacket, and handed it to Jenkins. "Apply pressure," he said. Using the stethoscope, he checked Jenkins's lung beneath the wound. Good breathing sounds.

David strung his stethoscope across his shoulders and stood. His wound was running. "You're going to be fine," he said. "I'm going to leave you here."

Jenkins nodded. In the distance, the pleasing sound of approaching sirens.

David dropped the otoscope, pried the Beretta from Jenkins's inert fingers, and stepped into the hall. The pistol felt weighty and awkward in his hand. One of the doors across the hall had been kicked in, and he trudged over to it, leaving a thin trail of blood drops on the carpet.

He looked down and noticed another trail of dripping blood preceding his own. Clyde had been hit.

David peered past the splintered door, ready to draw back at the first sign of Clyde. He flipped the switch with a trembling hand and blinked against the light. The window across the empty room had been opened. The pistol lay beneath the sill where Clyde had dropped it.

Heavy footfalls thundered in the stairwells--cops on the way to Peter, Jenkins, and Bronner. David limped across the room to the window. The fire escape outside wound down into the construction site of the building that fronted on Le Conte. The building was a confusion of Sheetrock planes and crisscrossing boards. The crooked scaffolding up front had been repaired.

A wide smudge of blood darkened the painted rail in three distinct lines--finger marks. "Clyde's been hit," David said into the mike. "He dropped his gun. And I think he exited the east side of the building." He ducked through the window, biting his lip against the pain in his side, and stood on the metal structure. The wind blew through the skeletal boards and beams, rattling the plastic wrapping covering the wheelbarrows.

David began the slow, painful climb down the metal ladder, stethoscope swinging from his neck, pistol heavy in his hand. He walked through the dark, hollowed interior of the building. The wheelbarrows and slanted boards threw shadows thick and fearful. The hiding places were countless. He lifted the plastic covering on one of the wheelbarrows, but there was only gravel beneath.

One piece of Sheetrock hung off a 4-by-4 beam from a single nail, swaying slightly in the breeze like a weighty pendulum. Tucking his elbow to his wound and taking in air erratically, David walked to it, trudging through sawdust and nails.

As he drew near, the Sheetrock smashed toward him, going to pieces and scattering at his feet. Behind it, three flashlight beams shot out at his face. The planks and boards around him rustled and creaked, then the whole interior of the building suddenly was alive with loud, booming voices and beams of light.

"Put down the fucking--"

"--hands on your--"

"Drop it! Drop it!"

David dropped the pistol immediately. The chopping approach of a helicopter reached a deafening decibel, then a spotlight laid down over David. He raised his arms, even though it sent a screeching pain through his side.

One of the figures stepped forward from behind the Sheetrock, waving his arms, a pistol in one hand. He entered the spotlight, his face glowing in the wan yellow light. Yale.

Behind him, the other men relaxed. Dalton turned his back, barking orders into a portable.

Yale popped out his earpiece. "Are you injured?" he asked.

David shook his head weakly. "Peter, Bronner, and Jenkins are upstairs. They're all injured, but no one's critical. Jenkins sustained a GSW, but he'll be all right."

"The building's already secured. Medics upstairs. What the fuck are you doing with a weapon?"

"It's Jenkins's."

"Oh," Yale said. "Even better."

The officers who'd been hidden in the building around David cleared the area in groups, their loud, forceful footsteps and jangling equipment belts reminding him of platoons deploying.

The helicopter flew away, spotlight sweeping the street. Police cars were suddenly everywhere, herding people off the sidewalks, setting up sawhorses.

Yale glanced down at David's bloodstained shirt. "How bad?"

David shrugged.

"We need to get you to the hospital."

"So you didn't get him?"

Yale's jaw tightened. "We'll get him. He couldn't have gotten far."

"How long ago did you secure the area?"

"Just as you stepped out onto the fire escape."

"He got out the window at least four minutes before that. Look for blood."

"You said he was hit?"

"I believe so. Jenkins got off a shot. There was blood and Clyde dropped his gun, so I think he might be wounded pretty badly."

"Maybe he went somewhere to curl up and die." Yale slid his pistol into his shoulder holster with a quick, practiced movement. Shaking his head, he crouched and picked up the Beretta that David had flung to the ground. "Stepping into bad lighting and a tense situation with a loaded weapon. Good thinking."

Yale's portable squawked and emitted an indecipherable burst of staticky voice that Yale seemed to understand. "We've got some drunk frat boys messing with the perimeter at Weyburn and Broxton," he said, starting to jog off. "I assume you can find your way to the ER?"

David nodded. Dalton trudged after Yale, face downturned into his own portable. He patted David on the hip as he passed, ballplayer style.

The building was suddenly deserted again. In the space where the dangling piece of Sheetrock had been loomed the sturdy outline of the hospital against the night sky.

David began the tedious walk across Le Conte toward the ER, pain coursing through his gut with every step. Some people had gathered behind the sawhorses at the sidewalk. A news photographer leaned forward into David's face and shot what must have been an entire roll of film. An officer stopped David with a gloved hand on his chest. "Sorry, buddy, no one gets through."

"I'm going to the ER," David said, turning to show his wound. The officer, evidently impressed, let him pass.

Trying to keep pressure on his wound, David walked up the slope, through the clusters of trees near the PCHS structure where Clyde had been arrested, down the curving sidewalk where he'd assaulted Nancy, into the ambulance bay where he'd attacked Sandra.

Manning the security desk in the lobby, Ralph watched David speechlessly as he limped in and shoved through the swinging doors into Hallway One. David spotted the UCPD cops before he saw Diane. They looked on edge; clearly, they'd been alerted that Clyde was in the area.

David nodded at them and peered into the crowded CWA. His walk over had opened the wound further, drenching his shirt. Diane handed off an armful of folders, barked a few orders into the phone, and wrote an order against her knee.

The taller of the two officers directed an exasperated expression David's way. "She's like the Energizer bunny on coke. We're having a tough time keeping up." He gestured at David's bloody shirt, then inside the CWA. "You'd better get that looked at."

Diane wiped a patient from the board with an eraser and tapped the slot below. "I'll take Van Canton in Four and I need the-- " She froze when she saw David in the doorway.

The room fell silent. The nurses and doctors watched them both.

Diane wore an expression of blind panic.

"I'm all right," David said. "It's not a gunshot wound. Just broken stitches."

She dropped her chart on the ground and crossed the room in four furious strides, embracing him hard around his neck. He held her clumsily with one hand, the other pressed down over his wound. When she came away, her scrub top was stained with his blood.

She flicked her bangs out of her face, the color slowly returning to her cheeks. "Let's get you to a room," she said.

The CWA remained silent behind them as she helped David down the hall. The officers followed Diane a few paces behind like obedient puppies. She brought David into Exam Fourteen, Clyde's old room, and sat him on the table.

"He attacked Peter," David said. "I managed to get there before he killed him. We fought, but he escaped. He's somewhere in Westwood--the cops are sweeping the area now."

Diane hugged David's head, burying his face in her chest. "Enough, okay?" she said. "Okay?" She drew back and crouched, raising his shirt. She tested the edge of the wound with a finger. "You need to be restitched."