Circle of Influence (A Zoe Chambers Mystery) (18 page)

“Oh.” Kevin seemed disappointed. If Pete hadn’t wanted this bust so bad, he’d gladly let the kid sit in a dark police cruiser as the thermometer dipped closer and closer to zero.

What was that? Pete paused and listened for a faint moan.

“What is it, Chief?”

Pete shushed him and held up one finger. There it was again. Low. Soft. Muffled.

And it was coming from the Malibu’s trunk.

“Forget the damned coffee,” Pete ordered. “Pop that trunk.”

SEVENTEEN

The crew room at North Monongahela County EMS sported an eclectic array of furniture that had been donated by various employees. “Donated” meant discarded by dumping it at the ambulance garage. None of the emergency personnel turned any of it down, though. They were thrilled with the donations considering their meager budget limited other furnishing options.

The sofa smelled of dust, but Zoe didn’t mind. She knew every lump by heart and knew how to position herself in the proper gully for maximum comfort.

Earl and the crew from Medic One huddled around the ancient television set, grunting and whooping at the Pittsburgh Penguins’ game. Medic Two remained out of service at Brunswick Hospital after transporting a teenage male with a possible closed head injury, the result of the traffic accident they’d responded to.

The Red Wings scored, and the guys let out a stereo groan.

It looked like it was going to be a quiet night until the pager tones went off, alerting them to a call from the County Emergency Operation Center.

“I’ll get it,” Tony DeLuca, crew chief and one of the hockey nuts, hoisted himself out of his chair and lumbered into the office.

Earl stood and stretched. He ambled over to Zoe and booted one of the sofa legs. “Wake up. This one’s ours.”

“I’m awake.” Zoe swung her feet to the floor, sitting up with a yawn.

DeLuca returned a moment later, his face red. “You better get rolling.” He waved a sheet of notepaper. “Respond to Rodeo’s Bar, thirteen forty-eight King’s Hollow Road. Male with multiple penetrating wounds. Undetermined weapon. He’s breathing, but unresponsive. The police are on scene. You’re asked to go to the rear of the building.”

Zoe bounded off the sofa. Earl snatched the paper from DeLuca on their way to the garage.

“You want me to drive?” Zoe asked.

“Nope. I’ve got it.” Earl grabbed his coat from the row of hooks in the garage and headed around to the driver’s side.

Zoe shrugged into her parka and climbed into the passenger side. Earl fired up the unit as the behemoth garage door rumbled open.

As they rolled onto Main Street, Zoe picked up the aluminum clipboard and the mic. “Control, this is Medic Three. We’re en route to Rodeo’s Bar, King’s Hollow Road.”

“Ten-four, Medic Three. Nineteen eighteen.”

Zoe jotted the time on the fresh run report and copied the address and other information from DeLuca’s note.

The emergency lights cut swaths through the black night, bouncing off the houses and businesses they passed. Zoe flipped the siren control from high/low to wail as Earl swung the ambulance left at one of Phillipsburg’s three traffic signals. They bounced across the rutted railroad tracks and made another left, heading into the countryside.

Penetrating wounds. That could be a stabbing. Or it could mean gunshots.

“What do you think?” Zoe asked. “Bar brawl gone bad?”

“Possible.” Earl shot her a grin. “And it wouldn’t be the first time. It’s your turn to take the lead, you know.”

“Only if the police have secured the scene before we get there.”

“Chicken.”

“You know it.”

The unit swayed as they made the hard right onto King’s Hollow Road. Zoe braced against the console with one hand and the doorframe with the other.

King’s Hollow Road wound its way through a wooded valley, crossing two one-lane bridges along its course. The top speed they could maneuver safely was little more than thirty-five miles an hour. Zoe cut the siren, turning it back on for a few whoops when they approached a blind curve or came up behind another vehicle.

“Medic Three, this is Control.”

Zoe keyed the mic. “Go ahead Control.”

“Chief Adams requests your ETA.”

Zoe checked the dashboard clock. “Estimated time of arrival, five minutes.”

“Copy, Medic Three.”

Zoe eyed her partner whose face glowed pale green in the illumination of the instrument panel. “Pete wants to know how soon we can be there. That doesn’t sound good.”

“No, it doesn’t. But on the other hand, it seems the cops have things under control so you don’t have to worry about leading the way into a barroom brawl.”

Small comfort.

Four minutes later, the ambulance rocked side to side as they drove through the potholed parking lot to the rear of the building where two police vehicles sat with their headlights aimed on a car next to a dumpster. Several flares added to the visibility. Even though the cab of the ambulance had only begun to feel the effects of the heater, a trickle of sweat rolled down Zoe’s back.

“Control, this is Medic Three. We’re on scene.”

“Ten-four, Medic Three. Nineteen twenty-nine.”

Earl parked behind Pete’s SUV and they both leapt out. Pulling on latex gloves, Earl headed directly to the car. Zoe yanked open the patient compartment’s side door and grabbed the jump kit and portable oxygen tank. Sirens wailed in the distance.

With the clipboard tucked under her arm, she lugged the equipment between the police cars and took her first good look around. A dark-colored Malibu sat next to the bar’s dumpster. Police tape partially encircled the car. The trunk was open and Earl leaned into it, his stethoscope plugged into his ears. Pete and Kevin stood back, watching.

The bar brawl scenario in Zoe’s mind began slipping away. It completely lost its credibility when she got close enough to see their patient.

Jerry McBirney, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, lay curled into a fetal position in the Malibu’s trunk. The illumination and shadows cast by the flares and the headlights masked the true colors of the surroundings, but not enough to disguise the sickly pallor of Jerry’s swollen face. Or the dark pattern of blood pooling beneath him.

Zoe froze. Was he dead? There had been times when she’d arrived at a scene and hoped the patient showed no signs of life because he was so badly mangled, she couldn’t imagine what his “life” might be like if the paramedics succeeded in their mission. This time she hoped the patient was beyond help for a more selfish reason. Heaven help her, she did
not
want to work on Jerry McBirney.

Pete’s voice pierced her mental fog. “Zoe.”

She shook off the momentary paralysis. “Yeah.” She jumped to Earl’s side and set the jump kit on the ground, flipping open the clasps. “What have we got?”

“He’s alive, but just barely,” Earl said. “No response to pain stimuli. Pulse is thready. B.P. is seventy-six over forty. Respiration, twenty and labored.”

Zoe stuffed her feelings into some enclosed corner of her brain and scribbled the numbers onto the report. Like it or not, McBirney was her patient and she would do whatever it took to keep the bastard alive.

The sirens she’d heard earlier were louder now, closer.

Earl placed one gloved hand on McBirney’s shoulder, the other on his hip and rolled him toward them enough to reveal four small holes in the back of his blood-soaked shirt.

“Bullets?” Earl aimed his question at Pete.

He shook his head. “Looks to me like he was stabbed.” He pointed. “See that tear? Looks like the weapon hit a rib and slipped.”

“Hard to tell for sure with all that blood,” Kevin commented.

“Either way, we have to get him out of there,” Zoe said.

Earl released his grip on their patient and dug into the jump kit, pulling out a packet of plastic tubing and a mask. “I’ll get him started on O2. One of you guys give Zoe a hand with the gurney.”

Pete fell into step with her as she jogged to the back of the ambulance.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She couldn’t afford to think about McBirney beyond what was needed to treat him. “I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh.” He sounded doubtful.

As they reached the ambulance, another police vehicle screeched into the parking lot, roaring toward them. Unlike Vance Township’s cruisers, this one was black with gold reflective lettering. Monongahela County Police. Pete muttered something too low for Zoe to understand. But from the narrowing of his eyes and the set of his jaw, she had a strong idea of what he was saying.

She threw open the back doors of the patient compartment. Each taking a side, she and Pete rolled the gurney out and set it on the ground. She yanked the backboard from its slot beneath the bench seat and a cervical collar from one of the cabinets, and tossed them both on the cot. “Go,” she said.

As they arrived back at the Malibu, Earl was adjusting the oxygen to the non-rebreather mask he’d placed on McBirney. Kevin held a stack of sterile gauze squares and a roll of tape, but appeared lost as to what to do next.

Zoe wiggled her fingers into her Latex gloves and snatched a handful of the squares. She ripped the paper covering from the first one. “Tear off some lengths of tape,” she told the officer.

He shot her a quick grateful smile and peeled off a foot-long piece.

“Whoa, cowboy. Not that long.” She indicated half that length with both her index fingers.

“Oh. Okay.”

Glancing up from her work, Zoe noticed Pete charging toward the new arrival and recognized Detective Baronick climbing out of the car.

Earl grabbed scissors and cut open the back of McBirney’s shirt. Zoe broke the seal on a bottle of sterile saline solution and poured some of the liquid onto a stack of the 4x4 squares. The rest, she dumped over McBirney’s back, washing away some of the partially congealed blood. She tore into another stack of the squares and dabbed his skin as dry as she could. Blood poured from the wounds as fast as she wiped it away.

Bleeding meant his heart was pumping. He was still alive.

For a moment, she questioned whether or not that was a good thing.

“Zoe.” Earl’s words sliced through her reverie. “Tape.”

Kevin held out a perfect length of the stuff. Earl pressed a wad of bandaging to one of the four holes and taped around it. Zoe did the same. Once all the wounds were dressed, Zoe said, “Let’s stabilize him and get him out of there.”

Zoe fitted the cervical collar around McBirney’s neck without looking at his face. Earl and Kevin positioned the gurney and backboard against the Malibu’s back bumper.

Pete and Baronick were engaged in a loud, animated conversation. They were far enough away that Zoe couldn’t make out more than a few words. She looked at Kevin. “Give us a hand?”

“Yup,” he said.

“Okay, kiddies.” Earl worked to get a grip on McBirney’s shoulders. “Let’s make this as smooth as we can.”

Zoe maintained traction on McBirney’s head and neck. “On three,” she said and counted. “One. Two…”

Earl maneuvered the patient’s shoulders. Kevin guided his legs. In unison, they muscled McBirney’s limp body out of the trunk. Earl secured the patient to the backboard with the straps.

“Grab the O2,” Zoe barked at Kevin.

He snatched the small green cylinder of oxygen and handed it to Zoe who positioned it between McBirney’s legs.

“You two take him,” Earl said. “I’ll grab the kit.”

Kevin and Zoe wheeled the gurney back to the unit and guided it into the patient compartment. “Is he gonna make it?” Kevin said.

“No one dies in our ambulance,” Zoe said. “Earl and I both need to work on this guy. Mind driving?”

“He’s on patrol duty,” Pete’s voice boomed from behind them. “I’ll drive.”

Zoe caught a glimpse of a muscle popping in his jaw as he stormed past her to the front of the ambulance. She looked over her shoulder at McBirney’s car. Detective Baronick and another officer leaned over the open trunk with flashlights aimed inside. The faint wail of distant sirens bounced off the hillsides. Apparently, County had once again taken over.

Kevin pressed his lips together hard in silent communication. Like Zoe, he obviously realized now was not the time to question the chief.

She climbed in beside her patient and flipped the switch for the heater onto high. Earl slid the jump kit into the side door and climbed in, too. Pete claimed the driver’s seat. Kevin slammed the back doors and then circled around to slam the side one.

“You’re good to go,” he shouted, and the ambulance lurched across the parking lot.

Like a well-choreographed dance, Zoe and Earl went about their work, switching McBirney from the portable oxygen tank to the ambulance’s supply, slapping the leads for an EKG onto his skin, getting a new set of vitals, listening to the lung sounds. In the bright light of the patient compartment, the grayish blue of McBirney’s skin couldn’t be dismissed as an aberration created by the poor illumination in the trunk.

Earl touched the patient’s neck and met Zoe’s gaze. “Pneumothorax,” he said.

Zoe took the seat at McBirney’s head, the clipboard in her lap. She stared at his face. The left side was puffy and showed signs of bruising. She recalled swinging Windstar’s bridle earlier that afternoon and the
thunk
of steel striking flesh. With a shudder, she picked up the radio phone. “Brunswick, this is Medic Three.”

After a brief pause, a voice responded, “Go ahead Medic Three.”

“We have a male, age forty-six, with multiple penetrating injuries to his upper back resulting in severe blood loss. Patient is unresponsive. B.P. is sixty-eight over forty. Pulse is one sixteen and weak. Respiration is twenty and labored. Lung sounds are absent on the right side. He has distended veins in his neck and is cyanotic.” Zoe knew her words translated into bad news made worse by the presence of a collapsed lung.

Earl had pulled out a bag of normal saline even before the doctor at Brunswick ordered them to start the I.V. and do a needle chest decompression. He plugged the tubing into the bag while Zoe repositioned herself at McBirney’s side. She tied the rubber tourniquet around the patient’s arm and felt for a good vein. Damn it. He’d lost so much blood, there was no way this was going to be easy.

“Can you get it?” Earl asked.