Ellie’s smile vanished as they hurried up the stairs. She and Catalina might privately joke about their jobs— they had to have a sense of humor, or they’d lose their minds— but once they were in the presence of their patients, the paramedics were completely focused on doing the best they could for them. Even if the boy was just drunk or high, Ellie and Catalina would examine him, make sure he was all right, and reassure his worried mother.
The woman who opened the door was tiny and white-haired, ninety if she was a day. “Oh, thank God you’re here! My poor baby Ricky!”
Ellie frowned in confusion as she followed the woman, who seemed way too old to have an eighteen-year-old son. Maybe the 911 operator had misheard ‘grandmother’ as ‘mother.’
The woman pointed dramatically. “Here he is!”
Ellie bit down on her lower lip to stop herself from bursting out laughing.
Ricky was a fat, fluffy, contented-looking Angora cat. He blinked up and yawned at them from his perch on the back of the sofa.
“Ricky is a cat,” Catalina said, her voice quivering slightly.
“He’s my baby,” the woman corrected them. “I woke up and went to get a drink of water, and I reached out to pet him as I passed by. He always purrs when I pet him, but tonight he meowed and twitched his head like he was going to bite me. My poor baby!”
“I think you just startled him,” Ellie said soothingly.
The woman shot her a doubtful look. “I guess that could be it. He does look better now, don’t you, baby? But better safe than sorry! Aren’t you going to examine him, just to be sure?”
Fighting to keep a straight face, Ellie said, “Catalina, why don’t you do the exam? I’ll just go out and radio the hospital with our estimated time of return.”
As Ellie walked past her partner, Catalina whispered, “You owe me a pizza.”
“Come on, you love cats,
” Ellie whispered back, and made her escape.
Once she was safely out the door, she gave in to laughter. Poor baby Ricky, the world’s most pampered cat!
Ellie was still smiling as she walked down the stairs. It was calls like these that reminded her of why she loved being a paramedic, despite the crazy hours and the lonely nights at home. Whatever else you could say about the job, it was never boring.
She entered the alley. Blinking down the dark strip of asphalt, lined with garbage cans and buildings with darkened windows, Ellie tried to remember which end of the alley led to the street where they’d left the ambulance. One dented trash can looked vaguely familiar. Yawning, she turned right.
The alley stretched on for longer than she remembered walking when they’d first come to the apartment. The only light was from distant street lights, and everything was dim and shadowy. The still air smelled strongly of mold, oil, and rotting garbage. There was no sound but the occasional rumble of a car driving by several streets away.
Uneasy, Ellie wondered if she’d gone the wrong way. Then she came to a dead end at a brick wall. It was a T-shaped intersection, with even darker and narrower alleys leading to the left and right.
Definitely the wrong way, she thought. She turned around to go back.
“Are you sure he’s dead?” The voice came from the alley to her left. The speaker was a man with a low voice.
Ellie froze in her tracks. Obviously, someone was in desperate need of medical help. Normally she’d have run forward to offer her assistance. But the speaker’s tone chilled her blood. She felt certain that he wanted someone to be dead.
“I’m pretty sure, Mr. Nagle,” said a different man, sounding slightly nervous. “I shot him three times.”
Ellie knew that the best thing for her to do was to walk away quietly and call the police. But she hadn’t become a paramedic because she liked to play it safe. She stepped behind a dumpster, careful to place her feet away from anything that might snap or squish or crunch. Her heart pounding, she cautiously peered out into the alley. Though the light was dim, her eyes had adjusted to it. She could see perfectly.
Two men stood in the alley, looking down at the limp body of a third man. One man was in his fifties, tall and gray-haired, dressed in a black suit that looked out of place in the filthy surroundings. The other was in his late twenties, a big bruiser in jeans and a blood-spattered T-shirt, holding a gun. But it was the sight of the man down on the ground that made Ellie stifle a gasp.
She wasn’t shocked because he was bleeding, or because he might be dead. Ellie had cared for lots of injured people, and seen her share of dead-on-arrival bodies. What shocked her was that she recognized the man.
She didn’t know him personally, but she was familiar with his face. She’d voted for him at the last election, barely three months ago. It was Bill Whitfield, the new district attorney of Santa Martina. He’d run on the promise to fight organized crime.
He was dead. She’d been a paramedic long enough to know that, even from a distance. There was nothing she could do for him.
“Shoot him again,” the tall man ordered. “In the head. Execution-style. Just to send a message.”
“Okay, Mr. Nagle,” the younger man— the hit man— replied.