End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3)(2)

Jason grabbed the mike. ‘Copy, Dispatch, this is 23 out of Firehouse 3, ETA just about six minutes.’

Other sirens were rising from other parts of the city, but judging from the sound, Rob guessed their ambo was closest to the scene. A cast iron light had begun creeping into the air, and as they wheeled out of McDonald’s and onto Upper Marlborough, a gray car knitted itself out of the gray fog, a big sedan with a dented hood and badly rusted grille. For a moment the HD headlights, on high beam, were pointed straight at them. Rob hit the dual air-horns and swerved. The car – it looked like a Mercedes, although he couldn’t be sure – slewed back into its own lane and was then nothing but taillights dwindling into the fog.

‘Jesus Christ, that was close,’ Jason said. ‘Don’t suppose you got the license plate?’

‘No.’ Rob’s heart was beating so hard he could feel it pulsing on both sides of his throat. ‘I was busy saving our lives. Listen, how can there be multiple casualties at City Center? God isn’t even up yet. It’s gotta be closed.’

‘Could’ve been a bus crash.’

‘Try again. They don’t start running until six.’

Sirens. Sirens everywhere, beginning to converge like blips on a radar screen. A police car went bolting past them, but so far as Rob could tell, they were still ahead of the other ambos and fire trucks.

Which gives us a chance to be the first to get shot or blown up by a mad Arab shouting allahu akbar, he thought. How nice for us.

But the job was the job, so he swung onto the steep drive leading up to the main city administration buildings and the butt-ugly auditorium where he’d voted until moving out to the suburbs.

‘Brake!’ Jason screamed. ‘Jesus-fuck, Robbie, BRAKE!’

Scores of people were coming at them from the fog, a few sprinting nearly out of control because of the incline. Some were screaming. One guy fell down, rolled, picked himself up, and ran on with his torn shirttail flapping beneath his jacket. Rob saw a woman with shredded hose, bloody shins, and only one shoe. He came to a panic stop, the nose of the ambo dipping, unsecured shit flying. Meds, IV bottles, and needle packs from a cabinet left unsecured – a violation of protocol – became projectiles. The stretcher they hadn’t had to use for Mr Galen bounced off one wall. A stethoscope found the pass-through, smacked the windshield, and fell onto the center console.

‘Creep along,’ Jason said. ‘Just creep, okay? Let’s not make it worse.’

Rob feathered the gas and continued up the slope, now at walking pace. Still they came, hundreds, it seemed, some bleeding, most not visibly hurt, all of them terrified. Jason unrolled the passenger window and leaned out.

‘What’s going on? Somebody tell me what’s going on!’

A man pulled up, red-faced and gasping. ‘It was a car. Tore through the crowd like a mowing machine. Fucking maniac just missed me. I don’t know how many he hit. We were penned in like hogs because of the posts they set up to keep people in line. He did it on purpose and they’re laying around up there like … like … oh man, dolls filled with blood. I saw at least four dead. There’s gotta be more.’

The guy started to move on, plodding now instead of running as the adrenaline faded. Jason unhooked his seatbelt and leaned out to call after him. ‘Did you see what color it was? The car that did it?’

The man turned back, pale and haggard. ‘Gray. Great big gray car.’

Jason sat back down and looked at Rob. Neither of them had to say it out loud: it was the one they had swerved to avoid as they came out of McDonald’s. And that hadn’t been rust on its snout, after all.

‘Go, Robbie. We’ll worry about the mess in back later. Just get us to the prom and don’t hit anyone, yeah?’

‘Okay.’

By the time Rob arrived in the parking lot, the panic was abating. Some people were leaving at a walk; others were trying to help those who had been struck by the gray car; a few, the assholes present in every crowd, were snapping photos or making movies with their phones. Hoping to go viral on YouTube, Rob assumed. Chrome posts with yellow DO NOT CROSS tape trailing from them lay on the pavement.

The police car that had passed them was parked close to the building, near a sleeping bag with a slim white hand protruding. A man lay sprawled crossways on top of the bag, which was in the center of a spreading bloodpuddle. The cop motioned the ambo forward, his beckoning arm seeming to stutter in the swinging blue glare of the lightbar atop his cruiser.

Rob grabbed the mobile data terminal and got out while Jason ran around to the rear of the ambo. He emerged with his First In Bag and the external defibrillator. The day continued to brighten, and Rob could read the sign flapping over the main doors of the auditorium: 1000 JOBS GUARANTEED! We Stand With the People of Our City! – MAYOR RALPH KINSLER.

Okay, that explained why there had been such a crowd, and so early in the morning. A job fair. Times were tough everywhere, had been since the economy had its own thunderclap infarction the year before, but they had been especially tough in this little lakefront city, where the jobs had started bleeding away even before the turn of the century.

Rob and Jason started toward the sleeping bag, but the cop shook his head. His face was ashen. ‘This guy and the two in the bag are dead. His wife and baby, I guess. He must have been trying to protect them.’ He made a brief sound deep in his throat, something between a burp and a retch, clapped a hand over his mouth, then took it away and pointed. ‘That lady there might still be with us.’