LITMIR.BIZ

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favouritism and they haul out their guns too. And all our hard work getting the place calmed down so you could walk around without shells flying over your heads, that’s all going to be down the tubes.

      On the bright side, our section beat 3 Section at soccer yesterday. Afterwards at the mess, Sarge did a little dance on the table again. From a strict religious Prairie boy, he’s getting to be the life of the party. And another good thing, Fundy has made a real difference to the mines. She finds them better than the engineers, and she gets such a kick out of it. Big smile on her face and her tongue hanging out as she waits for her treat. Yesterday she was tagging along with Mahir and she spotted one buried right on the path he uses every day to get home.

      * * *

      Sue Peters was being airlifted to the Ottawa Hospital on advanced life support. By the time the helicopter was scheduled to touch down at seven-fifteen, Green had already been on the phone with the military police, the Petawawa OPP and the Pembroke Hospital. He’d spoken to everyone from the first officer on the scene to the doctors who had tried to patch her together. He’d briefed Barbara Devine and prepared a short statement for the press.

      He knew everything that had happened from the moment Peters’ battered body had been discovered inside an abandoned railway warehouse, but not a damn thing about how she got there. Constable Weiss had been nearly incoherent when questioned by the local police, and doctors had stuffed him full of tranquillizers before packing him into the back of an OPP cruiser and shipping him off to Ottawa.

      By seven o’clock, Elgin Street Headquarters was teeming with people. Off-duty officers, on hearing the news, had reported in to learn the latest details, to volunteer for extra duty, or simply to be among their own. Coordination between the various police services involved had now gone up the chain of command to Barbara Devine, but when she phoned down to demand that Green come upstairs to a meeting with herself and the local brass from the military and provincial police services, he refused.

      “I’ve got a critically injured officer landing at the Civic Campus in less than fifteen minutes. That’s where I’m needed, Barbara. You guys decide how this is going to be run.” He paused as he caught sight of Bob Gibbs pacing back and forth across the squad room, talking to a rapt group of detectives. It looked as if the whole Major Crimes Unit, and quite a few of the other units, had come to commiserate. Nothing was worse than an officer down. These guys needed to be involved. “Just make sure you put me on any joint task force you create.”

      To her credit, Devine did not protest. It seemed even she understood this was one time when bureaucracy took a back seat. Green hung up, grabbed his jacket and headed out into the squad room to round up Gibbs. Throughout the entire car ride from Elgin Street to the Civic Hospital, the young detective talked non-stop, reviewing over and over the details of the investigation to date. His speculations made no sense, but Green let him talk. Exhaustion and self-recrimination would take over soon enough.

      The helicopter was just flying into view when they drove up to the landing site, which sat at the edge of a field across Carling Avenue from the hospital. In the darkness, lights and vehicles appeared to be everywhere. A circle of lights marked the landing pad, and a ground ambulance sat by the tarmac, lights flashing and stretcher ready. Green had the ridiculous thought that it would probably be faster to wheel the stretcher across Carling Avenue to the hospital on foot.

      At the entrance to the landing field, a burly ground crew worker flagged him to a stop, ignored Green’s badge and waved them over to the parking lot of the hospital emergency department across the street. “You’ll have to check in at Admissions, sir,” he shouted over the deafening roar of the helicopter. Dust and wind swirled in the air. “They’ll want some information.”

      Green parked in a restricted area closest to the door, slapped a police sticker on the dash and led Gibbs inside to the Admissions Desk in Emergency, which was right next to the ambulance bay. Heavy metal swing doors separated the admissions area from the unloading area, however, so they only caught a fleeting glimpse of Peters’ still form as the stretcher whisked by. White coats swirled around her, and a man’s voice snapped out her vital signs. The flurry of activity was over as quickly as it blew up, leaving no one left to ask.

      Green introduced himself to the admissions clerk and told her he’d like to speak to the doctor in charge as soon as he or she was available. The clerk gave him a brief, distracted nod before returning to her forms. The emergency room was filled with people slumped in chairs along the walls, talking in hushed whispers, reading, or simply staring into space. Several watched Green and Gibbs with idle curiosity.

      They never did see an ER physician, but about fifteen minutes later, the air ambulance crew emerged from behind the steel doors and stopped by to give them a report on their way back out to the helicopter. They looked grim.

      “She’s going straight up to surgery, sir,” said the senior paramedic. “The OR was all set up and waiting for her. But I don’t want to sugarcoat it. We got her here in very good time, and she had a carotid pulse when the surgical team took her up to the OR , and those are both positives. But she’s lost a lot of blood, and she sustained fairly extensive injuries to the head. Some bastard beat her up pretty bad.”

      Green listened with grim calm. He had already heard about the beating from the Petawawa OPP, but Gibbs’s reaction stopped him from asking further details. The young man suddenly swayed on his feet, and Green and the paramedic dived to catch his arms before he slumped to the ground. With practised calm, the paramedic helped him to a chair, forced his head between his knees and ordered Green to get some water.

      When Green returned with the water, Gibbs was hunched forward, clutching his head in his hands and rocking from side to side. “I should never have sent her alone. What was I thinking? I should never have sent her alone.”

      Oh, shit, Green thought, the self-recrimination has started already. “And maybe I should never have gone to Halifax,” he interrupted. “But Bob—”

      “You should never have put me in charge.”

      Probably not, once I saw how ruthless the killer was, Green thought, but he forced his own self-doubts out of mind. He dragged out the only platitudes he could think of. Platitudes that had been fed to him six years earlier, and rang as true and as hollow now as they had then. “Bob, these things happen. We’re out there in danger every day. We make judgment calls on a wing and a prayer, and sometimes we’re wrong.”

      “But I knew she was inexperienced. I-I just didn’t have the balls to tell her no. She wanted it so bad.”

      “You followed proper procedure; you sent someone with her.”

      “Another mistake. Where the f-fuck was Weiss when this happened to her?”

      Where the fuck indeed, Green thought grimly. The man didn’t need to be a major crimes detective to know the basic premise of policing. Officer safety first. Never leave your partner’s back exposed. Constable Weiss had a hell of a lot to answer for when he finally made it back to Ottawa, no matter what his mental state.

      For now it was a waiting game. The hospital directed them to a more private room up on the surgical floor, and officers drifted in and out in search of news and moral support. As the evening dragged on, one of Gibbs’s friends took him down to the cafeteria for some food and Green used the opportunity to duck outside and update Sharon.

      The sky was clear, and a hint of frost clouded his breath, but he was glad of the fresh air. He shivered as he sat on the stone curb and filled her in. True to form, Sharon listened and said exactly what he needed to hear. Which was why he loved her, why he had fallen in love with her the first time he’d met her six years earlier, when she’d offered a listening ear to an overworked and overwhelmed sergeant dealing with the worst killing he’d ever encountered.

      “The fact she’s still in the OR is a good sign, honey,” she said now. “It means she’s hanging in, and they’re stitching her back together bit by bit.”

      Sucking in the cold, crisp night air, he managed a feeble laugh. “Let’s hope they find enough of the parts.”

      “You always

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