We pivoted in the air and flew back up over 12th Street, rising above the crowd. I looked down through the spiraling snow and saw everyone ducking their heads from the helicopter wash. Everyone except for a single male face looking directly up at the Life Flight, not caring about the battering, stinging snow.
“That’s him!” I said.
“Detective?” the pilot said, his voice crackling over the radio in my helmet.
I tugged down the microphone, and said, “How do I talk to dispatch?”
The pilot leaned over, and flipped a switch.
“This is Detective Alex Cross,” I said. “Who’s the supervising detective heading to St. Anthony’s?”
“Your wife. Chief Stone.”
“Patch me through to her.”
Five seconds passed as we built speed and hurtled toward the hospital.
“Alex?” Bree said. “What’s happened?”
“John’s hit bad, Bree,” I said. “I’m with him. Close off that school from four blocks in every direction. Order a door-to-door search. I just saw the shooter on 12th, a block west of the school.”
“Description?”
“It’s Gary Soneji, Bree,” I said. “Get his picture off Google and send it to every cop in the area.”
There was silence on the line before Bree said sympathetically, “Alex, are you okay? Gary Soneji’s been dead for years.”
“If he’s dead, then I just saw a ghost.”
We were buffeted by winds and faced near-whiteout conditions trying to land on the helipad atop George Washington Medical Center. In the end we put down in the parking lot by the ER entrance, where a team of nurses and doctors met us.
They hustled Sampson inside and got him attached to monitors while Dr. Christopher Kalhorn, a neurosurgeon, swabbed aside some of the blood and examined the head wounds.
The bullet had entered Sampson’s skull at a shallow angle about two inches above the bridge of his nose. It exited forward of his left temple. That second wound was about the size of a marble, but gaping and ragged, as if the bullet had been a hollow point that broke up and shattered going through bone.
“Let’s get him intubated, on Propofol, and into an ice bath and cooling helmet,” Kalhorn said. “Take his temp down to ninety-two, get him into a CT scanner, and then the OR. I’ll have a team waiting for him.”
The ER doctors and nurses sprang into action. In short order, they had a breathing tube down Sampson’s throat and were racing him away. Kalhorn turned to leave. I showed my badge and stopped him.
“That’s my brother,” I said. “What do I tell his wife?”
Dr. Kalhorn turned grim. “You tell her we’ll do everything possible to save him. And you tell her to pray. You, too, Detective.”
“What are his chances?”
“Pray,” he said, took off in a trot, and disappeared.
I was left standing in an empty treatment slot in the ER, looking down at the dark blood that stained the gauze pads they’d used to clean Sampson’s head.
“You can’t stay in here, Detective,” one of the nurses said sympathetically. “We need the space. Traffic accidents all over the city with this storm.”
I nodded, turned, and wandered away, wondering where to go, what to do.
I went out in the ER waiting area and saw twenty people in the seats. They stared at my pistol, at the blood on my shirt, and at the black hole where Soneji’s bullet had hit me. I didn’t care what they thought. I didn’t—
I heard the automatic doors whoosh open behind me.
A fearful voice cried out, “Alex?”