The 6th Target (Women's Murder Club 6)

We both looked up when the stainless steel doors to the rear of the autopsy suite banged open and a tech wheeled a gurney inside, calling out, “Dr. G., where do you want this?”

The body on the stretcher was sheeted, about fifty inches long. “This” was a child.

“Leave him,” Germaniuk said to the tech. “We’ll take it from here.”

The doctor and I stepped over to the gurney. He pulled the sheet down.

Just looking at the dead child was enough to tear out my heart. Tony’s skin was a mottled blue color, and he had a freshly stitched twelve-inch incision across his skinny little chest. I fought an impulse to put my hand on his face, touch his hair, do something to comfort a child who’d had the bad luck to be standing in a madman’s line of fire.

“I’m so sorry, Tony.”

“Here’s my card,” Germaniuk said, digging it out of his lab coat pocket, putting it in my hand. “Call my cell phone if you need me. And when you see Claire . . . tell her I’ll come to the hospital when I can. Tell her we’re all pulling for her — and that we’re not going to let her down.”

Chapter 13

MY SQUAD HAD MOVED their chairs and herded up around me. They were throwing out questions and trying out theories about the Del Norte shooter when my cell phone rang. I recognized the number as Edmund’s and took the call.

Edmund’s voice was hoarse and breaking when he said, “Claire just came out of X-ray. She’s got internal bleeding.”

“Eddie, I don’t get it. What happened?”

“The bullet bruised her liver. . . . They have to operate on her — again.”

I’d been lulled by Dr. Sassoon’s smile when he’d said that Claire was as good as home free. Now I felt nauseated with fear.

When I arrived at the ICU waiting room, it was half full of Claire’s family and friends, plus Edmund and Willie and Reggie Washburn, Claire and Edmund’s twenty-one-year-old who’d just flown in from the University of Miami.

I hugged everyone, sat down beside Cindy Thomas and Yuki Castellano, Claire’s best girlfriends and mine, the four of us making up the entire membership of what we half jokingly call the “Women’s Murder Club.” We huddled together, waiting for news in that cheerless room.

Throughout the long, tense hours, we camouflaged our fear by topping one another’s kick-butt Claire stories. We downed bad coffee and Snickers bars from the vending machines, and during the early morning hours, Edmund asked us to pray.

We all joined hands as Eddie asked God to please spare Claire. I knew we were all hoping that if we stayed close to her and had enough faith, she wouldn’t die.

During those grueling hours, I flashed back to the time I’d been shot — how Claire and Cindy had been there for me.

And I remembered other times when I’d waited in rooms much like this one. When my mom had cancer. When a man I’d loved had been shot in the line of duty. When Yuki’s mom had been felled by a stroke.

All of them had died.

Cindy said, “Where is that son-of-a-bitch shooter right now? Is he having a smoke after his dinner? Sleeping in a nice soft bed, planning another shooting spree?”

“He’s not sleeping in a bed,” Yuki said. “Ten bucks says that dude is sleeping in a Maytag box.”

At around five in the morning, a weary Dr. Sassoon came out to give us the news.

“Claire’s doing fine,” he said. “We’ve repaired the damage to her liver, and her blood pressure is picking up. Her vital signs are good.”

A cheer went up, and spontaneously we all started to clap. Edmund hugged his sons, tears in all their eyes.

The doctor smiled, and I had to admit — he was a warrior.

I made a quick trip home to take a sunrise run around Potrero Hill with Martha, my border collie.

Then I called Jacobi as the sun rose over the roof of my car. I met him and Conklin at the elevator bank inside the Hall at eight.

It was Sunday.

They’d brought coffee and donuts.