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“Everyone stay down,” Jack yelled. And then the screams started.
Jack and Martinez and Cole were already in motion, Jack peeling off toward the alley entrance and Cole and Martinez going out the front. I’d noticed Officer Jackson was in another part of the restaurant with his girlfriend when we’d first come in, and he was only a few steps behind Cole.
I pushed up on my hands and knees and got to my feet. Glass was everywhere, even in my hair, and I took quick stock of my body to make sure I was in one piece.
“Lily,” I yelled over the chaos. “You okay?”
She was on the floor where Cole had shoved her and she had a dazed look in her eyes, but she nodded her head in the affirmative and tried to get up.
Then I heard the kind of scream I was all too familiar with. Death tore something in the souls of those who witnessed the violence of it firsthand, and I shuddered as the wails of those who’d cheated death crawled across my skin.
I’d spent too many years in the ER for instincts not to kick in.
“Lily, call 911 and tell them we need an ambulance. Sheldon, run to the Suburban and grab my bag. Tom and Emmy Lu, block the exits until Jack can get back so no one slips out. They’ll need to talk to everyone.”
I tossed Sheldon my keys and they hit him in the chest and bounced to the floor since his glasses were skewed, but I knew he’d get himself together and get moving. I’d found giving people something to do in a crisis kept them functional instead of paralyzed with fear. I climbed over the table and stepped over people until I got to the source of the sound.
“Let me through,” I yelled. “I’m a doctor.”
I knelt down beside a woman who was huddled next to the victim, her arms over her head protectively and her body shaking with tremors. It was the woman in the red dress. I hadn’t recognized her with her coat on.
“Ma’am,” I said, taking her by the shoulders. “Let me see. I’m a doctor. Let me help.”
She went limp and I was able to push her out of the way enough that I could see what I was dealing with. It was the silver-haired man, also dressed in his coat and scarf, and his keys were still clutched in his hand.
Even I could see there was nothing a doctor could do for this man. There was a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.
CHAPTERTWO
“Paramedics are on the way,”Lily said, coming up behind me. She looked down at the victim. “Yikes. I’m going to change my shoes. My feet are already killing me. And I think I’ve got some coveralls in the car. I’ll be right back.”
I grunted in agreement. We were going to be here for a while, and the heels Lily was wearing weren’t crime scene friendly. For some reason, television had decided that every female cop and coroner must work every scene in a two-thousand-dollar leather jacket and spiked heels. Which only told me that no one in TV had ever spent any time on an actual crime scene or enjoyed the luxuries a first responder salary provided. The work was long and tedious and there was a lot of standing involved. Then there was the added bonus of crime scenes like this one where glass littered the ground and it was easy to slip and slide.
“I need everyone to move back,” I said. “Is anyone else hurt over here? What about you?” I asked a thin pale man who’d uprighted a chair and was sitting with his elbows resting on his knees and his head down. He had smeared blood on his pressed khakis and along the cuffs of his dress shirt.
He held out his palms faceup to me and said, “It’s just glass. I landed on my hands.”
“You’ll want to get that cleaned out when the EMTs get here,” I said. “Make sure you go see them.”
Miraculously, it seemed no one else on this side of the restaurant had been injured other than minor abrasions and lacerations. I’d worked a number of drive-by shootings when I’d worked the ER at Augusta General and I’d been expecting a bloodbath.
“You,” I said, pointing to one of the victim’s companions. He was a sturdy man with thick blond hair and tortoise-rimmed glasses, but more importantly, he seemed to have most of his wits about him. “I need to go see if anyone else needs help. What’s your friend’s name?”
He glanced down at the body at my feet and swallowed. And then he said, “David. David Sowers.”
“I need you to make sure everyone stays away from David until I get back. No one touches him. Can you do that?”
He nodded and I had no choice but to take him at his word. I could feel the internaltick, tick, tickof the seconds that passed. Counting seconds during an emergency was like breathing to me. Only minutes had passed since the first shot had been fired and every single second was critical. There was nothing I could do for David Sowers, but maybe someone else had a fighting chance.
“Over here,” I heard someone yell.
I looked across the room and saw the manager waving in my direction. He stood at the opposite corner of the bar and was pushing people back who were starting to move around. I saw out of the corner of my eye a couple try to slip out the front door only to be met by Tom Daly, and I knew he’d be able to get them corralled back inside until Jack returned.
Almost all of the liquor bottles behind the bar had been broken, and the smell of alcohol permeated every surface. The chandelier hung haphazardly and crystals littered the ground. My shoes crunched over broken glass as I made my way to the manager, and I was glad I’d gone with my sensible black boots that morning.
“You’re the manager?” I asked the man in black. He skimmed just under six feet and was built like a boxer. He had a square head, a five o’clock shadow, thick black hair, and eyes so dark I couldn’t see his pupils.
“The owner,” he corrected. “Alex Denaro. I got up as soon as the dust settled to see who needed help. This lady seems to be the worst of it.”
