8:11 PM

      Nora Sanger rushed into the emergency room, closely followed by her husband. Scanning the sea of people for a familiar face, she finally saw the head physician of the ER night shift, Odette Morgan, standing near the desk, and plunged through the crowd, calling out, "Dr. Morgan, I'm here! What do you need?"

      The wiry Jamaican woman looked up from the pile of paperwork in front of her and said, "Nora! Thank the Almighty! I need you to scrub up and head over to fifteen, get everything together to help Dr. Massey remove splinters and glass shards from the young man in there. Make sure he doesn't touch the one in his neck, don't want him to start bleeding out if it hits a vein."

      Nora gave Garrett a brief wave and disappeared into the mass of people milling about the area, as he approached Dr. Morgan. She finally noticed him, and said, "Hello, Lieutenant. Is there something I can do for you? I've already told your people that they're not questioning anybody until after they've been treated, and if anybody complained about that, tell 'em to take it up with the hospital board."

      "No, doctor, that's not why I'm here," he replied. "I was told that a couple of witnesses in one of my current cases are among the victims, and I was hoping that you could confirm if that's the case. If it is, I'd like to speak to them, if possible, but if not, I'd at least like to know the extent of their injuries."

      "I suppose that's a reasonable request. What are their names?" she inquired, placing her hand on the small mountain of paper in front of her.

      "Briar Malveaux and Ashley Purdy."

      "Simple enough, then. You'll have to wait awhile on Mr. Purdy, at least until Nora and Al finish up with him. He's one of the luckier ones, actually. He became a bit of a pincushion, but the only real worry is the piece of glass laying along his collarbone. As long as it doesn't move in the wrong direction before they get it out, he should be fine. And let me see..." she muttered, rifling through the stack. "A-ha, here it is! Malveaux... yup, she's in seventeen, waiting for the meds to kick in so someone can stitch up her bottom lip. Three broken ribs, already wrapped, and some facial bruising, but nothing life-threatening. Does that help?"

      "Immensely. Thank you, Dr. Morgan," he replied. "I don't suppose there's any chance that I could speak to her, is there?"

      "I doubt she'd be too comprehensible with a needle and thread in her mouth, but I'll tell them to let you know when they're finished."

      He nodded, and then let his eyes travel around the room until they landed on June Whaley, one of the night-shift patrol sergeants, who appeared to be wrapping up a conversation with a large, red-bearded man in a tweed beret, who seemed to be uninjured, but rather distraught. Sanger approached the officer as the man made his way to the elevator, and inquired, "Witness or relative?"

      "Host parent. He and his wife have been hosting a Vietnamese exchange student, and her younger brother flew in to visit for the week, so she took him out to dinner," Whaley responded. "The boy lost part of his left pinky finger, and has around forty stitches in the rest of his hand, might not get full use of it back. He's thirteen years old, and permanently disfigured. The girl, who just turned twenty, took a faceful of glass, and it's apparently a coin-flip whether she'll keep her sight. And you wanna hear the kicker? She's a fucking art major! Kinda hard to draw and paint if you can't see! Whoever this asshole is, he needs to be strung up on a meathook by his nutsack!"

      "Couldn't agree more, June," Sanger said, trying to speak calmly. "Were you at the scene, or dispatched straight here?"

      "Mickey Ludovic and I rolled here as soon as we clocked in, because they'd already started bringing the victims here, so we were told to see if we could get any statements. He's gone up to see about talking to a couple of people who've already been taken to rooms, and I figured I'd try to catch people as they finished up here. The ones who are capable of talking, at least."

      As he opened his mouth to speak again, he was cut off by a shrill, keening wail from the opposite side of the room. They both turned, and saw Odette Morgan, a tense, drawn expression on her face, standing in front of a plump, sixtyish woman who was sinking to the floor, still shrieking, despite the two burly thirty-something men who were attempting to hold her up.

      "Shit, I figured that was gonna happen!" June Whaley muttered, and Sanger turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow in a silent request for clarification. "Apparently, that's Mrs. Bertolucci, and the guys are her sons, I assume. She and her husband own the restaurant, and he was just coming in from making a bank deposit when the car blew," she continued. "He wound up with one of the seat springs in his gut, tore the poor old man all to hell and gone. Mickey and I got here just as they brought him in, and it was pretty obvious that he wasn't gonna make it. The docs here are good, but you'd have to be a damn miracle worker to put that kind of damage back together."

      Feeling a sudden tug at his sleeve, he turned to see Nora standing next to him. "Dr. Morgan said that you needed to speak to the man that Dr. Massey and I worked on, so she's had one of the nurses take him and the girl he was with to the break room, so you can have some quiet, and be out of the way. Come on, I'll show you where it is."

      Nodding to Whaley, he dodged through the crowd, following Nora down the hall to a closed door directly behind the nurse's station. She pointed to it, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, and turned back toward the ER. He opened the door to see Ashley sitting rather stiffly on a stool, a bandage peeking out from the neck of the hospital gown he wore over his torn jeans. Stepping into the room, he moved to stand near the younger man. "I'm sure this is a stupid question, but how do you feel?" he inquired.

      "Sore. I just had a couple of people work me over with tweezers and some kind of antiseptic or something," Ashley replied. "Everything stings like hell, and I'm pretty sure I won't be sleeping on my back for the next week or so, but I guess I can't really complain. We got seriously fuckin' lucky, Lieutenant. Before we left, we saw a piece of metal through the chair Briar was sitting in, and a big-ass chunk of the wall was on our table. Speaking of, have you seen her yet?"

      Before Sanger could answer, the door opened again, and Briar announced, "Here I am, all stitched up and mummified." Walking slowly and carefully, she started toward the nearest chair, and offered Sanger a grateful smile when he quickly moved to grab it, moving it closer to Ashley and himself. She gingerly lowered herself into the seat, laying the paperback she held on her lap, and turning her eyes to meet Sanger's. "It was that stupid damn Pacer, Lieutenant! It had the same mismatched door as the one I almost ran into, and with a car like that, it's not bloody likely that there would be two of them floating around town!"

      "Oh, I don't doubt for a second that you're right, it's already been all but confirmed," he replied. "But right now, what I want is for the two of you to walk me through exactly what happened. Briar, you go first."

      She started speaking, beginning with Ashley's phone call that afternoon, and ending with her conversation with Officer Belmont before boarding the ambulance. When she finished, Ashley began relating his perspective, pausing at the point where they went to the floor, and glancing at Briar. "And I know I said this already, but I really am sorry about your ribs."

      "And I already told you not to worry about it, didn't I? I've gotten banged up worse than this at work," Briar told him. Then, returning her attention to Sanger, she said, "But that just made me realize that we don't have a clue about anybody else. Were people badly hurt, Lieutenant?"

      "I haven't had a chance yet to get a full accounting, but there were at least two people with serious injuries, and the restaurant owner didn't make it. Other than that, I don't know anything for sure yet."

      "Mr. B is dead? Fuck!" Ashley blurted, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I've been going there a couple times a month since I moved into the neighborhood, and he's always been a hell of a nice guy. That completely fuckin' sucks!"

      "It always does." Sanger responded, reaching out to give Ashley a brief pat on his uninjured shoulder. "But we need to get back to what happened at the restaurant. You said that you both heard a ticking sound, even through those thick glass windows, right? Maybe if were lucky, that will help the bomb squad guys figure out a little quicker what the bastard used. Whatever it was, he must have had an almighty lot of it, with all the damage it did."

      "Shit, I almost managed to forget about that for a few minutes!" Ashley groaned. "I'd better get ahold of my insurance guy first thing in the morning, and hope my policy covers this."

      Sanger snapped his head around, looking sharply at Ashley. "So your car was damaged? Where was it parked?" 

      "Just a couple of spaces from the window, we could look into it from our seats. The asshole parked ri..." His words trailed off as he paled, a stunned expression settling onto his features.

      "Right next to you." Briar finished for him. "Oh, shit!"

      "Did the two of you ride together, or is your car still there?" Sanger asked Briar, as he reached into his pocket, bringing out his phone.

      "Ash picked me up at my place, my car is still in my slot in the parking garage," she answered.

      "Which tells us that either he was following Ashley, or watching your building," Sanger mused, almost to himself. He then stabbed a button on the phone with his thumb, and as he waited for the call to be answered, he favored them with a grave look, and said, "All right, we obviously can't fuck around trying to work under the radar anymore. Time to get it in gear."

      Briar and Ashley looked at Sanger, and then each other, their faces expressing their confusion, as his call finally connected, and they listened to him say, "Hello, Chief, this is Garrett Sanger. I'm sorry to disturb you at home, sir, but we've had a major development regarding the matter we discussed in your office this morning, and I think that we're going to have to consider some more proactive measures. Is there any chance you might be available to come to the hospital to discuss the situation further?"