the man who’d done this. I wanted to shoot him twenty times, completely destroy the creature that had risen from the dead.
Sirens closed in on the school from six directions. I wiped at my tears, and then squeezed Sampson’s hand, before forcing myself to my feet and back out into the cafeteria, where the first patrol officers were charging in, followed by a pair of EMTs whose shoulders were flecked with melting snowflakes.
They got Sampson’s head immobilized, then put him on a board and then a gurney. He was under blankets and moving in less than six minutes. It was snowing hard outside. They waited inside the front door to the school for the helicopter to come, and put IV lines into his wrists.
Sampson went into another convulsion. The parish priest, Father Fred Close, came and gave my partner the last rites.
But my man was still hanging on when the helicopter came. In a daze I followed them out into a driving snowstorm. We had to shield our eyes to duck under the blinding propeller wash and get Sampson aboard.
“We’ll take it from here!” one EMT shouted at me.
“There’s not a chance I’m leaving his side,” I said, climbed in beside the pilot, and pulled on the extra helmet. “Let’s go.”
The pilot waited until they had the rear doors shut and the gurney strapped down before throttling up the helicopter. We began to rise, and it was only then that I saw through the swirling snow that crowds were forming beyond the barricades set up in a perimeter around the school and church complex.
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.”
Chapter 4
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