12th of Never

he started spraying down the flames. I couldn’t see much of the car underneath the fifty-three-footer, but what I could see looked like a tin can that had gone into a meat grinder.
    “I didn’t see him,” the driver was saying to me, tears flowing down his cheeks. “I didn’t know what had happened until I heard the racket. God help me. Please tell me I didn’t kill anyone.”
    I ducked under the rig’s undercarriage to see what was left of the getaway cruiser, to see if by a miracle someone had survived.
    Smoke burned my eyes and made them water. I forced my lids open and saw that the skin of the car was scorched, the roof of the vehicle flattened. No one could have survived this, I thought.
    But then a groan came from inside the car.
    And then—unbelievable but true—another sound ripped right through me. It was the wail of a young child.

Chapter 99
    THE WALKWAYS AND streets in front of the ballpark were lit up like Christmas in hell. Red and blue lights flashed and spun, fire flared, sirens wailed, car alarms went off, and injured pedestrians cried out for help.
    Ambulances came and went through the hastily erected barricades, ferrying people to emergency rooms, while Richie and other law enforcement officers corralled by-standers behind barrier tape and tried to keep the scene of an escaped convict’s crash intact.
    But we couldn’t.
    Fire engines doused the truck and the streets with CO2 and water, and even though the roads had been closed off, emergency vehicles kept coming.
    I stood by anxiously as a fire engine with a hydraulic lift jacked up the big rig. Another fire truck with a heavy-duty hydraulic winch got a hook into the squashed squad car and pulled it out from under the semi with a heavy steel cable.
    The child in the backseat was a toddler of about three. He screamed with everything he had and pawed the air with bloody hands. More blood streamed down the side of his head. Thank God he had been strapped into a sturdy car seat and that seat belts had been threaded through the back of it.
    His survival was nothing less than a miracle.
    Rescue workers applied the Jaws of Life to the back door of the squad car and three EMTs reached for the baby at the same time.
    I knew Lynn Colomello, the head paramedic.
    “Do you have an ID on this child?” she asked me.
    “I have no idea who he is.”
    “I’ll get him to the ER,” she said, “and I’ll stay with him, but I can’t even guess at his condition without X-rays. Here’s my number. Call me later.”
    Before the ambulance had left with the baby, I was on the driver’s side of the car, which was relatively intact. The door had been removed, the deployed air bag flattened. And I saw that the driver was either unconscious or dead, his head facedown on the steering wheel.
    I put my fingers to his neck and felt a pulse—but I didn’t feel facial hair, whiskers, or stubble. The driver was young, maybe a teenager, wearing the blues of a uniformed officer. He was still alive.
    How was this young man related to Fish, and whose baby was being rushed to the hospital?
    Fish was in the front passenger seat, crushed against the door. The engine block had blown through the fire wall, intruded into the passenger compartment, and was lying on Fish’s lap.
    From what I could see, his legs were mangled. Blood was pooling in the foot well, and I saw broken ribs coming through his shirt. Fish moaned. He was conscious.
    He saw me, took in a wheezing breath, and said, “Is she alive?” He spoke again. “Please, save her,” he said.
    Save
her?

Chapter 100
    I MOVED BLOOD-SOAKED hair away and looked more closely at the driver’s profile—and for a moment, I thought I had lost my mind.
    Just then, Conklin joined me beside the car. He said, “Did the driver make it?” He looked at the shock on my face, then dropped his gaze to the steering wheel. His eyes got huge when he saw her.
    “No,
no
,” he said. “This can’t
be
.”
    Conklin jerked around, cupped his hands, and yelled at every uniform within earshot. “Get her
out
. Get this woman the hell out of this
car
.”
    A rescue worker brought over a hydraulic ram, and
bam
—the dashboard was pushed back and Mackie Morales was unpinned. Two men extricated her carefully from the vehicle, lifted her onto a stretcher, and fitted an oxygen mask to her face.
    She’d been beaten up by the collision and looked like she was barely holding on to life.
    I said to Conklin, “The child in the backseat.