12th of Never

Could he be hers?”
    “She has a three-year-old. Benjamin. He’s alive?”
    I told Conklin what I knew. My partner looked scared and confused, and he hovered around the stretcher as paramedics strapped Morales down.
    “Mackie. Mackie. It’s Rich.”
    She didn’t move or acknowledge him.
    Conklin spoke urgently to the EMT. “Her name is MacKenzie Morales. She works in Homicide, Southern District. How bad are her injuries? Is she going to make it?”
    “Go with her,” I said to my partner. “I’ll stay with Fish.”
    Conklin didn’t argue.
    He climbed into the ambulance, took a seat beside the stretcher, and was looking at Morales when the doors closed. The sirens came on, and so did the rain, precipitation ringing the lights with intermittent halos of bright, flashing red.
    I watched for a moment as the ambulance headed out. I didn’t know what Conklin and Morales had together, but if anyone could find out why she had become the serial killer’s wheelman, Rich Conklin had the means and the motive to do it.

Chapter 101
    THE KALEIDOSCOPE OF blinking lights took on another dimension as helicopters landed and took off, medevac units shuttling victims to trauma centers in and out of the city. Media choppers had also arrived and were in contact with the press behind the barricades, sending live reports over the airwaves.
    I leaned in to the empty frame of the crashed squad car’s windshield and focused on a man I despised but who had become very important to me. Randy Fish had an IV in his arm, but he had pushed away the oxygen mask and was having a very hard time breathing. Every time he took in air, I expected him to let it out with a death rattle.
    But he was
not
going to die without answering my questions. I just wouldn’t accept that.
    “Randy. Can you hear me?”
    “Lin?”
    “Yes. It’s Lindsay. Who is Morales to you?”
    “I love … her,” he said. “I love …”
    I reached into the car, shook his shoulder. Blood was coming from his forehead, his chest, his twisted legs. His body was a sieve.
    “Stay with me, Randy,” I said to him. “Please stay with me. We’re going to get you out of here in just another minute. Hey! Randy.”
    Blood bubbled out of Fish’s mouth. He took another breath. I turned away from the car and toward the chaos around me. A fireman was six feet away from me, talking into his phone. Rain dripped from the brim of his hat.
    “We got a survivor in there,” I shouted, pointing to the car.
    “I know, Sergeant. We had to extract the ones who are going to make it first. But I didn’t forget him. I’ve got the Jaws coming back now.”
    The firefighter came back to the car and leaned his face through the windshield as I had done. He said to Fish, “I’m Deputy Chief Robert Wilson. I’m called Robbie. Take it easy, sir. Everything is going to be okay.”
    I had heard those words before, spoken in just the same way. And now I remembered the man called Robbie. The last time I’d seen him, I’d been naked, lightning blazing around me across the black sky. This man had helped deliver Julie.
    “Don’t I know you, Sergeant?” he said to me. “Sure I do. How’s your little girl?”
    My chest heaved. Tears welled, spilled, unnoticed in the rain. God, I was crying a lot these days. I sucked it up and pushed down the emotion that was on the verge of disabling me.
    I put my hand on Deputy Wilson’s arm and said, “Mr. Fish is an important witness to several unsolved homicides. I have to talk to him.”
    “Ma’am, that engine crushed his thighs and his pelvis. He’s got broken ribs, punctured lungs. He’s lost a lot of blood, and he’s either going to bleed out or the traumatic asphyxia is going to kill him.
    “He’s going in and out of consciousness now, you understand?” Deputy Wilson said. “He’s not leaving that car. If you want to talk to him, you should tell him that he’s got very little time. I’d tell him that right away.”

Chapter 102
    THE AMBULANCE TOOK off like a rocket. I stood in the street and stared after the taillights and flashers until they became the size of pin lights, trying to understand what made no sense to me at all.
    Why had Mackie Morales, our summer intern, been driving a stolen squad car with her baby in the backseat? Had Fish gotten to her in some way? Had he threatened her or her baby?
    That had to be it.
    Why else would a bright young woman with a big future and a small child commit a felony? But if Fish had threatened