Part 3

The blackness enveloped him for an eternity, or a few seconds, he really didn’t know. When he clawed his way back to consciousness from the dark pit, the first thing he heard was a scream and a shotgun blast. . .the unmistakable sound of a falling body. . . then another shot. Feeling no impact, Peter knew instinctively that the target had been someone else.

*Oh God, Mandy. Let her be all right. I’ve got to get to her.* A myriad of thoughts raced through Peter’s less-than-coherent mind.

"What do you think now, Caine?" a strangely familiar voice snarled from above him. "As my father said, ‘ Kill your enemy and he dies once. Do harm to someone he loves and he dies a thousand deaths.’ Looks like you have a lot of dying to do, Hot Shot."

A sob escaped his lips as he pushed himself up from the floor where he had fallen. He made it almost to his hands and knees when the sharp tip of a boot impacted his side. He felt ribs give and all of the breath leave him. The blackness returned.

***

"Hey, mister, can you hear me?" An annoying voice pierced the shell of fuzziness around Peter, and he groaned softly. Pain assailed his body from every angle. The hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently did nothing to help.

Satisfied that Peter was indeed alive and had some degree of awareness, the voice continued. "I’m a paramedic with County Rescue. Do you understand?"

"Mmmmm." Peter couldn’t seem to open his eyes, couldn’t quite manage a cohesive thought. He hoped that the paramedic would take his mumbling as a response and leave him alone.

"This one’s alive. He’s got a bruise over his eye and on his side. Looks like someone kicked the Hell out of him." The man, still a disembodied voice with hands that prodded and poked, spoke to someone else in the room. "As soon as I get him checked out, give me a hand and we’ll get him on the backboard."

Peter struggled to open his eyes. His left eye wouldn’t budge, but he managed to open the right eye just a slit. It was a mistake. The light sent needles of blinding pain through his head and he returned to the artificial midnight once more.

****

"Detective Caine? Can you hear me?" Someone else was yelling through jello at him. The voice was different than the first one. "Try and squeeze my hand if you hear me." Peter used his little remaining strength to squeeze the object in his right hand.

"Good. You’re at County General. I’m Dr. Meeksa, Peter. We’ve met before. You’ve been hurt and we’re taking care of you. Can you speak?" The voice was growing clearer.

"Ohhhh." he mumbled, trying to fight back the pain and utter a intelligible word. "Hurts."

"Yes, Detective Caine, I imagine it does. You have severely injured ribs in addition to a pretty serious concussion. I need to do some tests, though, to assess your condition. It isn’t going to be fun."

"Do it." Peter whispered through gritted teeth.

Dr. Meeksa had not lied.

***

Twenty four hours later, Peter was fully conscious and had listened in horror as Mary Margaret filled him in. Trying to be as gentle as she could, she told him that Mandy was dead. She had taken a shotgun blast to the head and one to the abdomen.

"I want to see her." Peter insisted, barely able to sit up in bed.

"Come on, Peter. The shotgun. . . well, . . . she’s torn up pretty bad." Skalaney tried to discourage him from his quest. He wasn’t ready for this yet.

"Somebody has to identify her, don’t they? She doesn’t have any immediate family. I am all she’s got." Peter was grasping at straws, trying to maintain some semblance of reason. He had to see her, had to tell her he was sorry. He hadn’t protected her. He needed to touch her one last time.

"Peter, we can do dental or footprint identification. You don’t need this."

"Footprint ID?" Peter stared at her through his one open eye. The left eye was grotesquely swollen shut and bruised. The bandages over his chest covered the long row of sutures there, as well as a sea of purple and red bruising . She had seen a glimpse of him when the paramedics wheeled him into the ER. She’d met the ambulance at the hospital as soon as she heard the call on her scanner. The boot had torn open a long furrow in his side.

"She had her hands up, defensively, when they fired," his partner told him reluctantly. She could see him flinch as she told him. Silently the brunette cop wondered if he had been conscious when they had killed his lover. If the injury to his face was any indication, he wasn’t. Skalaney prayed that she was right.

"Where is she?" Peter knew that homicide victims were usually taken to the Coroner’s Building, adjacent to the hospital. A sky walk connected the two.

"Mary Margaret, I need to see her. Get the nurse in here and get me a damn wheelchair, or I’ll walk over to the morgue myself." His fury was mixed with sorrow and guilt. His head was pounding, and the tirade had cost him what little breath he’d managed. He wouldn’t let this drop, though. He threw back the covers, moving gingerly to climb out of the bed. Skalaney pushed him down onto his back again.

"Damn it, Peter. I just got you back together again. Stay the Hell in that bed." Dr. Dale Meeksa’s voice boomed across the room. Peter ignored him and continued his efforts to rise. Dale bolted across the room. "Get the nurse, STAT!" Dr. Meeksa screamed at Skalaney as he bent down to check the damage the stubborn cop had done to himself. He was shocked at what he saw. He’d expected to have to physically restrain the detective to keep him in bed. Instead, Peter Caine lay flat in the bed, defeated. Dale had seen Peter, with injuries much worse than this, rise and leave the hospital under his own steam. The man before him seemed devoid of life. Once he had laid back down, it was as if Peter’s soul had left his body and all that remained was a corpse. Something else had to be going on here.

"Easy, Caine, easy. Where does it hurt?" The doctor gently examined each limb, each part of his patient’s body. Peter didn’t flinch once during the exam. Dale intentionally pressed a little harder than necessary on the injured man’s ribs, trying to get a reaction.

"Damn it, I didn’t protect her. That’s my job, to protect and serve. I couldn’t even protect the woman I love." *My God,* the doctor thought to himself. The paramedics had mentioned something about a DOA in the same apartment. He’d assumed that it was Caine’s assailant. Now, seeing Peter like this, and remembering that Caine was completely naked when he came into the trauma room, it all made sense. Some one had attacked not only the cop, but his lover as well.

"Where did you think you were going, Peter?" Dale Meeksa asked, not sure what had transpired.

"I have to go identify Mandy, Dr. Meeksa. I can’t let them poke and prod her, take prints like she was some homeless person no one knew. I have to be the one that tells them who she is." Peter’s voice quavered as he spoke, but no tears fell.

Dr. Meeksa looked down at the man in the bed, and realized that keeping him there could do more harm than good. The trip might set his body back a few days, but the damage to his psyche would take much longer to heal.

"All right. On three conditions. First, you stay in the wheelchair over and back. Second, you return here immediately and climb back in that bed. The third is that you don’t leave the hospital AMA this time. It screws up the bookkeeping if you leave against medical advice." The Doctor tried to lighten the mood, but he watched his patient carefully as he listed the conditions. This might be his only chance to help heal the man in front of him. Peter’s hazel eyes spoke silent words of gratitude.

Mary Margaret arrived with the nurse moments later. After a quick conference with Dr. Meeksa, she and the nurse left once more. His dark haired partner returned less than five minutes later with a wheelchair. Not saying anything, she helped her partner and friend into the contraption. They traveled the long pilgrimage to the Coroner’s Building without saying a word. There was nothing to say.

[end part 3]

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Part 4

Nicky Elder greeted them at the entrance. His normal effervescence was missing and he seemed almost somber. He didn’t usually deal with next of kin identifications, but this wasn’t his usual case. He had eaten dinner with Peter and Mandy, had sat on their couch and watched football, hockey, ping pong, or whatever ESPN was featuring that particular night. Peter was his best friend. Usual didn’t matter. He had given instructions for Mandy’s body to be placed in an isolated room where Peter could spend some time with her. When one of his coworker’s protested, siting the district policy book on identifications, he’d snarled at the man.

"This woman is a friend. Her fiance is my best friend, so the Hell with district policy. I am not going to treat this like just another body to be identified. Just back the Hell off." The assistant coroner did.

Nicky brought out a box labeled with a number and showed the two cops the personal effects of the victim. There wasn’t much, just a blood soaked and ragged green silk nightshirt and a ring. The ring was in a small plastic zip lock baggie. Mary Margaret removed the metal band from the bag and handed it to Peter. He held it with the reverence of the Pope touching the Bible. He placed it in the center of his right hand, staring at it as if the tiny ring with a single diamond were a crystal ball that would reveal all to him.

"The ring and the nightgown are hers." Peter whispered softly. "She was wearing the nightgown when . . ." His voice choked and he paused before going on.

"I gave her the ring three days ago when I asked her to marry me." Nicky and Skalaney looked away, afraid to let the man in front of them see their tears. He seemed in a dream state, however. Shock had numbed his senses and dulled the pain momentarily. Peter clutched the ring while he lifted the nightshirt up to his face, inhaling the perfume that lingered there. It was tainted with the smell of blood, though, and he put it back in the box. After placing the ring carefully in the plastic envelope then back into the box, he nodded. The trio moved to the room where his love waited.

Mary Margaret wasn’t prepared for the site that greeted her in there. Nicky had carefully draped the dead woman’s body in a clean white sheet. Only her head, neck and shoulders were exposed. Still, there was no way to lessen the impact of what the shotgun blast at close range had done. Mandy’s face was completely gone, along with a large portion of her skull. The female homicide detective choked, suddenly wishing to be somewhere else. Peter didn’t hesitate, though. He pulled the sheet farther down, exposing the woman’s breasts, her arms, and the carnage that had once been her midsection. Rising from the wheelchair, he traced one loving hand down the line of her body, ignoring the coldness of the flesh, until he reached her hipbone. His hand paused there and a small cry escaped his lips. A fresh rosebud tattoo on the woman’s right flank told him all he needed to know.

Mandy was dead.

***

Peter had barely returned to his room and climbed into the bed when two dark suited men entered the hospital room. Mary Margaret had left for the evening at his insistence before *they* entered his room. Clean cut, tall but not too tall, wholesome looking, the pair could have been cut from the same cloth.

"What the Hell you Feds want ?"Peter asked belligerently. His sorrow was too painful to expose, so he turned it into rage for his new visitors.

"I’m Special Agent Dudding, and this is Special Agent Parker. We’re with the Federal Witness Protection Program." The man on the left announced, holding his identification forward like an armor shield.

"I repeat, what the Hell do you want?" Peter growled. He didn’t make eye contact with either of them, staring out the window at the grey sky instead.

"We understand that you were with Evelyn Lexton when she was killed?" The words tore into Peter’s soul. He clenched his eyes tightly closed and drew a deep breath. Centering himself as much as possible, he turned his attention to the pair for the first time. Seeing only cold professionalism, he looked away once more.

"Yeah. So?"

They ignored his question and responded with another of their own. "How well did you know Ms. Lexton?"

"I asked her to marry me three days ago. Is that well enough for you? What the Hell is this all about?" He was growing angrier by the second.

". . . And you positively identified the woman in the morgue as Evelyn Lexton?" The black suited pair listened intently, seemingly unaware of the anguish they were causing.

"YES!" Peter screamed, throwing back the covers he’d just pulled over himself. He wanted to throttle the men in front of him. They had no business breaking in on his pain.

"Were you aware that Ms. Lexton was a protected witness?" The other fed spoke for the first time. Peter jerked upright, and immediately grabbed his side. His breath was coming in ragged gasps, the pain in his ribs making a deep breath impossible.

"What?" he whispered with his remaining breath.

"She was one of ours," the older of the two spoke tonelessly, as if he were describing a file cabinet or a desk.

"Get the Hell out of here! I heard you halfway down the hall. This man needs rest, not to be brow beaten." Dale Meeksa’s voice boomed from behind the Witness Protection officers. "Can’t you see he’s just suffered a great loss? What the Hell do they teach you guys about tact, anyway?" He was furious as he saw his distraught patient begin to climb out of the bed. The doctor took two giant steps and pushed Peter back down, ringing for a nurse.

"I said Get the Hell Out of Here!" Dale Meeksa repeated. His tone left no room for argument; the two left the room. He turned his attentions back to Peter. The cop had curled himself up into a fetal ball, staring at the wall opposite Dale.

"Take it easy, Peter. They’re gone. You stay here." Dr. Meeksa strode to the nurses’ station, a grim look on his face.

"Keep those Feds the Hell away from my patient!" the doctor snarled at the charge nurse, causing her to pull back slightly. She had never seen the doctor this furious.

"Call that friend of his in the green sunglasses and have him get over here. I have a feeling he can help with our Federal problem. His name is Kermit Griffin. He’s a detective at the 101st." Dale’s tone was somewhat calmer, but still showed his anger. The nurse picked up the phone and began dialing.

[end part 4]

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