“Stand by, Sam!” Kelly yelled at the moving patrol car.

         “Dispatch for Code Two at Silverglades Memorial. Hurry up and close the door.” Sam Peterson slowed the car down so Kelly could jump in with her box of jelly-filled doughnuts.

         “Wassup?” Kelly asked, licking a splash of jelly from the corner of her lips.

         “Disturbance at the entrance. A party in vehicle holding up the traffic. Crazed guy maybe. Dispatcher says emergency vehicles have to cut through the lawn at the back.”

         “What’s his problem?”

         “Another nutcase. Boycotting, blaming, hate campaign, whatever. Put down that effing box, will you?”

         At fifty, with a protruding belly, Sam was back on patrol duty due to the small-mindedness inside the department. That small-mindedness had been because of the “unnecessary” head wound Sam sloppily took when he interrogated a robber. The young officer who brought the suspect in had overlooked the knife the robber hid. Sam, who was drowning in paperwork at the time, did not notice the knife either, and that knife left a slashlike scar on his right brow.

         Partially for that attack, Sam showed little tolerance for any sapling partner or for Kelly, especially a female and especially today, since he was still nursing a smashing hangover, having overserved himself at his best buddy pal Charley’s birthday party. ‘Instead of this girlie sprout, I’d rather partner with the old broom,’ he thought and grinned, recalling the way he tangoed with an old broom, when he clowned in Charley’s honor the night before.

         “You sure you don’t want to eat?” Kelly asked.

         “Nope.” Then, Sam twisted his head toward the radio. “Responding…We’re en route.”

         “Affirmative,” the dispatcher’s voice crackled.

         “What kinda vehicle?” Kelly asked.

         “A grey van. License plate ends with 06. That’s all we got.” Dispatcher signed off.

         “Goddam hospitals!” Sam complained. “Who knows what’s where, and they tell you to go do this and do that.”

         “I know the place,” Kelly said. “A long time ago, I was a candy striper there.”

         “Okay, Candy-Striper Kojak, how do we do this from the inside, then? Cut through the lawns and hear from the hospital board?”

         “We can’t,” Kelly answered patiently. “There are no lawns but trees. Unless you want to knock down a tree or two, we can’t do it from the inside. The exit lane is at the Elm street and snakes through the grounds. It’d take forever.”

         “Can’t use that way. What if the guy’s armed and takes someone out while we are getting to him?”

         “That’s true.”

         Sam completed his last statement. “And he may escape.” Then he mumbled, “Damn! We have to push him in from the outside. Those cocky white coats hate commotion in there, but…”

         He didn’t finish. They were already on Orchard Street South, heading toward the hospital’s entry. The van looked huge on the single lane, and it was moving back and forth without stopping.

         “Heck, this is no van,” Sam said.

         “It’s a covered truck, but I can see only one head.” Kelly pushed down the door handle at her side.

         “Get in. There may be others crouching. Never attempt a moving vehicle, Kid.”

         Kelly nodded in agreement

         Although obedience was not in her blood, Kelly Davis obeyed Sam. There was something tender about the way Sam took his anger on her and the other newly uniformed youngsters. Something down-to-earth about Sam. Kelly thought of her father, now dead for thirteen years.

         Sam switched on the siren, and the police car made its way into the entry lane. The van suddenly jolted, and backed into the patrol car.

         “Dammit! He’s rammin’ us!” Sam lifted his left hand to his head. His hangover didn’t need this jolt

         “Call for back up, Sam,” Kelly pleaded. “He’s violent.’

         Sam shook his head in negation as he backed the car into Orchard Street South, but Kelly shot for the radio.

         “Code One, please. We need backup. The party’s ramming us.”

         “Please…” Sam imitated Kelly’s voice, smirking at the absurdity of the situation. “What kinda cop are you, saying please to the dispatch?”

         Kelly shrugged. “What do we do now?”

         “You called them, right? So we wait, and we make sure we don’t lose him, but if he stops and gets out, we nab him.”

         The van continued moving up and down the lane to prevent entry to the hospital grounds.

         “Look up,” Kelly said, sticking her head out of the window and pointing to the News12 helicopter hovering above them. Sam pulled her in.

         “You could get your head blown off like that. Keep it inside, Geez!”

         “Just like my father, Sam. You’re like him so.”

         “Whoop dee doo! Your father. Tell me, what does your father do?”

         “He’s dead. He was in the National Guard.”

         “First responders, eh?” Sam scratched at the scar on his right brow. “What about your mother? Do you live with her?”

         “No, I didn’t see Ma for seven years, since after her husband threw us out, my sister and me.” Kelly’s voice broke.

         “Her husband? Why?”

         “He never liked us, not really. He said, once sixteen, you fend for yourselves.”

         “And your sister?”

         “She’s married…lives away. But after the accident, she came back for a few days.”

         “Accident?” Sam pushed the button on the camera mount. The police camera started moving from side to side capturing the movements of the truck and the frantic motions of the hospital security people who watched it from a safe distance. He knew he should have done this earlier, but with this jelly-licking, fraidy-cat Kelly and his throbbing head, he had forgotten all about the camera biz.

         “Car accident. Ma and Doug, Doug’s her husband; they were in a car accident two years ago.”

         “Then what?”

         “Ma got hurt but lived. She’s crippled, my sister says. Doug was unharmed, but then, last month, Doug died, from a liver thing. That’s what my sister said.”

         “You didn’t go to see your mother even then, not at all?”

         Kelly shook her head.

         “Not much of a family person, are you!”

         “Not with Doug. Nobody could. Except Ma. Ma was blind to it all.”

         Sam eyed Kelly. The girl had a terrorized expression on her face with lips pursed and eyebrows raised, but she kept watching the entry lane like a hawk as the truck moved back and forth. On the job, Sam had come across enough family troubles to figure this kid out. Stepfather, two girls, and God knows what. No wonder the girl was the way she was.

         Another voice came on the radio. “Code 6. Car 81, how’s the location?”

         Sam answered. “Same but steady. Someone better go in from the exit at Elm. We might be able to pit maneuver him.”

          “Code eleven. We’re on our way.” Then the dispatcher spoke. “Code Three. Use all you got.”

         A few seconds later, lights on and sirens ablare, three other patrol cars turned into Orchard Street South. Suddenly, when the truck squealed toward the curb, Sam and Kelly held their breaths for a moment of pure terror, thinking the driver would back into them again.

         A policeman from one of the backup cars used the megaphone. “Driver, stop that van and get out with your hands on your head. No harm will come to you.”

         But the truck moved forward, making its way through the narrow lane toward the car park.

         “Tail him,” came the order through the radio.

         Sam and Kelly’s car jerked forward. “He must have bent the front when he rammed into us,” Kelly said.

         “Yup, but the thing works. Let’s go.”

         The van turned following the curve of the road toward a stone building with curved buttresses and ivy climbing all over as the late afternoon sun drizzled off the darkened leaves.

         “Day Ward,” Kelly said. “Where they perform one-day surgeries.”

         “He’s driving slow, Goddam stupid! What’s this? Fucking OJ chase?”

         “Like he doesn’t want to hit other cars.”

         “No, just us! He hits just us, the idiot.”

         Radio dispatch came on again. “11-10 The exit from Elm blocked. Opposite escort en route. For 81, just follow…but tag him anyway.”

         “On your side, turn the key on the dashboard,” Sam told Kelly. “Take out the launcher. Open your window. Aim at the van.”

         “Why waste it?” Kelly asked while she laboriously turned the key and then pulled a cylinder out. “He isn’t going to get away easily. The roadways are blocked.”

         “Yeah, but orders…are orders. You heard’em. Do it.”

         Hanging from her window, Kelly pushed the button at the bottom of the cylinder. A golf-ball sized gadget zapped through the air and landed at the chassis of the van.

         “Good aim, Kelly girl!” Sam held a burp from escaping. “You’re right though. There ain’t no need for that zapper gizmo at this speed. If you’d call it speed.” He laughed. “OJ’s white Bronco was a fuckin’ Maserati in comparison. Get the laptop, will ya?”

         “Good thing, we can stay back a bit.” Kelly said, looking at the computer screen.

         “They must’ve wanted to test them zappers. The department’s just got’em.”

          “It says they don’t know the driver guy.” Kelly said. “Someone’s been calling the hospital with threats; he might be the one. He’s looking at a misdemeanor, the least.”

         “A lot more now,” Sam said as they turned toward another building that housed the chapel and the morgue.

         “It says the guy has a baseball cap on and long hair in back. Hospital people saw that. Why don’t they send all the info on dispatch?”

         “The guy could be listenin’ in. And they didn’t put us through stuff with that ‘puter course for nothin’.”

         “Message says the van belongs to Meyer Westlake of Virginia Avenue. But they contacted him. Westlake didn’t know the van was gone.”

         “Jeez, miles of dupes in this effin’ world!”

          “Years ago, I used to play in the park at the corner of Elton’s Lane and Virginia Avenue,” Kelly said.

          “And they let you? With all those used car lots around that place?”

         “Better there than home,” Kelly murmured. Then, she motioned toward the right side window. “If he goes by the emergency, we can sidle him. The road’s wider there,” she said.

         “What? And he rams into the emergency? Never mind! He has the tag. He ain’t goin’ nowhere with that.”

         The van followed the road that curved around a visitor-parking area. Sam and Kelly followed it. Two other police cars came behind them with sirens now turned off.

         Dispatch came on again. “Escort through Elm is nearby...”

         “Showtime,” Sam said.

         At the next curve, three other police cars appeared from the opposite way. Loudspeakers ordered the van to stop. The van slowed but could not stop. It abruptly veered toward the right, next to the left; then, it crashed into a lamppost. Something rumbled and the cement pole of the lamppost fell forward, smashing the front of the van.

         By the time Kelly, Sam, and the other cops came running out of their cars, the van had started smoking.

         From the opposite escort, Sam saw Scott and Phil darting at the van. “Gotta get him outa there,” Scott yelled as he lunged at the driver’s door.

         While they were peeling the driver out, Kelly let out a scream as if she had seen a specter.

         “Hush, Girl,” Sam said. “You’ll never make it as a cop like this.” But Kelly sobbed hysterically.

         “It’s an old woman, darn it!” Phil said, pulling the driver far away from the van. “And she’s got just one leg.” They laid her on the side to wait for the ambulance. Scott brought out a wooden stick from the van. “Her other leg,” he said.

         Kelly knelt by the driver. The woman had a bleeding wound on her head. Her close-cropped bangs stuck to her forehead with blood. She opened her eyes and stared at Kelly.

         “He was supposed to live. To live until a hundred. The palmist said so; a hundred, she said, but they killed him here. They did. He died here.” Her eyelids quivered, but she opened her eyes again.

         “She’s a loony,” Scott said.

         Kelly sobbed. “Ma, why Ma, why?”

         “Ma…what?” Sam held back any further comment. Instead, he put his arms around Kelly.



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