Chapter 5

Cruz

I.

Today.

It would be today, it would have to be today. If she didn't do it today, she wouldn't do it at all. And that was not an option.

There were obstacles, yes. Quite a lot of them. Many of them looked impossible, and perhaps they were. If so, she would find out in time. But she would try, and if there was any justice, she would succeed.

She was calm now, almost serene, and it had nothing to do with painkillers. The medication had worn off, and she had no intention of letting them give her any more. Her shoulder was bad now, yes, very bad, but that was all right. Because she had decided that this must be her punishment. Her penance for failing Lettie. That made sense, didn't it? She had promised her father that she would look out for her, protect her, and she had failed. She had weakened and she had failed. If she deserved to be punished for anything, it was that. And with that in mind, she found she could endure the pain. She could endure it just fine.

And anyway, physical distress was not the worst of her problems at the moment.

First, there was the bed. They hadn't cuffed her to the safety rail, but the rail itself was in the way; it was the kind that ran all the way from the head of the bed to the foot. She might be able to lower it, but that might make noise and bring a nurse. The nurse would call the cop who was guarding the door, and they'd restrain her for sure. She couldn't afford to get careless, couldn't rush into things. She would need to take it slow and easy, think of this the same way she thought of doing her job. Say, sneaking into a crackhouse through the back door, knowing that even the smallest slipup would be unacceptable, that the slightest mistake would probably mean the end of her life. The stakes here were just as high, only instead of sneaking in, here she would be sneaking out. Unarmed, of course, and with a great physical handicap.

It'll never work, a little traitor voice whispered. They'll have you before you get to the end of the hall.

Well, so what? At least I'll have tried.

Cruz glanced over at the digital clock next to her bed.

Eleven thirty. Half an hour left until the guard's lunch break.

Very soon now. She would have to make her first move very soon.

Schaeffer, the bastard, had tormented her a little more before leaving her to ponder her new situation. First, he'd told her about the paramedic and the firefighter. There had been an explosion, Schaeffer said, a direct result of the chase that she and Bosco had pursued against Buford, and the subsequent pileup that Buford's abandoned car had caused. As it turned out, the biker had fitted his mean machine with a nitro kit. Unfortunately, nobody had been told about this happy little fact, and a fire had reached the nitrous tanks right in the middle of the rescue operation. The result: one very dead medic and one charbroiled firefighter - and that, Schaeffer said, was a miracle considering all the other innocent bystanders who could have bought it as well. The medic had been killed almost instantly, blown in half while trying to help someone in one of the other cars. The firefighter was still hanging on by a thread, though by all accounts he probably would have been better off if he'd been killed outright as well; Schaeffer had told her that even doped up, the poor bastard screamed himself hoarse most of the time.

"And you know, Cruz, it really should be you," Schaeffer had said, leaning in close and breathing the words in her ear like a lover. "It should be you up there in the burn unit with half your skin baked off, screaming yourself to sleep. Not Johnson. Because it's your fault he's there. Just like it's your fault the paramedic went to the morgue in two pieces."

This little tale was supposed to upset her. It hadn't. Made no impression whatsoever. It wasn't that she couldn't sympathize with other people's suffering - she could. After all, she wasn't a monster. But this was a war, and the first rule of war is that there are casualties. The second rule is that they are quite often going to be innocent casualties, bystanders caught in the crossfire. And that was the situation you had here - the paramedic and the firefighter were collateral damage. Hard truths to be sure, but with things the way they were it was not a matter of if you paid your part of the price but when - at some point everyone is going to be touched by it, everyone is going to have to throw their portion into the pot. Letitia Cruz had, and in that Maritza Cruz had as well. Nobody got off easy.

She still believed that, and a dickless pencil-pusher like Schaeffer wasn't going to change it, so instead of rising to his taunts, she had calmly asked to make her phone call. She had intended to call Eddie Dade. Dade was her closest colleague from Anti-Crime, someone she thought she could trust to help her.

"Dade's been arrested!" Schaeffer had laughed cheerfully. "My God, woman, you really aren't seeing the theme here, are you? The Fifty-Fifth Precinct no longer has an Anti-Crime unit. It's gone. Finito. We've been looking into you guys for a long time, and now we've got you."

So that was how she found out that Anti-Crime had been the subject of an investigation, not just her. And she had been unable to think of anyone else to call. She'd thought briefly of Ramon Valenzuela, a detective from Major Cases. They'd been close at one time - lovers, in fact - but she didn't think he would put his career and freedom on the line to help her. When it came right down to it, she supposed she wouldn't ask him to. Beyond Ramon, though, there was no one, and she sure as hell wasn't calling an attorney. Calling an attorney would be as good as an admission of guilt. She had nothing to be guilty about -

(Lettie)

and she would apologize for nothing. Nothing.

So she had nobody to rely on but herself.

That was okay - she'd spent a good chunk of her life relying on nobody but herself.

Schaeffer had finally left, posting the cop on her door. Cruz had really only seen the guard once, a young female cop who was pretty in a mild, unremarkable way and had tied her dirty-blonde hair in a tight bun she probably thought made her look severe. She was, in fact, about as physically threatening as a girl scout, just some young rookie who'd probably been given this light duty to make her feel important. Big Bad Detective Schaeffer says, "guard the Anti-Crime bitch I just arrested," and the rookie feels all big and tough. Like she's part of the big investigation. If she were at the top of her game, Cruz might simply try to lure the girl (and girl was what she was, make no mistake) into the room and knock her out. But of course, if she were at the top of her game, she wouldn't be here in the first place. A more mundane approach was called for - she would have to wait for the guard to leave for lunch. From watching her yesterday, Cruz knew she left at twelve noon on the mark and stayed gone for about forty-five minutes. That should leave a big enough window of opportunity. She hoped it would, anyway.

Eleven-forty now. Twenty minutes and she would know for sure.

In the meantime there was nothing to do but wait. So Cruz closed her eyes and waited, letting her mind drift, trying to be at ease in her new tranquility, the sense that whatever happened, happened. If she couldn't ignore the pain, she would at least try to acknowledge it as necessary, unchangeable. She distracted herself further by thinking about Yokas and Boscorelli. More specifically, about what she would like to do to Yokas and Boscorelli. Yokas, Cruz decided, would get a bullet in each kneecap. This was simple and effective and it was poetically just - let Yokas in on the grand old experience of having a bone shattered by a bullet. Boscorelli, on the other hand, would require something slightly more spectacular. Cutting a few choice pieces off him sounded about right - Cruz knew the topography and she knew where (and what) to cut. Guys like him, half their goddamned identities came from their pricks - remove it and it would probably be like ripping out his fucking soul. Failing that, it would at least be sure to make him scream. And Cruz wanted to hear him scream, she wanted to hear them both scream, she wanted to hear them beg, she wanted to make sure they both took a good long time to die.

Oh yeah.

Such revenge fantasies were childish and pointless, but they helped pass the time. And, she reasoned, it was important to fuel the rage. Right now it was all she had.

Eleven-fifty.

Ten to go.

She was mildly surprised to realize that her nicely smoldering anger had been joined by a distinct sense of anxiety. Her heart was thudding heavily in her chest, the way it had been when Schaeffer had first appeared and ripped her out of her sleep just to arrest her. And her right hand was working again. Clenching. Unclenching. If she had anything left of her fingernails they would be carving fresh little smiles into her palm.

Cruz fixed her eyes on the clock, watching and marking the last few minutes as they dragged by. Eleven-fifty-six ... eleven-fifty-seven ... eleven-fifty-eight ... Jesus ... eleven-fifty-nine ...

Twelve o'clock.

Chow-time for all pretty little rookies.

Cruz gave the kid another five minutes to get lost, counting them out. She wasn't feeling very serene anymore; her heartrate was really cranking along now, her anxiety steadily working its way up to boiling point. She was here, it was down to the wire now, she had reached the point where she couldn't put it off any longer. And not only was she getting pretty far from tranquil, she was downright scared. She'd waited for this moment, planned for it, obsessed over it, and now that it was here she was scared.

That's because you know you can't do it, that part of her - that maddening Voice of Doubt - whispered again. And you never really intended to do it. No matter. It was a stupid idea anyway, bound to fail. There's just too much working against you.

Cruz took quick stock of herself and found she had to agree. Just getting out of bed was going to be a major undertaking, and the safety rail wasn't even half the problem. She was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey and literally wired in; there was an IV in her right arm that would have to come out. Her useless left arm was bound snugly in a sling to keep it from shifting around, and the shoulder itself was heavily bandaged and bulky. She would need both arms in working order for what she was preparing to do. At the moment, for all intents and purposes, she was an amputee.

Again, though - the odds of success didn't matter. She had to try. That was the point. She wasn't going to lie here like an invalid and let them destroy her. She was going to fight. This was her last chance, her only chance, and it was beginning to look like she had nothing to lose. Soon they would start the first round of reconstructive surgery on her shoulder, and that would weaken her further. Eventually, when she was sufficiently patched up, they would drag her away.

And then things would really get interesting, wouldn't they? There would be a trial, one which she would almost certainly lose. Then prison. Then the civil suits would start rolling in. There were always civil suits. Everyone she'd ever locked up would be set loose, and they would all want a piece of her - if not a piece of her hide, then a piece of her bank account. Money makes everything all better, after all. Not that money would matter much to her by that point - Cruz guessed that most of her time at Riker's would be pretty well occupied with keeping her skin attached to her body.

She would not get another chance, she would not see another opportunity like this. She had to act.

Now.

Cruz wasted no more thought on the matter; she leaned down and tore the IV out with her teeth.

There was a half-second feeling of giddy unreality, disbelief that the first step could have been so easily taken. Then her mind cleared and she slipped very neatly (and with an ease that was surprising) into cop-mode, all of her misgivings and doubt and apprehension eclipsed in an instant by a cold, unfeeling single-mindedness, the place in her psyche she always went to whenever her life was on the line.

As it was now.

First order of business was to sit up. The head of the bed had been raised up as far as it would go, but it still wasn't far enough for her to get upright on her own. Cruz slid her good arm behind her and started pushing against the bed, wriggling to build momentum.

Her shoulder immediately began to scream. She tried to push it away, ignore it, but she couldn't. Every move she made was bringing the true extent of the damage home to her.

So don't ignore the pain. That doesn't work. Savor it. That's the key to beating it. Know that it's what I deserve. For Lettie. Think of Lettie. Think of her running into that meth lab, completely helpless to stop herself, practically cooking whatever was left of her brains right in front of me. I deserve this. But that doesn't mean I can't make it work for me.

Face contorted with effort and with sweat already breaking out on her forehead, Cruz squeezed her eyes shut and pushed harder.

The pain pushed back. Her concentration slipped, just long enough for some malicious and treacherous part of her mind (the thing she was coming to think of as the Voice of Doubt, perhaps) to conjure up a very unpleasant and perfectly grisly mental picture: jagged bone fragments. The mulched-up remains of her shoulder joint, the pieces shifting around, shards of bone slicing through tender flesh, grating against each other -

Cruz uttered an inarticulate curse and bit down on her tongue, hard, drawing blood. It was like pulling a plug, the new pain clearing her mind and shocking her back into focus just long enough for one final shove ... and then abruptly she was there, sitting up in the bed, leaning over her legs.

Everything in her head seemed to slosh forward, and the room began to spin. Her stomach gave an alarming heave and for one terrible, endless moment she thought she was going to throw up all over herself. That would probably mean the end, her little escape plan blown out of the water before it even began, and that thought was all that allowed her to hold onto her gorge.

She waited for what seemed a very long time, part of her brain crying a mindless warning over and over that the stupid fucking rookie would be back soon, that maybe yesterday's forty-five minute lunch was a fluke, maybe the little bitch wouldn't be as hungry today. She ignored it, and eventually both the nausea and the sense of vertigo passed. There was blood in her mouth now, a lot of it, and she spat it over the side of the bed with a grimace.

The safety rail was next. She thought she'd done pretty well so far (to this point she had managed to sit up, and to be perfectly honest that was further than she'd really expected to get), but now she needed to get her legs into the act. She looked down at them, stretched out in front of her, two vague lumps under the sheet. She had been off them for days now. They would be weak and rubbery and thoroughly untrustworthy.

No matter - it wasn't as if she had a choice. If they worked they worked and if they didn't they didn't. She pulled the sheet off and lifted her right leg over the rail, using her good arm to help it along.

The bedframe shook and the rail rattled. She froze, casting an involuntary glance at the door.

Don't be stupid! It was nothing. Keep going or you're finished!

True. Every second the reality of her condition was becoming more and more clear. If she slowed or faltered now ...

The left leg came next, slowly, carefully. Now she was draped over the side of the bed in a ridiculous position. The hateful hospital gown had pulled up to her hips. If the rookie came in now, the girl would see a sight she wouldn't soon forget, and Cruz doubted her first instinct would be to rush over and help, or even to put a stop to the sad little game - she guessed the cop's first instinct would probably be to laugh. At the absurd position Cruz was in, but more so at her stupidity for thinking she could actually escape. The kid would go home after her shift and tell her boyfriend or her husband (or maybe her mommy, by the look of her) about the crazy ex-cop caught hanging half in and half out of her bed, showing the world all her charms, and they'd laugh ...

You're wasting time ...

Cruz shifted. She had to get her butt over the side now, and she had to do it without falling on the floor. Again this was something she really needed two arms for, and again it seemed like she would be working with what she had. She thought she would be able to manage - she'd been working out most of her adult life, and her right arm was probably strong enough.

She tested it a bit and then began to lift herself up, swallowing the cry of pain that kept wanting to escape and squashing it down into a series of almost inaudible little grunts, ignoring (savoring) the excruciating, grinding torment in her shoulder. She lifted, pushed forward, and began to slide over the safety rail.

There was a bad moment when she was sure she was going to overshoot it, when she felt herself slipping. She would tumble out of the bed onto the floor, perhaps landing directly on the bad shoulder. If that happened, they'd hear the screams halfway to Manhattan.

Then her feet touched the floor. The safety rail ground painfully against the small of her back. And then she was out.

She was standing on the floor, free of the bed.

It had been that simple.

Simple? It took five damned minutes

No time to dwell on it. Her success - completely unexpected success, really - encouraged her, time spent notwithstanding. And things weren't as bad as she'd feared. Her legs were a bit shaky, true, but she was already discovering it was nothing she couldn't handle, and though she was out of breath it was not by any means an unpleasant feeling; it was more like the way she always felt after a good two- or three-mile run. Even the pain seemed to have suddenly retreated to a distant buzz. She was up on her feet now and she felt more like herself again, more in control.

Cruz smiled and allowed herself a moment of private celebration. They couldn't beat her. They never had been able to beat her, and it seemed they still couldn't, not even with things the way they were now. She was going to succeed. Fuck you, Detective Brent Schaeffer.

She started for the door, bare feet padding silently on the floor.

The pain was sudden and tremendous. She came up short, almost toppling forward. She could feel the scream rushing up her throat this time, so she sank her teeth into her tongue again and what came out instead was a long, sighing moan. More blood squirted into her mouth, warm and salty, and that brought back the urge - the need - to puke, and brought it back hard. She felt her knees beginning to buckle, and it was only by colossal effort of will - knowing she had started her gears turning and if they stopped now, they'd be stopping for good - that she managed to remain standing.

The sling, it seemed, wasn't enough - every step she took jolted the shattered ruin of her shoulder (little bits of bone, screeching and grinding up against each other - oh, can't you just see it?). Cruz found herself able to do nothing but stand stock-still where she was, head still swimming with that last enormous jolt of pain, heart racing, eyes darting aimlessly and helplessly around the room. She felt sickeningly vulnerable, sickeningly exposed, and she felt the first sly threads of panic begin to tickle at the back of her mind. She couldn't move, and it was as much fear of pain that kept her in her place as it was the pain itself. She was effectively trapped - unable go forward, unable to go back. Frozen in place, like a kid playing Red Light.

You moved too fast, the Voice of Doubt said curtly, apparently deciding - at least for the moment - to offer advice instead of criticism. You got up and tried to walk out of here like everything was perfectly all right. Like you were all right. You're not. You're pretty far from all right. You keep forgetting that.

Cruz gulped (to anyone watching this would have been comic, almost theatrical) and took a ginger, hesitant step forward. It was okay. Another. And another. Baby steps. Jesus Christ, she was reduced to baby steps, shuffling along like an old woman.

I just have to move carefully, that's all. And keep the left arm completely immobile.

Cruz drew a deep, trembling breath and started forward again. Carefully. No problem. No problem at all.

Don't get too comfortable yet. Take a look at yourself. Feel a draft?

Yes, she was in a hospital gown. The clothes she'd been wearing when they brought her in were long gone, bagged as evidence. Which was beside the point; they would have been bloody, torn and worthless anyway. But again, it was no problem - there was a hospital bathrobe hanging on the door, and a pair of slippers under it. She would have to find something better at some point, but it was a start. The next phase of her plan was getting out of the hospital, probably through a side door, getting a fair distance away, and perhaps hailing a cab.

The Voice of Doubt spoke up again. A cab. Right. What are you gonna pay him with, sweetie? More to the point, where are you gonna tell him to take you?

Those were two bridges that she'd cross when she came to them. At the moment the only thought in her mind was now. Later could wait.

She reached the door and turned the knob gently, slow and as quiet as she could manage, and opened it a crack. Taking another long, shaky breath, Cruz risked everything she had achieved to this point and looked out.

For a moment she thought could actually see the rookie, complete with her stupid little don't-fuck-with-me hairdo, sitting in the chair next to the room, thumbing a magazine to pass the time.

It was, of course, pure nervous hallucination. The hall and the plastic waiting room chair were both empty. Cruz grunted a suppressed laugh. The cop was probably still in the cafeteria, one floor down, and not hurrying - after all, her prisoner wasn't going anywhere, was she?

Cruz took the robe off the door. She worked her right arm through the sleeve and draped it around her bad shoulder, then cinched it closed at the waist. She slid her feet into the slippers, then peeked out and checked once more for nurses, doctors, orderlies and the like.

Still all clear.

She slipped out of the room, quietly shut the door behind her, and walked lightly down the hall - still just a bit unsteady but doing better now. She glanced at doors as she passed, trying to think of places where she could find something decent to put on, preferably a coat. Shoes could wait - the slippers were light and flimsy but they'd do. She needed a coat. A long coat. It was unseasonably cold out, and she hoped that gave her an advantage.

The hall here on the third floor was absolutely deserted. It wasn't just chow-time for pretty little rookies; everybody else seemed to have taken off, as well, including the duty nurse. That was good, but she had to get down to the first floor where there would be a lot more activity. It was possible - very likely - that she'd run into someone who knew her, someone who knew why she was here. A doctor or nurse. Fields, maybe. Or Yolanda the she-bear. Maybe even Schaeffer's pet cop.

It's not as if I'm gonna go staggering right through the middle of the fucking ER. Mercy's a big hospital. I just have to stick to the out-of-the-way places.

True, she could do that, but that didn't change the fact that every minute she was out of the room she became more vulnerable. She'd been incredibly lucky so far, and she'd actually been able to dominate the pain, but she still knew that it wouldn't - and couldn't - last. She had to move fast and think fast, and while those were two things she'd always been superb at, her head just wasn't in the condition for it right now. She could feel the walls closing in on her.

Didn't think this through so well after all, did you, honey?

Again she felt panic began to thicken in her chest, but she curbed it and shambled on, heading for the stairwell at the end of the hall.

The stairwell! There'd be an emergency exit on the first floor of the stairwell!

But that still left the issue of clothing. She would look too suspicious in just the robe.

Oh, would you listen to yourself? Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. Would you just please give this up? It's just too much, too many obstacles stacked against you. Just face reality, Maritza - it's over. One way or another, it's over. Why are you trying to deny that simple fact? What are you trying to prove?

Cruz reached the stairwell in two final lurching steps and slumped against the doorframe, realizing that she could at last put an actual face with the Voice of Doubt - it was her father. The Voice of Doubt was her father. Of course it was. The tone was badgering but there was nothing really mocking or contemptuous in it; it was just Jaime Cruz, just her Papa's soft, reasonable voice, telling her exactly what he would if he were here with her now.

Give up. Go back to her room. Surrender to the cop and face whatever was coming. It was really all there was, wasn't it?

And there was a part of her that wanted to go back, back to her room and her bed. Or maybe just lie down here and wait for someone to find her. She had denied that part of her, she had buried it under a desperate refusal to submit, and so to escape it had simply taken on separate voice in her mind, whispering to her in the persona of her sweet, timid father, telling her to stop now, to let this all go. Don't worry, Maritza, it'll be all right. No matter what happens, it'll be all right. He had been the only person she had ever known who had been able to make her believe that. Always so placid, so reasonable, so soothing. The temptation to listen to it was almost overwhelming.

And she might have. She might have if this was just a simple matter of escape. But there was more at stake now, something that went beyond Schaeffer, beyond Yokas and Boscorelli and Noble and what had happened in his hotel room. There had been that growing doubt ever since Lettie's death, that sly, creeping suspicion that what she was doing was wholly inconsequential, that far from being the hero the badge was supposed to make her, she was just a small cog in a broken machine, perpetuating a pointless and endless cycle in a war that would never see any definitive end, no winners and no losers but only casualties. Everyone pays their part of the price at some point, right? Not a matter of if but when. Consider what happened to Lettie. Consider the fact that so many of her old friends and schoolmates had fallen in much the same way - to gangs, to drugs, to the temptation to become part of the problem and sell drugs. And always that accompanying sense of powerlessness; she had been able to do nothing, not as an individual, not as part of the whole. She had become a cop and she had tried, she had recited that tired old mantra to herself about how she was making a difference, knowing that she'd never be able to make so much as a dent. If Buford went down, another would take his place; perhaps two would take his place. The war would rage on, endlessly. Pointlessly.

But she had always kept fighting it, and she would keep fighting it. She would keep fighting, and it wasn't even out of anything as rational as an ideal; she would keep fighting because it was too deeply instilled in her, the awful, bitter rage had become too much a part of who she was. It was a matter of hard-wiring. She would keep going as long as there was breath left in her. Whether she wanted to or not.

Her father would not have understood that. They had been very different people.

And besides which, he was dead.

She, on the other hand, was still alive. So far.

Cruz went down the stairs slowly, taking each step as it came - one foot at a time - holding tight to the bannister. Perhaps she would get lucky and fall. A broken neck would put a quick end to this insanity, wouldn't it?

But she didn't fall, and there was indeed an emergency exit on the ground floor of the stairwell. She fell against the crash-bar and shoved the door open with a pained grunt. And just like that she was out, out in the air.

The exit let her out into the hospital's rear parking lot. She began to walk, casting a doubtful glance overhead. The sky above was heavy with dark, evil-looking clouds, moving in fast.

And here she was, still in a hospital robe.

No matter. They would catch her soon anyway. Any minute now, they would catch her, and all of this would be brought to an end.

But she kept walking.

Whatever happens, happens, she thought dimly. Whatever happens, happens.