They heard a loud clanging noise and the sound of muffled gunfire.
Savich ran to the stairs door, yelling over his shoulder, “Sherlock, Harry! Find out where the shooter got access to the elevator! Get him!”
When he burst out of the stairwell door onto the fifth floor, he was greeted with the yells of hospital staff and the screams and shouts of patients standing at the doors of their rooms, staring at smoke seeping out between the closed elevator doors. Half a dozen hospital personnel were trying to pull the elevator doors open, but no luck. Savich ran to the fire extinguisher case and pulled out the ax. He shouldered through and slipped the edge between the doors and pulled down across the safety beam. The doors sprang open.
Thick black smoke billowed out. When it was cleared enough to see inside, Savich saw blood spattered everywhere.
San Francisco General Hospital
Fifth floor
A shout came out of the chaos. “The shooter’s on the roof of the elevator! Officers down!” Officer Eddie Hughes stumbled out, panting and coughing, holding his bloody arm and trying to keep Deputy Marshal Allen Milton upright, blinded by the blood streaming down his face. Both men still had their guns in their hands.
SFPD officer Jay Mancusso staggered out, his Glock at his side, his eyes tearing from the smoke, coughing. He wheezed out, “He threw a smoke bomb down through the top of the elevator and opened fire. Barbieri, she’s with Judge Hunt. I don’t know—” And he bent over in a fit of coughing. At least he hadn’t been shot that Savich could see.
The orderly was trying to pull himself up, blood soaking his white pants.
All of it had happened in seconds.
Savich was coughing, fighting to see through the gray haze of smoke still clouding the elevator. A frantic voice came through the chaos, “Judge Hunt! How is Judge Hunt?”
Savich managed to push his way in, and his heart stopped. Eve was lying stretched out on top of Ramsey, and she wasn’t moving. He was afraid to touch her. “Eve? Answer me!”
Slowly, Eve raised herself off of Ramsey. She was in pain, obvious to Savich, but he didn’t see any blood. She turned to look at the myriad faces staring down at her, then settled again on Savich’s face. He helped her slide off the bed. She stumbled, and he helped her right herself. “Sorry, the bullets knocked me silly. I’m okay.” She pulled away from him and looked down at Ramsey’s white face. “Ramsey—talk to me.”
He opened his eyes. “Hi, Eve.”
“Are you all right?”
A doctor and a nurse squeezed into the elevator beside them and eased them aside to tend to Ramsey. “Yes, I’ll live.” He coughed and moaned. “All the smoke and gunfire. How is everyone else? How are you, Eve?”
“I’ll live, too. He shot me three times in my back, missed my head, thank goodness, or I’d be a goner. The impact knocked the breath out of me, that’s all.” She gave a wild grin, even though she felt like she’d been whacked by a two-by-four too many times. “Thank the good Lord for Kevlar.”
A doctor tapped Eve on the shoulder. Ramsey gave her hand a squeeze, and reluctantly, Eve released his. They wheeled him out of the elevator. He said to all of them, “I’ll be all right, don’t worry about me.” Three doctors, including Dr. Kardak, panting from running from surgery to get here, hovered over him as they wheeled his bed down the hall, two SFPD officers and one deputy marshal flanking them.
They heard Ramsey say, “You’d be wheeling me down to the morgue in the basement if not for Eve. I’m going to kick her butt for taking such a chance.”
Eve waved into the elevator car. “It looks like a war zone in here.” She pointed up, nearly groaning at the pain in her back. “Would you look at the ceiling? Our guys shot the crap out of it. They fired nonstop, but I don’t know if we hit him.”
She closed her eyes. It had looked like the end, but no one was dead. She sent a prayer of thanks upward. “Please tell me you got this idiot.”
Savich said, “Sherlock and Harry are on it; they’ll be here soon.”
Harry Christoff gently picked up an elderly man by his elbows and set him aside. He shoved two police officers out of his way and stood in front of Eve, panting from running down three flights of stairs. He took in her tearing eyes, her blond straggling ponytail, her smoke-blackened face. “Good grief, woman, look at you. You’re all right, aren’t you?” He saw that she was hunched over and touched her arm.
Eve smiled at him. “I’m okay, thanks to the miracle of Kevlar. We all survived.”