Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Sandra had talked over the walkie-talkie several times in the last forty minutes, trying to lure a response, but nothing worked.
If they were even still listening. Thirty-five minutes had passed since Sandra got through to the man over the radio.
His words “everyone is okay” continued to haunt her because she had no foundation of trust with him.
The door to the vehicle swung open and Kreiger stepped inside.
“Good news, everyone. The jammer’s been knocked out.
Bad news. There are so many calls flooding nine-one-one, they’re overloading the system.
But there’s one woman currently on the line about to be patched through to here.
She says she’s on the fourth floor, and there was a gunshot. ”
Where they knew one gunman was positioned. But no one had heard gunfire. The concrete and steel of the structure must have prevented the sound from reaching them out here.
The vehicle’s phone rang, and Gibson answered. “Yes, I understand.” Gibson spun his chair around. “I have the woman from inside, a Gail Chapman, on a shared line with the nine-one-one dispatcher. You can pick it up there.” Gibson pointed at the headset dangling on a hook in Sandra’s workstation.
Sandra wasted no time putting it on her head. “Gail Chapman? This is FBI Special Agent Sandra Vos. Are you somewhere safe and hidden?”
“Yes, in my daughter’s room. But, please, do something. He has a gun.” Her breaths were fast and jagged, and if Sandra didn’t help calm her down, she’d go into a full-blown panic attack.
“You’ve got the door locked and the blinds closed?” As much as Sandra wanted details, the women’s safety was the priority.
“Yes.”
“And it’s just you and your daughter in the room?”
“And Nurse Torres is here.” Gail’s inhales were hungry gasps for air. If she kept going like this, she might pass out.
“Gail, you need to do something for me. Okay?”
“Okay.” Tentative.
“Just take a few deep breaths.”
“I am…” She panted. “Breathing.”
“Just deep, calm breaths,” Sandra reiterated in her soothing late-night DJ voice.
When Gail’s breathing slowed, Sandra spoke again. “There. Are you feeling better?”
“A bit, but he has a gun.”
At least this time when she doled out the situation recap, she was much calmer than before. “How many men are there with guns?”
“Just the one that I know of.”
“So you never saw or heard this man talking to anyone else? An accomplice?”
“He was talking to people. I think they’re with the hospital, though, and he… he…”
“You’re safe, Gail. Talk to me. He what?” Sandra remembered Kreiger said this woman heard gunfire, but she wasn’t going to rush her.
“I went out there… in the hall. The sounds came from the nurse break room.”
Sandra looked over at Brice, who had picked up his headset and was listening in too. “What did you hear?” she asked Gail.
“There was a bunch of talking. Men’s voices, two or three.
I think one was the gunman. Then there was what sounded like a scuffle, the gun went off, and there was screaming.
” Her breathing deepened. “I think that he… that he might have shot one of the men. One screamed, and that’s also when I heard a woman cry. ”
Sandra sensed the energy shift inside the vehicle. Injuries changed things and would have ERT wanting to move in, but there was nothing standard about today’s incident. “Do you know if anyone was seriously hurt?”
“A man was shot.”
“There was a gunshot,” another woman said in the background, presumably Nurse Torres. “That’s all you know for sure.”
“You weren’t there,” Gail said. “You didn’t hear the screams or crying.”
“Ms. Chapman, did you hear anything else after the gun was fired?” Sandra asked calmly, taking back the reins of the conversation.
“No, but someone could be dead.”
“You sound scared, and that’s understandable. But, please, focus on what you heard. Did anyone cry out that someone was killed?” Sandra slid her gaze to Kreiger, who was watching her closely with squinted eyes. The expression defined a wrinkle in his brow line.
“No.”
There was some hope in that. Logic would suggest someone would have blurted this out in shock. While injuries ramped up the urgency, murder advanced things to the next level. “Please run me through when you heard the gunfire. Why were you in the hall?”
A few beats of silence, then Gail told her about her daughter arresting and how she went to get a defibrillator.
Sandra was touched by the story, but she couldn’t allow herself to get weighed down from it.
Her focus needed to be on resolving this incident.
Even asking about the daughter’s well-being would be too much.
It could be assumed the child was helped, or the woman would be past soothing.
“I’m so sorry that you and your daughter are going through all this.
So you heard all this take place from the hall outside the nurse break room, but you didn’t see the shooting happen? ”
“That’s right. I just heard it.”
Sandra made eye contact with Kreiger again and shook her head. “Did the man see you? Know you were in the hall?”
“I don’t think he even knew I was out there. And I hurried back to the room with the cart.” Sniffles traveled the line.
“You’re doing great, Gail.”
“What are you waiting for? Get in here and put an end to this. He shot someone. I know that. I mean, why else fire a gun? And with doctors and nurses locked up in the rooms, he won’t get the help he needs.”
“I assure you, Gail, that we are doing all we can to bring this to a safe resolution for everyone.”
“What does that even mean?” Gail tossed back. “If you don’t do something fast, my daughter is going to die!”
Sandra may have been wrong to assume the situation with the daughter was resolved.
Clearly, her daughter had a weak heart. She could arrest again.
There was a clatter from the other end of the line, and Sandra thought the connection had been lost. Following more scrambling and scuffing noises, another woman’s voice came over the line.
“Hello? Is this nine-one-one?” the woman asked.
“The nine-one-one call was patched through to me. I’m FBI Special Agent Sandra Vos. Who am I speaking with?”
Gail was sobbing in the background. Getting through her eyewitness account must have pushed her past her stress limit. From the sounds of it, she was already dealing with a lot before a gunman entered her life.
“Nurse Torres?” Sandra said, wagering a guess.
“This is.”
“What did Gail mean when she said that her daughter is going to die?”
“Her four-year-old daughter, Phoebe Chapman, is scheduled for a heart transplant tonight at eleven PM. She’s in a very critical and fragile state. Without that donor heart, she will die.”