I left Conklin at the scene and followed the paramedics taking Miranda White Barkley on her stretcher down to Thornton Avenue.
By then, because of the SWAT team ruckus, the street was teeming with curiosity seekers and law enforcement officers of every type and stripe. Car horns blatted as frustrated drivers tried to move stalled traffic with the heels of their palms.
I walked up to one obnoxious jerk, who had buzzed down his window and was blowing his horn, yelling at the ambulance, “Move your ass, goddamnit.”
I put my badge up to his face and said, “Cut it out.”
The ambulance hadn’t left the street. I jogged along Thornton and caught up with EMT Andy Murphy as he and another paramedic wheeled Miranda’s gurney up to the back of the bus.
“Andy, I need to ride with my prisoner.”
I held up the handcuff key. He nodded okay, and we swapped out my handcuffs for Flex-Cuffs and secured Miranda’s wrists to the gurney’s rails.
Murphy gave me a hand up, said “Brace yourself,” and pulled the doors closed. I used the shoulder harness to buckle up, and sitting on the narrow bench, my knees up against the gurney, I also grabbed an overhead strap. The sirens whooped and the ambulance shot up Thornton. I leaned down close to the injured woman’s ear.
“Miranda.”
“Randi.”
“Randi. For everyone’s sake, I need to find your husband before he makes another mistake.”
“Go away.”
She tried to turn away from me, but I persisted.
“If I talk to him first…look at me, Randi. I’m trying to stop this from ending in a funeral.”
The bus took a hard right on Bayshore Boulevard and Randi yelped. Then she opened her eyes and looked into mine. “Leave him alone. Okay? He didn’t do anything except run. He has PTSD.”
I squeezed her good arm and gave it a little shake. “That may be true, but that’s only one part of what’s happening here.”
She watched as I took out my phone, then shouted, “He doesn’t have his phone. It’s on the nightstand. Charging.”
Well, damn it, so much for giving him a friendly call. I barely clung to my seat on the bench as the ambulance pitched and yawed. If Barkley had executed the Barons, he might not have told his wife about it. If he had told her, she was legally protected from testifying against him.
That thought led to another.
Randi had said that I was going to feel stupid. Why was that? Was she working undercover? Was Barkley?
I needed more information, and at about that time the bus took a hard turn, and with tires squealing, we pulled into Metro’s ambulance bay.
The driver opened the rear doors. I jumped out ahead of the gurney and walked around the corner of the building to the main entrance to the ER. I’d been here so many times for family, for suspects like Randi Barkley, for my own injuries, I knew every corner of the bland beige waiting room by heart. Only the diverse collection of loved ones waiting for news and the magazines ever changed.
I knew the intake nurse as Kathleen. She spoke with a trace of an Irish brogue, asking, “How can I help you, Sergeant?”
I pointed to the doors to the ER. She buzzed me in, and I waved my thanks as I breezed through. I searched the curtained stalls and found Randi and a nurse in one of them.
The nurse had cut the plastic restraint on Randi’s bad arm and was cleaning up the wound. She said to her patient, “See how lucky you are? The bullet missed the bone.”
I entered the stall, closed the curtain, and said, “Randi, how’re you feeling?”
“Awesome. Haven’t you heard? This is my lucky day.”
I pulled up a chair. “Explain something to me, will you? Because I’m a little mystified. Why’d you fire on police with a handgun?”
She said, “Ever read a book called Competitive Shooting?”
“You’ve lost me.”
“I used a target pistol because that’s what I had. Before you showed up, I was going to go to the range and practice shooting to compete.”
I wanted to shout at her, Are you crazy? You fired on SWAT. You should be dead.
I just stared at her. She went on.
“SWAT was outside my field of vision. I only saw you and that cop with you. I wasn’t shooting to kill. I shot over your heads. Did you notice?”
The nurse was openmouthed. Randi was looking at me—like I was stupid—saying, “Ever hear of a diversion?”
Now I got it. She’d created cover so that Barkley could get away.
“Helping your husband escape from the police makes you an accessory to whatever he’s done. Get me? At present, he’s under suspicion of committing murder.”