Flack got on his phone and called for an ambulance, saying, "Officer down."
When he clapped the phone shut, Stella, who was holding Rossi's hand, said, "He needs a tracheotomy, now. Lay him on his back."
Bloom was still writhing, but the spasms had subsided.
Stella had not brought her kit. There had been no thought of crime scene work, only the arrest of a murderer. A mistake. It had been a week of mistakes. Aiden had made a mistake. So had Danny. Now she had made one, too.
The heat, she thought.
"We need a knife or a razor blade," she said. "Something really sharp."
Flack reached into his pocket quickly and glanced at Rossi, whose face was almost a watermelon red. Flack's hand came out with a multi-bladed Swiss Army knife. He opened one of the blades and handed the knife to Stella. She knew how to test the sharpness of a blade without cutting herself. She swiftly ran a finger up the blade toward the edge and past it. Then she looked at the edge of the blade and nodded her head toward Flack.
"We need a straw, a plastic tube, something…" she said, but she could see in Flack's eyes that he had seen this before. He could probably even do the tracheotomy, but it was her job.
She looked at Rossi. She was thinking that the young cop's life could now be measured in seconds. Bloom was sitting on the floor, dazed.
"Thin cardboard," she said. "Roll it in a tight tube."
Flack understood. He remembered a tissue box on the counter from the last time he was there. Flack moved behind the counter, found the box and took out the tissues. Then he tore off one side of the box and rolled the cardboard.
"Stella," he called, holding up the tube.
"It'll do," she said.
He gave the rolled-up tube to Stella, who knelt next to Rossi. Rossi's eyes were closing.
"Need me?" Flack asked.
"I'll call if I do," she said.
"Ever done this before?"
"No," she said, lowering the knife toward Rossi's throat.
"Good luck," said Flack, getting up and moving toward Bloom.
A little luck would be great, but Stella believed less in luck than skill. She knew how to do this. She had watched paramedics do it three times. When they were done, she had asked them questions and then later asked Sheldon Hawkes to tell her how it was done.
Stella found the indentation between Rossi's Adam's apple and the cricoid cartilage. Then she made a half-inch horizontal incision about half an inch deep. Rossi didn't react. He didn't seem to be breathing.
Next Stella stuck a finger into the incision. The whole procedure was not only unsterile, but probably profoundly dirty. Couldn't be helped. Blood circled her inserted finger and flowed out of the incision site. Then Stella felt her finger enter the windpipe. With her free hand, she picked up the makeshift cardboard tube and tightened it. It should fit. If not, she would have to make a larger hole if she had enough time.
She carefully removed her finger from the incision and slowly inserted the cardboard tube into the windpipe. She leaned over and blew into the tube to clear it of blood that might have rushed in. Then she waited five seconds and blew into the tube again. She was unaware of where she was and even who she was. She concentrated only on the big police officer. She blew into the tube every five seconds.
"How's it going?" asked Flack.
She didn't answer. She was counting seconds.
Then she heard the warning sound of the paramedic van in the distance. She turned her head toward the street for an instant and then back at the fallen police officer, whose chest was now rising. Less than thirty seconds later, Rossi's eyes opened. He was breathing on his own with pain in his chest and the invasive tube of cardboard in his throat. Rossi mouthed, "Thank you." Stella nodded.
Two paramedics rushed in, kits in hand.
"Where does it hurt?" one of them asked. "Were you shot?"
Stella looked down at her blouse, which was covered with blood, as were both of her hands and her face.
"Not me," she said. "Take care of him. This is his blood."
Both paramedics nodded and moved to Rossi, who, with pain, said, "I can walk."
"Not a good idea," one paramedic said.
"I'm walking," he whispered softly so Flack and Bloom couldn't hear him. "I'm not letting that son of a bitch see me carried out."
They helped him to his feet. He seemed to be breathing normally.
"Nice tracheotomy," said one of the two paramedics. He looked at Stella and added, "You do it?"
Stella nodded.
"You guys are CSI, right? We've seen you before?"
"We're CSI," Stella confirmed.
"All of you?"
"Not the one in cuffs," she said. "He's a murderer."
Rossi gently shook off the hands of the paramedics and managed to walk normally to the door, glancing once at Bloom, who didn't look back at him. The policeman he had hit was unimportant, not worth looking at. It didn't matter that he had lived instead of dying. There had been a few before him, in at least six countries. They were living dots that he could easily erase, witnesses, people who had gotten in the way. They hadn't mattered, since the killing that had been assigned to him had been carried out. Now, for the man who called himself Bloom, the primary thing was staying alive.
He would make a call and they would save him. There was no doubt in his mind. He was too valuable. He knew too much and had hidden documents where even they couldn't find them. They knew that if anything happened to him, he would make a call and someone would bring the documents to The New York Times. He would insist that a federal government agency be notified that he had been arrested for murder.
Flack, trying to tame a limp, pushed the big man toward the door. He stopped to pick up Bloom's glasses and was about to put them on the prisoner when he noticed something. He held the glasses up to the light and then handed them to Stella.
She too held them to the light and said, "Plain glass."
Bloom looked over his shoulder at them and smiled.
"Where's your wife?" asked Stella.
Bloom continued to smile.
"Bring him in," she said. "I'll look around here and meet you in about an hour."
She was wrong. It took her two hours in the shop, and that was after she called Aiden, told her what she had found and asked her to bring her kit.
They were in an office in the Manhattan building of family court at Lafayette and Franklin.
Jacob and Tabler sat across from a judge who didn't look much like a judge. She was black, very pretty, with soft-looking ebony hair brushed down to her neck. She couldn't have been more than thirty.
Judge Sandra Whitherspoon had read the reports. Because Jacob was between the ages of seven and twelve, there would be no record of this preliminary hearing or of the case if it went beyond her jurisdiction. In addition, Jacob could not be tried for murder.
She looked up at Tabler and then at Jacob.
"How old were your parents when they were married?" she asked.
The question confused Jacob. Tabler considered saying something but didn't.
"My father was forty-one," he said. "My mother was eighteen."
Judge Whitherspoon nodded as if this were important information.
"Where were they married?" she asked.
"Houston, I think," said Jacob.
"We found your mother's parents in San Antonio," she said. "They want you to live with them. They're coming to get you. I'll be sure they're good people before I release you to them. You understand all this?"
Jacob nodded.
"When you get to San Antonio where they live, they're going to arrange for you to see a psychologist who specializes in children who need help."
Jacob turned to Tabler and said, "What about Kyle?"
"We'll do what we can for him," the old lawyer said gently.
"It's not fair," Jacob said, voice raised, tears in his eyes.
"Why isn't it fair?" asked the judge.
"Because the whole thing was my idea," Jacob said. "He wasn't coming to the house because he was seeing Becky. He came because I called him and asked him to come. When he was on the way I came up with the plan, leaving the evidence in the woods, his running and leaving clues to where I was hiding."