“Officer, I’m not going to ask you again. I need to know what type of trauma the patient sustained so I can properly diagnose his condition.”
eyelid pulled open
penlight flicked across face
pain!
hand on wrist
pinprick
pain!
“He resisted, got violent, tried to punch Russ-Officer Ilg. I’m not sure what happened. We did what we had to do to restrain him. It was dark, we didn’t know what weapons he had. Taylor was stabbed and his.38 was missing. We couldn’t take a chance MacNally was gonna shoot or stab us. We weren’t gonna show him mercy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I’m not thinking anything. I know you men have a tough job and these…these inmates here are the dregs of society. But right now this dreg is my patient. So I’m going to ask you again: what was done to this man?”
“He was kicked. A few times.”
hands around neck holding it
body turned to the side
body flat down on table
“This is…my god. This is quite severe. I- Thank you, Officer Strayhan. You can go. Nurse, wheel him into x-ray and get me a skull series, stat.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Dr. Tumaco,” Strayhan said. He cleared his throat. “I- We-Officer Ilg and me-we’d appreciate if you would be…careful with how you word things in your report. Hopefully MacNally’ll be okay. But we both have families to support. And if the captain reads that our use of force was excessive, it could be our careers. The rocks-so you know, our official story is that while trying to escape, MacNally fell down the rock bed, banged himself up pretty badly. Nearly ended up in the water. Officer Ilg and me…we saved him from drowning.”
bumps
rolling
movement
pain swelling bulging
pain!
The voices faded further into the distance.
“Thank you, Officer. I understand your concern. I’ll take it from here. Rest assured…”
A FOGHORN BLEW IN THE DISTANCE. MacNally opened his eyes. A thick bandage was wrapped around his head and an IV snaked from his right hand. Moaning, he heard moaning. It was him. Pain.
“Pain!”
A man rushed to his side. “Okay, Mr. MacNally. Okay. I’ll take care of it…”
Darkness muted his vision, and seconds later, he heard nothing.
“MR. MACNALLY. WAKE UP.”
A hand rocked his shoulder and he struggled to pry his eyes open. Standing beside his bed was a man in a white coat.
“I’m Dr. Martin Tumaco. I operated on you. You were in pretty bad shape. Do you remember anything?”
MacNally opened his mouth to speak, but his tongue felt thick and parched.
Tumaco held a cup to his lips and he sipped water from a straw.
“That’s enough,” Tumaco said, then withdrew the drink.
MacNally turned his head toward the doctor. His neck was stiff. “Am I going to be okay?”
Tumaco turned around, grabbed a chair, and moved it to the bedside. “We had to do emergency surgery, but you’ve made an extraordinary recovery. A month ago, you were brought in with significant head trauma. You’d apparently had an accident, and you sustained damage to the prefrontal cortex and frontal lobe areas of your brain. I don’t want to get too technical on you, but-”
“I’d rather you say it. Be honest with me.”
“Right. Honest. Okay.” Tumaco paused, nodded silently, and then said, “In a normal brain, those areas provide self-control. If it’s damaged, you have less control and increased desire. It feels better for you to act than to stop yourself from acting, even if it’s a bad idea or if it’s likely to get you into trouble. And if you succeed-meaning you don’t get caught-you want to do it again. The longer the reward is delayed, the more the brain produces the hormone testosterone, which-” The doctor stopped and frowned. “That’s probably more than enough for now.”
MacNally glanced around his hospital room: two large adjacent-barred-windows on the wall to his right, a radiator squatting below it. Gray light streamed in and fell across a table fan that sat atop a glass cabinet to his right. “Go on. What does all this mean?”
“There will be certain deficits, that much I’m certain of. But I’m afraid I don’t know yet what they’ll be.”
“But you have a pretty good idea. My brain will want me to do things without me being able to stop it. Right?”
Tumaco hesitated. “You’re in the right ballpark. Bottom line is that aggression and violence may be a problem. But-we’ll see how things go. I wouldn’t worry about it now. Just get your strength back so you can-”
“So I can go back downstairs to my cell. And live with violent men who do violent things. Like me. Sounds like a recipe for success.” MacNally closed his eyes, then turned away from the doctor.
A moment later, Tumaco rose from his chair and left the room.
65
The Coast Guard cutter delivered them to Pier 33 fourteen minutes later. They ran to their car, Burden driving with Vail riding shotgun and Dixon in the back thumbing her iPhone.
Vail stuck the light atop the Taurus to ensure the ride did not take any longer than necessary.
“I’ve got it,” Dixon said. “It’s called the Washington/Mason Cable Car Barn and Powerhouse. It’s on Mason-”
“I know where it is,” Burden said. “We’re real close-we’ll be there in four or five minutes.”
“It’s the only transportation system listed on the National Register of Historic Places,” Dixon read from her screen. “Been around since 1873.”
“Almost as old as Robert,” Burden said with a laugh. But his grin immediately faded as he-no doubt-realized that his friend and colleague wasn’t in the car to offer a retort.
As Burden pulled down Jackson Street, Dixon pointed at an open rollup doorway on the side of the brick building. “There.”
A painted sign on the gray steel framework above the tall maw read, San Francisco Municipal Railway.
Burden stopped in front of the entrance and they poured out of the car; the wall to the right was dominated by floor-to-ceiling corrugated metal with a freeway guardrail in front of it and two horizontal windows featuring closed cream venetian blinds. Above the windows was an old Market Street and Fisherman’s Wharf Cable Car sign, advertising Rice-A-Roni. Notices and papers were posted across the glass: Authorized Personnel Only, Keep Out, and Cable Car Storeroom, Parts, Receiving.
Vail stepped up to the steel door-it, too, was covered with signs and employee-themed paperwork. She rapped on it. Seconds passed. She banged again, and it finally swung open. She held up her creds, as did Burden and Dixon. “We need to talk with someone in charge.”
The woman’s eyes flitted over their IDs. “You got her. Elise Cooper. I’m a supervisor. What do you need?”