Sign of the Maker (Boston Crime Thriller Book 4) by Brian Shea (novel books to read TXT) 📗

the red rain falling from her wound. The spattered fabric told the terrible tale of what her damaged eye had borne witness to. Kelly continued running to the amputee.

His face was ghost-white as shock and blood loss gripped him. "Sir, I'm going to help you,” Kelly said. “I need you to keep your eyes up, and don't look down."

The man's body vibrated uncontrollably as Kelly slid a belt from his waist. He teetered on the verge of collapse like a precariously balanced Jenga block but did as he was told.

Kelly threaded the worn leather of the belt's frayed end through the metal rectangular buckle and pulled it tight. He used the buckle's prong to pierce a new hole in the leather. The makeshift tourniquet slowed the bleeding but didn't stop it completely. The trick was to restrict the blood flow completely. Scanning the carnage in his immediate area, Kelly found a fragmented shard of metal just shy of the length of his hand, the perfect size for the last piece in his ad hoc medical device.

His hands were now slick with the injured man's blood, making the grip on both ends of the metal shard and belt more difficult. Kelly alternated wiping the dampness onto his jogging shorts and maintaining the pressure. He slid the shard between the shredded jeans and belt, then stood, coming within inches of the man's ghostlike face. "Look away from your leg. But I'm going to need to lower you to the ground now."

His blue lips moved, but no sound came out.

Kelly didn't wait to confirm if the injured man had registered the instructions. He slipped his right shoulder underneath the man's armpit as he held the lamppost in a death grip. After a couple of seconds’ work peeling back his fingers to release his hands from the post, Kelly shouldered his weight and guided him to the ground, being careful not to drop him. A task made more difficult by the seizures ravaging his trauma-shocked body.

With the dirty concrete sidewalk doubling as the bleeding man's bed, Kelly set to work. Using both hands, he gripped each wet end of the metal shard and said, "This is going to hurt like hell."

The words held no value for the man, who was closer to death than life. Kelly twisted hard in a clockwise manner. The worn leather of the belt protested the effort, but Kelly was unwilling to concede to its resistance and powered through. He turned the shard one hundred and eighty degrees. The torn, bunched-up pant leg locked it in place.

Kelly slid his hand underneath the tourniquet, running his fingertips along the man's shredded flesh. The pulse beneath the belt had ceased and the blood flooding the sidewalk stopped its flow. Kelly took his blood-dipped finger and marked the man's head with a T, then wiped the blood from the face of his watch and wrote the time on the amputee's pale cheek.

The man's eyes fluttered before rolling back. Kelly felt along his neckline, relieved to detect a faint pulse. He sat back just long enough to take a breath before beginning his search for the next victim.

He glimpsed Barnes. She was carrying a small child wearing dinosaur pajamas out of a nearby café, his body hanging limp in her arms. Barnes was almost in a sprint as she carted the boy toward one of the two ambulances that had just arrived on scene.

Kelly flagged a medic running by. "Got a guy down. Leg's missing. He's lost a ton of blood."

The tall, lanky medic detoured, redirecting himself to the man on the ground. "Nice tourniquet."

Kelly barely registered the compliment. His mind was reeling at the chaos surrounding him. "Is he gonna make it?"

"Hard to tell." A second medic came barreling into view with a gurney leading his charge. "But he'd definitely be a goner had you not jumped in." In no time at all, the two paramedics had the legless man on the stretcher and were moving toward a waiting ambulance.

Sirens hailed the approaching cavalry of fire, medical, and police personnel closing in on the Common. Amidst their wailing, Kelly met Barnes's tearful eyes as she turned after placing the child in the ambulance. She shook her head slowly, answering Kelly's unasked question as they stood separated by forty feet of carnage.

Kelly met Barnes in the middle. Her head was still shaking as if in a silent argument with herself. He knew. He'd been there before. The Baxter Green incident had rocked him to his core. He saw the same shock and disbelief in Barnes's eyes. It didn't matter how long a cop had been on the job or how much awfulness they'd absorbed in their career, the sight of a dead child never got easier.

Kelly saw in Barnes what he assumed she saw in him. No matter how long it took or what they had to do to accomplish it, whoever was responsible was going to pay for what they had done.

Barnes stopped shaking her head, changing it to a nod as she met his gaze. The sadness Kelly had seen now shifted into an unequivocal rage that he recognized because he felt it too. "You okay?"

"No." Barnes’s voice was flat. Her light pink, long-sleeved, moisture-wicking shirt had absorbed the dead boy's blood.

"You've been here before. I know this is ten times harder for you because of the marathon." He disregarded the blood on both of them and pulled her close. "Listen to me, Kris: we're going to get the son of a bitch who did this!"

"Then you better get changed."

Kelly recognized the voice and turned to see Detective Sergeant Halstead walking from his department-issued sedan.

4

It looked as though every police officer, firefighter, and EMS worker had squeezed themselves into the three-block area surrounding the blast site. The morning's light pierced the thin clouds, but the debris kicked up into the air cast the area outside the café in a gray haze.

Kelly took it all in. The last body bag was being