Do No Harm

After a moment, he pulled off his gloves, walked back to the CWA, and located Diane. "Sandra's mother is in the lounge," he said. "I think you might want to… "

Diane nodded and handed off the chart she'd been scribbling on. He watched her head back to the doctors' lounge without hesitation.

He felt suddenly ineffective.

Chapter 19

DALTON slouched down in the backseat of the LA Express Airport Shuttle van, and Yale looked over at him with a grin. "The windows are full tint," he said. "We're covered."

Dalton pulled himself up in his seat with a groan. "That's just how I sit," he said. Like Yale, Dalton wore a surveillance piece, the clear plastic tube hooking around his ear, the spring coils hidden beneath his hair. The tube connected to a wire that disappeared beneath his back collar, and hooked into a Motorola Saber radio strapped over one of his love handles.

"Our boys have been bedded down since five this morning," Yale said. He leaned forward and tapped the driver. "Jerry, bring it around through the parking kiosks and into the ER lot. We're gonna do a drive-through and see how it looks."

Because of the high-profile nature of the case, it had taken less lobbying to get approved for the overtime necessary to do a stakeout. In the end, the Captain had personally called the Mayor; he'd managed to pull six undercovers, whom Yale had briefed at the West LA station. Yale had asked Dalton not to attend the briefing, so he could assess the stakeout with fresh eyes.

Dalton leaned forward, focusing as they turned left off Le Conte and approached the parking kiosks. Blake, the older UCPD cop from whom they'd acquired the case, leaned out the window. He wore a baseball cap and a University of California Parking T-shirt. "That'll be five dollars please." He did not so much as glance at the two officers in the back of the van, maintaining their cover.

"Actually, sir," Jerry said, "we're just pulling down to the ER. I believe there's no charge for ER short-term parking."

"All right." Blake waved them forward.

"What the fuck?" Dalton muttered as they pulled away.

Yale shrugged. "UCPD wanted in, and, to be fair, they have a better idea how parking works here."

"Why not someone younger? For parking, you should've pulled a twenty-two-year-old out of the academy or something."

"Politics," Yale said. "They're still chafing we yanked him and Gaines from the case, so we cut Blake in on the loop. Besides, given the second attack, we don't mind sharing juris as much. It's more than a glam case now. It's a fucking plague."

"If our guy's familiar with this area of the hospital, new faces might throw him."

"The parking workers switch all the time, from complexes all over campus. There are new faces every week."

Dalton made a noise of resignation and turned in the seat, taking in the surroundings as the van veered right and headed toward the ambulance bay. An old man sat on the bus stop bench, a girl with pigtails sitting on his lap and trying to untangle a yo-yo from her legs. An overweight woman assisted her elderly mother up the walkway from the ambulance bay into the PCHS lot. A homeless man padded by on Reeboks, pushing a shopping cart filled with cardboard boxes and plastic bags, and two Mexican gardeners worked on their hands and knees on the stretch of ground ivy to the right of the ambulance bay. A trench they'd dug left some piping exposed, and one leaned over with a wrench, pushing his fanny pack to the side. A scattering of tall trees, mostly pines, framed the edges of the buildings and the parking structure.

The van drove down the ramp into the subterranean ambulance bay and idled alongside an ambulance double-parked at the left curb. UCLA CRITICAL CARE TRANSPORT was block-lettered on the side; the back windows were blacked out. Yale slid the van door open and stepped out and immediately through the back doors of the ambulance. Dalton followed suit, slamming the ambulance door behind him. The two officers sat on small stools, peering out the one-way rear windows. The shuttle van U-turned in the narrow space and passed them, heading up out of the ambulance bay. Concrete pillars, painted blue at the bases, set off the parking strip to their left. Beyond that, near the entrance, a chain-link fence enclosed a utilities storage area. Plenty of natural light spilled down the ramp, and the rows of fluorescent lights overhead colored the far reaches of the ambulance bay a tired yellow.

From their seats, Dalton and Yale had a clear view up the ramp; any incoming traffic or pedestrians would have to pass right by them. Beyond the ramp, a patch of grass was visible, as well as the parking turnaround and the edge of a kiosk.

"Well?" Yale asked.

"Nice touch, finding Mexicans for the gardeners. You pull them from Southeast or 77th?"

"From 77th. How'd you make 'em?"