Life Blood ---XIV---Page No--43

Before I could ask him what the hell he was talking about, the
medics were ringing the doorbell. They strode in with a gurney,
also rolling a portable plasma IV, young guys who looked like
they'd be more at home at a Garden hockey game, followed
immediately by two uniformed policemen, actually policewomen,
one short and heavy, with reddish hair, the other a wiry young
Hispanic. (I found out that ambulances called out for stabbing or
gunshot wounds automatically get a cop escort.) In less than
three minutes, Lou was in the blue-and-white ambulance and on
his way to St. Vincent's emergency room.

I rode in the backseat of the squad car as we followed them
and tried to explain what little I knew of what had happened. It
turned out to be an education in the mindless sticking points of the
law.

Long story short: The fact that I hadn't reported the burglary of
my apartment that very same day immediately cast doubt on my
seriousness as a truth-seeking citizen; I had no proof the
unreported burglary of my apartment (if, indeed, such had actually
occurred) was by some Guatemalan military attache named Jose
Alvino Ramos; since Lou had never seen Colonel Ramos before
tonight, he couldn't possibly identify him as that burglar either;
accusing diplomats of a crime without ironclad proof was frowned
on downtown; and when I stupidly repeated what Lou had said
about Sarah's last words (well, he was going to tell them sooner
or later, it would just come bubbling out at some point), the whole
case that she was kidnapped went into revision mode.
        By the time we got to the hospital, I was getting questions that
seemed to imply that maybe it was all a domestic affair—like most
of their calls: some spaced-out chick who’d run away once and
got brought back and then, still unstable and crazy, decided to
knife her own dad and disappear again. Now he was
understandably covering for her. Happened more than you’d
think.

I kept stressing that Lou was former FBI and not the sort to
invent such a whopper, but this was listened to in skeptical
silence. If it was a kidnapping, they then wondered aloud what
was the motive and where were the demands of the perpetrators?

I was ready to start yelling at them by the time we parked in the
Seventh Avenue driveway of the emergency room at St.
Vincent's.

They next made me cool my heels in the waiting room while they went back to interrogate Lou. They were with him for almost an hour, then came back to where I was and asked me to read and sign the report they'd written.

A troubled girl, who had emerged from a coma and apparently
was suffering bouts of non-rationality, had disappeared and her
father had been stabbed but not seriously. He was the only
witness to the incident and claimed she'd been kidnapped.
However, the girl had run away once previously, and there was no
physical evidence she'd been taken against her will; in fact, her
father admitted she had declared just the opposite. The whole
incident would be investigated further after he came downtown
and made a complete statement.

"I'm not going to sign this." I handed it back, fuming.

"Is there anything here that's not factually correct?" The

Hispanic cop was looking me straight in the eye, her expression cold as Alaska.

The question made me seethe. Sarah was probably already on her way out of the country, and here I was trying to reason with two women who practically thought she was the criminal. But I knew a lost cause when I saw one.

"Forget about it. I want to see Lou."