breathed Garfield. “This was no fucking accident.” The intersection of Campbell and East 22nd was a mess of pebbled glass and sundered metal, with splashes of crimson all around. Local PD had set up a wide perimeter around the scene—a small act of kindness to any pedestrians who might happen by. Not many did. Campbell and East 22nd crossed in the short stretch between the highway overpass to the east, and the gentle rise of Hospital Hill to the west—a squat, unattractive no-man’s-land of overgrown, chain-linked vacant lots, low-slung yellow-brick commercial buildings, and satellite parking for the rambling medical complex that sprawled across ten city blocks. The ambulance lay on its side in the center of the intersection, resting at a diagonal to the right angles of the streets. The driver was facedown in a pool of his own blood some twenty yards from where it sat—thrown by the force of the crash, Garfield thought at first. But the windshield, though fractured, was intact, and when he examined the man, he found his back riddled with bullet holes, as if he’d run and been gunned down.
