Authors: Hilary Norman
“Hi, gorgeous,” Joe said, lightheartedly, as he entered the room and bent to kiss the top of her head. “You look okay – are you okay?” He glanced at Hugo.
“Barzinsky, you look like hell.”
“Thank you,” Hugo said.
“I am okay,” Lally said, “but I think I’m going a little stir-crazy.”
“You’ve only been here a few hours,” Joe pointed out.
“I’d like to be back in Key West.”
“I wish you could be.”
“How long before they do something?” Hugo asked.
“A little while yet,” Joe replied.
“You know we’re waiting for Dr Ash,” Lally said.
“I think it’s nuts to wait,” Hugo said for about the twelfth time.
“What’s another few hours?” Lally’s sense of unreality had returned with the X-ray session, though she thought that perhaps the tranquillizer Dr Morrissey had persuaded
her to swallow had something to do with it.
“Can’t you talk some sense into your sister?” Hugo pleaded with Joe.
“I agree with her,” Joe said. “There’s no imminent danger.”
“How can you
say
that?”
“Easily,” Joe lied. “The people who died all had their pacemakers implanted for much longer than Lally’s had hers, so another few hours aren’t going to make any
difference.”
“Why don’t you trust Dr Morrissey?” Hugo wanted to know.
“It has nothing to do with not trusting him,” Lally tried to explain. “But Dr Ash and Joanna King and Bobby Goldstein are all on their way, and since they put the thing into my
chest – since Dr Ash was the one who threaded those wires through my veins into my heart – I figure no one else knows his handiwork as well as he does. Surely that makes sense to you,
Hugo?”
Hugo looked at Joe, saw him nod, almost imperceptibly.
“I guess so,” he said.
“Where’s Chris?” Lally asked Joe.
“At my house, sleeping.”
“Good,” she said. “He must be exhausted.”
“We’re all exhausted,” Hugo said, a little tetchily.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” Lally asked. “I keep telling you to.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” she said.
Joe was mindful of time slipping away. “I have to go, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Is there anything you need?”
Lally shook her head. “Not a thing.” She smiled at him. “It’s really a lovely place, don’t you think? There’s no hospital smell, and it’s so
quiet
. When no one’s talking, and the TV’s off, you can hardly hear a sound.”
“It’s a fine place,” Joe agreed. He saw no necessity to tell Lally that the reason her room was so silent was that every other patient in her wing had been moved, prior to her
arrival, to a safe distance. What Morrissey had said at O’Hare about others not being at risk was true enough as far as it went, but as Tony Valdez had said hundreds of times, anyone who was
complacent about any kind of bomb was either insane or very dumb. Bombs were unpredictable, and though Joe was still praying that Lally’s pacemaker was one of Schwartz’s benign dummies,
if it wasn’t, there was no way of knowing for sure that it would behave in the same way Marie Ferguson’s or Alice Douglas’s had.
“How’s Jess doing?” Lally asked.
“She’s doing great. No more pains, and they’ll probably be sending her home – or at least to her mom’s – tomorrow.”
“That’s wonderful.” Lally saw the urgency in her brother’s eyes, and reached for his hand. “You can go, Joe, honestly. I really am okay.”
“I know you are.” Joe held onto her hand for another moment. “You do what they tell you, sis, okay?”
“I promise.” Lally paused. “Will you come back before they operate?”
“You bet I will.”
He forced himself to walk slowly to the door. The instant it had closed behind him, he began to run.
It was twenty minutes before six.
Commander Jackson had a dinner to attend. He was sitting behind his desk, resplendent in a tuxedo, and he was impatient to get away.
“This had better be good, Duval. Mrs Jackson is waiting, not to mention the one hundred and ninety-eight other people expecting to hear my speech.”
“It isn’t good, sir,” Joe said. “What I’m hoping it will be is off the record, at least for another twenty-four hours.”
“What have you done, Duval?” The words were uttered on a sigh. “Or can I guess?” Jackson shook his head in frustration. “For the love of God, tell me you
didn’t search Schwartz’s apartment.”
“I wish I could.”
Jackson stood up, walked around the desk, checked the door was properly closed and pulled down the blinds on the window through which he could see and be seen by the detectives in the open plan
office outside.
“You’d better sit down,” he told Joe.
They faced one another, the desk separating them.
“You need coffee?” the commander asked.
“No, thank you, sir.”
“You better tell me then.”
“Are we off the record?”
“Maybe.”
“I need to know, Commander.”
“You don’t need to know anything, Duval. You just need to tell me the whole miserable fucking truth and when you’ve finished, you need to keep your mouth shut.”
Jackson seldom swore. Joe knew it was not a good sign.
He told him everything.
“Is that it?”
“It is.” Joe waited.
The commander’s jaw was set tight. “So, to sum up your day’s work, you not only ignored my express orders and conducted not one, but
two
illegal searches – you
also broke into both apartments, you bribed one civilian and involved a second in your crimes, which have resulted in his injury and hospitalization.”
Joe knew the time had come to keep his mouth shut.
“And now you’re asking me to ignore all that, and to let you run with the case for another twenty-four hours.”
Again, Joe said nothing.
“Do I have that right, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me again why you think I should give you that time.”
“Because I think I can finish it.”
“What you mean is, you think you can help give your sister a better chance of survival.” Jackson’s voice was stony.
“I mean I think I can do that,” Joe said as steadily as he could, “and break Schwartz at the same time.”
“Using inadmissible evidence.” The documents lay on the desk, plastic folders piled almost three inches high.
“Plus what we now know about his condition.”
“Don’t tell me any more.” Jackson’s dark eyes were narrow and very sharp. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just suspend you right now and hand the
case over to someone who understands our state and federal laws.”
“Whose hands would be tied because my searches were illegal.”
“Your hands are tied too, Duval.”
“Only as far as the evidence I found during the search.”
The commander stood up, walked over to the dark wood wall on his left, and stared at the photograph that included Marie Ferguson’s father. For several moments, he remained deep in thought,
and then, at last, he turned around.
“Is the rest of this plan of yours legal?”
“It is.”
“Is it ethical?”
Joe hesitated only briefly. “It may not be strictly orthodox, but in my opinion it is ethical.”
“In your opinion.” Jackson didn’t trouble to hide his sarcasm.
“Yes, sir.”
“Does this plan involve any other member of the police department?”
“No, sir.” Joe paused. “Except for the Bomb and Arson team already on alert for Lally’s surgery.”
“Does anyone know where the documents were found?”
“No, sir. I believe that Hagen and Leary have a pretty shrewd idea that Schwartz is our man, but they’ve agreed to ask no questions.”
“Do you believe” – the commander looked Joe straight and hard in the eye – ”do you honestly believe that my letting you go ahead with this may save the lives of
others as well as your sister?”
Joe looked back steadily. “Lally’s the guinea pig for every other one of Schwartz’s victims. If her pacemaker does turn out to be a bomb, we’ll be able to assist other
hospitals around the country.”
“And do you believe you can still get me a case against Schwartz?”
“I think I can.”
Jackson waited several more seconds. “You have till eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”
It was more than Joe had hoped for. “Thank you, Commander.”
“You’ll be on your own. I won’t let another officer help you on this, not Lipman, not even Cohen.”
“I understand that.”
“And after the deadline, you may be on suspension.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want your word on something, Duval.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“If you realize at any point during the next” – Jackson checked his watch – ”fourteen hours, that you’ve made another mistake – that it’s going
wrong – you come to me right away. Other than that, I don’t want to know. The only other news I want from you is a result.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“You realize you could lose your job, whichever way it goes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Which is a goddamned waste.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m about as angry and disgusted with you right now as I’ve ever been with any officer under my command.”
“I understand that, sir.” Joe stood up. “I’d better get going.”
“You had.” Jackson paused. “I’ll pray for your sister.”
“Thank you,” Joe said again.
In silence, they walked back to the front door.
“So far as I’m concerned, Duval, you have not been here.”
“No, sir.”
“That’s as much for myself, as for the sake of the case. I’m not prepared to stand up with you on this one.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Joe said.
Jackson’s hand was on the door knob.
“If you go down, you go down alone.”
It was snowing when Joe walked out of the station. He unlocked his car door and got in. The clock on the dashboard read twenty-five minutes after six. If flights were running to schedule, Lucas
Ash and his team would have landed by now and would shortly be on their way to the Howe Clinic, and before much longer, everyone and almost everything would be in place for Lally’s surgery.
The rest – the missing link – was still in Schwartz’s head, and it was entirely up to Joe now to extract it.
The commander was right. He had never felt so alone in his life.
Had Sean Ferguson not been drinking whisky in John Morrissey’s private sitting room at the clinic when he arrived, Joe would probably not have contemplated involving yet
another civilian. But the grieving man was so avid to help, and without him, Joe knew, they might not even have gotten this far, and for better or worse, Joe was still working on instinct.
“I have a plan,” he told them. “And I need your help.”
“You’ve got it,” Ferguson said.
“Don’t be so hasty, Sean,” Morrissey cautioned.
Ferguson ignored him. “Anything you need, Lieutenant.”
Joe told them what he needed.
“I’m told that Schwartz is on the way to a full recovery,” he summed up, “but at this stage, he still feels lousy. I want him to go on feeling lousy, because the worse he
feels, the better chance I believe we have of making him see our point of view.”
“Why can’t you just confront him with the documents?” Morrissey asked.
“I’ve told you why,” Joe said, bluntly. “Because I found them during an illegal search. Because I screwed up. Because I think Schwartz would call in his attorney and then
we’d be dead in the water.”
“Is he right?” Ferguson asked Morrissey, and took a sip of whisky. “Could Schwartz be made to go on feeling lousy?”
“Without endangering his life,” Joe added.
“Certainly he could,” Morrissey said. “If a physician was willing to do it.” He paused. “There’s no way Chicago Memorial would permit a patient to be duped in
that way.” He looked directly at Joe. “Which is why you want Schwartz transferred to the Howe.”
“If you agree.”
“I have no particular problem with bringing him here.” Morrissey’s face was grim. “It’s the rest of your plan that goes against everything I believe in.”
“Just a few harmless drugs,” Joe said. “And a little extra heat.”
“You make it sound so easy, Lieutenant.”
“John isn’t a natural risk-taker,” Ferguson told Joe. “He’s already committed the clinic to a degree of danger by agreeing to let this surgery go ahead here –
which I know he’s doing as much for Marie as for your sister, if you’ll forgive my saying, Lieutenant.”
“I know that,” Joe said. “It makes me no less grateful.”
“But now, if I have this right,” Ferguson went on, “you’re asking him to break more moral and ethical codes than I can even begin to count. I can understand why
you’re willing to put your career on the line, Lieutenant, but John Morrissey’s a doctor, not a cop, and a damned fine one, and this city’s already lost one good physician in my
wife.”
Joe held his breath.
“I, on the other hand,” Ferguson said, a new glint in his eye, “have nothing to lose.”
“What are you suggesting, Sean?” Morrissey asked.
“I think I’d make a fair physician.”
“You’d make a lousy physician,” Morrissey said.
“Correct me if I’ve misunderstood” – Ferguson looked at Joe – ”but once the drugs have been administered, your plan wouldn’t call for me to do any
actual doctoring, would it? It’s mostly talk, isn’t it?”
“That’s about right,” Joe agreed.
“It’s insanity,” Morrissey said flatly. “It could get you arrested.”
Ferguson was matter-of-fact. “Marie is dead, John. This man killed her. She was thirty-two years old, and she was my life.”
The three men were silent.
“Okay,” Morrissey said, at last.
Joe waited, every muscle taut.
“I’ll allow beta blockers to be given, which will slow his heart-rate, and I’ll allow the heat in his room to be turned up.” Morrissey paused. “And if you two want
to do a little play-acting in this clinic, I’ll turn a blind eye.”
Joe breathed again. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“You do know how unethical this is, don’t you, Lieutenant?”
“I do.”
“And you understand the risks, to us all?”