If I Should Die (26 page)

“It’s very clean,” Chris said. “Almost sterile.”

Joe knew. It looked like a regular living room, but every pore of his skin, every hair on his body, every nerve end told him that this was where Schwartz had carried out his work.

“Come on,” he said.

“Not much to look through.”

Joe nodded towards the state of the art compact disc player and the small black matt-finish cabinet beside it. “You take the discs.” He pulled out his keys and selected one of the
two small screwdrivers on the chain. “I’ll check the speakers.”

They set to work in silence, Joe intent, Chris uncomfortably aware of the six sets of reptilian eyes watching them.

“I think they’re hungry,” he said, trying not to look at them.

“Concentrate,” Joe said.

“Right.” Chris bent back to his task. “Wagner,” he said.

“What?”

“The CDs are all Wagner operas.”

Joe started on the bookshelves, cut from the same matt-black wood as the cabinet. Books on German mythology, and on opera, on the care and breeding of lizards, and at least a dozen books, some
of them leather bound and gold tooled, on dragons. There was nothing, no neat little parcels of evidence hidden at the back of the shelves, no convenient clues concealed within the books
themselves.

They both finished at the same time. Chris knew Duval was going to make them search the enclosures next. He loved Lally, but he hated the idea of getting too close to the big suckers with the
pointy crests and dewlaps.

“I’ll take the iguanas,” Joe volunteered.

“Okay.” Chris felt sweet, guilty relief.

The central vivarium was big enough for Joe to get right inside, hardly stooping at all. He took off his jacket and hung it over one of the chrome and glass chairs, then unfastened the glass
doors. The bad smell hit him instantly, of the creatures’ droppings and a dish of what looked like mouldy dog food in the far corner. Joe stepped through, trying not to inhale, his feet
squelching on the damp, soiled wood chips. The big lizards backed away warily, and he got down on his haunches and started digging around with his hands.

Chris watched him, putting off the moment, and then he pulled himself together and got the geckos’ door open, grateful that this enclosure wasn’t big enough for him to get right
inside. The pretty creatures scuttled to the back, and he knelt down on the parquet, took a deep breath and stuck his head and upper body through, raking his hands through the damp, smelly sand on
the floor, forcing himself to comb thoroughly, the way the lieutenant was next door, glad of the thin layer of latex that made it possible to feel around effectively without physically touching the
dirt.

“Nothing here,” he said, after a while. “Except lizard shit.”

“Same here.” Joe was still feeling around, his frustration starting to mount again. He knew he was right, he just
knew
it, and yet still there was nothing to show for it, no
hard evidence, no damned proof that Schwartz was their man.

Chris extracted his head and arms and straightened up, resisting the temptation to brush the dirt off his hands, knowing Duval would make them clean up when they’d finished.
“I’ll take the other one,” he said, emboldened by its emptiness.

“Uh-huh.”

This time Chris had to get right inside to make a thorough search, but there was nothing living in there, and it didn’t smell too bad. He got down on the floor, and his knees sank right
into the coarse sand. There was a rock over to his right. He took a breath, and began feeling around.

“I’ve got something.”

Joe jerked up, hitting his shoulder on the glass wall to his left. “What?”

“I don’t know – ” Chris felt around some more with his left hand. “Could be paper – ” Excited, he plunged his right hand, wrist-deep, into the moist
sand, and his fingers closed on it: “It feels like papers, a whole bunch of them, I think – it’s hard to tell through the gloves.”

Joe was out of the iguana enclosure and right behind him.

“Take it slow and gentle,” he said. “Don’t rush.”

“I’m getting it – ”

Out of the corner of his right eye, Joe saw the sand to Chris’s side shift and ripple, just a little, like a tiny quake –

“Watch out,” he said, too late.

“Jesus!”
Chris screamed, a strangled cry of pain.

“What?”

“My
hand
!” Chris tried to keep his voice down, but something down in the sand had his right hand, something with teeth so sharp they were like razors, and they weren’t
letting go. “Jesus, Duval, it’s got my hand!” Desperately he struggled to pull free, but the thing was hanging on. “Help me, for Christ’s sake, Duval,
help
me!”

Joe stuck his head and upper body through the opening, but there wasn’t enough space for them both inside.

“Webber, there’s no room – you have to get out of there!”

“I can’t!” Chris tore at his right wrist with his free left hand, but the weight of the damp sand was making it harder – and then suddenly it came clear, popped right out
into the air, and there was a creature hanging off his palm – just hanging by its teeth, the thin latex torn, the flesh pierced – and it was a sturdy thing about the size of a big rat,
its scaly skin banded with pink and black, and Chris thought he was going to throw up or pass out, but then the pain turned to agony, and he screamed again instead.

“Pull it off!” Joe yelled. “Get out of there so I can help you.”

“I
can’t
!”

Joe reached in as far as he could, got his right arm around the other man’s waist and dragged him out. Chris fell hard onto the wood floor, yelping with pain. Joe grabbed his outdoor
gloves and took hold of the creature with both hands, pulling as hard as he could, but its teeth were deeply embedded in Chris’s palm and he couldn’t dislodge it.

“Do something, Duval, for Christ’s sake!” Chris pleaded. “Shoot it – get it off me, just get it
off
!” His head was spinning, the agony was more acute
than anything he’d ever experienced.

Joe pulled his gun. “Stay still,” he ordered. “Don’t move a muscle.”

“I don’t care if you shoot me, too – just get it
off
me!”

“I’m not going to shoot.” Joe raised the weapon and brought the butt down with all his strength on the animal’s head. Its grip relaxed instantly, but the teeth were still
tangled in the other man’s flesh, and Joe had to grasp its jaws to extricate them completely.

“Got it.” He flung it away from them, towards the bookcase, and it landed with a dull thud, either dead or stunned. Chris lay very still, his hand a bloodied, torn mess, his face
ashen, his eyes closed.

“Webber, you okay?” Joe knelt beside him and felt for his pulse.

“No,” Chris said, still not opening his eyes. “I’m not okay.”

“Let’s get you to an emergency room.”

“I think it poisoned me,” Chris said through gritted teeth.

“I don’t think lizards are venomous,” Joe said.

“This one was. Take my word for it.”

Joe got up and fetched a clean towel from the bathroom, and bound up the hand, but the blood, still flowing freely, soaked right through in seconds.

“Come on,” he said, starting to help him up.

Chris opened his eyes. “The papers,” he whispered.

“We have to get you fixed up first.”

“No, get the
papers
.” Chris was starting to sweat, and his whole body was trembling, but Lally was still in danger, and he was damned to hell if this was going to be all for
nothing. “He buried them – the son of a bitch buried them – ” He shut his eyes again, it was just a tad more bearable with them closed.

Joe got back into the enclosure and dug up the papers, his eyes darting everywhere as he dug, mindful that there might be another of the beasts under the sand. Webber was right, there were a
whole bunch of papers, all bound together with elastic, and they were wet and filthy with dirt and blood and excrement, but he knew they were what they’d been looking for, and as he climbed
back out, the desire to stop and take a good look at them was almost overpowering. But Webber’s colour was getting worse by the minute, and his breathing was a little laboured, and Joe had an
idea that he was right about having been poisoned, and if they didn’t get him the hell out of there right away, the man might even die.

“You got them all?” Chris murmured weakly.

“Every last one.” Joe put on his jacket, rolled up the stinking papers and stuck them inside, zipping himself up tightly. “Shit,” he said.

“What?”

“We should take that bastard with us.” He went and looked down at it. It looked dead enough. “It’ll help them to treat you.”

“Shoot it first,” Chris said.

“No need.” Joe went into the kitchen, took a stack of cloths from one of the cabinets, came back into the living room and wrapped up the lizard, careful, even with his thick gloves,
to keep clear of its teeth.

“There were some plastic bags in the closet,” Chris said, struggling to stay with it. “Are you sure it’s dead?” He was shivering violently now.

“As a doornail.” Joe stuck the lizard in a bag and started to help Webber to his feet. “Come on, let’s get moving.”

Chris leaned heavily against him as they went out through the front door.

“Will the papers be admissible?” he whispered, trying to keep a grip on his mind, trying to stay upright. “I mean, didn’t we just burglarize that place?”

“I don’t know,” Joe said, though he knew damned well that there was every chance their case against Schwartz was going to go down the toilet because of his illegal search, and
the thought of that was too unbearable to contemplate. “Don’t worry about that now.”

They were heading for the elevator.

“They can’t stop you using them to help Lally, can they?” Chris’s voice was becoming slurred.

“Are you going to pass out on me, Webber?”

“I’m trying not to.”

“Good. No, they can’t stop me using them to help Lally.”

“Duval?”

“What?” The elevator was on its way up, and Joe was wondering what their friendly extortionist doorman would make of them now.

“Are you going to lose your job?”

“Maybe.”

“I hope you don’t. You’re a good cop.”

The elevator doors slid open.

“You can give me a reference,” Joe said. “Unless we’re both in jail.”

While Webber was being attended to in the poisons unit at Chicago General, Joe called John Morrissey at the Howe Clinic to check on Lally.

“She’s in X-ray as we speak,” Morrissey said. “Your man Valdez is with her, supervising. And Detective Cohen’s been in touch to say that Dr Ash got back this
morning, and that he’s getting his team together to fly over here. If he’d known Lally was here, he’d have been here by now – seems his flight from Honolulu stopped over in
Chicago.”

Joe cursed silently. “How long till they get here?”

“Flight’s due in at six-fifteen.”

Joe glanced at his watch. Three thirty-three.

“How do you feel about waiting for Ash?”

“Depends what the X-rays show,” Morrissey answered. “On the one hand, I’m keen to get your sister’s pacemaker out as quickly as possible – on the other hand,
since Ash put it in, he may have the edge when it comes to removing it.”

Joe was using one of the payphones in the hospital corridor. He faced the wall and kept his voice low. “Tell Valdez I have something,” he said. “It may make a difference to
whoever does take the thing out.”

“How long till you know more?”

“I can’t say yet. How long till you have the X-rays?”

“Last I heard, Detective Valdez wanted us to up the kilo voltage, use a higher penetration beam to help us see more.”

“Mightn’t that be harmful?”

“Not at all – in fact, with higher penetration, less X-ray is absorbed in the body.”

“How’s Lally coping?” Joe’s insides were tight as a drum. He didn’t know if he could handle hearing that she wasn’t coping well. He needed all his resources
now to get on with the job, to help her in the most practical way he could.

“On the surface, she’s coping remarkably. She’s a brave young woman.”

“I know she is,” Joe said.

When the initial rush to take care of Webber was past, the attending physician came out into the waiting area to tell Joe that his friend had been bitten by a
Heloderma
suspectum
, more commonly known to them as the Arizona Gila monster.

“That and its Mexican cousin,” the young, dark-eyed doctor said, unmistakably excited despite his work fatigue, “are the only known poisonous members of the lizard
family.”

“What are you doing for him?” Joe asked.

“Unfortunately, there’s no antivenin for the Gila monster – ”

“But he’s going to make it, isn’t he?”

“Fatalities are very rare, Lieutenant, but we don’t have too many statistics, and I’ve never seen a Gila victim first-hand, so you can rest assured we’ll all be watching
Mr Webber very closely.”

“He looked pretty sick to me.” Joe was worried as hell. Webber had been vomiting and semi-conscious when he’d last seen him, and his hand, with the cloth removed, had looked a
bloody mess.

“I’m told it’s an agonizing bite,” the doctor explained, “so part of the physical reaction is shock. Mr Webber’s BP and pulse were way down when you first got
him to us, but we’ve already seen an improvement there. He’s been given a corticosteroid and tetanus toxoid, and he’ll be needing some heavy-duty analgesia for pain.”

“Can I see him?”

“I’d wait a while. We’re going to be running a bunch of tests and, as I told you, keeping a real close eye on him. Best for him if he gets a little rest.”

“How bad’s the damage to his hand?” Joe thought about the way Lally had looked at Webber at O’Hare. “He’s an artist.”

“Too soon to tell.” The doctor was already moving, on his way back to business.

“Great,” Joe said, to himself. “Really great.”

The clock on the wall told him it was a quarter to four. Lally had been at the Howe Clinic for almost three hours. Nine floors up in this same hospital, Jess was lying in her bed, fighting as
hard as she could to hold onto their unborn child. In Memorial Hospital, about three miles away, Frederick Schwartz, mass murderer, was being cared for like the solid, deserving citizen
they’d all, deep down, thought he was – for hadn’t he, Cohen, Lipman and Valdez all found good old Fred the most plausible, most dependable – most
likeable
, for
fuck’s sake – individual at Hagen Pacing?