If I Should Die (32 page)

She half expected someone to jump on her the minute she opened the door, for some armed guard or vigilant nurse or one of Joe’s pals to push her gently but firmly straight back into her
room again, but no one stopped her – there seemed to be no one around at all.

She walked a little way along the corridor. The quietness she’d noticed soon after her arrival, and that she’d put down to the thickness of the bedroom walls, was just as noticeable
out here. The place felt deserted, almost ghostly, as if she were the only patient in the place.

Realization struck her. She was the only patient.

Softly, she tapped on a door. No one answered. Slowly, carefully, she opened it. Another pastel room, prettily furnished like her own, but empty, the bed neatly covered. She shut the door,
opened another, then another.

Fear returned, then irritation again, then anger. Morrissey had told her that Marie Ferguson, his partner, had been in bed with her husband when her pacemaker had exploded, and he had been
unharmed.
They were about as close to each other as they could get. And nothing happened to him. Not a scratch.
If that was true, why the hell was she being treated like Typhoid Mary, and
if they were so goddamned scared of her, why hadn’t anyone had the decency to tell her, or Hugo for that matter?

Lally turned on her heel and stalked back along the corridor, looking for someone, anyone, who could answer her questions. She came to the staircase she’d seen on her arrival, elegant and
circular.
Up or down?
Or maybe it didn’t matter, maybe there was no one else left in the whole clinic, maybe they’d all abandoned her the way Chris had, and they were waiting
now to see if she would blow or not.

She went down to the next floor, turned to her right, then changed her mind and went the other way.

People. Two, no three people, standing in a huddle outside a room. She stalked toward them. One nurse, an orderly, and Joe.

He looked up and saw her. “Lally, what the – ?”

She walked right up to him, saw the orderly and nurse both throw an anxious glance at the door behind them. “I got tired of lying around like Camille. I’m not sick, Joe, and
I’m not stupid, and I want to know what’s going on in this place, and I want to know it now.”

Joe put his arm around her. “Let’s get you back upstairs.”

“No.” She shook him off. “Joe, I mean it. Stop treating me like some tender little coward and tell me the truth. Why am I the only patient here?”

“You’re not,” Joe said.

“Don’t lie to me. I checked, and there’s no one else in my corridor, all the rooms are empty.” She hardly paused for breath. “If it’s because you’re all
afraid I’m going to go up like the Fourth of July, then you could at least – ”

“Shut up, Lally.” He took her arm again and steered her firmly back towards the staircase.

“I will not shut up.” She dug her feet into the carpet and refused to be moved any further. “I’ve been lying up in that room for a whole day, and first of all everyone
claims they were going nuts trying to find me so they could take this thing out of me, and then we had to wait for Lucas Ash to arrive – ”

“Lally, for Christ’s sake keep your voice down,” Joe hissed at her. “You wanted to wait for him – ”

“But he arrived hours ago, and I’m still waiting.”

“I explained that to you.”

“You explained
nothing
to me, and I’m sick of it.”

“You’re just upset, sweetheart – ”

“Of course I’m upset, Joe!”

“I told you to keep your voice down.” Again, he tugged at her arm, trying to draw her away, and again she resisted. “Lally, let’s go back to your room and I’ll tell
you everything.”

“Tell me here,” she said.

“I’ll tell you upstairs.”

Suddenly she knew.

“He’s here, isn’t he? The one who did this. He’s here in that room.”

Joe kept his hand on her arm, as if he feared she might break into a run and go for Schwartz’s door.

“I’m right, Joe, aren’t I?” Lally demanded. “He’s in there, and you’re trying to get him to talk.” She waited. “That’s it, isn’t
it?”

“He’s here,” Joe said.

“You can let go of my arm now.” He released her. “Thank you.”

“Will you come upstairs with me?”

For a moment, Lally stood still.

“I want to see him.”

“No,” Joe said.

“But it might make a difference.”

“No,” he said again.

“He wanted to see her.”

Morrissey’s voice behind her made Lally spin around.

“Did he?” she asked.

“It’s not going to happen,” Joe said.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t trust him.”

“He’s not armed, is he?” Lally asked.

“Lally, it’s not a good idea.” Joe paused. “Anyway, he’s a lot weaker now than he was when he suggested seeing you.”

“Is he sick?” Lally wanted to know. “What’s wrong with him?”

“That’s a long story,” Joe said.

“Maybe now’s the perfect time,” Morrissey said.

“I don’t agree,” Joe argued.

“You said yourself he’s weakening.” Morrissey spoke reasonably. “Whatever he said to Kaminsky, he’s human, and no one really wants to die, not when there’s a
chance.”

“Who’s Kaminsky?” Lally asked Morrissey.

“The doctor treating Schwartz,” he replied.

Lally turned back to her brother. “Joe, let me see him.” She felt stronger and more positive. “He’s never met any of his victims, has he? Like the doctor said, he’s
human. Maybe seeing me might turn him around.”

“The man’s a mass murderer, Lally,” Joe said. “He’s no different to a serial killer. Most killers get a kick out of seeing their victims suffer.”

Lally was immovable.

“What are you trying to get him to tell you?” she asked.

Joe looked at Morrissey. “What do you think?”

“I think you should tell Lally what we need. It can’t do any harm.”

Lally waited. “Joe?”

For several seconds, Joe said nothing. Then he shook his head. “Ah, what the hell,” he said.

They insisted she sit in a wheelchair, partly, Morrissey said, because it was the policy of the clinic, but mostly, Joe said, because Lally was entering that room as a victim
making a plea. Standing over him, she was a potential threat; in the chair, she was vulnerable.

Joe wheeled her in at one thirty-five. Lally had been warned about the heat and stuffiness in Schwartz’s room, and that it was vital she appear unaffected by it, but still the discomfort
startled her, made it all the harder to keep calm.

Schwartz was still awake.

“Lieutenant,” he said.

“Sir,” Joe said.

“Busy night. I thought I was the only one awake.”

“We’re all pretty much awake,” Joe said. His hands on the back of Lally’s chair were clenched too tightly, and he made himself relax them. “This is the patient I
told you about earlier. You remember you expressed a wish to meet her.”

“I remember.” Schwartz was clearly in physical distress, but he seemed in perfect control as he looked at Lally. “How do you do?”

Lally met his eyes. “Not bad, considering.”

“I thought perhaps the lieutenant had invented you.”

“I’m real enough,” Lally answered, steadily. “As you see.”

“Do you have a name?” His voice came with an effort.

Lally hesitated.

“We won’t bother with names, if you don’t mind,” Joe said.

“And if I do?”

Joe said nothing.

For a brief moment, Schwartz closed his eyes, as if he was in pain. Then he opened them again. “I’d like you to leave us alone.”

“No,” Joe said.

Lally looked at the man in the bed, and then up at her brother.

“Please,” she said, softly. “I’ll be fine.”

“It’s out of the question.” Joe was adamant.

Lally looked back at Schwartz. His skin was pasty white, with patches of hot colour on both cheeks. His upper lip was beaded with sweat, and his eyes, it seemed to her, were suffering. His
breath sounded wheezy.

“Please,” she said again.

Schwartz’s eyes flickered.

“I believe you still need my help, Lieutenant Duval,” he said, looking straight at Lally.

“We do,” Joe said.

“Then please leave us alone.”

Joe looked long and hard at Schwartz.

“I’ll be right outside the door.”

Lally took a few moments to steady herself. She looked around the room, noting the masculine touches that replaced the feminine pastels of her own bedroom on the floor above; the dark woods,
softened by cream paintwork and beige curtains, the Turner print on the wall facing the bed. She let her eyes wander over the surfaces, across the fabrics, felt as if she were earthing herself
before touching something that might give her an electric shock. And then she forced herself to look directly at Schwartz.

“There isn’t too much time,” she said.

“Maybe not.”

“For either of us.” She paused. “I’m not here just for myself.”

“Oh, I’m sure you want to live,” Schwartz said.

“Of course I do. But I want those other people to have the same chance.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” The words were dismissive, mocking.

The heat in the room made it hard for Lally to breathe easily, but she knew she had to conceal her discomfort from him.

“They told me what happened to your mother,” she said. “I’m sorry. It must have been devastating for you.”

“Devastating is a good word.”

Lally swallowed. “But I find it hard to believe that your mother would have wanted innocent people to suffer.”

“Do you?”

“I do.”

“I assure you my mother would have expected me to avenge her death.”

“And you have,” Lally said. “Four people have already died. Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s very hot in here,” Schwartz said. “You find it warm, too, don’t you?”

“Not particularly,” Lally said.

“You look warm.”

“Maybe I’m not very comfortable being with you.”

The EKG monitor beeped erratically for a moment, unnerving her. Schwartz’s breathing seemed to become more of an effort, the wheeze grew louder. Dr Morrissey had told her that the
overheating was not harming him, but Lally found that hard to believe. She felt perspiration starting to form on her back, and she knew that her cheeks were flushed.

“Nothing more to say?” Schwartz asked.

She shook her head. “Except to ask you to help me. And to help yourself. Tell them which document is real. And let them give you the treatment you need.”

“That they say I need.”

“I believe them.”

“That’s your prerogative.”

“They wouldn’t lie to you, not about something like that.”

“They lied to my mother,” Schwartz said.

For a moment, Lally’s hands tightened on the arms of the wheelchair. “I’m a dancer, you know. I teach ballet to small children, and I bake for a café in a village in New
England.” She paused. “I’m not married, and I have no children of my own, but I hope to some day. And I love my life.”

Schwartz’s smile was cold. “What a lucky girl you’ve been.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And yet you still want more?”

“Yes,” Lally said again. “And so do all those other people.”

Schwartz said nothing, just kept watching her. Lally looked at his face and at his eyes, and she no longer saw suffering. On the contrary, she thought she almost detected a kind of pleasure. The
eyes were very hard now, almost clinical, and she realized, with a fresh shock, that he was looking at her the way a biologist might regard a specimen prior to dissecting it.

“You’re not going to help, are you?” she said, softly.

“I think not,” he answered.

And Lally knew then that Joe had been right, that Frederick Schwartz didn’t care about her, and that there was not one single part of him that felt guilt for the deaths that had already
occurred.

She knew now that there was no escaping the fact that there might be a tiny bomb lying just under her skin. That she was going to have to endure the uncertainty of the second operation. That
unless someone was able to establish precisely what this man had done, any number of people might, at any time, die.

And that Schwartz didn’t give a damn.

“Ash wants to operate now,” Valdez told Joe thirty minutes later, in the third-floor corridor not far from Lally’s room. “He says he can’t see the
sense in waiting any longer. He wants Lally as calm as possible, and that’s going to get tougher the longer she has to wait.”

“She’s resting right now,” Joe said. He kept his voice low, though there was no one in earshot. “Al Hagen just called – someone else who can’t sleep. He
discharged himself from Memorial a couple of hours ago, and he’s on his way over here now. He says he wants to talk to Schwartz, says he’s known him for ten years, and he thinks
there’s a chance he might be able to get through to him.”

“If Schwartz has been planning his revenge for the whole ten years,” Valdez said, “Hagen can’t have known him all that well.”

“I told him he can have ten minutes,” Joe said, grimly. “I need more time anyway – I’m not finished planning yet.” He paused. “Tell Ash that if
there’s a chance –
any
chance at all – of finding out for sure what’s inside my sister’s pacemaker, I intend to grab it before he starts taking unnecessary
risks with her life.”

“He’s afraid we may be running out of time,” Valdez said. “I’m not sure I don’t agree with him.”

Joe’s stomach was clenched tighter than a fighter’s fist. “The shortest period so far between implantation and detonation was Marie Ferguson’s at three weeks.
Lally’s had hers for just sixteen days.”

“That guarantees nothing except hope,” Valdez said, gently, “and you know it. And now that we could be talking about a different kind of detonation, it means even
less.”

“Which makes it all the more vital that we get the information out of Schwartz.” Joe felt another of those out-of-control surges of panic and rage, and struggled to master it with a
deep breath. “Aside from the fact,” he went on, gritting his teeth, “that Lally’s my sister, this is the first of these things we’ve had that’s still intact.
It’s in everyone’s interest to keep it that way.”