Sleep Tight (23 page)

 

They left Tommy alone in front of the TVs for a while to think about what was coming. For a while, he’d fought to maintain perspective, trying to convince himself that people weren’t kept in hospitals against their will, that as soon as these doctors realized that he wasn’t sick, they would discharge him. He would be allowed to leave. He would see Grace again. Soon.

That had been the old Tommy. The Tommy who had faith. In God. In America. In the government. In people.

The hospital had burned most of this faith right out of him.

Now he fought against the despair that threatened to sweep him away, that sapped his strength, stole his will to live. The throbbing in his head never left. When he did speak, his voice was wavering and weak. He lived on nothing but protein shakes he drank through a straw. His muscles felt slack and useless; he guessed he might have lost at least ten pounds. Maybe fifteen. If things didn’t change, he was going to die, virus or not.

Tommy forced himself to slow down and concentrate. He let his eyes glaze over, so the disturbing images on the TVs sank into a blurry haze, and he focused on the face of his daughter in his mind. He could see her smiling. Hear her laugh when they threw the rubber chickens at the Son of Svengoolie. Feel her arms around his neck.

Same as before, two technicians and Sergeant Reaves came in to take him back upstairs. Tommy couldn’t tell if it was the same two techs or not, but these looked like they’d been on duty twenty-four hours at least. Their eyes were sunken and dull. They moved like robots in need of oil. No weapons.

He wondered how much the life of a tech was worth to Dr. Reischtal. At first, Tommy would have assumed he could take a hostage to escape. He’d been planning on twisting his head when one of them grabbed the handles of the wheelchair and biting down on the tech’s hand, threatening to rip the biohazard suit wide open if they didn’t wheel him right out the front door.

Sergeant Reaves, as always, was the problem. He hung back, hands clasped loosely in front of him, eyes missing nothing. Tommy had no doubt he could have his handgun out and squeezing the trigger in less time than it took for Tommy to sneeze. Hell, he’d empty the clip into both Tommy and the tech before anybody could say, “God bless you.” And while Tommy was the most desperate he’d ever been in his life, he wasn’t suicidal.

They wheeled him out of the conference room. Tommy sank back in his straps on the wheelchair as they rolled him back to the elevator.

 

 

Back in the car, Ed asked Qween, “Did you take us back there for the reasons we talked about or for some kinda half-assed payback?”

“Didn’t sound half-assed to me,” Sam said.

Qween watched the lights slide past the windows. “Little of both, Ed Jones.” She didn’t say anything else, and seemed oddly contemplative. Whatever had happened back at the mission had calmed her. She sounded at peace with herself and the universe.

Ed didn’t like it. “We asked you for help, not for an excuse to seek revenge. We got bigger problems here than you.”

Sam nodded. “I know. But listen, we got what we needed. If that was the price, than so be it.”

“I just don’t like to be used,” Ed grumbled. “If it was necessary, I would’ve been happy to go back there when all this other shit was finished.”

“No point in worrying about it now,” Sam said. “Like you said, we got other problems. Let’s go take a closer look at that address.”

Qween laid back on the seat and unfurled her cloak. With the windows rolled up to hold the air-conditioning in against the summer heat, it soon became clear that it had been a while since she had bathed. She pulled up her knees and crossed one leg over the other, her left foot braced against the back passenger window. She let out an “Oh, yeah . . .” that Koko Taylor would be proud of.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Ed said, trying to breathe through his mouth. Sam rolled down his window and stuck his head out, taking deep breaths of the sweltering heat.

Qween laughed. “You two need to get over your own damn selves.”

 

 

There was no chance to try anything.

They wheeled Tommy out of the elevator and into Don’s room without any preamble, just banged him into a door and there was Don. He had been lying so still before they came in that Tommy had thought he might be dead, but the sudden movement startled the large man, and he flinched against his restraints. His eyes, blood red and swollen, slid wildly around his sunken sockets, lighting briefly on Tommy.

There was no sign of recognition.

The techs left before Tommy’s wheelchair had stopped moving. Nobody wanted to be in there any longer than necessary. The shock of seeing Don, up close and personal, made Tommy forget about his escape plans for the moment. He stared at his partner.

The skin around Don’s stomach had pulled back, revealing a distended organ, while the flesh around his face had simply wilted and hung off his skull like fake eyelashes on a decomposing corpse. Dark saliva collected at the corners of his mouth. He struggled against the straps, but the movements were feeble. Large black bruises had formed along limbs, concentrating in his joints, as if slow-motion car crashes were happening under the skin.

Watching Don on the closed-circuit TV had been bad. This was worse.

Tommy could now actually hear the sounds coming from Don’s throat. It wasn’t screams exactly, it was more like someone trying to force air through a saxophone that had been buried in the bottom of a swamp for a long time.

The other thing was the smell. Tommy’s neighbors composted their own fertilizer when he was a kid. They would dump everything into the box out back of their house. Coffee grounds, leftover eggs, bones, rotten fruit, everything. Every once in a while, the husband would go out and churn the decomposing mess with a pitchfork, bringing the dark matter on the bottom up to the top. Once, Tommy had tried to help. Until the smell attacked him and made him vomit. The neighbor had laughed and scraped the bile and half-digested scrambled eggs and toast into the compost pile with a shovel.

The putrid smell in Don’s room reminded him of that decaying organic matter. Tommy breathed through his mouth, trying to be a silent as possible. He wanted Don to forget he was in the room. He wanted Don to rest. He wanted Don to find peace.

But Don wouldn’t stop screaming. He was like some malfunctioning machine.

The hoarse cries grated against Tommy’s eardrums. After half an hour, he could almost understand why some asshole parents hurt children who wouldn’t stop crying. He just wanted it to stop. Finally, after another twenty minutes or so, Don’s whispering squeals began to taper off. An hour later, Don was still and quiet once again.

Tommy didn’t move. He barely breathed. He was afraid that any movement, any sound at all would trigger Don’s panic once again.

After another hour, his own eyelids grew heavy. He fought sleep, because he was afraid of making some kind of unconscious noise, like snoring, or jerking against his own wheelchair straps, reawakening Don.

He was also acutely aware of the two cameras in the room. One was attached to the ceiling, aimed down at the bed. This was the feed that Tommy had been watching down in the conference room. The other camera had been set up on a tripod on the far side of the room, getting a closer view of Don’s body. Tommy knew that he was in the shot as well.

Both cameras’ red lights were on.

That helped to keep him awake. For a while.

 

Lower Wacker was an industrial tunnel that ran along the Chicago River, originally designed for through traffic and deliveries to the buildings above. Ed coasted past the loading dock and they all took a good look. There was nothing special about the dock; it looked like a hundred others that were spaced out along the street.

Ed checked the mirrors. The street was practically deserted. Only a few parked cars dotted the sides. He cruised down another hundred yards, whipped a U-turn at the next intersection, and parked so they could watch the loading dock. A cab passed them, going fast and gaining speed, as if it was nervous about being underground.

“Now what?” Qween asked. She seemed happy to leave the decision making up to the detectives now that they had finished with the homeless shelter.

“Let’s sit tight for a while,” Ed said. “See if we can’t spot anybody going in or out.”

Qween grunted. “Shit. You two ain’t gonna bust any heads open, I’m goin’ to sleep.”

Sam popped more nicotine gum and got comfortable. Most of the time, he had about as much patience as a pregnant woman waiting to use the restroom. With stakeouts though, he adjusted, somehow slowing his internal clock, altering his rhythms to endure long periods of sitting still, often watching a home or building where nothing would move for hours. Ed thought it might have something to do with Sam’s insomnia. The detectives’ combined ability for patience when necessary was part of the reason they worked well as partners.

An hour passed. Two.

This time, Ed was the one getting impatient. “I’m thinking we might be wasting our time out here. Maybe we should take a closer look. See if that door’s really locked.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Might be a quiet way of getting inside. See if we can’t take a look-see.”

“And Sleeping Beauty?”

Ed glanced at Qween, snoring in the backseat. “Let her rest.”

Sam opened his door, but Ed said in a sharp voice, “Hold up.”

A rumbling reached them. Sam eased back into the car, pulling his door closed in a smooth, unhurried motion. Headlights filled the car. Ed and Sam sank down in their seats. The roar of diesel engines grew louder, shaking Lower Wacker.

A convoy of M939 military trucks thundered past the Crown Vic. They were all painted in gray and black camouflage instead of the usual green and brown. The first truck pulled left, bouncing up over the center divider between the heavy concrete columns, then backed up to the loading dock.

Someone had been waiting for the trucks. The heavy loading dock door rolled up as soon as the brake lights flashed, and four soldiers stepped out and opened the flaps at the back of the truck. Dozens more soldiers hopped out and disappeared inside the dock. As soon as the last soldier left, the first truck pulled away and waited fifty yards up the street. The second truck repeated the process. As did the third and the fourth.

There was no confusion, no hesitation. The entire operation was finished in less than three minutes. Ed counted a dozen trucks. He guess there must have been at least twenty to twenty-five soldiers in each truck. The last truck pulled away and the first four soldiers slammed the loading dock door. When they were once again in a line, the trucks smoothly accelerated toward Congress, leaving nothing but a cloud of diesel exhaust in their wake.

Lower Wacker was silent and still.

“I got two-eighty. Three hundred, tops,” Sam said.

“Same here,” Ed said.

Qween rested her chin on the back of Ed’s seat. “So much for your big plan to sneak inside.”

 

 

The grumbling, rhythmic thud of boots in the hall jerked Tommy out of his sleep. For a moment, he wasn’t sure where he was. He remembered a faint sense of being in his parents’ kitchen, the vague memory of sitting in the old vinyl chairs and a whisper of the smell of bacon. It was nothing of particular importance, not really, but for some reason, it all seemed very special. Even as he clung to the image, the smell, the comforting sense of safety, the memory or dream slipped through his grasping fingers, like wisps of fog in the sunlight.

The figure on the bed came into focus and everything came rushing back. The hospital, the rats, Dr. Reischtal, Grace in danger, all of it. Tommy froze, afraid he had awakened Don, and he couldn’t stand to watch his partner writhe and scream anymore.

Don was already awake. His mouth was open, but Tommy couldn’t hear anything.

Don’s mouth was full of black, clotted blood. He vomited, spraying bloody chunks across his right arm and the side of the mattress. His nose bled in a steady stream. It leaked from his eyes.

The blackened tongue tried to push the viscous fluid out of his mouth so he could breathe. He sucked in a gurgling breath, enough to galvanize the oxygen-deprived muscles, and he spewed out more of the thick, rotten glop with a wet, gagging sound.

Globules hit the carpet and quivered like half-digested Jell-O.

Tommy twisted his ankles against the straps and strained to reach the floor. His bare toes managed to graze the plastic. The slick sheet slid against the tile floor underneath, stopping any movement of the wheelchair. He shoved his hips forward, putting more weight on the restraints. This time he gained enough traction to push the wheels backwards an inch.

On the bed, Don continued to shiver and flail. The sad, liquid sound of the expulsion of gas came from underneath him. The unbearable stench of shit and blood and rotten flesh filled the room. An impossible amount of blood kept erupting from his mouth, steadily pumping it out of his body and onto the bed and floor.

Tommy threw his body into pushing himself backward, one squeaking inch at a time. He didn’t think the virus could spread through the air; if that was the case, the whole bar full of Streets and Sans guys would have come down with it. No, the virus probably wasn’t airborne, but he sure as hell didn’t want any infected blood touching his skin.

He heard a soft
pop
and froze. It felt like one of the leather restraints had torn, just a bit, but he didn’t want to give it away. The problem was, he wasn’t sure which leg might have torn. He looked around, and found he was nearly back against the door. There wasn’t much else he could do. If the virus was now airborne, then he was dead. If it wasn’t, then hopefully he was far enough away from Don to avoid contamination.

He forced himself to concentrate on the wheelchair. He mimed rocking around, still thrashing against his restraints for a while, but he was actually trying to read anything he could off of the wheelchair. He discovered that it had a certification sticker on the arm, and this particular wheelchair’s certification was over fifteen years old. If the leather had not been taken care of properly, it could be brittle by now. That might be what he’d heard. He thought about that faint tearing sound, lingering in the air for a quarter second. Maybe less. Wondered if THEY had heard it. Wondered if it truly had torn something major, something that he could tear completely away, or if it was nothing, just a cruel joke to get his hopes up.

Don flopped against the bed, still vomiting. He was blind now; two pools of blood filled his eye sockets. The thrashing slowed. His fingers fluttered. The legs stopped moving. The chest rose, sank, rose once more, then slowly sank. It did not rise again. Blood bubbled out of the mouth, pulled by gravity, instead of forced out by muscle contraction.

Don was dead.