If I Should Die

by Hilary Norman

  “This would be a real good time for you to go, Jess.”

  “Why?” Her soft brown eyes were suspicious.

  “Because I’m going to be working around the clock on this new case – and I mean around the clock – and because I’m going to be bringing the paperwork home with me, and because I’m not allowed to tell you anything about it, and you know me, I hate it when I can’t share important stuff with you, and it’s going to drive me nuts.”

  “So this has nothing to do with any kind of danger?”

  Joe knew she was afraid. “No danger, Jess, I swear it. Just a heap of work, and I’m not going to be nice to know until it’s over.”

  “So it’s another big one.”

  “The biggest.”

  “And you’re going to get crabby, and you think I need looking after because of the baby, and so if I’m around, you’ll just feel guilty and that’ll make you even crabbier.”

  “You got it.”

  “And you swear you’re not in any danger?” Jess raised her chin in a challenge, bouncing her chestnut curls a little.

  “Cross my heart and hope to die,” Joe said, and winced inwardly.

  “I’ll call Mom in the morning.”

  “I love you, Jess.”

  “I know.”

  Joe hated sending her away. But then he hated just about everything about this case. There was such a nasty element of remoteness about it all. Not seeing the victims, thank God. Not being privy to the immediate, overwhelming horror that normally fuelled the rage that was a part – a necessary part – of any homicide investigation. Whenever Joe saw a murder victim, saw men, women, sometimes children – most of all, the children – slashed or cut up, or shot or beaten, or burned or Christ alone knew what, he suffered the same kind of agonies that most of his colleagues did in the struggle to detach from them. And then, too, in most murder cases, there was the need to learn about the victims, to discover every last detail about them, anything that might help them get the killer. But it had quickly become plain that all of that wouldn’t get them anywhere in the pacemaker case. The victims in Boston and Chicago were not connected in any way; they were random victims, their only link here, at the point of their pacemakers’ origin. There was no reason for Joe to discover anything more about Jack Long or Marie Ferguson than he already knew. They were simply victims, and it all felt so cold, so passionless, and though Joe had learned, over the years, the importance of professional detachment, he was aware that passion, to him, was still a necessary evil in any investigation.

  He had been working on the profile of the killer every night that week, seldom catching more than two hours’ sleep and vainly trying to limit his caffeine intake, knowing he had to keep an even keel.

  Since the birth of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in 1984, the FBI had assembled on their computers a massive data bank on violent criminals. The scientists and special agents who worked full time on criminal profiling at Quantico were not detectives but behavioural scientists, their role not to psychologically analyse the criminal mind in order to understand why they committed crimes, but to analyse the crime in such a way as to help lead them back to the perpetrator. They regarded crimes as symptoms, backtracking from the acts themselves in an attempt to try to work out the type of individual who might display such symptoms.

  “In the most simplistic terms,” one of Joe’s tutors had told him, “it’s like a pathologist being presented with a severed foot with only a big blister on its sole for ID. The kind of blister points to a particular brand of sports shoe, which points to an athlete of some kind. The fact that the blister has formed over old scar tissue indicates that the runner may be the obsessive kind, the kind who won’t give it up even if it hurts, and so on. We’re looking for clues – usually a lot more subtle than that blister – that may give us insight into the mind of the criminal.”

  Mass murderers or serial killers seldom knew their victims, frequently gloried, sometimes suffered, during the killings, but the behavioural scientists had also studied, with the help of interviews with convicted serial killers, the way they behaved after each kill. In this case, with the two deaths taking place hundreds of miles apart, and in the absence of media coverage to date, there was little or no chance that the pacemaker killer had been able to return to the scene of the death either to gloat or to observe, though there was every likelihood, of course, that he or she was returning to – or had never left – the scene of the crime itself: the place where the lifesaving devices had been transformed into death traps.

  “Let’s go over it one more time,” Joe said to Lipman and Cohen during a snatched meeting in their office at the factory on Friday morning. They had been allocated a medium-sized, utilitarian room on Al Hagen’s floor, with two desks, a computer terminal, four telephones, a fax machine and a coffee maker. “Hagen, Leary, Ashcroft and Schwartz all give the same reasons for claiming it’s virtually impossible for the crime to have been committed here.”

  “Though since any one of them could be our bad guy,” Sol Cohen said, “what they tell us may not be worth bubkes.” Detective Cohen was seventeen years older than Joe, chubby and balding, and he and the lieutenant were as fond of each other as if they were uncle and nephew.

  “It’s gotta be one of the A Team,” Lipman said. “Someone with access to the place at a time when no one else is around to watch, and according to security, no one beside the top guys ever stays late at night. And it’s mostly the men,” she added, “though apparently Leary hangs around less than Schwartz, or Hagen himself. Ashcroft told me she likes to get home to be with her family, and her assistant confirmed that.”

  “Valdez agrees with Schwartz that you can’t break into a pacemaker after it’s been finally sealed,” Cohen said. “So there’s no way it could have happened past the final checks without being noticed.”

  Joe nodded. “Yet Schwartz claims that none of his workers, however dextrous – and even if they had the capability, which he doubts – would have had the time to tamper on the production line without being caught.”

  “But Schwartz may just be covering his ass,” Lipman reminded them.

  Valdez came into the office in a rush, sending papers on one of the desks flying. When he was dealing with explosives, Valdez moved as sweetly and smoothly as a cat, but off the job he enjoyed moving fast, being careless, even clumsy.

  “Al Hagen just went home with the flu, and he’s the third this morning.”

  The entire Hagen Industries complex had been stricken with influenza since mid-week, men and women dropping like flies.

  “Get someone on his apartment building,” Joe told Cohen. “Keep it discreet.”

  “Sure thing.” Cohen was already on the phone.

  “Schwartz looks like hell too,” Valdez said.

  “How close are you guys to getting through the checking?” Joe asked.

  “He’s slowing down. He’s tired and he’s sick.” Valdez paused. “I guess I was hoping he might incriminate himself and save everyone a pile of trouble.”

  “I still don’t believe it’s Schwartz.” Lipman shook her head. “We’ve all watched him for hours on end. He never lets up – I’ve never seen anyone so focused, so dedicated, so meticulous.”

  “Maybe.” Joe picked a sheet of paper out of his briefcase, and read. “. . . perfectly proper, a regular man . . . no jewellery, no flashy ties or clothes . . . quiet, polite, methodical, prompt.”

  “Your profile?” Lipman asked.

  Joe shook his head. “James Brussel’s profile of The Mad Bomber.”

  “Frank Kulak?” Lipman wrinkled her brow.

  “Another one – guy called Metesky in New York in the early fifties. Blew up Radio City Music Hall and a few other theatres.”

  “And a couple of train stations,” Valdez added. “You used his profile in the arson case.”

  Joe nodded. “Like our friend here, Metesky used precise, scientific methods to target random victims and kill through preparati
on, not hands on.”

  “Leary wears a Rolex and two rings,” Lipman said, thinking of the profile.

  “And Hagen’s too flamboyant,” Cohen, off the phone, joined in.

  “Schwartz is certainly as capable as Leary and Hagen of pulling it off,” Lipman mused. “Though I’d rather it was Leary.”

  “You, too?” Joe had disliked Leary from first meeting.

  “He’s such a smart-ass. And he spent ten years designing weapons systems.”

  “I think Schwartz is okay,” Cohen reconsidered.

  “Me, too,” Lipman agreed.

  “Can’t hang a guy because he doesn’t wear flashy clothes,” Valdez said.

  “I hope it’s Leary,” Lipman said again.

  “Can’t hang a guy because we don’t like him either,” Valdez pointed out.

  “What next?” Cohen asked.

  “We stick to the A Team like glue,” Joe said. “I’ll take over Schwartz for a while, until he drops. Lipman, you take Leary – flirt with him if you have to.”

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  “Cohen can take Ashcroft – I don’t think she’s the flirtatious type – and Valdez, just go on sniffing around. All of you use your clipboards, look and listen hard, tape a zillion notes, get everyone as much on edge as you can.” Joe went to the door, grabbed the handle and turned around again. “Maybe we’ve made them too cosy, too complacent. I want us to really breathe down their necks for a while, get under their skins a little.”

  “You want us to make them crazy?” Lipman asked.

  “The crazier the better.”

  The news about the death in San Francisco came in just after five that afternoon, and the collective blood pressure of Joe’s task force and the Hagen A Team shot volcanically higher as the decision was made that Hagen Pacing would be shut down by morning. Within an hour, Fred Schwartz, by now running a high fever, went home to bed, and the only members of the A Team still on the premises were Ashcroft and Leary. As the crisis had deepened, with Hagen and Schwartz becoming sicker and Ashcroft growing more worn and harassed, Howard Leary seemed, increasingly, a model of composure.

  “What happens now?” Ashcroft asked Joe in Leary’s tastefully decorated office a little after seven o’clock.

  “We stop pretending to be statisticians and start an open investigation,” Joe replied. “We’ll be joined as soon as possible by two more detectives from our Violent Crime Unit, two more from Bomb and Arson and two FBI scientists – and before morning, this building will be sealed off from the rest of the complex and the only employees beside yourselves will be the key personnel you asked for.”

  “What’s the cover going to be?” Leary looked comfortable and smooth in a flawlessly tailored dark suit, his pale grey tie knotted in a manner that Joe knew he could never achieve if he stood in front of a mirror for three hours straight.

  “Building cracks,” Joe replied.

  “Cracks?” Leary raised an eyebrow.

  “Subsidence,” Joe explained. “We’ll tell them it’s probably a foundation problem. Discovered late today. No danger with a skeleton staff, but normal weight loads hazardous. Those locked out will be told they’ll remain on full pay, and given a special number to call daily for updates, so that we can keep tabs on them if necessary.”

  “That poor fireman,” Ashcroft said. She looked pale and tired. “I can’t help wondering if he might be alive if we’d gone public.”

  “That’s illogical, Olivia,” Leary argued. “The only difference is he might have died standing in line at his doctor’s office instead of in a fire, and he would have died in terror instead of at work.” He paused. “How long do we think we can keep this whole mess quiet, Lieutenant?”

  “Not too much longer,” Joe answered. “Not without a lot of cooperation. Too many people know – family, medical examiners, physicians – one journalist that we know about.”

  “I still believe secrecy’s vital,” Leary said.

  “Even though there may be men and women – perhaps even children – walking around with time bombs in their chests?” Ashcroft asked him. “I’m not so sure they shouldn’t at least have the right to try to save themselves.”

  “As of tonight,” Joe said, “the FDA still agree with Mr Leary that there’s more to lose by going public. I gather there’s going to be some kind of high-level meeting tomorrow morning to see how secrecy can best be maintained.”

  “Are you getting anywhere with the investigation, Lieutenant?” Ashcroft asked.

  “We’re still ruling out a lot of possibilities.”

  “In other words, you’re getting nowhere,” Leary said.

  “We don’t have a resolution yet.”

  “At least you’re half honest.”

  “No sense not being.”

  “Do you still suspect me?” Leary asked.

  “What makes you imagine I might?”

  Leary shrugged. “I’m not a likeable man.”

  Olivia Ashcroft sat very still, and Joe regarded Leary’s ironically raised red brows, narrow green eyes and sallow face. “That doesn’t automatically make you our number one suspect.”

  “What about Hagen?” Leary asked.

  “What about him?”

  “Do you consider him a suspect?”

  “Howard!”

  “Don’t look so shocked, Olivia,” Leary said. “You know perfectly well it could be any one of us.”

  “It’s much more likely to be some brilliant insane person masquerading as a cleaner or working in the despatch department,” Ashcroft insisted.

  Joe focused on Leary. “Why should we suspect Hagen?”

  “Because of his mother.”

  “What about her.”

  “You don’t know?” Leary was gently mocking.

  “Apparently not.”

  “His mother died of a heart condition.”

  “Millions of people do,” Ashcroft said.

  “Not when they might have been saved by a simple intervention.”

  “A pacemaker.” Joe’s spine prickled briefly, but he kept his voice flat.

  “That’s right.”

  “When did she die?”

  “In the mid-fifties. Hagen was fourteen.”

  “Pre-pacemakers,” Joe said.

  “Only just. He heard about them soon after she died.”

  “I didn’t know,” Olivia said.

  “He told me years ago.”

  “What else did he tell you?” Joe asked.

  Leary smiled. “You mean did he tell me he resented pacemakers because they came too late to save his mother?”

  “Did he?”

  “On the contrary,” Leary said, “he told me it was a prime motivating force behind his takeover of the pacemaker company.”

  “Makes sense,” Joe said.

  “It would seem to,” Leary agreed.

  “Of course it does,” Ashcroft said warmly.

  “You have another opinion?” Joe asked.

  “Not really. Just thought I’d throw it in, if your people hadn’t already picked it up.” Leary paused. “I imagine you feel I might have told you sooner.”

  “It comes to mind.” Joe contained his irritation well. He, Lipman and Cohen had all interviewed Leary on several occasions, and the possibility of any known grudges had been raised each time. He flicked mentally back over the folder of information they’d accumulated on the boss of Hagen Industries. Albrecht Hagen, born 1941, Chicago. Father, Helmut, born 1916, Cologne, W. Germany. Electrical engineer. Died 1950 (lung cancer). Mother, Annaliese, born 1921, Chicago. Housewife. Died 1955 (myocardial infarction). Marital status: single. Children: none. So far as he remembered, sixteen other personnel files had revealed familial deaths from heart-related diseases.

  “Anything else you’d care to mention?” he asked Leary.

  “About Hagen?”

  “Or anyone else.”

  “Would you like me to leave?” Ashcroft asked with a touch of acid.

  “Not necessary.” Lea
ry smiled again. “Did you know Al dropped out of college?”

  “Yes, I did,” Ashcroft said, still coldly. “Is it relevant?”

  Leary’s shrug was slight. “Probably not.”

  “It certainly didn’t hold him back,” Joe commented.

  “No, it didn’t,” Ashcroft agreed. “Al built up Hagen Industries on his own, he didn’t inherit it. He’s a very gifted man.”

  “Who pays us for our qualifications,” Leary said. “We’re the brains, he’s the boss.”

  “I think that’s a gross overstatement,” Ashcroft said. “And Hagen Pacing’s the apple of Al’s eye. What you’re suggesting makes no sense.”

  “No sense at all,” Leary agreed amicably.

  “Are you suggesting he may resent his lack of qualifications?” Joe persisted quietly.

  Leary shrugged again. “He knows we know we’re brighter than him.” He glanced across at Ashcroft. “Especially Olivia – however vehemently she protests – who’s the most brilliant of us all.” His green eyes were amused. “You could certainly have done it, though I don’t know of anything in your background or past to motivate you to do such a thing.”

  “Thank you, Howard,” Ashcroft said scathingly.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What about Schwartz?” Joe asked. His inner eye reviewed the start of that personnel file. Frederick Schwartz, born 1951, Chicago. Father, Siegmund, born 1920, Düsseldorf, W. Germany. Artist. Died Chicago 1950 (road accident). Mother, Eva, born 1924, Chicago. Housewife. Died 1962 (cerebral thrombosis). Marital status: single. Children: none. Schwartz had not known his father and had lost his mother young, as Hagen had lost both parents, but Joe recalled nothing else of special significance.