If I Should Die

by Hilary Norman

  “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 wai
ting 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?

  Every part of Joe that could churn was turning back-flips, including his brain. The proof he’d been praying for, blood- and shit-stained, but conclusive nonetheless, was still rolled up inside his zipped-up jacket. Enough evidence, Joe guessed, to put Schwartz away for the duration. Except that Lieutenant Joseph Duval had broken all the rules and screwed the whole thing up. He couldn’t even hold the documents back for a few hours, in case the blueprints and figures he’d had just a brief glimpse of in apartment 1510 might be of help to Ash and Morrissey when they took out Lally’s pacemaker.

  That’s what matters now. Saving Lally and the others.

  Three forty-nine and counting.

  Joe forced himself to the coffee machine, commanded himself to cut out the panic and to choose a course of action.

  Under the circumstances, there was only one course left.

  He dumped his polystyrene cup in the nearest trashcan, and headed, under heavily clouded skies that promised a fresh load of snow, for Chicago Memorial. He stayed at the hospital for just fifteen minutes, keeping away from Schwartz but talking to one of his physicians and one of his nurses.

  By the time he got back in the Saab, Joe knew, beyond reasonable doubt, that Schwartz’s sickness had nothing to do with the flu, and that it was almost certainly connected with a bite they had found on his heel – probably, Joe guessed, from the same venomous lizard that had torn Webber’s hand half to shreds in apartment 1510.

  By the time he’d started the motor and was pulling out into the noisy, hectic city street, the new plan was already three-quarters formulated in Joe’s mind.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Monday, January 25th

  As Monday afternoon dragged slowly by, his fever continuing to rise, the man named Frederick Schwartz lay under a single sheet in his private hospital room, and let himself drift back into the past again. He preferred it there, even the darkest memories, for remembering the wickedness reinforced his strength, steeled his will against them.

  The chapel. His shiny black shoes. The long white scratch on the pew. The coffin. He was eleven years old and he understood precisely what was happening. Mother’s body lay inside that box, cold and waxy and unreal. Her golden hair neatly curled, framing her face, her bright lipstick and pale powder applied by the undertaker, almost, though not quite, the way she liked it. Mother was dead. He would never see her or touch her or hear her again. And in just a few more minutes, her body and the coffin would be gone from his sight, for ever, to be consumed by the fire.

  She had planned her own funeral. The doctors had said she would live to a ripe old age, but she hadn’t believed them. And she was right, the doctors had lied, which was why he was sitting on the front pew next to his cousin Beatrice, who had worked in Mother’s special place, listening to the music Mother had chosen. Her beloved Wagner. He felt like crying, but his eyes remained dry, for she had told him not to weep.

  “Heroes don’t cry,” she had said, “unless they’re all alone.”

  The music ended, and the small congregation knelt again to pray. A splinter dug into his left knee and he concentrated on the pain, pushed the knee harder into the wooden floor, and when he rose again, his eyes bright but still dry, cousin Beatrice whispered: “It’s okay to cry, Freddy.” And he raised his chin high, and his expression was full of contempt.

  “Heroes don’t cry,” he said.

  The moment came closer. When the doors would open and the coffin would slide away to be burned. Mother said she had always wanted to be cremated, like Brünnhilde on her husband’s funeral pyre in Götterdämmerung.

  Wagner rose again, soaring and magnificent. He watched the doors smoothly open, was intent now on Mother, hidden from view in her box, gliding on her way to the flames and to heaven. He felt suddenly happy for her, for it was as she had wanted it, beautiful and heroic and more mysterious in its dignity than being put into the earth. And he wondered if she had already found his father, or if they would not find each other till after the cremation.

  The doors closed again. The congregation rose, but still he sat, until Beatrice nudged him, and he stood, and slowly, silently, they began to file out of the chapel.

  The explosion was massive, deafening, cutting off the music, flinging them all to the ground. He could not speak, could scarcely breathe, but he was not hurt, his arms and legs still moved. Someone screamed, someone wept.

  Slowly, painfully, he sat up. The doo
rs to the furnace had disappeared and the cavern beyond was filled with flame and black smoke. Hot cinders floated through the air like fireflies.

  The coffin was gone. Mother was gone.

  He’d thought that the last crime against her, but then they wrote about it in the Tribune, and on the bus on the way to school, he saw two women reading that page of the newspaper, and he watched their faces, waiting for their horror.

  They laughed.

  They covered their open mouths with their hands and rolled their eyes and shook with mirth. He stared at their ugliness, at their wickedness, and then, slowly and clearly, he saw, for the first time, how right Mother had been to warn him about the dragons that lived in the world outside their home.

  “They take on many forms,” she had said.

  She was right.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Monday, January 25th

  Al Hagen professed to be well enough to go over the documents with Joe and Howard Leary. His hospital room at Memorial, eight floors above Schwartz’s own room, was brightly lit and cheery with flowering plants, and Hagen himself looked a whole lot better than he had when Joe had last seen him at home just over a week before.

  “I’ll be out of here by tomorrow morning,” he told them. “The doc only had me admitted because I passed out in the street, but it was nothing much, just the after-effects of that damned flu.”

  “This whole fiasco can’t have helped,” Leary said.

  “Are you sure you’re up to this?” Joe asked, pulling up one of the chairs to the bedside.

  “Your sister and the others need all the help they can get,” Hagen said, still heavily burdened by responsibility.

  “I appreciate that, sir.”

  Leary sat down on the other side of Hagen’s bed. He was natty in a well-cut sports jacket, his red hair crisply combed as always, his eyes avid with curiosity. “What do you have for us, Lieutenant?”

  The documents were in an attaché case, leaning up against Joe’s right leg.