If I Should Die

by Hilary Norman

  The commander was right. He had never felt so alone in his life.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Monday, January 25th

  Had Sean Ferguson not been drinking whisky in John Morrissey’s private sitting room at the clinic when he arrived, Joe would probably not have contemplated involving yet another civilian. But the grieving man was so avid to help, and without him, Joe knew, they might not even have gotten this far, and for better or worse, Joe was still working on instinct.

  “I have a plan,” he told them. “And I need your help.”

  “You’ve got it,” Ferguson said.

  “Don’t be so hasty, Sean,” Morrissey cautioned.

  Ferguson ignored him. “Anything you need, Lieutenant.”

  Joe told them what he needed.

  “I’m told that Schwartz is on the way to a full recovery,” he summed up, “but at this stage, he still feels lousy. I want him to go on feeling lousy, because the worse he feels, the better chance I believe we have of making him see our point of view.”

  “Why can’t you just confront him with the documents?” Morrissey asked.

  “I’ve told you why,” Joe said, bluntly. “Because I found them during an illegal search. Because I screwed up. Because I think Schwartz would call in his attorney and then we’d be dead in the water.”

  “Is he right?” Ferguson asked Morrissey, and took a sip of whisky. “Could Schwartz be made to go on feeling lousy?”

  “Without endangering his life,” Joe added.

  “Certainly he could,” Morrissey said. “If a physician was willing to do it.” He paused. “There’s no way Chicago Memorial would permit a patient to be duped in that way.” He looked directly at Joe. “Which is why you want Schwartz transferred to the Howe.”

  “If you agree.”

  “I have no particular problem with bringing him here.” Morrissey’s face was grim. “It’s the rest of your plan that goes against everything I believe in.”

  “Just a few harmless drugs,” Joe said. “And a little extra heat.”

  “You make it sound so easy, Lieutenant.”

  “John isn’t a natural risk-taker,” Ferguson told Joe. “He’s already committed the clinic to a degree of danger by agreeing to let this surgery go ahead here – which I know he’s doing as much for Marie as for your sister, if you’ll forgive my saying, Lieutenant.”

  “I know that,” Joe said. “It makes me no less grateful.”

  “But now, if I have this right,” Ferguson went on, “you’re asking him to break more moral and ethical codes than I can even begin to count. I can understand why you’re willing to put your career on the line, Lieutenant, but John Morrissey’s a doctor, not a cop, and a damned fine one, and this city’s already lost one good physician in my wife.”

  Joe held his breath.

  “I, on the other hand,” Ferguson said, a new glint in his eye, “have nothing to lose.”

  “What are you suggesting, Sean?” Morrissey asked.

  “I think I’d make a fair physician.”

  “You’d make a lousy physician,” Morrissey said.

  “Correct me if I’ve misunderstood” – Ferguson looked at Joe – ”but once the drugs have been administered, your plan wouldn’t call for me to do any actual doctoring, would it? It’s mostly talk, isn’t it?”

  “That’s about right,” Joe agreed.

  “It’s insanity,” Morrissey said flatly. “It could get you arrested.”

  Ferguson was matter-of-fact. “Marie is dead, John. This man killed her. She was thirty-two years old, and she was my life.”

  The three men were silent.

  “Okay,” Morrissey said, at last.

  Joe waited, every muscle taut.

  “I’ll allow beta blockers to be given, which will slow his heart-rate, and I’ll allow the heat in his room to be turned up.” Morrissey paused. “And if you two want to do a little play-acting in this clinic, I’ll turn a blind eye.”

  Joe breathed again. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “You do know how unethical this is, don’t you, Lieutenant?”

  “I do.”

  “And you understand the risks, to us all?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “I’m far from convinced that I’ll be able to persuade Memorial to let us have him.”

  “Just make them understand we won’t be endangering him,” Joe said.

  “I’d say that was another debatable point, Lieutenant.”

  Joe said nothing more.

  While Morrissey spoke, behind closed doors in his office, with the Chief of Medicine at Chicago Memorial, Joe, too hyped up either to cat nap or to visit with Lally or go anywhere near Hugo Barzinsky, paced the Persian rug with Sean Ferguson in Morrissey’s sitting room.

  When Morrissey came back in, Joe’s pulse-rate went sky-high.

  “They bought it.”

  “Thank God.”

  “What are we waiting for?” Ferguson asked.

  Morrissey held up both hands, slowing them down. “I gave my word that the patient’s health will not be endangered, and that their responsibility for him will terminate the instant he’s off their premises.”

  Joe checked his watch again. It was twenty minutes after seven.

  “Let’s do it,” he said.

  “Lucas Ash should be here any minute,” Morrissey reminded Joe. “How much do you want me to tell him?”

  “Nothing at all about what we’re doing,” Joe replied. “Just tell him that we may be getting close to having vital information about the make-up of Lally’s pacemaker, and that it could be deadly to start without it.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Ferguson said.

  Morrissey sighed. “The more we know, the better, no doubt about that.”

  “So are we agreed?” Joe asked.

  No one dissented.

  “All right,” he said.

  “Has anyone heard from Chris?” Lally asked Hugo at seven twenty-six.

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “He must still be sleeping,” Lally said.

  The tranquillizer she’d been given a few hours ago was wearing off, and though she hated the muzzy feeling it had given her, the downside was that she was now a whole lot more alert than she wanted to be.

  “Can I do anything for you, sweetheart?” Hugo asked.

  “No.” She got out of bed for the tenth time in the past hour, went over to the window on the left side of the room and stared out into the dark.

  “You’re supposed to stay in bed.”

  “Like it would make a difference.”

  “The doc must have his reasons.”

  Lally didn’t turn around. “Dr Morrissey has no more idea about what is or isn’t going to happen to me than you have, Hugo. The only reason they want me to stay in bed is to keep me out of everyone else’s way.”

  “My reading,” Hugo said, “is that they want you to rest as much as possible in case your pacemaker isn’t up to doing its job as well as it ought.”

  “Thanks, Hugo.” Lally turned away from the window. “Just what I needed to hear to make me feel better.”

  “It sounded worse than I meant it to,” he said wretchedly.

  “No, it didn’t. Either my heart explodes or stops.”

  “Shut the hell up, Lally,” Hugo said, with feeling.

  Lally sat down moodily at the built-in dressing table, and stared into the mirror. She looked normal enough. She’d changed into her favourite Garfield nightshirt that travelled most places with her for comfort. Her hair hung in a single long loose plait over her right shoulder. Her face still glowed from the Florida sunshine. Only her eyes, unmade-up, weary and afraid, betrayed the way she really felt.

  “You’re just grouchy because Chris went off to sleep.” Hugo tried a change of tack.

  “I am not,” she said tartly. “He spent days looking for us, and then that flight – of course he had to get some sleep.”

  “Then you’re grouchy because he’s slept fo
r so long.”

  “If I am grouchy, it has nothing to do with Chris.” Lally’s voice grew tighter. “The real reason I’m grouchy” – suddenly she was on the brink of tears – ”is because I feel as if I’m sitting here on some kind of glitzy Death Row, waiting for someone to come and tell me if I’m going to be reprieved or not.”

  Appalled, Hugo jumped up. “I’m so sorry.” He bent and put his arms around her shoulders as the tears, at last, began to fall. “I didn’t mean to make you feel worse – I know how scared you are – ”

  “I don’t think scared quite covers it.” Letting the hot tears flow, Lally couldn’t figure out how she’d made it this far without weeping. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed against his sleeve, “I can’t help it.”

  “You’re being so brave,” Hugo said, despising himself, for now he was crying too, and that was no help to her at all. “Oh, God, look at me – I’m sorry, sweetheart – ”

  Lally lifted her face to look at him, and managed a smile.

  “Your nose,” she said, “is so red.”

  “You’re no oil painting yourself,” Hugo said.

  She drew away, pulled several tissues out of the Kleenex carton on the dressing table, handed two to Hugo and blew her own nose with the others. Briefly, she glanced back at her reflection, then looked away again. She thought of Chris’s portrait of her in her dance clothes. She wondered if she would ever take a class again, ever see her studio again, or the house.

  She wondered, more than anything, why Chris hadn’t called.

  Chris had never been especially obsessed by a fear of dying. Like most people, he had occasionally wondered what his final hours would feel like, had been torn between the desire to be able to prepare, to die well, and the hope that he would go fast and easily, preferably when he was asleep.

  He knew now what dying felt like. It felt like hell, but what hurt more than the agony in his hand and arm, what was squeezing the breath and strength out of him even more than the effects of the deadly venom in his blood-stream, was his inability to talk to Katy or Lally. He was glad, he supposed, that neither of them could see him this way – especially his sweet little Katy, and she’d be okay, he knew she would, once Andrea got herself back on her feet, and Andrea would, she’d have no choice, with him gone. But to leave Lally this way, when they’d hardly begun, to abandon her when she was so vulnerable and frightened and in such mortal danger, without another word, without a chance to hold her or to tell her how he felt about her, that he loved her more than he’d ever loved any woman, that he’d do anything for her, that he’d give his life for her. And he supposed, in a way, that he had done just that, and maybe that should have been some comfort to him, and maybe if he could know that Lally was out of danger, that finding those documents had been enough to save her, he might be able to feel a degree of solace. But as it was, here he was, all alone in this awful, painful, lonely place, tortured by tubes and needles and surrounded by well-meaning strangers, and he was dying, dying, for fuck’s sake, because of a stupid, goddamned lizard, and he didn’t know if Lally was being operated on, or if it was over, or if it had even begun . . .

  At twenty after eight, Frederick Schwartz woke from a restless, dream-laden sleep to find a dark-suited man and two white-coated orderlies with a gurney at his bedside.

  “What’s going on?” His vision and voice were fuzzy from sleep, fever and drugs.

  “You’re being transferred to another hospital, Mr Schwartz.” The man in the suit held his medical chart and a sheaf of papers.

  “Now? Why?” Schwartz peered at the man’s name tag, but couldn’t quite make it out. “Why can’t I stay here?”

  “Because you need specialist care, which we’re not equipped for here.”

  “What kind of care?” Schwartz felt vague, out of control.

  “I’m told you’re going to a clinic with a specialist poison and venom unit, where the bite on your heel can be attended to properly,” the man said.

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “I’m sure it is.” The man held out a sheet of paper on a clipboard. “I need you to check this over and sign, please, sir.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a document confirming your discharge from Chicago Memorial. All straightforward, but I’d like you to be sure to read it before you sign.”

  Schwartz took the clipboard. He was still weak, though less so than the previous day. “I feel a little better, actually.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “I don’t really understand why they’re moving me now. I figured the treatment was working.”

  “I’m just following orders, sir. All I know is they ran some tests, which showed that the poison in your system is still creating a few problems.” The man smiled. “I’m sure there’s no cause for concern.”

  Schwartz tried to focus on the man’s face. “Are you a physician?”

  “No, sir, I’m just an administrator.” The man paused. “Would you like me to obtain a copy of the test results, sir?”

  A wave of nausea gripped Schwartz’s stomach. Better to get this over and done with. “No,” he said, “I guess I can trust you.” He held out his right hand for the pen.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” Schwartz said, and signed.

  “Always,” the man said.

  Lucas Ash came to see Lally in her room at eight thirty-five.

  “Well, what in blue blazes am I doing here?” he said as soon as he walked into her room and saw her. ‘“You’re blooming, Lally.”

  “That’s fine, doctor.” Lally grinned at him from the bed. “So can’t we just get on a plane together and fly straight back to Massachusetts?”

  “Suits me, but I understand the nervous Nellies at the airlines won’t let you do that.” Ash sat on the edge of her bed and took both Lally’s hands in his. “So I guess we’ll just have to humour them, and get this nonsense over with as quickly as possible, okay?”

  “Okay.” Lally liked the feel of his strong hands on her icy ones. “You don’t really believe my pacemaker could be one of those, do you, doctor?”

  “Do you think, under the circumstances, you could call me Lucas?”

  “You’re evading my question, Lucas.”

  “I don’t know is the honest answer, Lally.” Ash paused. “I know that when I checked it over before I implanted it – when I held it in the palm of my hand and touched it with my fingers – it looked and felt exactly as it was supposed to. I’ve implanted dozens of that specific type, all of them made by Hagen Pacing.”

  Lally had forgotten the intense, violet blue of his eyes, such a very different blue from Chris’s. She fixed her gaze on them. “That still doesn’t mean it’s impossible that it is a bomb, does it?”

  “No, Lally. I’m afraid it doesn’t.”

  She took her hands out of his. “It was very, very kind of you to make the journey, Doctor.”

  “Lucas,” he corrected, gently. “And since I was the one who put the damned thing in, I see no special kindness in being the one to take it out again.”

  “Dr Morrissey said that the others were coming, too.”

  “Joanna and Bobby are here. They’re helping to set things up now.”

  A new kick of nervousness hit Lally’s stomach. “So it won’t be long?”

  “A little while yet,” the doctor said. “Try to be patient, okay?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  In final preparation for his confrontation with Schwartz, Joe went back to the killer’s second apartment. He took a good, long look around. He studied every painting, the dust jacket of every book, the sleeve notes of every compact disc, the meticulously embroidered words of every sampler.

  The surviving lizards watched him as he worked. Joe felt their eyes on him and experienced anger for their helplessness. From an early age, he had disliked zoos, had hated seeing animals in cages. These creatures would, if they were lucky, end up in Chicago Zoo, or with some
other private collector. More probably, they’d end up being destroyed.

  It had not been difficult concluding that the lizards represented dragons to Schwartz. It was not hard coming to the realization that there was a connection for the killer between these mythical creatures and his mother, the madam, though apart from the messages and warnings contained in those homespun samplers, those unsettling gifts to her son, there was no way of knowing just how bizarre a mother Eva Schwartz had been. Pretty bizarre, Joe guessed. And responsible, if not for the manner of her death or its aftermath, for the life that had come before, the life that had begun the warping of her son.

  Leaving Schwartz’s apartment, Joe called Chicago General, first to check on Webber’s condition and then to talk to Jess.

  “My bag’s as good as packed,” she said. “Ready to go back to Mom’s.” Her voice was cool, the atmosphere between them, even on the telephone line, strained and unhappy. “Unless, that is, I get to come home.”

  “Not quite yet, Jess,” Joe said. “Soon.”

  “Are you coming by later?”

  “I’m not sure. I hope so.”

  “Still on the same case?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Not long.”

  “I want to come home,” Jess said. “Sal wants to come home.”

  “And I want you both there. But it’s too soon.”

  Jess’s voice was searching. Joe could imagine her eyes. “Do you still swear you’re not in danger?”

  “I swear it,” he said.

  “But you are in trouble.”

  “Nothing I can’t resolve.”

  “I wish you’d tell me.”

  “I know.”

  But he told her nothing, about Lally, or about Schwartz, or about the possible imminent demise of his career. He knew it was wrong not to tell her, that it went against everything he believed in about marriage, but he could not afford to diminish his strength at this point, and so he tried to convince himself that his silence was for the sake of their unborn baby, and he said nothing.