by L T Vargus
Chapter 79
Officer Lennie Washington flopped down in her easy chair with her microwave chicken potpie and gave a shimmy. The footrest popped out and she reclined back just enough to relax and eat her dinner. She had to set it aside for a minute while she hunted up the remote and turned on the Weather Channel, but then she was set for the night.
Correction: Would be set for the night, if she had somebody to bring her a nice glass of wine.
Nothing went with Marie Callendar’s like a little Riverboat Red. But Lennie hadn’t made it over to the store before the storm shut everything down, so she’d just have to settle for a beer when she was finished eating. She still had a few in the fridge drawer.
She would’ve preferred a cigarette, but that was life.
The talking heads showed a bunch of clips of people wading through snow earlier in the day, then talked about how this was set to be the biggest single snowfall in Illinois in one night.
“Hell of a deal,” Lennie muttered. She speared a piece of crust.
They cut to weather cams mounted around the city at strategic places, then talked some more about how much snow had already fallen, and the mayor advising everybody to stay in tonight.
Lennie hooted.
“Like it was his damn idea!” She shook her head and chuckled. “Dipshit.”
The wind was really kicking up outside. Blowing snow across the windows. Moaning and carrying on. Faintly she heard a pounding under the wintery noises. Sounded like someone pounding rocks. Just her luck it was across the street from her apartment. The slamming grew louder as the wind died back.
She turned the TV up.
“—now we’ll take a quick look at the weather around the country,” the meteorologist was saying.
“Ah,” Lennie complained.
The phlegmy grunt turned almost immediately into a cough. After a few minutes, she leaned over and hocked up an ugly wad into her chair-side trashcan.
With a disgruntled sigh, she dumped the cardboard trash from her potpie into the can as well, then grabbed the bucket of soft peppermints. While they went on and on about the jet stream making everything terrible across the Midwest and just peachy down in Florida, she unwrapped the first of her after-dinner mints and popped it in her mouth.
Outside, the wind howled like crazy, overpowering the meteorologist as they read temperatures off the map.
Lennie was about to stab the volume button again when all her hair stood on end.
When you’d heard enough humans scream, you got to where you could differentiate between something coming from a person and something coming from nature. Wind, cat, dog, even new brakes could make you think somebody was being murdered, until you’d heard the real thing.
The sound she was hearing now wasn’t the wind.
Lennie threw her weight forward, slamming the recliner shut with a bang. She hustled into the bedroom and grabbed her gun, housedress flapping around her knees.
There it was again. Someone was screaming bloody murder. A man, she thought. A grown man screaming. Sounded like it was coming from out in the street.
She went back out into the living room and pulled down on the metal slats of her blinds.
At first, she didn’t see anybody. Then they screamed again, one long call, like a lost hiker shouting for help in the wilderness. Down the street a ways, a figure lurched and stumbled between the concrete dividers blocking off the parking around the historical building. His hands were wrapped up close to his stomach, and he looked like he was having a hell of a time just staying on his feet.
Lennie stomped into her snow boots, then grabbed her phone and called in to the station on her way out the door.
“Don?”
“I can tell by the crankiness and smoker’s wheeze that this is Officer Lennie,” he joked. “What can I do for you, Marlboro Madam?”
“Cut the shit, Don. I need an ambulance and a black and white to my block. I’ve got somebody with possible trauma in the street right outside my building. Don’t know if they’ve been mugged or in an accident or what, but they’re not looking good.”
She heard keys tapping in the background, and let out a breath of relief that the little brat had taken her seriously. She gave him the exact address as she descended the stairs.
By the time she made it outside, she really was wheezing like the Marlboro Madam. Maybe she could get a hit of oxygen when the ambulance got there. Down the block, the figure let out another ragged scream that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.
Lennie spat another wad of phlegm into the snow, then started toward him, gun in hand.
“CPD,” she called. “Stop where you are! Let me come to you!”
But the figure just kept coming. He was wheezing and panting as bad as Lennie was. At first, she’d thought he was just dark-complected, but as he got closer to the floodlight over her building’s lobby, she started to see the color of the stuff covering his face and clothes.
Red. He screamed again, opening one eye wide enough that it looked white.
“Stop or I’ll shoot,” Lennie screamed, her craggy voice breaking.
The figure took another step, then tumbled into the snow, shoulders and chest heaving. Hyperventilating.
Lennie crept closer. Somewhere, she could hear the call of a siren. Maybe her ambulance and black and white coming. She stayed back, watching as the gore-covered man’s breathing eventually leveled off, and waited for backup.
Chapter 80
Loshak bolted awake, trying to throw his hands up between his face and Walsh’s Uzi. Velcro crunched, and tight elastic bands jerked his arms back. He fought against them, but the restraints were too strong. He couldn’t break free.
He opened his mouth to yell for help — maybe if he raised enough hell, somebody would hear and call 911 — but the inhale told him immediately that something was wrong. He wasn’t drinking in icy winter air. This smelled like antiseptic and… air freshener?
Loshak opened his eyes, the right one only cracking open a slit. It throbbed like it was trying to explode. He took stock of the situation. He was in a hospital room, wearing a papery gown. Blue soft-restraints fastened his forearms to the bedrails. A wired doodad on his index finger monitored his heart rate and blood oxygen levels. An IV dripped next to him.
The curtains were open, letting in cold, gray sunlight. Outside, all he could see was winter sky.
Bits and pieces of the fight with Walsh came back to him. Snarling teeth. Gunshots. Someone shot dead in the street. Had he shot the pharmacist? Was that how he’d escaped?
The call button lay across a chair just out of his reach. He tested out the stretchiness of the restraints one more time before giving up and laying back in bed.
“Hey,” he yelled. Pain shot through his chapped and busted lips, nose, and eye. Pretty much everything on his face hurt. “Hey, I’m awake and I’m yelling because I can’t reach my call button!”
Then he listened for anyone coming. He hadn’t paid attention to what it had sounded like out in the hall before he yelled, so he wasn’t sure whether anything had changed.
“Hey!”
The door swung open, and Spinks let himself in.
“You’re awake again,” the reporter said, rubbing his hands together. “Recognize me this time?”
“This time?” Raising his brow hurt — surprise, surprise — so he wiped the incredulous look off his face.
Spinks grinned. “Want me to skip the “welcome to the future” spiel and just go straight into how you ended up here?”
“Do you think you could untie me first?” Loshak asked. Then a snippet of hospital regulation came back to him. “Or get a nurse to do it?”
“I believe I can,” Spinks said, heading back out into the hall.
The nurse who came led Loshak through a battery of tests for coherence and lucidity, asking questions like, “Name the city you’re in,” “What is the name of the current president,” and “Do you feel like hurting yourself or anyone
else right now,” before finally taking the soft restraints off his arms and ankles.
“When can I get my real clothes back on and leave?” Loshak asked.
“Dr. Chen will want to speak with you first. You were mildly hypothermic when you were admitted, and we couldn’t exactly do a full work-up while you were still in a psychotic state.”
“Walsh drugged me,” Loshak blurted out, remembering. He looked up at Spinks. “During the interview—”
“We figured that was the case,” Spinks said, nodding.
“Where is he? He’s our shooter.”
Spinks glanced at the little nurse, then back to Loshak.
“He’s dead,” the reporter said.
The feel of the rock in his hands and the thud of it against Walsh’s skull played through Loshak’s head. Not a gunshot, then.
“What about the other guy?” Loshak swallowed around a dry throat.
A furrow appeared in the middle of Spinks’ brow. He looked worried, like maybe he wasn’t sure the hallucinogens hadn’t quite cleared Loshak’s system all the way.
“Other guy?”
If Spinks knew that Walsh was dead, then they’d found his body. Surely they’d found the shooting victim as well. The man who’d knocked on Walsh’s car window and asked for directions.
“He shot someone in the street. Male. Accent from the upper East Coast. Did they find him?”
Spinks shook his head. “As far as I’m aware, they didn’t find anyone aside from Walsh. Are you sure that wasn’t a hallucination?”
After a second, Loshak shook his head.
“How did I get here?”
Spinks grinned. “Believe it or not, our little old lady pal Officer Lennie found you crawling around in the snow, covered in blood and screaming for help right outside her building. She called you in, bundled you into an ambulance, and then her and a couple of the on-duty officers traced your steps back to… to Walsh.”
The feel of the stone thudding against bone. A head that was half caved in and still Loshak hadn’t stopped swinging. He swallowed.
“So, when can I check out?” he asked the nurse. “Am I free to go?”
“Like I said, Dr. Chen will want to see you before she signs off on anything. You might not be able to tell right now because of the sedatives, but you’ve got first-degree frostbite in your fingers and toes.”
Loshak looked down at his hands in his lap and flexed the swollen, pink fingers. Stinging pain shot up through his wrist.
“Can I at least get my clothes back while I wait?” he said, wincing.
Spinks hmmed.
“CPD took your clothes into evidence, but you wouldn’t want them back anyway. They’re pretty bad. I brought your suitcase over from the hotel.” He went to the cabinet by the sink and pulled it out. Then he inclined his head to the little nurse. “If the lovely Nurse Leta says you can change, that is.”
She looked like she was going to say no.
“I’ll have to stay in the room with you,” she said finally. “You’re a fall risk until I can confirm that you’re ambulatory.”
Spinks chuckled.
“This man’s always been a fall risk. I knew that the first day I met him.”
While Loshak changed, Spinks went to find a candy machine. Every move felt awkward, partly because a tiny Latina half his age and too small to actually stop him if he fell over was watching him intently, partly because it felt like he’d torn every muscle in his body.
“Alright?” Nurse Leta asked.
“Yeah.” Loshak sat back on the bed to finish buttoning his shirt with clumsy, burning fingers. “I feel like I’ve been in a car wreck.”
“Certain drugs are harder on seniors than others,” she said.
Loshak let out a bark of laughter. When she looked alarmed, he held up his hands.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t usually get called a senior citizen.”
After that, she didn’t stick around for long.
Spinks reappeared a few minutes later with a Twix and a tiny bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
“Sweet or heat?” he asked, waving them both enticingly in the air. “Or both?”
“Maybe later,” Loshak said. “I’m really more interested in water.”
“I know just the thing.” Spinks grabbed a paper cup from a stainless steel holder bolted to the wall and filled it in the sink. “Your water, partner.”
“Just a warning.” Loshak downed the first cup, savoring the feel of wetness reviving the dry spots in his throat. “I’m going to need about twelve of those before I’m done.”
Spinks gestured to the sink.
“We have an ever-flowing fount. As long as the tap water in Chicago is better than the tap water in Flint, I think we’re OK.”
While Spinks was refilling the cup, the reporter’s phone chimed. He handed Loshak the water, then checked his screen. Spinks spent a few seconds responding.
“It’s the day job,” he said. “I had time to put together a column on the investigation while I was waiting around for you to come out of it.”
Loshak stopped mid-drink. “What did Millhouse say about that?”
“In what might not be a very surprising move, she loved it.” Spinks grinned at him. “I didn’t leak any details hitherto unknown by the press, and my portrayal of the inner workings of the Chicago Bureau of Detectives as ‘a well-oiled machine’ was very well received.”
“That’ll do it,” Loshak said.
They were silent for a few minutes before Loshak spoke again.
“Did they find any evidence proving that Walsh was the shooter?”
“They searched his apartment from top to bottom.” Spinks pulled up the doctor’s rolling stool. “Found an Uzi, an AR-15, a few small handguns, enough rounds to take over a small island nation, a supply of military-issue hand grenades they’re working on tracing, and a small pharmacy worth of narcotics, both prescription pills and street drugs. Also found a pair of loafers with trace amounts of blood on the soles, ditto for a long black leather duster. They’re waiting on all the lab reports to match blood to victims and the guns to the scenes, but yeah, not much doubt that Walsh was our guy.”
Loshak stared down into the paper cup in his hands. Bloody scabs cut here and there across the skin, and bruises turned spots purplish-gray and yellow. On second thought, he didn’t really want to talk about this all that much.
He cleared his throat. “Did you ever hear back from your private investigator?”
The reporter deflated a little. He shook his head.
“Nothing turned up,” Spinks said. “If George Whitley was involved with Kansas City, then he never left any evidence of it.”
“Nothing?”
Spinks shrugged. “I mean, I could go off on a hundred different tangents about why this might actually be more suspicious than if we had found something—”
“But you’d be reaching,” Loshak said.
“A little. Who knows? Maybe the simplest explanation is that not everything is a conspiracy.”
Chapter 81
The doctor had wanted to keep Loshak for another night to make sure he wasn’t suffering from any lasting side effects of the drugs, but with enough arguing, Loshak finally got himself released. When the last of the paperwork was finished, he and Spinks headed downstairs to find a cab. The wheels of his suitcase whirred along the hospital corridors, a sound Loshak hadn’t realized he associated only with airports until he noticed how out of place it sounded amongst the mechanical beeping, rustling of papers, and squeaks of nurses’ soft-soled shoes.
Outside, the streets and sidewalks had already been cleared and salted, and traffic was rushing past like the blizzard of the century the night before had been just another light snow. Tires splashed through puddles of gray-brown slush, horns honked, and exhaust spewed.
Loshak could tell Spinks was disappointed about not finding anything more on the human trafficking case, but on the other hand, this made for a cleaner exit. What would they h
ave done if they had found something here? Found a reason to stay? As it was, the mass shooting investigation was all but wrapped up, and their perp was in the morgue. Walsh wasn’t going to be gunning down anyone else. Even if George Whitley had somehow been involved in the Kansas City conspiracy, they hadn’t found any proof, and Loshak was doubtful that further sniffing around would have uncovered anything concrete. Whitley had simply been too isolated. Too cut off from other people.
Funny, though, Loshak thought, to take down a mass shooter and find yourself underwhelmed by the result. With all the lives Walsh took, however, it was impossible to feel good about any of it. You could stop further damage, but you couldn’t undo all the horrors committed. Lives taken. Hearts ripped open.
The wounds here in Chicago would lay open for a long, long time. Some may never heal.
The conspiracy lead coming up a bust only compounded the sense of disappointment.
Still, they’d gotten close to something here, Loshak thought. Maybe closer than they knew. He couldn’t help but think about the guy Walsh had shot in the street, just as he’d leapt out of the car.
He pictured the scene, the buildup to that knock on the window. Pictured the headlights shining behind Walsh’s car. His gut had told him they were being followed. At the time, he’d thought that implausible, but maybe he wasn’t considering all the angles at play.
What if he and Spinks had drawn attention when they looked into George Whitley? The guy asking for directions… he could have been mixed up in it all. Had something to do with Kansas City. Watching him and Spinks. Maybe, just maybe, that was even the reason that he hadn’t been found. No body. No shooting victims admitted to area hospitals. What other explanation would there be for that?
Then again, with the drugs peaking right around then, he couldn’t be sure what all had even happened. In his mind, he could only picture an actor standing there outside Walsh’s window, his face aglow with a plastic smile — some heavy-set character actor whose name he couldn’t place. Some guy from a mafia movie or something.
Spinks must’ve still been thinking about Kansas City, too.
