Faith was Sewall’s long-suffering wife.
“She stole your car, sir?” The officer tried to pull a followable strand out of the tangled yarn Sewall had flung at us.
“Probably egged on by Warshawski here. The two of them have lived to make my family’s life a misery ever since they met in law school. Did you actually tell Leydon to steal my car, or just suggest it would be a good way to piss me off?”
“Steal your car? What do you drive, anyway, that someone could hot-wire it?” I was rattled, and seized on the one point I could understand—perhaps I’d told Leydon how Boom-Boom and I once hot-wired my uncle’s old Buick. Leydon could quote poetry by the ream; maybe she’d memorized the details of solenoids and ignition wires when I recounted them all those years ago.
“Hot-wire my Beemer? What are you talking about? She waltzed into our company garage and helped herself to my BMW and then had the gall to tell the garage man I’d given her permission to drive it. The idiot didn’t check with me first.”
“So your—sister, is it?—borrowed your car, sir,” the officer said. “The word we’re getting from the hospital is that if Ms. Ashford recovers, it’s going to be a long time before she drives again, so I think we’ll just let that dog lay down and sleep.”
I restrained an impulse to slap him on the back and cry, “Good show.” Sewall was less impressed.
“She has the keys. Did she leave them with you, Warshawski?”
“I got here too late to talk to her,” I said. “I was wondering where her handbag was. I found a piece of paper she’d been writing on, something about seeing someone on a catafalque.”
“Oh, that catafalque crap!” Sewall snapped. “That was part of what she laid on Faith yesterday, she kept saying she’d seen him on the catafalque and then asking, well, I won’t repeat it, it’s too embarrassing.”
“Seen whom?” I asked.
“Oh, you know Leydon when she’s jumped the rails, who knows? It was all some jumble, some garbage she likes to taunt Faith with, about ‘the faith once delivered to the sinners,’ whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean! She says that all the time to my wife, and then yesterday she added on all this catafalque crap.”
“You weren’t here earlier, were you, Sewall?” I asked. “A witness heard Leydon shouting up on the balcony. They couldn’t tell who was with her.” If anyone, I added to myself; it was always depressingly possible that Leydon had simply been shouting.
The officer who’d made the remark about letting the dog lay down and sleep stopped what he was doing to look more closely at Sewall. “Were you here earlier, sir?”
“I was at my office in the Loop until thirty minutes ago. And I have a dozen witnesses, including a senior officer of the Fort Dearborn Trust, and one of my attorneys. We’re underwriting a bond issue and I did not need my damned sister derailing herself and my work right now.”
“Your sister may not live through the night,” the officer said. “You need to show some respect.”
One of the evidence techs strolled over. “We found some pill bottles. Risperidone and some vitamins. We’ll bag and tag just in case. Which one of you would be the responsible party, so we can get a signed receipt?”
“Do you have her power of attorney?” I asked Sewall.
“Faith—my wife—does. Did you find my car keys?”
“No, sir, but they may show up. This is a big space and it’s not easy to find things.”
Sewall turned to me. “What hospital did they take her to?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know—I suppose the one right here, but it doesn’t have a trauma center. You’d better call around.”
The cops took care of that for us: Leydon was at Mitchell Hospital here on the university campus, going into surgery to deal with damage to the brain. The hospital would be glad if Sewall stopped by to give them financial information.
“Her wallet isn’t here?” Sewall said. “It has her Link card in it.”
“Your sister is on public aid?” My jaw dropped down to my chest. “I thought she had a trust fund—”
“She does,” Sewall cut me off. “But she needs health insurance and she’s disabled.”
I clasped my hands tightly behind me. “You know, Sewall, it would be a really good idea for you to get over to the hospital and deal with them. Because I feel this horrible urge to break your nose and your ulna and all these other body parts you’ll need if you want to locate your Beemer and drive back to the North Shore tonight.”