Police cars screamed in. Pierre arrived with a team from the private security firm Tintrey, the FBI alongside them. By then we had found Bernie, where the thugs had tossed her bound body. It was Mitch and Peppy who led me to her: the goons had dumped her in the mud along the edge of Dead Stick Pond. Mr. Contreras tried to follow us to Bernie, but he was too dazed and exhausted; he collapsed onto the backseat of the Taurus. The hard hats, guys who’d been working on the barges below us on Lake Calumet, were talking excitedly to the cops, helping them hoist the thugs into squad cars.
Bernie was still alive, but with a very weak pulse. My own exhaustion was overwhelming me; I fumbled at her bonds with thick clumsy fingers until one of the hard hats saw what I was doing and came to my aid. A sheet of gray water seemed to envelop me, making it hard for me to move or think. I could see Mitch and Peppy anxiously lick Bernie’s face and hands but couldn’t decide if that was good or bad and couldn’t move my arms to stop them.
Pierre appeared and pushed the dogs away, lifted Bernie. I saw his mouth move but couldn’t hear any words. A helicopter materialized and Pierre and Bernie shimmered away into it. The water pulled me down, into the grasses, the mud, the rusting cans. No more responsibilities. How good it felt to drown.
FIFTEEN-DAY DL
I was out for the better part of two days. The concussion I’d suffered under Wrigley Field, the lack of rest, the more-than-strenuous race around Chicago had me unconscious long before an ambulance drove me to Beth Israel Hospital. Lotty’s anesthesiologist gave me a cocktail that kept me deeply asleep while the worst of my wounds healed.
For once, I slept dreamlessly, no nightmares about tar pits or Stella Guzzo. It was only when I woke the next night, feeling Lotty’s fingers on my wrist, that the fears came tumbling back in on me. Bernie, Mr. Contreras—I’d watched him collapse—but I’d passed out instead of helping him. The dogs, the thugs.
Lotty looked at me with wry sadness. “I’m tempted to put you under again, Liebchen, if you’re only going to wake up to frenzy. Your neighbor is recovering. He was dehydrated and exhausted—he went through a heavy workout for a man his age. For anyone of any age, even for you. As for Bernadine, she, too, is on the mend. She isn’t my patient, but the doctors at the University of Chicago who have been treating her tell me she is tormenting herself with guilt over putting you and your neighbor in peril.”
Lotty sat on the edge of the bed, brushing my hair back from my face, her black eyes glittering with unshed tears. “When you come to me like this, wounded, my heart stops: I don’t want to be the one to outlive you. But if you hadn’t torn yourself apart, Bernadine would be dead. I’ll never be able to balance what you do to yourself to save others with my own need for you to save yourself, but I promise to stop adding to your torment by chastising you for it.” She stopped, smiled wryly and added, “I will try to stop.”
I squeezed her fingers. “What happened to my dogs?”
“The dockworkers who saved you before the police arrived seemed to have taken charge of the dogs, as well. Your neighbor wouldn’t let me hospitalize him until he knew they were safe. Jake went to South Chicago to collect them. He’s boarding them in the place he says you always use.” She made a face. “He said it’s called doggie day care—because you are convalescing, I will spare you my opinion of that.”
I laughed weakly and fell back into sleep while she sat next to me. When I woke again, Lotty was gone; a nurse had roused me to warn me that the police and an FBI agent were on their way up to my room.
I felt at a disadvantage in my hospital gown, grubby and unkempt. I made them wait while I wobbled into the bathroom and rinsed my face and hair. Jake had brought over some clean clothes, a pair of his own jeans, since I’d trashed all three of mine, and a rose cotton top, which made me look almost soft, graceful—a useful piece of misdirection in speaking to the law.
Conrad looked ostentatiously at his watch when I emerged. “You can spare a few minutes now? Must be nice to take off for R and R when you feel like it, instead of sleeping standing up the way I’ve been doing.”
“Like an elephant.” I sat cross-legged on the bed.
Derek Hatfield, from the FBI, looked startled. “Elephant?”
“They sleep standing up. I expect if you’d been shot in the head and kept going so you could rescue a kidnap victim, the department would let you take a break. At least twenty minutes. Take it up with Captain Mallory. What can you tell me?”
“Wonder Woman saves the city again.” Conrad was only half jeering. “You got some major bad boys way out on a limb they can’t climb back from. The Sturlese brothers and Boris Nabiyev, they were the goons who tried killing you and the Fouchard girl. Their alibis—the flu, being on job sites—unraveled like my mother’s knitting, once we flashed some warrants around. They didn’t really have any interest in any ancient papers, just wanted to get a couple of meddling women out of the way.”