The dark is deep now. The building shadows have taken over the whole lake. The trees are as black as Purbeck marble. Beyond stands the gray wall of Chicago.
Lincoln Park Zoo is closing. Already, the parking lot is half empty. They’ve locked one of the big iron gates in front. People trickle out the other, in ones and twos and clinging clumps. The numbers dwindle. The people walk low at heel. Their limbs hang tiredly on them. Out comes an old man. His sweater hangs in two triangles above the baggy knees of his gray trousers. At his side capers a child, a tow-headed boy. They could have been Abraham and Isaac, age and youth, patience and vigor. They are coming this way, down this path. I toss out more bits of cracker. I want the pigeons to be as thick as autumn leaves when the boy arrives. I want him to charge into their midst and scatter them in a bleating flock.
The pigeons cooperate, but not the boy. He moves forward with the nudging caution of a car pushing through a flock of sheep. I smile gently at the boy as he and the old man pass me by. They round a hedge and head into a pedestrian tunnel beneath Lake Shore Drive. For some reason, I stand and follow. It is not their time to die. Not today. Not by my hand. Perhaps that is why I follow.
The gun is the charcoal color of the tunnel’s fitted stones, but it glints an even rod of light. The darkness behind it is an alcove, and a man in the alcove. The boy and his grandfather – I had decided that was their relationship – stand in at rigid attention, their hands held comically above their heads.
“Leave them alone,” I shout.
The gun swings toward me for a moment. “Fuck off.”
I continue into the tunnel, already five paces away.
“You fuck off.”
As I close on him, he shoots twice. I feel a strange, disjointed heat in my right hand, but don’t understand it until I swing a fist at the man and see meat and blood and bone slap limply against his face. My left has his gun. I kick him in the groin and wrench his gun away. I turn it and shoot, emptying the cartridge into him. Then, as an afterthought, I fling the hot gun at the gurgling fountain of blood that he has become. Turning, I gaze at the trembling, terrified child and his grandfather. I sketch an ironic bow and gesture them safely on their way.
It was all too familiar – the acoustic tiles, the peach-colored walls, the bed rails and plastic tubes and furtively beeping machines. At first, Donna thought she was awakening from a relapse of the coma, but the speech at the plenary loomed too large in her mind. Something had happened. Something dreadful. Her hand moved down to the mound of her baby. She felt the baby kick, awakening also. She also felt a dozen sore spots. At each one a bright-colored plastic pouch clung leechlike to a taped slit in her skin.
“It’s for the infection,” said a female voice. “It draws the seepage away from your organs.”
Donna glanced stiffly to one side and saw the short, red-haired doctor she vaguely remembered from her previous awakening. “Hello. I just woke up.”
“I just walked by,” responded the doctor, coming to sit at her bedside. “How are you feeling?”
“Wrung out.”
The doctor smiled. Her lipstick was the same hue as her hair. “That’s what we tried to do. Wring you out. The cleaner got all through your peritoneum.”
“In English?”
“Your abdominal organs were bathed in Windex for about three hours. We drained it off, but there was a layer of necrosis on the outsides of some of them. Your body is getting rid of the dead cells, and the little bladders here are drawing out the infection.”
“Windex. How the hell -?”
“He injected you. I think he was trying for the baby. It’s good he didn’t know what to do with a needle. By the time he got through your abdominal muscles, he thought he was into the uterus. He wasn’t into anything except a layer of fat.”
She said ruefully, “We can’t stop him. Nobody can stop him.”
“Well, apparently your baby can. He’s a fighter. The baby wasn’t touched by the stuff, except indirectly, through the effects of the coma.”
The doctor paused, her eyes compassionate above an apologetic smile.
“When I saw you were awake, I had the nurse call your chief. He’s coming up.”
Donna sighed, leaning back. “It’ll take an hour from Burlington.”
The doctor’s smile turned wry. “Actually, he’s coming up from the cafeteria. He’s been taking his lunch here ever since you landed here the second time. He gives a break to the guys stationed outside your door.”
Donna saw a head leaning around the corner and a brief wave before the whole doorway was eclipsed by a fat and red-faced figure. “There’s my girl!” came Biggs’s ebullient greeting. “I had a feeling you’d wake up today.”
“You’ve said that every day,” the doctor replied. The chief’s bruin body seemed to be crying out for a hug, and Donna lifted her arms toward him. He swallowed her in his hearty embrace.
“I’m so glad you’re back with us.”
Donna drew back, and he released her, standing upright. She smiled. “Hi, Chief. It’s good to be back.” She glanced down at the lumps beneath her nightgown, where the little plastic bulbs clung, and began to cry.
“I’d heard pregnancy was a bitch, but-”
He laughed. “You’re back, all right.”
Miserable, she asked, “How many days this time?”
“Three. Just a long nap.”
“And in that time, you’ve caught the Son of Samael, and the killing is all over, and he’ll never touch my baby again?”
He glanced toward the thickly waxed floor. “Afraid not. Still, it doesn’t look like he’s killed while you were under.”
Sadness deepened across her face. “What happened, Chief? He wasn’t supposed to be able to get to me. Not anymore. What the hell happened?”
Behind rags of red on his cheeks, Biggs looked white.
“I’m sorry, Donna. It won’t happen again. He’ll be in prison soon enough.”
She sighed, leaning wearily back into her bed. “If he’d succeeded, it would all be over. Maybe killing me and the baby would have won him his wings back.”
Biggs looked both dismayed and hurt. “No. Don’t talk like that. We need you, Detective. Besides, I’ve got a better plan.”
“A plan? Something proactive, I hope.”
“You could say that. Your funeral is planned for a week and a half from now.”
“My funeral?”
“He’s been reading the papers, Donna. He knew about you waking up last time, about you talking at the plenary, and about the baby. Now he’s going to find out about you dying. You and the baby.”
“Would he fall for that again?”
“He doesn’t have to fall for it completely – just want to find out. We’ll set up a big funeral – dress blues and everything. Cops from three counties. We’ll even have a twenty-one gun salute. A eulogy for you and the baby. He won’t be able to resist.”
“Why a week and a half? Isn’t that a long time to keep me on ice?”
“You’re not going to ‘die’ until next week. We need time to organize this down to the last detail. We’re going to have a hundred cops there and fifty trained spotters, sharpshooters, dogs, the works. He’ll find himself in the center of a beehive.”
“He’s smart. He’ll know it’s a trap.”
“Maybe, but will he be able to resist? I’m betting he won’t.”
“I want to be there,” Donna said, putting on a brave face and struggling to sit up higher in the bed. Every one of the plastic bladders pulled achingly. “I know him better than anyone else. Besides, it’d be nice to sneak up on him for a change.”
“I knew you’d say that. I also knew you’d be invaluable there. This guy’s become a master of disguise. To catch him, we’ll have to let in a lot of pedestrian onlookers, and we’ll need every eye we can get. Yes, you’ll be there – part of the reason we need the extra time for you to recover well enough to walk. But you’ll be armed, and disguised, and wearing a wire and microphone, and guarded by three men.”