“You’ve had a pretty rough night.”
McGonnigal’s voice held just the right level of concern. I tried not to imagine him learning how to talk to difficult witnesses like that at a seminar in Springfield-I tried to think he really cared about the horrors I’d been through. After all, we’d known each other six or seven years.
“A little exhausting,” I admitted.
“You want to tell me about it, or do you want to wait to talk to the lieutenant?”
So it was role-playing from a seminar. My shoulders sagged a bit farther. “If I tell you, will I have to repeat it to Mallory? It’s not a story I feel like going over more than once.”
“You know the cops, Warshawski-we never take any story just once. But if you’ll give me the outline tonight, I’ll make sure that does for now-get you home while there’s still a little left of the night to sleep in.”
Maybe there was a little personal concern mixed in. Not enough to make me tell the whole truth and nothing but-I mean, I wasn’t going to explain about the doctor’s medical texts. And certainly not Jurshak’s relations with Louisa. But after I’d pulled a crate over to the water’s edge and sat on it, I gave him more details than I’d originally planned to.
I started with the call from Dresberg. “He knew Louisa was important to me-my mother had looked after her when she was pregnant and they’d been pretty good friends. So they must have realized she was one person I’d come out here to help.”
“Why didn’t you call us then?” McGonnigal asked impatiently.
“I didn’t know how you’d manage a quiet assault. They had her in the back of the plant here-they’d simply have murdered her if they figured they were under attack. I wanted to sneak in here myself.”
“And just how did you manage that? They had a lookout where the road turns off to here and another guy at the gates. Don’t tell me you sprayed some amnesiac in the air and slid by them.”
I shook my head and pointed at the dinghy floating below us. The floodlights overhead picked up the incredulity in McGonnigal’s face.
“You rowed up the river in that? Come on, Warshawski. Get real.”
“It’s the truth,” I said stubbornly. “Believe it or not. Ms. Chigwell was with me-it’s her boat.”
“I thought you said they’d come here together.”
I nodded. “I knew if I told you the truth, you’d keep her and her brother here all night and they’re too old for that. Besides, she got shot in the arm, even if it did just graze her -she should have been in bed hours ago.”
McGonnigal pounded the crate with the flat of his hand. “You don’t have an armlock on empathy, Warshawski. Even the police are capable of showing concern for a couple as old as the Chigwells. Can’t you drop your sixties ‘Off the Pigs’ mentality for five minutes and let us do our job? You could have been killed and gotten the Djiak woman and your elderly friends knocked off in the bargain.”
“For your information,” I said coldly, “my father was a beat cop and I never in my life referred to the police as pigs. Anyway, no one got killed, not even those two pieces of shit who deserved it. Do you want to hear the rest of my story or would you rather get up in your pulpit and preach at me some more?”
He sat stiffly for a moment. “I guess I can see why Bobby Mallory shows up at his worst around you. I was bragging to myself that I was going to show the lieutenant what a younger officer with sensitivity training could do with a witness like you, and I blew it in five minutes. Finish your story -I won’t criticize your methods.”
I finished my story. I told him I didn’t know how Chigwell had gotten hooked up with Jurshak and Dresberg, but that they’d forced him to come along tonight to look after Louisa. And that Ms. Chigwell was worried about him, so when I showed up with my crazy suggestion that we row up the Calumet and sneak up on the plant from the rear, she jumped at the chance.
“I know she’s seventy-nine, but sailing’s been her hobby since she was a kid and she sure handled her oar splendidly. So then we got here, and we had a lucky break-Jurshak went into the plant and Dresberg walked off to check on the people in the ambulance. Who was in it? Is that who shot at you guys when you showed up?”
“No, that was the sentry,” McGonnigal explained. “He tried making a run for it. Someone got him in the abdomen.”
I suddenly realized that Caroline Djiak didn’t know where her own mother was. I explained the problem to McGonnigal. “She’s probably roused the mayor by now. I should call her if I can get back into one of the offices.”
He shook his head. “I think you’ve done enough running around for one evening. I’ll send a uniformed man over to her house-then she can get an escort down to the hospital if she wants. I’ll run you home.”
I thought it over. Maybe I’d just as soon not include a close encounter with Caroline in the night’s strains.
“Could we go pick up my car? It’s down on Stony a half mile or so.”
He pulled out his walkie-talkie and summoned a uniformed officer-my pal Mary Louise Neely. She saluted him smartly, but I could see she was eyeing me curiously. So maybe she was human after all.
“Neely, I want you to drive Ms. Warshawski and me down the road to pick up her car. Then go to the address she gives you on Houston.” He sketched the situation with Caroline and Louisa.
Officer Neely nodded enthusiastically-it’s a break to be signaled out for a special assignment from among so many. Even though it was just chauffeuring duty, it gave her a chance to make an impression on a senior man. She trailed behind us as McGonnigal went to tell Bobby what we were doing.
Bobby agreed reluctantly-he wasn’t going to contradict his sergeant in front of me or a uniformed officer. “But you’re talking to me tomorrow, Vicki, whether you like it or not. You hear?”
“Yeah, Bobby. I hear. Just wait until the afternoon-I’ll be a lot more cooperative if I get some sleep.”
“Yeah, princess. You private operators work when you feel like it and leave the garbage for the cops to sweep up. You’ll talk to me when I’m ready for you.”
The light was dancing in my eyes again. I had moved beyond fatigue to a state where I’d start hallucinating if I wasn’t careful. I followed McGonnigal and Neely into the night without trying to respond.
40
When Officer Neely had dropped us at my car, I dug the keys from my jeans pocket and handed them wordlessly to McGonnigal. He turned the car in the rutted yard while I leaned back in the passenger seat, releasing it so it was almost horizontal.
I was sure I’d fall asleep as soon as I lay back, but images from the night kept exploding in my head. Not the silent trip up the Calumet-that had already faded to the surreal world of half-remembered dreams. Louisa lying on the cart at the end of the plant, Dresberg’s cold indifference, waiting for the police in Chigwell’s office. I hadn’t been afraid at the time, but the recurring pictures gave me the shakes now. I tried clenching my arms against the sides of the seat to control the shaking.
“It’s aftershock.” McGonnigal’s voice came clinically in the dark. “Don’t be ashamed of it.”
I pulled the seat back to its upright position. “It’s the ugliness,” I said. “The horrible reasons Jurshak had for doing it, and the fact that Dresberg isn’t a man anymore, he’s an unfeeling death machine. If they’d just been a couple of punks jumping me in an alley, I wouldn’t feel this way.”