“You’re such an asshole, McGlade.”
“You love me. Admit it.”
“I admit nothing. I-”
A sound, to the south. Mechanical. Rumbling. Growing louder.
“A helicopter.” McGlade shielded his eyes from the sun and peered into the distance. “Son of a bitch.”
“I’ll second that.”
As it came into focus, I saw it was a Chicago police chopper, coming at us fast. Real fast. I looked at my watch. We had fifteen seconds left.
“WE DON’T HAVE TIME TO LAND!” the megaphone boomed, and I’d recognize that voice anywhere.
Herb.
“GRAB THE LADDER! WE CAN ONLY MAKE ONE PASS!”
Harry and I watched as a rescue ladder unfurled below the landing skids. The bird swooped in low, the bottom of the ladder sparking against the pavement. It was coming so quick, it would knock out our teeth, or yank our shoulders from our sockets. I decided I could live with either.
At nine seconds until detonation, the ladder hit us with the force of a car wreck. I’d been aiming to get my arm in between the rungs, and I did it, getting a smack in the chest that knocked the wind out of me and probably broke a few ribs. I was jerked off my feet, and so was Harry. The helicopter began a rapid ascent, but it was too fast, too much G force, too much wind resistance, and I just couldn’t hold on.
My grip failed, and as I began to fall I wondered what would kill me first, the ground or the explosion.
CHAPTER 43
4 SECONDS
I DIDN’T FALL.
McGlade-stupid, offensive, obnoxious McGlade-wrapped his legs around my waist in a fireman rescue, and I squinted through the rushing air and saw his mechanical hand locked tight onto a ladder rung.
We climbed even faster, the treatment plant getting smaller and smaller until the cloud cover made it disappear. I held on to Harry’s waist, and looped an elbow around the ladder.
And then the world exploded.
It wasn’t a bang. More like a whoomp. Beneath the clouds came a searing flash of light, and then a wall of hot air and detritus, which rocked the whirly-bird like a toy boat in a hurricane. We tilted to the side until the ladder was actually higher than the propeller, back the other way, and into a spiral that once again broke my grip, but not Harry’s. I squeezed my eyes shut, unsure which way was which, only that I was alive for a little while longer and damn grateful for it.
Then the storm passed. The chopper regained control and began a steady descent that took a tremendous amount of strain off of my muscles and joints, making hanging on almost child’s play. We crept down past the clouds, and I looked toward the treatment plant and saw a giant column of smoke where it used to be. But the houses to the west, and the businesses to the south, seemed intact. It was strangely quiet, and I realized the explosion had knocked out my hearing, which for some reason was more peaceful to me than frightening.
We landed on the country club green, though it wasn’t actually green anymore. Sludge and waste and debris was spewed across the golf course, making it look like a dump. It was still coming down from the sky too, a foul black drizzle mixed with smoke and tiny bits of dirt.
When my feet touched land I cried out in pain from five different places at once, but I was in better shape than McGlade. His prosthesis was soaked in blood, which had leaked from where it was attached to his stump, and his shoulder was noticeably dislocated. Eyes closed. No movement at all. But his legs remained locked around my waist.
“Harry!” I yelled, barely able to hear my own voice.
A dozen things flashed through my mind. Had he been hit by some shrapnel? One of the nails from the bomb? Some sort of internal injury? A fast-acting disease from the raw sewage he’d flopped around in?
I gave McGlade a shake, and one eye peeked open.
“Is it over?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Did we live?”
I nodded again.
He smiled. “For a moment there I thought we were in trouble.”
I smiled back. “Nice work, Sundance.”
“You so owe me some sex.”
I disentangled myself from Harry and managed to stand up, albeit painfully. A few yards away, the helicopter powered off and a beaten-up Herb hopped out. He hobbled over to us, his face awash with concern.
“Jack! Are you okay?”
He came to me, approaching slowly, and I threw my arms around his shoulders and hugged him.
“Thanks, Herb.”
I felt his strong arms patting my back. “Somebody’s gotta save your ass.”
After the male-bonding, I pulled away and sized him up. Herb didn’t look much better than I did-skinned knees, bleeding head, torn shirt.
“What happened?” I asked.
“A little car trouble. Nothing serious. I was lucky my phone didn’t break; I wouldn’t have been able to call for the chopper.”
I heard a very faint sound. It was music, some heavy metal song from the eighties.
“Speaking of.” Herb pointed. “Your pocket.”
I stuck my hand in and pulled out Harry’s phone, surprised it had survived. I’d have to pick up one of these things.
“Daniels,” I answered.
“Lieutenant? Is that you? It’s Hajek, at the crime lab. Are you the one that sent me the fingerprint from this phone?”
“Yeah. What have you got?”
“I got a trace. It belongs to a postal worker named Carey Schimmel.”
I knew that name.
“He was the guy who delivered the extortion letter to the superintendent’s office, the one covered in BT.”
And it suddenly made sense why the Chemist was so paranoid about leaving prints. Postal workers are government employees, and they get fingerprinted when they’re hired. Schimmel’s prints were on file. I remembered his brief statement, and then wanted to kick myself.
“He said he wore gloves. But there were no other prints on that letter, other than from people at police headquarters. Dammit, how did we miss that?”
Hajek groaned. “It was staring us right in the face. A dozen people in the post office would have touched that letter, left some prints. But none of them did, because Schimmel was the only one who handled it. Did we even check to see if headquarters was on his route?”
“No,” I said, feeling like an ass. “Does he have a record?”
“No, he’s clean. But I’ve got his current address. He lives in Forest Glen.”
That was a Chicago neighborhood on the north side, only a few miles away.
“Call the super. Get a warrant. We’ll be there in two minutes.”
“Hold on, I’m sending you a JPEG of his driver’s license picture.”
I shared the information with Herb, and the chopper pilot, a woman called Leaky. She radioed base to get coordinates. Next, I approached Harry, who appeared to have successfully snapped his shoulder back into place, but not without consequences. He was moaning, and tears had left some clean trails in the filth on his cheeks.
“Got any morphine on you, Jackie? Or crack?”
“You’ll get some help soon, Harry.”
“Going to drop me off at the hospital?”
“No. You’re staying here.”
“No I’m not.”
“We’ll send an ambulance for you.”
“I’d like that, but I have to come with.” He pointed to his mechanical hand, still locked on to the ladder rung. “It won’t come off.”
Against Herb’s protestations, we helped McGlade into the bird.
“No grab-ass,” Harry warned him.
“I’ll try to restrain myself.”
“No reach-around either, Sir Eats-A-Lot.”
“I did save your life. How about a thank-you?”
“Be honest. The reason you came charging in here so fast is because you thought I had a cruller in my pocket.”
“God, you’re an asshole.”
Once we were airborne, I played with Harry’s phone and managed to access the Internet. After sifting through an extraordinary number of e-mails that involved porn, much of it the chunky booty variety, I found the picture from Hajek. Carey Schimmel was an average-looking white male, thirty-five years old, dark blond hair, and brown eyes. I remembered those eyes. They were the same eyes I saw in Records.