CHAPTER 38
9 MINUTES
WE WASTED TOO MUCH TIME trying to start the truck. McGlade tore open the steering column housing and tried crossing several different wires, but all he accomplished was turning the dashboard lights on and off.
Herb stuck his head in the door. “It’s the red wires.”
“I’m crossing the red wires. It isn’t doing anything.”
I watched the timer count down and felt myself getting sicker and sicker.
“Are you sure they’re crossed?” Herb said.
“They’re crossed! You want to squeeze your fat ass up here again and take a look?”
“You’ve got the truck in second gear.”
“It’s supposed to be in second gear. If you don’t stop bugging me, I’m going to stick my claw so far up your-”
From behind us: “Is there a brown wire?”
Someone else had joined the party. A tall woman, young, brunette, tattoos on bare arms, named Renée Davidson. Bernice had apparently gone off and brought back someone who knew what the hell she was doing.
“Yeah,” McGlade said. “There’s a brown one.”
Davidson climbed onto the foot platform, next to the driver’s-side door.
“The red ones are the ignition wires, the brown one is the starter wire. Strip the brown one and touch it to the reds.”
“Stripping is kind of a problem one-handed. Porky had to strip the other ones, and he almost got stuck.”
“Let me give it a try,” Davidson offered.
“Sure. We won’t have to grease your hips first.”
McGlade scooted over. Davidson removed the folding knife clipped to her belt, bent under the steering wheel, and five seconds later the truck coughed and roared to life.
“The steering column is still locked,” she said. “You won’t be able to turn unless you break the mechanism. It’s in the ignition.”
“That I can do,” McGlade said. He held his claw over the key switch and said, “Close.” His hand crunched down on the mechanism and cracked it off.
“Can you drive a truck?” I asked Davidson.
Her shoulders slumped. “I’m here with my kids. I can’t take the risk. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t look too sorry, but I really couldn’t blame her. I thanked her for the help and watched her jog off. Herb checked his watch.
“I’ll meet you there, Jack. My car is parked about three blocks away. I have to get moving.”
“Good luck,” I told him.
He nodded, and then hurried into the crowd.
“Don’t run!” McGlade called after him. “Don’t risk the heart attack!”
I ran around to the passenger side, grabbed the side bar, and swung myself up in the seat. I considered putting on my seat belt, and decided there was no point when I had forty thousand pounds of high explosive five feet behind me. Harry closed his door, adjusted his seat, then played around with his side mirror. He glanced over at mine.
“Jackie, can you tilt your mirror forward just a bit?”
I cranked down the window, reached for the mirror, and froze. There, plain as day, was a perfect latent fingerprint, gracing the lower right-hand corner of the mirror glass. The Chemist’s? He’d been fanatical about not leaving prints, but had he gotten a little careless? Especially since he figured the truck would be obliterated in the explosion?
“Jackie, the mirror.”
I held the back and nudged it forward an inch.
“Is that better?”
“I have no idea. Your big gray head is in the way.”
“Just get moving, McGlade.” I fished through my purse, looking for my eye shadow.
“Sure. Get moving. Okay. Let’s see. Gas… bring up the RPM… clutch… neutral… neutral… dammit, Jackie, help me get this into neutral.”
He was trying to use his fake hand, and his claw kept sliding off the shifter ball knob.
“Where is it?”
“The middle.”
I fought with the stick and popped it into the center.
“Okay, I’m hitting the clutch, put it into first.”
I did, and the truck jerked and then began to groan and shudder without actually moving.
“Oops, I’m doing something wrong.”
The truck wasn’t moving, but the engine revved into the red zone and the cab began to bounce.
“McGlade, it’s probably not a good thing to shake up the bomb.”
“I’m thinking… Hold on…”
“Harry-”
“Shit! The trailer hand brake.” He gripped another stick, pulled it back, and the truck lurched forward. “My bad.”
He drove us off the patch of dirt and down the path Murray had cleared, into the throng of people. I found my eye shadow and dabbed the applicator into the purple powder. I was lightly dusting the latent print on the mirror when a tremendous piercing sound shook the floorboards, almost causing me to drop my brush and wet myself. It was McGlade, tugging on the pull cord for the horn.
“Dammit, Harry, I thought we blew up.”
“These people need to get out of my way.”
I peered out the front window and saw a man in a wheelchair in our path, twenty yards ahead.
“Watch out for the disabled guy.”
“I see him.”
We closed to within ten yards.
“You’re heading right for him.”
“He needs to move.”
Five yards. McGlade blared the horn again.
“HARRY!”
We bumped the man, and he went careening off to the side at a very high speed.
“Jesus, McGlade! You hit him!”
“He should have moved faster.”
“He was handicapped!”
“It’s not like I did anything to make his life any worse. He already couldn’t walk.”
My cell phone buzzed, and I picked it up.
“Daniels.”
“Jim Czajkowski told me to call you. I’m Dalton Forrester from Northside Treatment. You’re bringing a bomb to my plant?”
“That’s the idea, Dalton.”
“We supply close to two hundred thousand homes and businesses with fresh water. If you blow up the facility, they could be without water for weeks.”
“Simple math, Dalton. People without any water is a better deal than water without any people. Have you evacuated your staff?”
“Yeah. I was the last one to leave. I’m heading home to my family, five miles away. Is that far enough?”
“It should be. What’s the best place to drop off this payload?”
“It’s a truck, right? Avoid the settling tanks. Those are the round ones. They aren’t very deep, and there is skimming machinery that you could get stuck on. You should sink it in one of the aeration pools. They’re square, about an acre wide, twenty feet deep. That’s where the microorganisms eat all the organic solids. When you turn into the plant off of Howard, go left, to the west. And good luck getting here-the roads are all blocked off.”
Czajkowski moved fast. I thanked Dalton, hung up, and went back to dusting. McGlade hit the horn again, and I heard someone scream.
“Old lady,” Harry said. “I think I missed her. Mostly.”
“McGlade, you need to-”
“Turning onto Pratt. It’s going to be tight. Hold on.”
The truck smacked into two parked cars-sending them off into opposite directions as if they were toys-jumping the curb and screeching onto the asphalt, beelining for an office building straight ahead. McGlade wrestled with the steering wheel, and we kissed the brick wall, pulled past, and then straightened out onto the street.
“Okay, I’m going to turn onto Hamlin. Get ready to shift. Ready?”
I had turned my attention back to the latent on the mirror. The eye shadow wasn’t fingerprint powder, but it had done a fair job clinging to the oils and making the ridges stand out.
“Jackie! You with me?”
“Yeah, Harry. Say when.”
“Okay, gas… clutch… neutral… shit!”
Ahead of us on Hamlin was a gridlock of cars, none of them moving.
McGlade hit the brakes, and the tires squealed, but the truck groaned and didn’t slow down.
“The hand brake!” he yelled, his claw bouncing off the stick.
I looked out the side window and watched, horrified, as the trailer kicked out to the side and the truck began to jackknife.
CHAPTER 39
6 MINUTES
SERGEANT HERB BENEDICT, gun in hand, jogs up the sidewalk, past one idling car after another. His own car is pinned between three others, impossible to drive. The streets are jammed, and nothing is moving. It’s like all of Skokie has become a giant parking lot.