Lorna dresses quickly. His shirt is too big, and the pants are too long and tight at the hips, but after she tucks this in and tucks that in and puts on the sheriff department jacket and snap-brim hat, she takes a look at herself in the rearview and is pleased by the transformation.
Next, Lorna gathers up four more guns – she can’t find the one the Fed threw into the grass – and a pair of reflective sunglasses. She brings it all into the dark sedan and starts the engine.
Blessed Mercy Hospital is less than ten miles away. Lorna puts the car into gear and hits the gas. It’s the first time she’s driven in over a decade, and it’s almost as exciting as shooting all of those pigs.
Lorna fiddles with the car radio, and finds a station that plays country. She hums along to an old Hank Williams tune.
The hospital is a mess of activity. There’re media folk around, all over the roads, and Lorna drives past them and into the parking lot. She leaves the car by the ER entrance, counting seven police cars before she goes inside.
There’s a handful of pigs in the lobby. Two of them eye her. She walks past, ignoring them, trying to imitate the cop swagger she’s seen so many times. The nurses’ station is hopping, and Lorna lets out a shrill whistle to get a little girly’s attention.
“Where’s Kork?”
The nurse gives Lorna a foul look. “Down the hall, to the left. Room 118.”
Lorna tips her hat, slightly large for her head, and walks into the ICU. There are two cops guarding Bud’s room. One is asleep in a chair. The other gives Lorna a lazy glance.
Lorna removes the hand from her pocket, the hand holding the Sig, and jams it up into the cop’s armpit. She pulls the trigger three times, but only two bullets fire. The cop flops over, and Lorna glances at the gun and sees the barrel is all gunked up with blood and little bits of stuff. She drops the weapon and reaches for another, a.45 AMC tucked into her belt, which she levels on the sleeping cop’s head just as he opens his eyes.
Lorna’s knuckles are the last thing he sees. She fires once, then steps into the room.
Bud is sitting up in bed, a goofy grin on his face.
“Hello, my love.”
“Hello, Bud.”
She tosses him a gun from her other pocket, then fishes out the handcuff keys she got off that cop at Rosser Park. Handcuff keys are universal, and she unlocks Bud’s thin wrist.
Bud shoots at someone in the hall, and Lorna knows that cops’ll be all over the place soon. She aims at the window and puts three rounds through it, then uses her foot to kick the spiderwebbed glass onto the lawn.
“We gotta go.”
Bud fires again, and Lorna drags him over to the window and shoves him through. She follows him out and looks around, trying to get her bearings. The parking lot is fifty yards to the right.
They run for it.
Neither Lorna nor Bud are in the best physical condition, but fear is a powerful motivator, and they make it to the car in under ten seconds. From first shot fired until now, less than a minute has passed.
Lorna expects the parking lot to be swarming with pigs, but the two cops she sees are running inside the ER. They probably think she’s still in Bud’s room.
“Keep your head down, Bud.”
Lorna pulls out of the parking lot, forcing herself to drive slow and careful and not attract attention. She drives past all the reporters, turns on the road to the interstate, and merges onto the expressway.
“I knew you’d come for me, Lorna.”
She reaches down, patting his bald head.
“Family takes care of its own, Bud. We help each other.” She wrinkles her brow, trying to remember what to do next.
“We gotta ditch the car, get you some clothes.”
“And then what?”
“Then we got a score to settle in Chicago. Against that bitch cop who took away our Charles.”
She presses in the car’s cigarette lighter.
“I want her alive, Lorna. She’s a sinner, and needs to be taught the error of her ways before we send her to meet her Maker.”
“We’ll teach her, all right, Bud. She’s gonna repent all of her sins. By the time we’re through, she’ll be repentin’ other people’s sins.”
The cigarette lighter pops out. She hands it to Bud, the end glowing orange.
“Here you go, baby. Play with this while I think.”
There’s a sizzle, and a squeal, and a smell like bacon frying.
Lorna smiles.
It’s good to have her Bud back.
CHAPTER 39
I WAS QUESTIONED for over six hours.
I’d forewarned Holly that the fastest way to get through it was to tell the truth. Which is what I did. It meant disclosing I’d taken a civilian to Indiana to interrogate a suspect, and then snuck her into the Cook County morgue – neither of which were recommended police procedure.
But stopping a serial killer still counted for something in the eyes of the state’s attorney, and Caleb Ellison was indeed a killer.
Besides the grisly tableau in his basement, Caleb had almost twenty snuff videos, many of them duplicates of Charles Kork’s collection, but some of them new. Caleb had been smarter than Kork – he’d kept his face out of the picture – but not by much; weapons he’d used in the movies were discovered in his apartment. The camcorder seemed to be a match. Caleb also had a collection of Polaroid snapshots of posed murder victims, one more revolting than the next.
Another interesting bit of evidence was discovered in his bedroom – a cache of Michigan driver’s license templates, and the equipment and software to create fake IDs, including an algorithm program that generated accurate driver’s license ID numbers based on name and date of birth.
Checking his database uncovered several aliases for Caleb Ellison and for the recently deceased Steve Jensen. Background checks on these aliases revealed criminal records; their paper trails had ended several years ago because they’d committed their recent crimes and done their time under false names. We still had no idea what had dissolved their partnership, or what prompted Ellison to kill Jensen so horribly. But psychos really didn’t need much provocation.
The Crime Scene Unit, and the Feebies, had practically moved into Caleb’s apartment, continuing to gather evidence and build a case against a corpse.
I was finally cut loose at four in the morning, without charges filed against me.
Even at that late hour, the media had camped outside the station, and in a rare moment of lucidity I gave a decent statement.
“The Chicago Police Department is a meticulous, highly tuned crime-fighting machine, unlike how it’s portrayed on certain television shows. Stopping Caleb Ellison was the result of the hard work and dedication of dozens of officers, from the superintendent on down.”
Maybe that would score me some brownie points.
Once home, I unplugged my phone, fended off a cat attack, took a long shower, slapped on some burn cream, tugged one of Latham’s old T-shirts over my head, and crawled into bed.
I was exhausted, but unable to relax. Sleep mocked my attempts, keeping me awake with thoughts of Caleb’s basement, of my mother, whom I hadn’t visited in a few days, of Herb, of Harry’s wedding, which I had to get ready for in just a few hours, of Holly, who was still being questioned as far as I knew, and still hadn’t bought a wedding dress.
I managed about ten winks out of a possible forty, and at nine a.m. I got up to face the day. It began with a call to Herb, who was being prepped for his bypass surgery.
“I saw it on the news this morning. You’re catching psychos without me. I’m obsolete.”
“Sorry, Herb. Next time I’ll wait until you’re feeling better before I do my job.”
“I appreciate it.”
“How was my sound bite? Did I look okay?”