“You don’t die from a separated shoulder,” I noted, my knees pinning down Stanley’s arms. “Or broken fingers. Or a broken wrist. Does that wrist seem broken to you, Stan?”
I figured a fractured right wrist worked nicely with broken left fingers, making either hand unusable for a weapon, now or later. Stanley’s eyes were squeezed shut and he was moaning with pain. He was probably approaching shock. Tori was probably right.
“You’re going to give him a heart attack,” she said.
“Stanley. Stanley.” I smacked at his cheek lightly. “The bombs, Stan. What are you planning to bomb and when?”
Stanley Keane was fading in and out now. He was probably in excruciating pain. I’d gone overboard. I’d let my anger take over. But I didn’t care.
“Stop this, Jason. I may have found some things. Let’s go,” Tori said. “Please.”
“Go to the car,” I said. “You don’t need to be around for this.”
“No. I’m not leaving without you. Let’s go.”
“Not yet.” I got off Stanley and dragged him into the living room and propped him up in a chair. I went into his kitchen, grabbed a glass and filled it with water. When I returned to the living room, he was slumped forward, his chin resting on his chest, his breathing shallow.
I took a drink of the water, because I was thirsty. Then I threw the rest in his face.
It helped a little. He shook his head and managed to raise his eyes to mine.
“You decide when this ends,” I said. I removed the slippers from his feet. “Next up, I’m going to smash your toes into ground beef,” I said, showing him my boots.
“No, Jason. Stop this!” Tori shouted.
“You have… no idea,” Stanley mumbled.
“I know your company sold the nitromethane and Randy’s company sold the fertilizer. I know you’re building a bomb. And so do the feds. You know how the G is, Stan. You’ve probably given this a lot of thought. They’re a step or two behind, because they’re building a case for a search warrant and all that, but they’ll get there. You’re done. They’re on to you. There’s no way you and Randy and whatever nutjob group you’re a part of is going to get away with this. So tell me what you’re planning to do, and when, or walk with a limp the rest of your pathetic life.”
“I… don’t… need to know.”
I paused. So he was saying there was operational security, and only the game-day players would know the details. Always a good strategy to maintain confidentiality.
“You know plenty, you piece of shit.” I gripped his shirt. “I’m not leaving until you tell me.”
I didn’t really want to smash his toes. But this was my chance to learn some things. Maybe my only chance. So I threw him another shiver, reminding him of how much his shoulder hurt.
He let out a low cry, something primitive, a wounded animal, then he fell against the arm of the chair seething through his teeth. Now, I thought, I was hitting the limit. He wasn’t even crying out anymore, just panting and moaning. Too many things hurt all at once.
“You’re going to tell me. Since it looks like you’re about to pass out, I’m going to cut to the finale. The finale is I go to the kitchen, grab a butcher knife, and cut off your balls. You’ll bleed out on this chair while I watch.”
I looked at Tori, who stared at me with her mouth hanging open. She wasn’t sure what she was witnessing, or whom she was witnessing. I wasn’t either, not at that moment.
I gave her a faint shake of the head, indicating I was bluffing. It didn’t change the expression on her face.
Stanley swallowed hard, then his eyes grew vacant. For a brief, panicked moment, I thought he had died. But he hadn’t died. He’d simply grown calm.
“I’m… sorry,” he mumbled. “So… sorry I wasn’t… there for you.”
“Sorry about what?” I asked, shaking his arm.
His face contorted. Tears came from nowhere and rolled sideways down his face, as his head lay on the arm of the chair.
“I miss you so… much,” he said. “I’m coming… to you… I’m coming…”
“He’s going into shock,” Tori said. “We need to get him to the hospital.”
I looked back at Stanley, who was looking in my eyes. “Kill me,” he said, with a surprisingly strong voice. “It doesn’t mat… matter any… anymore.”
“Tell me, Stanley. Whatever you’re doing, it has to stop.”
My tone had instantly changed from punitive and taunting to a plea. This man, I now realized, wasn’t going to talk. I could waterboard him and he wouldn’t crack. Whatever he was doing, he was committed to it.
What was he talking about? Some tragedy in his life? I didn’t know. But I did know that I wasn’t going to get him to talk, and I couldn’t just leave him here.
I scooped him up in my arms and headed for the door.
83
Tori found the nearest emergency room with her iPhone. I burst in and got someone’s attention right away. I told them my uncle had tried to move a refrigerator down to the basement by himself and he’d fallen down the stairs. I figured fractures to the wrists and hands, and a separated shoulder, told that kind of a story.
Stanley could tell a different story if he wished, but I couldn’t see him doing it. His hands were pretty dirty. Why call attention to himself?
I took the medical paperwork with me to a chair and then walked out of the place. Tori had the SUV running outside, and I jumped in.
“That… wasn’t right,” she said to me.
“I agree.” I looked right at her. “You shouldn’t have stopped me.”
“That’s not what I-”
“I’m trying to save lives, Tori. This guy’s plotting to bomb something. I don’t have time for touchy-feely ACLU bullshit. You’re feeling sorry for that asshole?”
“That’s not the point-”
“It most certainly is the fucking point. What, you think I enjoyed that?”
She didn’t answer. Which was an answer in itself.
“Okay, so now I’m the sociopath,” I seethed. “I beat up a homegrown terrorist and I’m the bad guy. Lock me up, but let him plot a mass murder.”
She looked away. “Let’s just go home,” she said in a more subdued tone.
“Yeah, let’s do that. Thanks for coming along, Tori. You were a real help to the cause.”
She didn’t respond. There wasn’t much left to say. I wasn’t the least bit sorry for what I’d done. I only regretted that I didn’t get more out of him. In fact, I got basically nothing, other than confirmation that I was on the right track.
We drove awhile, back onto the main roads, and then the highway. I was exhausted from the adrenaline drain. My head was pounding, and my knee suddenly remembered how much it hurt.
“What’s in the gym bag?” I asked. “What did you get from the upstairs?”
“Anything I could sweep off his desk,” she answered. “A pile of papers that I didn’t have time to look at.”
“What about his cell phone or computer?”
“He didn’t have a laptop that I could see. Just a desktop that I couldn’t have carried if I wanted to. No cell phone that I could see. Really, I didn’t have time, Jason. It sounded like you were killing him downstairs.”
I didn’t have the energy to rekindle a civil-liberties debate. I just prayed like hell that she had found something good.
84
When we got back to my hotel room, I dumped everything out of the blue gym bag Tori had taken from Stanley Keane’s office upstairs. My initial optimism quickly dimmed as I pored over Stanley’s telephone and cable bills, a letter from his health care provider, a summary of year-end payroll for his company, and a notice from Publishers Clearing House informing him that he may have just won a million dollars.
But before I got to a second makeshift pile that appeared to contain similarly irrelevant stuff, my heart did a flutter. Among the pile was a pocket-sized map of the city’s downtown.
I unfolded it and spread it out on the table. It was limited to the commercial district, bordered to the west by the north-south bend of the river and to the east by the lake, covering twelve city blocks with the east-west leg of the river cutting it roughly in half.