It ignored Tonya and the policemen and darted at Don again. This time, Tommy stepped in front of it. He pulled his aluminum bat out of the sling on his back as his feet found their sweet spot. He brought his hands down almost leisurely, the bat swinging in slow motion behind him. Until time sped up. The barrel whipped down and connected with the front shoulders of the rat the way a freight train connects with a stalled VW Bug.
The rat slapped into the wall with a soft crunch and a smear of red. The ballplayer in Tommy was still very much alive, as he elegantly followed through with the swing, eventually letting the right hand fall away, ending in the pose that had made Kimmy fall in love with him as she watched from the bleachers their sophomore year.
“You can put it on the board.... YES!” Don roared, mimicking the Sox play-by-play man Hawk Harrelson. He slapped Tommy on the back. He yelled down at Tonya and the policemen, “We weren’t kidding when we said we don’t fuck around.” He hung his arm over Tommy’s shoulders as they looked down at the rat. He called back to the group, “Uh, yeah. Clean-up on aisle fourteen. You’re gonna need a big sponge and a bucket to clean this shit up.”
Instead of Captain Garnes or Tonya though, they heard an icy voice behind them. “Do you realize that you’ve just destroyed an extremely valuable scientific specimen?”
CHAPTER 23
3:17 PM
August 11
Ed pulled up behind a uniform laundry van and a Streets and San truck. Sam eyeballed the two vehicles. “Any more and we could start a parade. Busy day in City Hall.”
Inside, everyone was agitated, yelling into cell phones. There was one officer waiting at the front desk. Ed showed him his star and signed in, explaining, “We’re here for a prisoner transfer.”
The cop behind the desk looked skeptical. “They sent a couple of detectives for some old woman? It’s not like she tried to shoot Derrick Rose or anything.”
Ed nailed him with a dead-eyed stare.
Sam, still sore over the bullshit assignment, said, “Fuck you care?”
The cop shrugged. “Fine, whatever.” He picked up the phone. “She’s in the lockup on the county side.”
Ed and Sam moved down the hall. The cop did a good job ignoring Sam’s glare, so Sam stopped, until the cop didn’t have a choice but to look over. Now Sam could be the one to shake his head first, as if dismissing the younger man.
Another cop standing at the top of the escalator stopped Ed from going downstairs. “Sorry, buddy, this part of the building is temporarily closed.”
Ed blinked. “Why?”
The cop hesitated. Ed oozed law enforcement from his pores, but the cop couldn’t be sure. “I don’t have any exact details at this time, sir.”
Ed had to pull his star out again. “Unless there’s some deranged fucknut down there with a gun, I’m going downstairs. Thank you, officer.” He stepped onto the escalator.
Sam passed the second cop, still shaking his head.
They heard somebody with a deep Chicago accent arguing loudly with a thin, sharp voice. The argument got louder. Ed and Sam followed the clamoring voices and turned into a hallway. A knot of Chicago cops and an attractive woman in a tight suit blocked the view of the rest of the hallway.
They got closer, moved through the cops, and Sam got his first look at Dr. Reischtal.
A tall man, somewhere around his early fifties. Wearing a doctor’s lab coat, buttoned to the top. Tiny round glasses, giving his eyes a perpetually narrow look, as if he was zeroing in wherever his gaze landed. Arms held loose, left hand clasped tightly over the right at his waist.
“—has absolutely no bearing on the fact you have just committed a serious felony crime.”
The big guy in the Streets and Sans uniform snorted in disgust. “And I keep saying, we did our job.”
Assistants in protective gear and surgical masks were placing a mangled dead rat into a container with its own air filter. Despite this, the soldiers took Sam’s attention. Three of them, wearing National Guard uniforms. Sam squinted, wondering if he should start bringing his reading glasses with him on the job. He cursed himself for the thought, but something wasn’t quite right with the soldiers. The uniforms were too new.
Ed and Sam got closer. All of the soldiers carried at least one sidearm, some kind of knife, and an assault rifle stowed on a sling behind them. Sam realized that they weren’t AR-15s; he didn’t even know what the hell these were. Something exotic. Fancy. Expensive. More details jumped out. They all wore knee pads. Sophisticated throat mikes. Wireless earbuds.
“Look pal, you’re barking up the wrong tree here. You oughta be talkin’ to my boss, you know, the guy who sent me here.” The big guy in Streets and Sans uniform wasn’t as tall as the doctor, but he might have weighed twice as much. Classic Chicago build. Mustache too. Hawks hat, the whole nine yards.
The other Streets and San guy was much younger. Clearly the quiet half of the pair. Maybe a couple of years out of high school. Didn’t appear to be college material, except maybe on a sports scholarship. He had the build of a shortstop, low, lean, and quick. Cold eyes. The handle of an aluminum bat stuck up from behind his head in some harness.
Sam gave a small smile. It was always the quiet ones you had to watch out for.
“If you think you can hide behind your pathetic job, my dear friend, I can assure you that I will see to it that your bosses crucify you,” Dr. Reischtal said. The guy was so cold Sam was surprised a hailstorm didn’t accompany each word. “I will see to it.”
Ed pushed through the knot of cops and said, “Perhaps I can be of assistance.” He wearily pulled his star out for the third goddamn time in five minutes. “Detective Ed Jones. This is Detective Sam Johnson.”
Dr. Reischtal tilted his head at the detectives. “Ah. I am . . . familiar with your work.”
Sam glanced at the dead rat, Tommy’s bat, and the blood on the wall. “Seems to me what we got here is a situation of a couple of Streets and San workers doing their job.” He stared at Dr. Reischtal. “You got here late.”
The techs glanced at Dr. Reischtal and showed him the lights on the container. They glanced at the mess on the wall and more blood on the floor. Dr. Reischtal gave his head a short shake. “This mess is not ours. Leave it to them to clean it up.”
As the techs headed for the escalator, Dr. Reischtal turned to the detectives and the Streets and San men and held his head so that the fluorescents caught his glasses. His eyes crackled with white energy. “Understand this. You will all be held responsible. I will see you again.”
CHAPTER 24
3:19 PM
August 11
The running joke among the cleaning women at the Clark Adams Building was that Herman Smith looked like a Muppet that belonged on Barrio Sésamo. His body was covered in short fur, and his face was all mustache and eyebrows. He wasn’t a large man, but when he got to yelling at anybody he thought was underneath his position, he would puff his chest out and bounce on his toes, trying to make himself more physically intimidating.
The women had a pool going about his age; everybody had put in five bucks and given their best guess. Estimates of his age ran anywhere from thirty-five to fifty-eight. They knew he’d changed his name, as his former name was some unpronounceable jumble of consonants, but nobody had gotten a look at his records yet, so the pot was unclaimed. Apart from their curiosity about his age, they didn’t like him much. He refused to help out upstairs, preferring instead to remain by himself in his basement.