We All Fall Down (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

Donnie Quin swung off Randolph’s restaurant row, cruised east on Washington, then south on Clinton. He looped past the Blue Line stop, under the highway, and headed north again on Jefferson. Three blocks later, he pulled over. There was a homeless man draped over the curb, facedown, near an overpass. Usually Donnie would keep driving, but this guy was lying in the street. Less than a half mile from Old Saint Pat’s, no less. Donnie shoved the envelope he’d gotten from the valet into his glove box, grabbed his flashlight, and walked across the street. The wind was raw, its greedy fingers tearing at his jacket.

“Hey.” Donnie nudged the bum with his nightstick. Nothing. Donnie ran his flashlight up and down the block. Not a soul in sight. He bent over the bum again.

“Hey, asshole.” This time Donnie put his size eleven and a half boots to good use in the man’s ribs. Still, the bum didn’t move. Fuck. The last time Donnie actually squatted was seventy pounds ago, and the kick in the ribs already had him winded. So the cop took his time, finally managing to take a knee beside the bum and roll him over. His face was fish-belly white, a thin tracing of blue around the lips. Donnie took off a glove and felt for a pulse. The bum was dead, which wasn’t the worst news in the world. Alive meant ambulances and follow-up interviews and all that bullshit. Dead meant a ride to the morgue, a couple of forms, and done. Where bums were concerned, dead was definitely better.

Donnie tugged the body into the dark recesses of the underpass and took another look around with his flashlight, this time checking the upper windows of the nearest apartment buildings. Everyone and his brother had a camera shoved up their ass these days, and Donnie didn’t need any of that shit. Fuck it, he could always say he was just looking for an ID.

Donnie checked the man’s hands and wrists first, then around his neck. People would be surprised at how many of these homeless fucks wear rings, watches, necklaces, every goddamn thing. This one, unfortunately, was clean. Donnie unzipped the red Bulls jacket the corpse was wearing. Donnie’s twelve-year-old loved the Bulls, but he wouldn’t love the smell of this coat. From inside the jacket, Donnie pulled out a couple of newspapers the departed had used for insulation against the cold. Then the cop found an inner pocket and a wad of cash, wrapped up in a piece of notebook paper and bound with a rubber band. Donnie gave the roll a quick count—all singles, maybe thirty dollars total. He slipped the money into a pocket and reached for his shoulder mike to call in the body. That was when he heard a noise.

“Chicago police.”

Donnie splashed light across some bushes at the far end of the underpass. He caught a glimpse of what looked like a green army jacket and a pair of red Converse sneakers. Someone was trying to stand and run. Donnie couldn’t have that. Not with all the cameras people had these days.

“Hold it right there. Police.”

Donnie got all two hundred eighty-four pounds moving as fast as he could in one direction, crashing across the street and belly flopping into the bushes. Whoever he was, the interloper’s face kissed Chicago cement. Donnie rode him into the gutter and gave him an asphalt face wash for good measure.

“Didn’t you hear me identify myself?”

The second bum was younger than the first, and in better shape only in the technical sense: he was alive and the other wasn’t.

“That your friend over there?” Donnie gripped the man with both fists and shook. Dark lines scored the man’s cheeks, and there was a hunger circling his lips. Even in the cold, Donnie could feel heat radiating from the man’s skin. He let the rough coat slip from his grasp.

The man dropped back into the loose gravel and exploded in a fit of coughing: huge, ragged bursts, hauled up wet from the lungs and leaving the man exhausted. Donnie took a step back. The bum uncovered his face and looked up at the cop. His grin was a red and sticky thing.

“I saw what you did to my friend. Dirty fucking cop.”

Donnie cracked the bum across the side of the head. His face snapped to the left and bounced off a frozen piece of rebar. Donnie plodded forward. His fingers found the man’s throat. Donnie lifted and squeezed. A pair of red Cons dangled in the early morning light.

“What did you say?”

Ropy lines of saliva hung from the man’s open mouth. Donnie put a fist over it. Then he pushed hard up against the cracked cement of the underpass. The bum’s eyes gripped him, and Donnie could feel the first stirrings of fear, irrational and unbidden, uncoiling inside. It was kill or be killed time. And somehow, the cop knew it.

He leaned into the job, closing off the man’s nose with his other hand and taking him to the ground. The man clawed at the cop’s back, and Donnie could hear his legs thrashing against the scatter of rocks and dirt. Yellow eyes danced in the half darkness, but Donnie didn’t waver. The scratching got weaker. The legs stopped moving. The eyes began to jitter and fade, losing focus before, finally, unthreading altogether. Donnie knelt over the man and felt his own heart slow. He didn’t know why he’d done it. Just that it was the right thing, maybe the best thing he’d ever done. He checked for vitals, a hint of breath. Then he brushed the man’s eyelids shut and dragged him over to join his companion.

Donnie radioed dispatch and told them he had two bodies for the morgue—apparently dead from natural causes. He waited in the warm cruiser for the coroner’s wagon. He was supposed to go out for beers after his shift, but figured he’d take a pass. Donnie had two more things to take care of. After that, he just wanted to go home and crawl into bed.

CHAPTER 5

Danielson walked back into the room without his briefcase. Trailing behind him were two women. Both in their mid-thirties. Both seriously scientific.

The first was maybe five seven, with long limbs and an athlete’s shoulders hidden under a lab coat. Her skin looked like coarsened marble, her hair black and cut loose to the shoulder. She had a large mouth, a square chin, and a nose that was probably longer than she liked. Her deep-set eyes were polished to a high shine and slid smoothly in my direction. She was sizing me up, whether for a drink or a specimen jar, I wasn’t sure. But she was sizing me up.

The second woman was maybe five three, round almost to the point of squat, with curly red hair and a face full of sun and freckles—the dubious look of someone who liked to camp. She had a mouth that moved, even when she wasn’t speaking, and her eyes were dangerously alive—two electric blueberries plopped in a couple saucers of heated milk.

I stood as the two settled. Danielson took a chair and waved his hands toward the women.

“Kelly, this is Dr. Ellen Brazile. She’s working with us on this.”

The taller of the two stood up. “I’m Dr. Brazile.” She pointed to the redhead. “This is my associate, Dr. Molly Carrolton.”

We shook hands all around. Danielson tapped his fingers on the table impatiently. When we were all seated again, Danielson flipped open his cell.

“Where are they?” he said and listened to whoever was on the other end. Then he grunted and hung up.

“We need to wait a minute.” Danielson talked to the two scientists as if they were the only other people in the room.

“Who are we waiting on?” I said. Danielson continued to ignore me, so I got up and poured myself some coffee.

“Anyone want any?” I held up the pot. Ellen Brazile kept her eyes focused on a stack of paperwork she’d pulled out of a briefcase. Molly Carrolton shook her head.

“We can’t have coffee.”

I poured some cream into my mug and stirred.

“Want to know why?” Carrolton said.

I didn’t really want to know, but there she was, perched and pert, looking like she wanted to climb inside my ear and collect a sample from my prefrontal lobe. I figured it was best to play along.

“Why?” I said.

“We work with live pathogens, so we get our blood scanned every week. Just a precaution. Caffeine throws off the diagnostics on some of the tests. We can have limited amounts of dairy, but cream is, like, pushing it.”

“That’s very interesting,” I said.

“We drink a lot of Diet Coke. Caffeine free.” Carrolton smiled. I smiled back and moved down the table, sitting a few seats closer to Danielson. The man was an asshole and might like to pop his colleagues when they became inconvenient, but he didn’t work with viruses that could wipe out half the world in a single exhale. And he didn’t have to get his blood screened like Count Fucking Dracula.

“Who are we waiting on?” I said for the second time. Just then the door opened.

“Thanks for coming, Mr. Mayor.” Danielson stood up and stuck out his hand. John J. Wilson gave him two flaccid fingers and scanned the room, taking in the two women before fastening on yours truly.

“Kelly. I was wondering if you’d be here.”

The mayor took a seat at the end of the table. In his wake floated a gray smudge of a man whose features seemed to collect in a holding pattern and hover at the mayor’s shoulder.

“This is Mark Rissman,” Wilson said. “My chief of staff and acting city counsel.”

The smudge moved to a corner and sat. Danielson gestured to the two scientists sitting to his left. “I believe you know everyone, Mr. Mayor, so why don’t we just get started.”

Molly Carrolton used a remote to lower the shades on two picture windows and to dim the lights. The wall across from me began to glow, and I realized it doubled as a flat screen. A series of images appeared before settling on a picture of a black box about a foot long and a foot high. Ellen Brazile stood and began to speak.

“This is an early bio-warning device we’ve developed called the Canary. As some of you know, we placed three such devices in strategic locations along the CTA’s Blue Line.”

“An early warning device?” I said, and glanced at the mayor, who didn’t flinch. Danielson motioned for Brazile to continue.

“These devices are prototypes,” Brazile said, “and thus I caution that their reliability is problematic. If I could give just a little background?”

Brazile gave a cursory look around the room and continued.

“The Canary continuously monitors its environment, putting random air samples into contact with human cells, B-type cells, that are specifically engineered to trigger when they detect certain pathogens. The Canary can identify thirty different pathogens within three minutes of their release, including anthrax, plague, small pox, tularemia, and E. coli.”

Danielson creaked forward in his seat. “Do we have the uplink?”

Brazile touched the screen. The image of the Canary dissolved into video of a CTA subway stop, deserted save for a stack of silver crates piled in the center of the platform. A man clad in a white space suit appeared at the corner of the screen. He walked across the platform, holding some sort of instrument in his hand.

“You’re looking at a live feed from the Clinton subway station on the Blue Line,” Brazile said. “Three hours ago, the city was kind enough to shut it down for maintenance work. An hour before that, one of our Canaries located two hundred yards down the track line registered the possible presence of a pathogen.”

I felt a cold flush in my body. Four hours ago. I looked around the table and realized I was the only one standing up.

“Sit the fuck down, Kelly.” That was Danielson. “We told the city about the reading ten minutes after we got it.”

I glanced at Wilson, who nodded.

“The Canary, as Dr. Brazile explained, is a prototype,” Danielson said. “As such, it’s got some flaws. Among other things, it occasionally triggers for fossil fuel compounds. Gasoline, oil, shit you might find floating in a subway tunnel. We expected it, and now it’s happened.”

“Now what’s happened?” I said.

“A false positive,” Danielson said. “Most likely, the result of some sort of oil-based vapors.”

“Oil-based vapors?” I turned to Wilson. “Is that what you think?”

The mayor shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “We’re very concerned, hugely concerned, about the safety of the people of the city of Chicago. That is our primary focus.”

Rissman was peeking inside his briefcase. Ten to one he had a recorder in there, taking in every word. I guessed it wasn’t the only recorder in the room.

“As Mr. Danielson knows,” the mayor continued, “I expressed concern about these devices when they were put in. I especially expressed concern about the need for them and whether we shouldn’t shut down the subway system at that time for a full sweep by a team of experts. Mr. Danielson, however, felt that wasn’t the best approach.”

Danielson had slumped sideways in his chair, eyes half closed, index finger and thumb working his lower lip.

“Today,” Wilson said, “the city will hand-deliver a letter reiterating our concerns and our desire that the entire matter be made public so the people are aware of this potential threat.”

“We’ve discussed this, Mr. Mayor.” Danielson was up again, walking the length of the room and running a hand through thinning hair. “If we go public with things like this, we’re guaranteed widespread panic. Not only will it create a problem for your police force, it will make the job of the people who have to investigate these threats infinitely more difficult.”

Danielson circled back around the mayor. Wilson sat like a bullfrog in the weeds, watching the room without seeming to, waiting for his breakfast to fly just a little bit closer.

“Mr. Mayor?” Danielson’s voice cracked with frustration.

“Our concerns are outlined in the letter, Agent Danielson. We shut down the Blue Line stop this morning and stand ready to do whatever else you need to neutralize whatever threat might exist.”

“Meanwhile, your ass is covered either way.”

“That’s not how we do things in Chicago.” Wilson actually smiled when he said it. Then he poured himself a glass of water and took a sip. Danielson sat down again and let his chin hit his chest.

I pointed to the live feed on the screen. “Can we get back to this? What are you doing, and why are we sitting here?”

Danielson pulled a folder off the table and opened it. “Twelve minutes after the first reading, I authorized Dr. Brazile to begin her evaluation.”

“And?” I said.

“And that’s what we’re doing,” Brazile said.

“All due respect, that was four hours ago.”

Danielson flipped his folder shut. “Dr. Brazile is not here to explain herself to you.”

“Think of it as practice for the congressional hearing.”

Wilson coughed at the end of the table.

“Our first priority,” Danielson said, “was to get people out of the subway without creating a panic. The Canary that triggered was collected and is being examined as we speak. These aren’t fucking parking meters, Kelly. This shit takes time.”

“So why do you need me?”

“First intelligent thing you’ve said all morning. Dr. Brazile is about to lead a small team into the tunnels. She will analyze initial data from air and soil samples and confirm that we’re looking at a false positive. She will also be deploying another prototype device, designed to seal off the tunnel areas and render any pathogen that might be present ineffective.”

“And?”

“I want you to go down with her team and provide security.”

“Security from what? You said the subway was shut down.”

“There will be a significant amount of valuable technology in that tunnel. A lot of proprietary equipment used by Dr. Brazile and her staff. I want someone down there with some training. Someone to watch their back.”

“What’s wrong with the feds or the Chicago PD?”

Danielson shook his head. “I told you—this is nothing more than a fire drill. You let a Chicago cop down there, and it winds up on the front page of tomorrow’s
Trib
. Unfortunately, the same concern applies to the federal agencies in town.”

“And you trust me to keep my mouth shut?”

Danielson thinned his lips. “Actually, I do. Mr. Mayor, we’ll call you as soon as we have confirmation that the subway is clean and work out a schedule to reopen closed portions of the system. If everything goes smoothly, I would expect trains to be up and running by rush hour at the latest.”

Danielson cast a final look around the room. “Last thing. No one, outside of the people at this table and Dr. Brazile’s team in the tunnel, knows the details on this. So if there’s a leak, we’ll track it quickly, quietly, and ruthlessly. Am I clear?”

Brazile and Carrolton nodded. Wilson waved off the threat and stood up. I took another sip of coffee and wondered. Everyone in the meeting knew more than I did. Probably a lot more. Still, they wanted me to tag along, play a part in their game. So I would. Just in case the geniuses got it wrong and really did need a man with a gun.