The Dispatcher
Author: John Scalzi
Date: 2016-10-04 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; mystery; Fantasy; Thriller
Description: One day, not long from now, it becomes almost impossible to murder anyone—999 times out of a thousand, anyone who is intentionally killed comes back. How? We don’t know. But it changes everything: war, crime, daily life. Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher—a licensed, bonded professional whose job is to humanely dispatch those whose circumstances put them in death’s crosshairs, so they can have a second chance to avoid the reaper. But when a fellow Dispatcher and former friend is apparently kidnapped, Tony learns that there are some things that are worse than death, and that some people are ready to d
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Rights: Copyright © 2016 by John Scalzi. All rights reserved.

The Dispatcher Copyright © 2016 by John Scalzi.

All rights reserved.

Dust jacket and interior illustrations Copyright © 2017

by Vincent Chong. All rights reserved.

Print version interior design Copyright © 2017
by Desert Isle Design, LLC. All rights reserved.

Electronic Edition

ISBN

978-1-59606-787-5

Subterranean Press

PO Box 190106

Burton, MI 48519

subterraneanpress.com

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

I take it as a given that no one really likes to see me in my official capacity. But Dr. Chao seemed more annoyed than most when I showed up for the open heart surgery she was performing.

“Tell me that’s not the person I think it is,” Chao said, to Sheila Reeves. Reeves, a hospital administrator, had accompanied me into the scrub room. Chao was scrubbing up and after the initial glance refused to look at me. Several other members of the operating team were in the scrub room as well, prepping for the operation; they seemed happy to be thinking about other business.

“Helen,” Reeves began.

“You know my policy on non-essential personnel in my operating room.”

“He’s technically not non-essential.”

“Yeah?” Chao said, and then addressed me, without looking my way. “You. What’s your name?”

“Tony Valdez.”

“And you’re a doctor, right? A specialist in heart surgery.”

“No.”

“An anesthesiologist, then.”

“I’m not a doctor of any sort.”

“Then you’re a nurse. A surgical nurse.”

“No. I’m not a nurse either.”

“So, not a doctor, not a nurse.” Chao pressed a dispenser with her elbow to get more soap on her hands. “Seems like he has no reason to be in my operating room, Sheila.”

“You know that’s not how it works, Helen.”

“It’s my operating room. It is how it works.”

“The insurance company insists on it. If he’s not in the operating room, they won’t pay.”

Chao glowered quietly for several seconds. I stood, also quiet. Years of practice told me the best thing to do in moments like these is not to speak unless spoken to.

Which I was, a second later. “Where’s Jimmy Albert?” asked another woman, to me. She was hovering over Chao, which made me assume she was a nurse or assistant of some sort. “Jimmy’s usually the one of you who works this hospital.”

“He was called away on a personal emergency,” I said. “Or that’s what he told me. I was on call this weekend so this got handed to me.”

“You’ve worked hospitals and operations before,” Reeves prompted me.

“Of course. A dozen hospitals at least and hundreds of operations. It’s our primary job responsibility at this point.”

“And how many people have you killed, doing your ‘job’?” Chao asked me. I could hear the quotation marks around the word ‘job’ in her voice.

“None so far. That’s actually the point of my job, Dr. Chao.” I had gotten her name from the assignment sheet I’d received a half hour earlier. Being on call meant catching up quickly. Notes from others who had worked with her mentioned she had a tendency toward hostility, which is why I stopped by Reeves’ office and asked her come up with me to the scrub room.

“This is crap, Sheila,” Chao said. She was done scrubbing and turned off the water with her elbows. “You know it’s crap. Check my record. I’ve never had cause for one of them,” she jerked her head in my direction, “to interfere with my work.”

Reeves had one of those set looks of patience that suggested to me that this was not the first time she’d had this discussion with Chao. “It’s not up to me, Helen, and you know it. The insurance insists on it. The family signed off on it. The law says that we have to allow him to be present in the operating room.”

“And to interfere with the operation.”

“He’s allowed to intervene if necessary, yes.”

“Intervene, hell. Interfere.” Chao jabbed an elbow at me. “This jackass has no medical experience at all. He’s not even a nurse—no offense,” she said to the nurse near her, who gave the briefest of nods, “and you’re trying to tell me he’s in some way competent to make a medical judgment?”

“I checked his rating, Helen. He’s exemplary in all categories. Across the board.”

“And that means exactly nothing, because he’s not a doctor. You’re taking away my right to give the best care I can to my patients, and all you have to say to me about it is ‘the insurance insists on it.’ It’s crap, Sheila. It’s crap and I shouldn’t have to work this way. No surgeon should have to.”

“You and I don’t disagree, Helen. But the point is it doesn’t matter whether I agree with you or not. It doesn’t matter if you like the policy. We have to allow him into the room. If we don’t and something goes wrong, the hospital is open to being sued for negligence. And so are you. We have this argument every single time. It doesn’t change.”

“You could make it hospital policy not to allow them in surgery at all.”

“We could, yes. And then we’d go bankrupt because insurers wouldn’t refer their patients to us and the U.S. Government wouldn’t allow us to handle Medicaid cases. As you know.”

Chao stared angrily at Reeves and then finally looked over to me. “Your name again,” she said.

“Tony Valdez.”

“Where’s your instrument?”

“I was told there was one in the operating room already.” I looked over to the nurse by Chao, who nodded.

“When you’re in the room, I want you well out of the way.”

“I always am.”

“I don’t want to hear a peep out of you. No talking to the team unless you’re directly spoken to.”

“Fine.”

“If you distract any of us I’m going to have you hauled up in front of a review board so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

“I understand.”

“If you do anything I deem disruptive I’m going to have you thrown out of the room.”

“Helen,” Reeves began.

I help up a hand and looked at Reeves. “It’s all right.” I turned back to Chao. “Doctor, I get it. You don’t want me here and you don’t want me getting in your way. And I agree. I shouldn’t be getting in your way, or in the way of your team. You have my word that I am going to stay out of your hair. Like I said, I’ve been present at hundreds of operations. I’ve gotten very good at making like a hole in the air. It’s not my job to get in your way. You’ve said it yourself, you’ve never needed one of us to step in. In which case, you won’t even know I’m here. You can get in, do your job, and get out without acknowledging I’m even in the room. I don’t mind.”

She glowered at me some more. “What do you do while we work?”

“Sometimes I read a book off my cell phone.”

“I don’t allow cell phones in my operating rooms. They’re a distraction and they can introduce pathogens.”

“Then I’ll stand around quietly.”

Chao was now fully prepped for the operating room. She looked over again at Reeves, gave me the barest of nods, and then turned and went away to get gowned and gloved, starting what was obviously her plan to ignore me through the rest of the day.

Reeves looked over to me. “Sorry about that.”

I smiled. “I’m used to it.”

“I suppose you might be. I don’t imagine you’re very popular with surgeons.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Is it because you remind them of their failures?”

“It’s because I remind them they’re not God,” I said. “And that if there is one, I’m closer to Him than they are.”

In Hour Seven the operation went to hell.

It wasn’t Chao’s fault as far as I could see. The patient was seventy-eight years old and, from what I read from the case file I was given, was not a great candidate for surgery anyway: old, frail, and had more than one operation before. In my opinion this operation wasn’t going to make him any better. All it was going to do was make sure the time he had left was going to be more awful. He was going to be recovering from massively invasive surgery rather than doing anything else he’d want to do with his life, which was probably anything else.

But Chao was right. I’m not a surgeon, or a doctor, or a nurse. I could be entirely wrong about the value of this particular operation. I wasn’t involved with, or didn’t pretend to understand, the intricacies of what they did with their hands inside the open cavity of this man’s chest.

All I had was my experience observing hundreds of operations, and at least a couple dozen just like Chao was now attempting. When the patient was wheeled into the room and my observation of him dovetailed into what I knew from the case file, my gut told me that the good doctor’s streak of not needing someone like me in the room was going to end.

To be fair to her, for six hours she was quite competently proving me wrong.

But Hour Seven was about the patient’s body showing Chao there was a limit to what competence could do confronted with a body that was actively trying to self-destruct. The patient began to react to the anesthetic. Then he began to seize. Then it became clear that the patient, as sometimes happened with open heart surgery, was having a stroke.

All of this happened within five minutes.

Chao was a good surgeon as far as my layman’s eye could see—good in the chest, good with her hands and good, if short, with her team. But after a few minutes of this, it stopped being about her or her obvious talents. It was about whether anyone anywhere could save this patient from the death that was so clearly on its way.

During these five minutes of turmoil, I was doing what I had been doing for the previous six hours: standing there quietly, being the hole in the air I promised Chao I would be. The difference was now I was no longer just standing. I was waiting. Waiting for the sign that would tell me it was time to get involved.

I waited, relaxed. It wouldn’t be long now.

A minute later, the scrub nurse, Jenny Soto, glanced over at me. The glance was almost certainly unintentional; you could probably say it was involuntary. It was my cue nonetheless. In an operating room, no one looks at me—no one looks at anyone in my profession—until they’re absolutely sure we’re going to be needed.

Soto looked over, and I knew. It was time.

I walked over to one of the storage tables in the room, the one I knew my instrument was in. The instrument was about eighteen inches long, thin, and curved, wrapped in packaging so that it would be sterile until the moment of use. We called it the applicator. Next to it, also wrapped in packaging, was a capsule containing compressed nitrogen, and a cartridge with what we simply called the payload. All of the terms we used were as neutral as humanly possible. I retrieved each of these, put them on top of the storage table, and began unwrapping them.

Behind me the operating room had become a frenzy as Chao and her team struggled to keep their patient alive. The patient clearly had other ideas on the matter. I could hear the rattling as the patient jerked and spasmed on the table—whether because of an interaction with the anesthesia or as a side effect of the stroke I couldn’t say. I turned, my instrument fully assembled, and watched their activity for a few more minutes. Then, when I thought it was time, I walked up to the operating table.

Chao saw me coming and wasn’t pleased. “Back off.”

“Call it, doctor.”

“Get out of my operating theater.”

“Your patient is beyond saving, Dr. Chao. You need to call it.”

“I said get out!”

“Doctor, until you call it, I can’t do my job.”

“I don’t need you to do your goddamned job.”

“Dr. Chao,” I said, as gently as possible. “This isn’t about you. And you’re killing your patient.”

Chao swore and backed off from the table. There was dead silence for a moment. Chao swore again and kicked a storage table. It rattled with her fury.

Then she turned back around and faced her team.

“I’m calling it,” she said, and looked at the clock on the wall. “Patient deemed unsalvageable at 15:13. 3:13 p.m.”

“Thank you, doctor,” I said. Then I turned to the anesthesiologist, Dr. Osirio. “Remove the tubes from his mouth and throat, please.” He did.

I nodded to Nurse Soto. “You assist me. Everyone else stand back.”

Soto stayed. Everyone else stepped away.

I returned my attention to Soto. “You’ve done this before?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then this should be quick. Open the mouth, please.”

Soto reached over and gently opened the patient’s mouth, which was slack and mostly lifeless. “Do you want me to move the tongue out of the way?” she asked.

I shook my head. “It’s not going to matter.” I positioned myself for best access and then slid the applicator into the patient’s mouth, resting the end against the soft palate. I wedged the nearer end of the applicator against the lower jaw, to offer a bit of leverage. I looked up at Soto. She nodded and backed up a step.

“Delivering the payload,” I said, and pressed the button to prime the release. Some newer versions of the applicator automated the entire process and handled it by phone app, but I preferred manual control of the event. I waited the five seconds until the payload was primed, and pressed the button again.

The applicator released a burst of compressed nitrogen, forcefully driving the payload capsule through the soft palate and into the patient’s brain. After two seconds the applicator chimed, signaling it had received data from the payload confirming it was lodged in the brain.

“Activating the payload,” I said, and pressed the button a third and final time.

The payload exploded in the patient’s brain, killing him instantly.

I had purposefully and intentionally killed a man. I was the direct and immediate cause of his death.

That’s who I am. That’s my job.

I’m a Dispatcher.

Soto came back up to the table. “How long now?”

I opened my mouth to answer and the patient disappeared; there was a “pop” and a brief inrush of air as it moved to fill the void previously occupied by a body. Only the body disappeared. Everything else—the intubation tubes, the catheters and IV lines, the thin medical blankets draping the body—collapsed onto the operating table.

Eight years of doing this, and that never stops being weird.

I pulled out my cell phone and made a call.

Chao, several feet away, looked outraged. “I said no cell phones.”

I looked over to her. “Doctor, with all due respect, it hardly matters now.” Chao’s face twisted up and she pushed out of the operating room. Everyone else stayed.

“Agency retrieval,” a voice said on the other end of the line.

“Tony Valdez,” I said. “Dispatcher 1717.”

“Go ahead.”

“I need a confirmation on a client, named Allen Ostergard. I dispatched him home roughly a minute ago.”

“Please hold.” There was a click and smooth jazz came on the line. I looked over to Soto. “I’m on hold.”

“Does that happen often?”

“It usually takes a couple of minutes to confirm delivery.” Soto nodded. That made sense to her.

The voice came back on the line. “Dispatcher 1717.”

“Yes.”

“Confirm the client was successfully dispatched, and is at home. He is awake, aware and resting comfortably. Congratulations on a successful dispatch.”

“Thank you.” I hung up and looked at the remaining team. “The patient made it. He’s fine. I’m guessing you might be seeing him again here.”

Soto smiled. “Maybe not with Dr. Chao as the surgeon.”

I smiled back. “No, maybe not.”

A few minutes later we had all left the operating room and I had found my way to the floor’s staff lounge. While I was not hospital staff, I felt that after a successful dispatch I deserved a cup of coffee. And I needed a place to do up my paperwork.

As I poured my coffee, Sheila Reeves, the hospital administrator, entered the room with another woman.

I smiled at Reeves. “You’ll be happy to know that your patient survived his procedure, although not in the way that either he or Dr. Chao was hoping.”

Reeves didn’t smile back. Instead she pointed to me and looked at the other woman. “That’s him,” she said, glanced over at me, and left.

“Tony Valdez?” the other woman asked, coming up to me.

“That’s right.”

“I’m Detective Nona Langdon. Chicago Police.” She flashed her badge, not that I would know it from a fake one you could get in a costume shop.

I looked back over to where Reeves had just been, and then back over at Langdon. “Is this about the dispatch I just performed?”

“A little.”

“Look, I get that Dr. Chao got her surgical gown in a twist about it, but everything went exactly to spec. You can ask any of the rest of the team. Start with Soto, the scrub nurse.”

“Mr. Valdez, it’s not about that.”

“You said it was about the dispatch.”

“It’s about James Albert, the dispatcher you substituted for.”

I blinked. “Okay. What about Jimmy?”

“He’s gone missing, Mr. Valdez.”

“What?”

“His wife came home and their house was broken into. There are signs of a struggle and there was blood on the carpet. We’ve tentatively identified it as his.”

“Jesus.”

“Did you speak to Mr. Albert today?”

“Of course. He called me to sub in for him.”

“We think you were the last person to talk to him before he disappeared.”

“Jesus,” I said again, and took a sip of my coffee. And then grimaced.

Langdon noticed the grimace. “How’s the coffee?”

“It’s terrible.”

“I know a place where we can talk. The coffee there will be better, I promise. Come on. First cup’s on me.”

“How long have you known James Albert?”

I set my coffee down and looked over at Detective Langdon. She had steered us to a cafe on North St. Clair, a block south from the hospital. We were sitting in the al fresco part, meaning the cafe had carved out some of the sidewalk for its own use.

“Jimmy,” I said. “He hates being called James.”

“So you know him well enough to know that about him.”

“Anyone who knew him more than five minutes would know that about him. It was pretty much the first thing he ever said to me.”

“And when was it that he said that to you for the first time?”

“When we started dispatcher training. About eight years ago.”

“So you two were some of the first dispatchers.”

“We were the second class here in Chicago, yeah.”

“Are you close?”

“We’re friendly,” I said. I picked up my coffee again and blew on it. Langdon had her own cup, but she wasn’t touching it.

“Define ‘friendly.’”

“Meaning I’ve been to his house and he’s been to mine. I know his wife. He knows mine, or did until I got a divorce. We’ve been bowling. That sort of thing.”

“Friendly but not too close.”

“That’s right.” I drank from my cup.

“So why did he call you to sub in for him at the hospital?”

“That didn’t have anything to do with me in particular. I was on call.”

“Explain that.”

“Well, you know what being ‘on call’ is.”

“I get the general concept. Explain what it means for you in particular.”

A bus rolled by, making a bunch of noise as it squealed to a stop in front of us; I waited until it rolled away. “Dispatchers work the hospitals,” I said. “Insurance companies work with the Agency to make sure we’re in the room for high-risk operations like the one today, and otherwise we’re often stationed in the building in case we’re needed in the ER or somewhere else.”

“Okay.”

“So, usually the same dispatcher works the same hospital for a while. It’s easier that way and everyone gets into a schedule. Jimmy’s been working Northwestern for about three months now. But like everyone, once in a while he’s got something else on his schedule and he can’t make an appointment. So it goes to whichever dispatcher’s on call. Today that’s me. Jimmy called me to confirm and make sure I had the files.”

“You don’t have your own hospital to work?”

“I used to do the University of Chicago hospitals, but right now I’m between regular stints. So I’m on call instead. It’s like being a substitute teacher.”

“Well, except that you kill people.”

“They come back,” I said. “Mostly.” I took another sip of my coffee.

Langdon looked at me. “So what’s that like?”

“What’s what like?”

“Killing people.”

I shrugged. “You’re a cop. You ever shoot anyone?”

“No,” Langdon said. “I’ve never had to draw my gun.”

“But you might have to.”

“Sure.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“It’s less of a problem now than it might have been ten years ago.”

“Because they come back now.”

“Right. Mostly.”

“Same thing.”

“I might have to pull my gun one day. You kill people every day you do your job. There’s a difference.”

I smiled and set my cup back down. “This is beginning to sound a lot like one of my dates.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean that I go on a lot of first dates. Online dating, you know. I go on dates and eventually we talk about what we do for a living. And then I get a lot of questions about what I do. About killing people.”

“And what do you tell them?”

“I don’t tell them, I do this.” I reached into a pocket and pulled out three small objects and held them out for Langdon to look at.

She did. “All right, I give up. What are those?”

“They’re ten-sided dice.” I set them down in front of her.

“You actually walk around with three ten-sided dice in your pocket.”

“I do. A lot of us do. Because we answer this question a lot. Pick them up, please.”

She did. “All right, what now?”

“Here’s the deal. You’re someone who needs a dispatcher. The dispatcher is going to shoot you in the head. If you roll three zeros, you’re dead. If you roll anything else, then after you’ve been shot in the head, five seconds later you rematerialize at home, probably on your bed. You’re naked but otherwise you’re perfectly fine.” I pointed to the hand she held the dice in. “Now roll.”

She rolled. “Six two one.”

“You live. Roll again.”

“Two nine nine.”

“You live. Roll again.”

“Six five three.”

“You live. Roll again.”

“I actually do understand statistics, Mr. Valdez.”

“Then you get my point. When a dispatcher does his or her job, the odds of them killing someone are actually pretty low.”

Langdon reached out to return my dice to me. “You’re saying about one chance in a thousand.”

I took them and pocketed them. “That’s what the Agency says.”

“What about your own experience?”

“I’ve been doing this for eight years. I’ve dispatched more than a thousand people. Probably closer to fourteen or fifteen hundred. They’ve all ended up at home, mostly in bed, naked.”

“But there’s always a chance someone will stay dead.”

“Yes, there is. And that’s why dispatchers exist. Licensed, bonded, insured and we’ve passed a bunch of psychological tests that indicate we can handle the aftermath of a failed dispatch.”

“Do you believe that? That you’re psychologically equipped to handle the fact that you’ve killed someone? I mean, that they’re actually dead because of you.”

Another bus rolled in; I took a sip of my coffee until it drove away. “You know about the first time anyone ever came back?” I said, to Langdon.

“Not really.”

“It was a guy named Taylor Barnes. He and his wife go to Iceland to celebrate their anniversary, or something like that. They go hiking on some cliffs. She’s been having an affair, doesn’t want to live with him anymore but doesn’t know how to say it, sees him peering over the edge of a cliff and decides pushing him off the cliff is easier than an awkward conversation. He goes over, falls something like two hundred feet and hits the rocks below—and then the next thing he knows he’s home, in Glendale, California, wondering what the hell just happened.”

“It’s a good question.”

“It’s a very good question. He knows his wife pushed him off the cliff, he knows he fell, he knows he died—and yet, there he is in his condo in southern California, not dead but very confused. He calls 911 and reports his own murder, in Iceland. Everyone else is very confused as well, including his wife.”

“Until it starts happening everywhere.”

“Right. The United States has something like forty or fifty murders a day, and all of those murder victims just…stop dying. Or they die, but show up at home, naked and bewildered. That bomb went off in Athens, killing eighty tourists at the Parthenon, and all but one of them ended up back in their country of origin. In Afghanistan, hundreds of fighters dying in that Kabul offensive, and showing up at home a couple of seconds later, naked as the day they were born. And finally someone figures out the pattern.”

“Someone has to kill you in order for you to come back.”

“That’s right.” I signaled the waiter to get more coffee. “If you die of natural causes, you’re dead. If you commit suicide, you’re dead. If you accidentally fall down an elevator shaft or drop a radio in your bathwater, you’re dead. But if someone pushes you down that elevator shaft or drops that radio into your tub? You come back. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand.”

“Okay,” Langdon said. “And this has to do with you being psychologically prepared to kill someone how?”

The waiter arrived with more coffee. “Murder victims come back,” I said, picking up the cup. “No one else faced with death does. Except when dispatchers are involved.” I waved in the direction of the hospital. “I just dispatched a seventy-eight-year-old man who was about to die on the operating table. The operation had gone bad. It’s possible the surgeon could have pulled it out, but at what cost? The trauma to the body was so significant at that point that the patient was never likely to get back to where he was before the operation, in terms of quality of life. He would have been a mess, his insurance would have to shell out, his family would have been overwhelmed with dealing with the cost of the operation and the aftermath. If he survived.”

Langdon smiled. “I see where this is going.”

“Then tell me.”

“You’re detailing this nightmare scenario and now you going to tell me how you offer a better alternative.”

“You got it. I dispatch the patient. Yes, there’s a small chance of him dying, but what’s more likely to happen—and what did happen—is he ends up at home.”

“With his chest open and heart exposed.”

I shook my head. “No, because whatever trauma the body’s experienced just prior to dispatch disappears. The patient in this case is back home, uncarved. He still needs a heart operation, and will probably die without one, is my best guess. But if he goes under the knife again, they don’t have to work around any previous operation. Clean start. Plus they know what went wrong last time and can factor that in for the next time.”

“You’re saying you’re psychologically equipped for your job because you’re prolonging lives, not ending them.”

“No. I’m psychologically equipped for my job because whoever is using my services was already about to die. I’m increasing their odds of survival. If they still die, it’s not because I didn’t offer them a better chance to live.”

“So it’s not your fault.”

“No more than it’s a doctor’s fault if a severely injured patient dies on the table.”

“But the doctor is working to save their life.”

“So am I.” I drank from my coffee.

Langdon watched me drink. “Does it work?”

“Does what work?”

“That rationalization.”

“It works so far.”

“But you haven’t lost anyone yet.”

“No,” I admitted.

“Have you known any dispatchers who’ve had a failed dispatch?”

“Sure. A couple of the dispatchers in my class.”

“How did they deal with them?”

“One of them quit,” I said. “The last I heard she’s working at an orphanage in Mexico or something like that. The other one handled it just fine. She’s working Mercy Hospital most days.”

“What about Jimmy?”

“Are you asking if he’s had any failed dispatches?”

“Yes.”

“Not that I know of.”

“He wouldn’t tell you?”

“He might not. If it happened through a hospital he’d file a report to whatever insurance provider had contacted the Agency, and you could find it through the Freedom of Information Act. The Agency’s a state agency. They’d have to let you see it. But it doesn’t mean he’d talk about it, and I wouldn’t ask him.”

“What if it was a private gig?”

“You mean, if he was working for a client directly, not through the Agency or through an insurance company.”

“Yeah. I understand that happens from time to time.”

“Sure. I definitely wouldn’t know about those.”

“Why not?”

“They’re kind of a gray area, legally speaking.”

“Do you have any private clients?”

“What part of ‘it’s a gray area, legally speaking’ are you having trouble with?”

“You can tell me confidentially.”

I raised my cup to Langdon. “I appreciate the coffee, but I’m not that cheap. Or stupid.”

“Fair enough,” Langdon said. “Who would know if he had any private clients?”

“Katie might,” I said. “His wife. You’ve spoken to her?”

Langdon nodded. “Briefly. We asked her who she knew that might want to do harm to her husband. She wasn’t coming up with anyone.”

“You might ask her again. She might have thought you were asking about someone who had a grudge against him, not one of his private clients.”

“Would she tell us?”

“She might. Jimmy wouldn’t like it, but Jimmy’s missing.”

“Would you come with me?”

“To ask her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You know her husband. You know her. It might help.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not a cop, and I don’t know that I want to be involved.”

“This is your friend.”

“This is someone I’m friendly with. There’s a difference.”

“Is there any other reason?”

“It would take more time than we have.”

Langdon smiled. “This is your way of telling me our date here has come to an end.”

“I do have paperwork to fill out. And then I have other things on my agenda.”

“How does this compare to your other ‘dates’?”

“Not bad. We covered most of the basics. You never got to the theological aspects of my job.”

“There are theological aspects to your job?”

“Most of the time on my dates I get asked whether I think murdered people coming back proves that God exists.”

“That’s a pretty deep question for a first date.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Out of curiosity, what do you say?”

There was a squeal of tires behind me, the thump of something fleshy hitting something that was not, and the sound of someone screaming. Both Langdon and I turned to the sound.

Twenty yards away a bus had stopped, an impressive crack in its windshield and a smear of blood in the center of the crack’s spiderweb pattern. In front of the bus, a few yards away, a woman was crumpled in the street.

Langdon and I were both out of our chairs and heading toward the woman.

The driver was out of the bus and holding her arms out, in a defensive motion, as we approached. “She walked in front of the bus!” she said. “It’s on the dashcam! I tried to stop but I couldn’t!”

“Yours,” I said to Langdon, who nodded and headed to the bus driver. I kneeled down in front of the fallen woman and assessed her.

The woman looked to have been hit by the bus from the left side, which would have been consistent with her walking out in front of it. Her left arm was shattered and either her radius or ulna was sticking out of its lower portion; I wasn’t qualified to say which it was. Her skull above her left temple was cracked and flattened. That was probably the part that left the spiderweb crack on the windshield. I glanced up and looked around on the street and found what I was looking for; a cell phone, its screen shattered. The screen was still on, showing a half finished text.

“Idiot,” I said.

“How is she?” Langdon asked, coming up to me. The driver stood next to her bus, uncertain what to do next.

“She’s alive, but not for much longer,” I said. “Broken bones, massive head trauma and by the sound of her breathing, punctured lung and internal bleeding.”

“Are you qualified to make that assessment?”

“Dispatchers get first aid assessment and treatment as part of their training. I recertified last year. And anyway look at her.”

“The hospital’s one street over.”

“She’s not going to last that long.”

“What do you want to do, then?”

“Give me your gun.”

Langdon blinked. “The hell you say.”

“I’m serious.”

“I’m not going to give you my gun, Valdez. I’ll get fired for that.”

I shook my head. “Law enforcement officials are allowed to assist dispatchers. You’re legally protected. Give me your gun.”

“No.”

“Look, Langdon, she doesn’t have any time. If you don’t give me your gun I’m going have to dispatch her another way. The only way I’ve got right now is manually. So if you want me to strangle her right here in middle of the street, fine. But your gun would be faster. And merciful.”

Langdon thought for a second. “You’ll come with me to talk to Katie Albert.”

“What?”

“I give you my gun, and you come with me to talk to Katie Albert when we’re done.”

“You’re fucking bargaining with me right now? Are you shitting me?”

“That’s the deal.”

“Jesus Christ. Yes. Now give me the fucking gun.”

Langdon unholstered her handgun and handed it to me. I checked it and familiarized myself with it. I stood up and looked around.

“My name is Anthony Valdez and I am a dispatcher, licensed and bonded with the State of Illinois,” I said, loudly, to the now-considerable assembled crowd. “I judge this woman to be in a near-death state. As she is unresponsive, by State of Illinois law I am assuming her implied consent to dispatch her safely and humanely. You may all witness and record this action but be aware live ammunition is to be used.” Some of the crowd backed away at that last sentence. But none of them left.

I knelt back down, positioned Langdon’s handgun close to the fallen woman’s temple, and fired.

The woman’s body jolted and was still.

It was, literally, deathly quiet.

And then, with the familiar sucking pop of inrushing air, the woman was no longer there.

There was scattered applause as the crowd realized that accident victim was still alive. Then the crowd began to disperse.

I returned the handgun to Langdon, who checked it and holstered it. I pointed to the woman’s bloody clothes, which lay in the street where she had been. “You should check those for ID.”

“After you.”

“You’re the cop here.”

“Yes I am, and now I’m going to have paperwork to fill out, because my weapon was discharged.”

“Join the club. I have paperwork on this and on the hospital dispatch. I have no sympathy for you.”

“I’m still holding you to your promise. About coming with me to see Katie Albert.”

“That was a shitty thing to do, by the way.”

Langdon nodded. “Well, if the result is we find Jimmy Albert, then I can live with it.”

There was a noise from the street. It was the accident victim’s cell phone, blasting out a ring tone. We both stared at it for several seconds.

“You going to answer that or what?” I asked Langdon.

She sighed and went to go pick up the phone.

“You okay?” Langdon asked me, as we waited to be buzzed into the apartment Jimmy Albert shared with his wife.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You look a little tense.”

“I don’t usually go with cops to talk to people.”

“Yeah, but that’s not it. It’s something else.”

“I told you it’s complicated.”

The door buzzed, signaling Katie was letting us in. Langdon grabbed the door to open it. “Did you sleep with her or something?”

“What?”

“Jimmy Albert’s wife. Are you having sex with her?”

“No.”

“That would explain the tension.”

“That’s not it.”

“You sure?” Langdon held the door open for me to go through.

“I would remember sleeping with Katie,” I said, and walked in.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you would tell me about it.”

“You’re a cop. You should be able to tell if I’m lying.”

Langdon walked through the door. “You might be a good liar.”

“Is that your assessment of me?”

“No, but that would just mean you’re a better liar than I thought.” We walked up the stairs to the third floor, where Katie Albert was waiting for us.

She met us at the door, and her face darkened when she saw me. “What’s he doing here?” she asked Langdon.

“I thought he might be helpful to me,” Langdon said. “Someone in the same profession as your husband might be able to tell me about things I would otherwise be missing.”

Katie glanced over at me. “Uh-huh.”

“Would you prefer that Mr. Valdez wait out here while we talk?”

Katie was silent for a few seconds before she said. “No,” and opened the door to let us both in. She walked down her apartment hallway, toward the kitchen area in the back, without checking to see if we were following. Langdon gave me a look that said, we are going to have a talk about this, believe it. I shrugged. We walked down the hall, past the living room area of the apartment, which was still in disarray, and which still had blood on the rug and floor. I wondered whether the stain would ever get out of the rug.

In the kitchen Katie had propped herself up near the sink, holding a coffee cup. “Can I get you some coffee, detective?” she asked Langdon. I was aware I was not included in that invitation.

“Thanks, but no,” Langdon said. “We don’t want to take too much of your time.”

“Have you heard anything about Jimmy?”

“Not yet, but other detectives have been over to the Agency. We’re working to reconstruct his official appointments and duties and see if there’s anything there. And there should have been uniformed officers taking statements from your neighbors here earlier.”

“I saw them.”

“We’re working to find him, Mrs. Albert.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course.” Langdon nodded over to me. “I had a conversation with Mr. Valdez here earlier today about the job he and your husband share in common. We talked about the official Agency assignments, but we also talked about private engagements.”

A snort came out of Katie. “Yes, well. Tony would know about those.”

Langdon glanced over at me at this. I looked back at her blankly. “I was wondering if you knew whether your husband had any private engagements or clients recently,” she said, returning her attention to Katie.

“He had some in the past,” Katie said. She jerked a finger at me. “This one got a few of them for him. Real shitty jobs for creepy people. It brought in money but I told him I didn’t want him to do it anymore.”

“Why is that, Mrs. Albert?”

“Because we had people buzzing the door in the middle of the night, needing him to come out for jobs. They would sneak him out and he would come back at six in the morning and tell me he couldn’t say where he was. One time I was up when one of these assholes dropped him off; he came up to the apartment to pay him. All crumpled hundred dollar bills. Then he looked over to me and told Jimmy that I would be the first to go if Jimmy ever said anything about what they’d been up to. That’s when I told him to stop. Whatever money we were getting wasn’t enough.”

“So there were people who meant your husband harm.”

Katie shook her head. “That was a couple of years ago.”

“And your husband hasn’t had any private engagements or clients since.”

“No. Not that I know about.”

“No extra money coming into the house. No strange hours. No one being buzzed in, in the middle of the night.”

“None of that.”

“You’re sure.”

Katie’s face twisted. “No, of course I’m not sure now,” she said. She shot a dagger in my direction. “Ask this asshole about it. If anyone would know if Jimmy’s been doing anything on the side, he would. He’s the one who got him those jobs in the first place.”

Langdon looked at me. “I don’t know anything about what Jimmy’s been doing with his time,” I said.

“But you did,” Katie said. “You and Jimmy and your goddamned ‘bowling team,’ Tony.”

“That was a long time ago, Katie,” I said.

“Oh, bullshit, Tony.” Katie slammed her coffee mug down on the counter she was leaning against. “You’re dirty. You’ve always been dirty. And now maybe whatever it is that you got Jimmy into has gotten him killed.”

I held up my hands. “Katie. I’m clean. I got out the same time you told Jimmy to. I know you don’t believe me—I know you don’t want to believe me—but it’s the truth. I got out and I’ve been staying out. If Jimmy got himself into something, whatever Jimmy got himself into, I’ve got nothing to do with it.”

Katie picked up the coffee mug from the counter and threw it at my head. Coffee arced in the air. I ducked to avoid the mug and got coffee drops down my neck. “You were the one who got him into it in the first place, Tony!” Katie yelled. “You were the one who brought this to our door. And I promise you this, Tony. Whatever’s happening to Jimmy now, if it’s because of whatever you brought him into, if he ends up dead, you better hope I don’t find you at a crosswalk while I’m driving. Because I will fucking go up on the sidewalk to get to you.”

“You wouldn’t kill him,” Langdon said, after that statement had hung in the air. “Not permanently.”

“No,” Katie agreed. “But it would hurt like hell.”

“Explain,” Langdon said.

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“That much I get. But explain it anyway.”

We were at a Greek restaurant on Damen, close to the Alberts’ apartment. We came in two minutes before closing and the owner made the universal gesture for “kitchen’s closed.” Langdon flashed her badge, ordered two coffees and pointed to a booth. The owner sighed, nodded, brought coffee to the booth, and got back to closing up the rest of the shop.

I fiddled with my cup. “I didn’t think Katie would still be that pissed at me.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Langdon said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have tried so hard not to come with me when I asked you to. I’m pretty sure you knew she would still be that pissed with you and would try to blame you.”

“Yeah, fair enough.”

“Is she right?”

“That it’s my fault?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Langdon gave me a look.

“Probably no,” I allowed.

“I think you need to go back to the beginning of this for me,” she said.

“I told you that private gigs are a legal gray area.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Well, some of them are more gray than others.”

“Give me examples. Start with something only sort of gray.”

“All right. So, let’s say I take a gig working for a film crew here in the city, which is something that I’ve done before. They’re filming a complicated stunt, and I’m on hand in case something goes wrong. This part is totally legal and above board. The studio and the insurance company and the producers all want me there so they don’t have any fatalities on set.”

“Not gray at all.”

“Right, until it all goes wrong and the stunt person breaks their neck. The injury is serious—that stunt person isn’t ever going to walk again—but they’re not going to die from it. My job is to prevent fatalities. To dispatch the people who are clearly going to die if I don’t intervene. It’s not my job to dispatch people who are critically, horribly injured but aren’t going to die from it.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming on.”

“The ‘but’ here is this: No one in this situation, not the studio, the insurance, the producers, the director, the union or especially the poor bastard it’s happened to, wants this guy to go on living like this. It’s bad publicity for the movie, the stunt person will never work again in their chosen field, and the union’s insurance will have to pay out hundreds of thousands in medical bills, and ultimately someone somewhere’s getting sued.”

“So what happens then?”

“So what happens then is the first assistant director or the on-set producer calls you over and quietly hands you an envelope with forty thousand dollars of cash in it and asks you to take care of it. And you go over to the poor bastard, make an assessment that, surprise, the injuries actually are fatal after all, and pop one into their skull. The stunt person shows up at home, neck unbroken, gets on a plane to Chicago six hours later and everyone’s back to work the next day.”

“And you’re forty thousand dollars richer.”

“And with a clear conscience because honestly it’s better for everyone.”

“Unless it’s that one time out of a thousand.”

“That’s the risk. But then it’s only bad for me and the stunt person. Everyone else is off the hook, liability-wise.”

“This is something that’s happened to you.”

I smiled. “I am offering this strictly as a hypothetical.”

“Give me something less gray now.”

“Another hypothetical, you mean.”

“Call it what you want.”

“All right. Down on the far South Side, we’re talking a couple streets inside the city limits, there’s a restaurant that’s been shut down for years. And every Thursday night, there’s a fight club that goes on in it.”

Langdon smiled. “What, like the movie? ‘The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club’ sort of thing?”

I smiled back. “Not exactly. In this one, the fighters go after each other with hammers and baseball bats.”

“Jesus.”

“And it’s not run by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. It’s run by a pack of hardass motherfuckers who used to run dog fights until they figured out this is safer and more profitable.”

“Okay, but who the hell volunteers to fight like that?”

I looked at Langdon. “Are you from Chicago? I mean, born here.”

“I am, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“Are you from the South Side?”

“Oh, Valdez, tell me you’re not about to get racist on me. My own black self was just beginning to like you.”

“My point is that Chicago is still super-segregated and racist, and there are lots of young men who can’t find work because of it, and you would know it if you were from the South Side. And that there are hardass motherfuckers like the ones who run this fight club who are happy to give these young men fifty bucks a fight to bash each other’s brains in with a hammer, and they’ll take it because what else have they got.”

“Jesus,” Langdon said again, and took a swig of her coffee. “And dispatchers are involved in this shitshow somehow.”

“Yes. Because everyone who fights, even the winners, have the living hell beaten out of them. Broken bones, tendons shredded, gouges, eyes out of their sockets, all of that. None of them are going to the hospital to get themselves taken care of, are they? First rule of fight club, and all that.”

“So, what? The dispatcher just shoots everyone at the end of the fight?”

“That’s the standard operating procedure, yeah.”

“They don’t need a dispatcher for that. They could just give a gun to a flunky.”

“These guys use dispatchers for the same reasons they drive fancy cars and pay for bottle service in clubs.”

“As status symbols? You have got to be kidding me.”

“There are other reasons. But, yup. That’s a big one.”

“How much could a dispatcher get for this?”

“Five hundred a night, plus tips.”

“Tips? Tips?”

“If everyone was dispatched safely, you’d get a hundred dollar tip. Or more.”

“Tell me you never did this sort of shit.”

“I’m offering a hypothetical.”

“Hypothetical my ass, Valdez. Tell me you never did this.”

“I never did this.”

“But you’ve done things like this.”

“I’m going to plead the Fifth from this point on, I think.”

Langdon looked disgusted. “What about Jimmy Albert?”

“What about him?”

“Did he ever work one of these hammer fights?”

“I don’t think it’s my place to say.”

“So, yes.”

I spread my hands, placatingly. “I never said that. That’s your assumption.”

Langdon glowered. “Why?” she finally asked.

“Why do this stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“For the money, of course. Why do you think?”

“So this shit doesn’t bother you.”

“Private gigs? No,” I said, and then held up a hand because I could see Langdon about to go off. “Most private gigs aren’t like that. Most of my private gigs are things where I’m hired by rich people to attend polo matches or sailboat races, so if they fall off a horse or a boat I can get them home safely. Last weekend I went skydiving so I could dispatch this guy if his parachute didn’t open. Ninety percent of all the private gigs I have ever done are like that.”

“But then there’s that other ten percent.”

“Well, it’s like I told Katie. I don’t do those anymore. I got out of it.”

“Because it stopped being fun to watch poor black men beat each other’s brains out and then shoot them in the head when they’re done.”

There was no good way to answer that. “Something like that,” I allowed.

“You mentioned that you and Jimmy Albert went ‘bowling,’” Langdon said. “Then tonight Katie Albert mentioned something about your ‘bowling team.’ I guessing your team didn’t actually go bowling, did you?”

I shook my head. “No, it was an actual bowling team at first. Me and Jimmy and Judd Montgomery and Mason Schilling.”

“You were all dispatchers.”

“Yes. Me and Jimmy were in the same class. Judd and Mason were in the class after us.”

“Go on.”

“Mason always complained about living inside a state government salary and started looking for private gigs. He wasn’t picky, so he found them. And then he started getting more work than he could handle himself, so he’d parcel them out to the rest of us on league nights. Eventually we stopped bowling and just got together to get gigs from Mason.”

“So this Mason character was the ringleader.”

“‘Ringleader’ is a little grand for what he did, but sure.”

“But Katie Albert blames you.”

“I asked Jimmy to join the bowling team. That was back when it was just bowling.”

Langdon smiled at this. “No bowling team anymore.”

“No. I stopped taking certain gigs and Katie told Jimmy to stop taking them. Judd left dispatching and went to law school. I get most of my private gigs now by referral from other clients. That’s why I work with so many rich people now. I’m reliable and confidential.”

“What about Mason Schilling?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s still not too picky.”

“Could Jimmy still have been getting gigs from him?”

“I don’t know. Mason and I don’t talk much anymore.”

“Falling out?”

“We just run in different circles.”

“And yours don’t involve hammers.”

“Something like that.”

Langdon glanced over to the owner of the restaurant, who was giving us pained expressions. “I’d like to talk with this Mason character.”

“You won’t get anything out of him.”

“I’m persuasive.”

“He’ll lawyer up the instant he sees you coming. I guarantee it.”

“I can make his life difficult if he doesn’t talk. It’s hard to work the shady side of the street if a cop is shining a spotlight on you.”

“Mason has been doing this a long time. He can probably wait you out.”

“Fine. Then you talk to him. Ask him if he’s been giving any work to Jimmy Albert. He’ll talk to you. You’re an old pal.”

“I don’t want to get any more involved.”

“Look, Valdez, you’ve got a woman who is planning to run you over the next time she catches you on the street. I’d say you’re involved enough. And besides we don’t have anything else to go on.”

“You told Katie you had people working with the Agency.”

“And they’ve got nothing. Neither do the officers who canvassed the building. Forensics has nothing from the living room, either. I knew all that before we talked to her.”

“You lied to her.”

“I didn’t see the point in making her day worse. My point is, this Mason character is the lead we have now. I’ll make a run at him if I have no other choice. If nothing comes out of it then we’re basically left holding our collective dicks and hoping Jimmy shows up. But if you think you could get something more out of him than I could, then I’m asking you to help me out. And maybe keep Katie Albert from making you a hood ornament.”

I thought about it a minute and then pulled out my phone. “It would be better if you weren’t here for this call.”

“I’ll go pee,” Langdon said, and then nodded toward the restaurant owner. “And then we better leave anyway. Badge or no badge, I think this guy is about to call the cops on us.”

“Look at these assholes,” Mason Schilling said, pointing out into the field, sunken into the wide boulevard. In the dawn fog, two young men stood at a distance from each other, whipping swords around. Two other men, presumably their seconds, stood next to their friends, occasionally ducking out of the way of the swinging weapons. A fifth man, who I assumed was the referee or judge, kept his distance from all the other parties.

“What are those?” I asked, and peered into the fog. “Are those broadswords?”

“Technically they’re bastard swords,” Mason said.

“What’s the difference?”

“Fuck if I know, man. I’m just telling you what they told me when I called them broadswords. They were snotty about it, too. Nearly shot them then, just to teach them a lesson.”

I peered again. “So this is a duel. An actual duel.”

“You got it. It’s become a thing with college dudes. Someone’s honor is offended, someone demands satisfaction, and they show up at dawn to hack at each other with swords until someone is fatally wounded or the cops show up.”

“Do the cops show up often?”

“They won’t here. This is the University of Chicago. They have their own police force. I have an understanding with the woman who sends out the cars.”

“How much does ‘understanding’ go for these days?”

“About a hundred bucks for five calls coming in. She sends someone after that. I mean, that’s fair. And I don’t want her to get fired. This dueling thing is becoming a profitable sideline. I’ve got another one at Northwestern tomorrow.”

There was a small yelp down the field. We both looked over to see one of the seconds clutching his arm and hopping away. His duelist was loudly apologizing.

“They don’t seem very good at this,” I said.

“They’re fucking idiots, is what they are. But they’re rich and they’re stupid and that works for me. Hey! Chad! Or whatever your name is!” The judge turned to look at Mason. “Let’s get this going! And tell them I’m charging extra if I have to dispatch one of the seconds!” Chad or whatever his name was nodded and tried to get the attention of the others.

“Do you actually charge extra?”

“For dispatching anyone else but the duelists? Hell yeah. Additional risk.” He motioned to the kids now getting their act together on the green. “And the thing about college kids is they’re rich but they’re cheap. You have to get them to pay up front otherwise they try to weasel out and turn dorm room lawyer on you. So everyone pays up front. Two fifty each for the duelists, one hundred for the seconds. The judge I don’t charge. They don’t usually die.”

“Usually.”

“There was one time at Wheaton College. Bad thrust. Judge got it in the eye. Real fuck up.”

“I bet the guy who did it felt bad about it.”

“Yeah, for about two seconds. He just stood there gaping. Then the other duelist took the opening and pretty much hacked off his arms.”

“Is that legal?”

“‘Legal’ is a very fungible term for this sort of thing, Tony. You know that.”

“They’re ready!” Chad or whatever his name was yelled to Mason. Mason fluttered his hand as if to say, okay, fine, whatever and then turned his attention back to me. “But I don’t think you came to the fabled Midway at the UofC to talk to me about dueling, did you?”

I smiled. “What, you don’t think I would want in on this?”

Mason shrugged. “It’s in the financial demographic you like to work in. But it’s more into the gray area, legally, than you’re comfortable with anymore.”

I watched as the two duelists, yelling, crossed the field and started whacking swords together. “Probably,” I admitted.

“It’s too bad. It’s a growing field.”

“Dueling.”

“Yes. But I was thinking more of the gray areas.”

“I’m doing all right.”

“Suit yourself. But don’t pretend I don’t know you did it, once.”

“I’m actually here because I wanted to ask you about Jimmy Albert.”

Mason glanced over to me, then back down the field. “What about him?”

“He went missing yesterday afternoon.”

“Did he.”

“Signs of a struggle in his apartment. Blood on the rug. That sort of thing.”

The clanging of the swords lessened as the two duelists, clearly inexperienced with sword fighting, and possibly exercise, slowed down. The seconds hovered, unsure of what they were supposed to be doing.

“If you’re asking if I know anything about it, obviously I don’t,” Mason said.

“I didn’t think you did.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I was wondering whether you got Jimmy any gigs recently.”

“You know that Katie told him to stop with the side gigs.”

“Yeah, I know that. I also know Jimmy didn’t always do everything Katie told him to do.”

Mason grunted at this and then turned his attention again down the field, where one of the duelists held up his hand to signal a break. Chad or whatever his name was called for the break, and the other duelist started to complain about it.

“These assholes, I swear,” Mason said.

“Come on, Mason. Tell me.”

“Are you working for the cops, Tony?”

“What kind of question is that? Obviously I am.”

Mason laughed at this. “All right. I mean, what’s your intention?”

“Mason, if they wanted to get you on the hook for something, you’d be in an interrogation room with some detective or DA trying to grill you while your lawyer sat next to you and you had that smug look you get on your face.”

“I don’t look smug.”

“You always look smug. You have resting smug face.”

“I don’t even know what to think of that comment.”

“My point is that the reason I’m here is they don’t care about you or anything you’re doing. It’s beside the point. What they want is to find Jimmy. So if you gave him a gig then it would help to know. So we can talk to them.”

“Except then they’d know you heard it from me. That’s bad for business.”

“They’re not going to know that, Mason.”

“Jesus, Tony. Think of who I work with. Think of what you’re saying. Of course they’re going to know.”

Down the field the duelist who had been arguing with Chad or whatever his name was yelled in frustration, pulled his sword back and ran Chad or whatever his name was through the gut with it.

“Oh, fuck,” Mason said, and started running down the field. I followed.

Mason got to the duelist as he was lumbering over to the one who had called for a rest and raised his sword, using both hands, preparing to strike the other, who had fallen over in a panic and was trying to crawl away. Mason shoved the attacking duelist, knocking him off balance and tumbling him to the ground. The sword, knocked loose, fell, landing almost silently in the grass. Mason picked it up. I went to the judge, who was sitting, holding his gut and babbling.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Mason yelled at the duelist, who was still coming to terms with being on the ground. “You stabbed the fucking judge?”

“Look, dude, it’s against the rules to stop—”

“The judge did something you thought was against the rules so you fucking stabbed him?” Mason roared. “You think that was appropriate?”

“Dude—” the duelist said, and then screamed as Mason shoved his own sword into his chest.

“Oh, I’m sorry, was that against the rules?” Mason asked, and yanked the sword out.

The duelist didn’t respond, unless screaming was a response. Mason let him scream for a few more seconds before hefting the sword down on his skull, which split in two down to the bridge of the nose. The screaming abruptly stopped, and five seconds later the duelist’s body vaporized.

“Jackass,” Mason said, hefting the sword upward. He turned to me, with Chad or whatever his name was. “How does he look?”

“It’s not good,” I said. Some of Chad or whatever his name was’s insides were rapidly coming outside.

“No, I wouldn’t think so,” Mason said, walked over, and got himself into a classic batter’s pose. I lurched out of the way. “Sorry, Chad. Or whatever your name is.”

“What?” Chad or whatever his name was had time to say, and looked up, just before Mason sliced off his head in a surprisingly clean motion. The body collapsed, the head rolled a few feet, and after that they both disappeared.

Mason looked at the remaining duelist and the seconds, who had by now clumped together in terror. “Get the fuck out of here,” Mason said to them. They sprinted away, the duelist leaving his sword behind. Mason turned to me. “You’re absolutely sure you don’t want in on this.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “That was a genuine mess,” I said.

“Now you know why I get paid up front.” He walked over and picked up the other sword and stood, one in each hand. “Want one?”

“I’ll pass.”

“Yeah.” He tossed both swords into the grass. “Come on, let’s start walking. I’m pretty sure I burned through my five calls back there.”

“I could still use a name,” I prompted Mason, several minutes later, when the two of us were well away from the University of Chicago campus.

“I’m not going to give you a name of anyone I work with. And I’m not even going to tell you whether or not I gave Jimmy any new gigs.”

“Mason—”

He held up a hand. “Orval Wooldridge.”

“Who is that?”

“The Internet will tell you who he is.”

“What does he have to do with Jimmy?”

“I’m not saying he does have anything to do with Jimmy. But you wanted a name, and I won’t give you a name of anyone I work with directly. So you figure out what you can do with that name. And that’s what I can do for you, Tony.”

“All right. Thank you, Mason.”

“Don’t mention it. I mean that.”

I smiled at that.

“I still have a lot of gigs I need people for,” Mason said.

“I’m happy working my side of the street.”

“Just as long as you recognize we’re working the same street, Tony.”

“So who is he?” Langdon asked. We were at a hot dog stand, and she was getting her lunch.

“CEO of AltiStar Investments,” I said.

“Never heard of them.”

“Unless you have a couple hundred million to invest, you wouldn’t. It’s a private company that works exclusively with high-end investors who want to play in emerging markets. Heavy engagement in southeast Asia, Africa and Central America, and also in eastern Europe.”

“You’re an expert now.”

“I can read a Wikipedia article and a bunch of stories from Google News.”

“What else did Google News tell you?” Langdon bit into her lunch, made a face and then picked out the jalapeno from her dog. “I told you no jalapeno,” she said to the hot dog man, who shrugged. She turned her attention back to me. “This shouldn’t be a hard thing to remember.”

“You have my sympathy.”

“Uh huh. Wooldridge. What else about him.”

“His wife just passed away. Elaine Wooldridge. Cancer.”

“Okay. So?”

“So that would be Jimmy’s private gig.”

Langdon frowned. “What?” I asked.

“So, like you were doing when I met you? Being on call in case an operation went south?”

“Possibly but not necessarily. He could have been doing remediation work with her.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Someone who is sick but not necessarily on the edge of death might try experimental therapies, meant to offer an immediate medical benefit. If they work, great. If they don’t, and they end up making the patient sicker, a dispatcher deals with it. That’s remediation.”

“What does that offer her?”

“It resets her to before the therapy was tried.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When you’re dispatched your body goes back to a state several hours before when you were dispatched. I told you about that when we were talking about the heart operation from yesterday.”

“Is there a set amount of time? Like, you always return to how you were six hours earlier?”

“We don’t think it’s exact. We think it’s in a range from twelve to thirty hours. It just depends.”

“How does that even work?

I held up my hands in a questioning movement. “How does any of this shit work? We’re not supposed to come back when we’re dead. There’s no science we’ve figured out to explain it. What we know about it is what we observe. This is what we’ve observed.”

Langdon took another bite of her dog. “It really is unsettling, you know.”

“What? That we don’t know how this all works?”

She nodded and motioned out to the world, which in this case included views of the Wrigley Building and the Michigan Avenue Bridge over the Chicago River. “We live in a rational world. It has physics. And science. And now a big fat miracle that no one can explain and no one really likes talking about.”

“These are the days of miracle and wonder.”

Langdon peered at me suspiciously. “You just quoted a song at me.”

I smiled. “I did, yeah.”

“It doesn’t bother you.”

“To live in an age of miracles.”

“Yeah.”

I made a half-hearted shrug. “It’s just one miracle.”

“It’s a pretty big damn miracle, Valdez, come on! Coming back from the dead is pretty impressive. Before ten years ago, only one guy I knew of did it.”

“Two. You have to count Lazarus.”

“You know what I’m saying.”

“I get it,” I assured her. “And I don’t know. It was amazing the first few times it happened. It’s still weird. But now it’s also my job. It’s hard to get all mystical about your job.”

Langdon took another bite and nodded her agreement. “Okay, so, remediation.”

“Right. If he was doing that then it could have been a long-term gig.”

“And one that didn’t work in the end because she died.”

“Yeah.”

“Is there any way we can tell?”

“No, it’s a private gig so Jimmy doesn’t have to report like he does with an Agency job.”

“Okay, so, what? Do we think this Wooldridge guy has something to do with Jimmy Albert’s disappearance?”

“Not really.”

Langdon made a motion as if appealing to the heavens. “Then why on earth are you telling me this?”

“Because Wooldridge’s security, both for AltiStar and his private home, is run by Tunney Security Solutions.”

“Oh. Oh.”

“Right. Oh.”

Langdon finished her dog, and chewed the final bite slowly. “The Tunney family is supposed to be entirely legit by now.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Of course I don’t, but the part of them that’s not legit is pretty quiet about it these days.”

“It’s quiet but it’s there.”

“You ever do a gig for them?”

“No, but I know Mason did. He still may, but probably not if they were only one skip away from the name he gave me. And I know Jimmy did, back in the day, through Mason.”

“So you think Jimmy took a gig with them and something went wrong?”

“I don’t know. But if he was working for them and something went to hell then they wouldn’t want him around to be a witness.”

“Okay, so, walk me through this. Jimmy does a gig for Wooldridge, reconnects with the Tunneys through their legit arm, does work for them under the table…”

“…then somehow something goes wrong and they pack him away for whatever amount of time they need him packed away for.”

“They don’t kill him.”

“I don’t think so. But it doesn’t mean that what they might do to him is particularly pleasant.”

“It’s thin. We don’t even know for sure Jimmy Albert did work for Wooldridge.”

“You have anything thicker?”

“No, I don’t.” Langdon wiped her hands with a napkin, crumpled it up and tossed it into the vendor’s bin. “All right, let’s start digging things up on Wooldridge.”

“What do you mean ‘let’s’? I’m done. You blackmailed me to see Katie. I went to see Katie. You asked me to talk to Mason for you. I talked to Mason. I’m finished. I’m excused. I have other work I have to do.”

“I still need you. You’ve been helpful so far. You’ve gotten this investigation further along that I would have gotten on my own.”

“As far as I can see I’m the one who’s doing all the work.”

“That’s not true but I can see how it would seem that way to you.”

“Thanks, no. I have actual work.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“Will you.”

“Sure. You can be a Chicago Police Department consultant on this case. You’re already a state employee so getting you a vendor number shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I’m not cheap.”

Langdon shrugged. “It’s just tax money.”

“You’re serious.”

Langdon nodded. “We’re getting places. I like making progress. I want to find this guy before something shitty happens to him. I don’t want you run down by an angry spouse.”

“Let me think about it over lunch.”

“I just had lunch.”

“I didn’t.”

“Fine.” Langdon motioned toward the hot dog guy. “Have a dog. I’m buying.”

“This is nice,” Langdon said to me, as we walked onto Wooldridge’s property on North Dearborn Parkway.

“This is expensive,” I said.

“How old do you think this place is?”

“I’d guess it’s been around since the turn of the century.”

“I think it’s older than that.”

“I meant the other turn of the century.”

“Oh. Right.”

We ascended the exterior stairs where a security officer, dressed as a butler, and another man, dressed in a business suit, awaited us.

“Detective Langdon,” the business suit said, extending his hand. Langdon shook it. “I’m Garrett Trimble. Mr. Wooldridge’s personal assistant.” He turned to me. “And?”

“This is my associate, Anthony Valdez. He’s from the Agency, assisting with my investigation.”

“Ah, yes. Of course. Mr. Valdez,” Trimble reached out for my hand. We shook. “I do hope you understand that Mr. Wooldridge is in mourning for his wife. Elaine passed away just a few days ago.”

“We heard,” Langdon said. “Our deepest condolences to him and to you.”

“Thank you, that’s very kind.”

“You do know that we are here to ask him questions about Mr. Albert, the dispatcher who worked with Mrs. Wooldridge.”

“Yes, you made that clear when you called for an appointment.” I saw Langdon give a tiny smile at this; Trimble didn’t know he’d confirmed our guess about Jimmy working for Wooldridge with that phone call. “I note her passing not to attempt to dissuade you from your investigation. Just to let you know that Mr. Wooldridge may be…distracted.”

“We understand, of course.”

“Good.” Trimble motioned with his hand toward the house. “Mr. Wooldridge is receiving visitors in the upper parlor. This way, please.”

The inside of the house featured acres of hardwood floors and stained glass windows older than several of the states in the union. We were led up a flight of stairs to an upper landing and ushered into a large room furnished in the height of fashion for 1915. In a leather wingchair large enough to get lost in, Orval Wooldridge sat, looking indeed like he was trying very hard to get lost.

Trimble glanced over to us apologetically and then walked over to the chair, leaned over, and whispered into his boss’ ear. Wooldridge waved him away irritably. Trimble stepped back.

Wooldridge looked up at us. “Detective Langdon. Mr. Valdez.”

“Mr. Wooldridge,” Langdon said. “Our deepest sympathies on the passing of your wife.”

Wooldridge nodded very slightly, accepting our condolences with the minimum possible grace. He did not invite us to sit. It was Trimble who did, slightly embarrassed, when he realized his boss had no intention of extending the offer. We sat on a sofa that shared a table with Wooldridge’s chair.

Wooldridge glanced up at his assistant. “You have business to attend to.”

“Yes, of course,” Trimble said, and exited, double time.

Wooldridge then turned his attention, such as it was, back to us. “Get on with it.”

Langdon set out a recorder and put it on the table between us. “Mr. Wooldridge, you employed a James Albert recently, correct?”

“I did.”

“He was assisting in the care of your wife.”

“He was. So what?”

“He’s been missing for two days, Mr. Wooldridge. We believe he was abducted by force.”

“What does this have to do with either me or Elaine?”

“We don’t think it does.”

“Then you’re wasting my time.”

“We do think it might have something to do with the Tunneys.”

Wooldridge was silent for a moment, contemplating. Then he waved a hand. “Go on.”

“How did Mr. Albert come into your employ?”

“I asked Garret to find a dispatcher for Elaine. I didn’t specify which one. I didn’t care. Garret found Mr. Albert.”

“And he worked for you for how long?”

“For three or four months. Once or twice a week. Whenever we had the oncologists over to do their fiddling.”

“During this time, how much freedom did Mr. Albert have in the house?”

“None at all. He was either in Elaine’s room on the third floor during her medical procedures or out in the hall while they were changing her or doing things he didn’t need to be there for. He had use of the third floor hall restroom. That was it.”

“Did he ever speak to the members of your security detail?”

“How should I know? I wasn’t tracking his movements in the house. Ask Garrett. He might know.”

“We will, thank you. May I ask you why you chose Tunney Security Solutions for your home security?”

“That isn’t any of your business.”

“We don’t mean to pry. But any information might be what helps us find Mr. Albert.”

“For what good it will do you,” Wooldridge said, and for the first time directed his attention at me. “You. Vasquez, is it?”

“Valdez, sir.”

“Valdez. You’re a dispatcher.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You ever lost one?”

“Have I ever had a failed dispatch? No, sir.”

“Never happens.”

“It can happen. I’ve been lucky.”

Wooldridge made another hand motion and leaned forward. “Luck is bullshit. You do your job or you don’t. You’ve never lost one.”

“Not so far.”

“How long have you been a dispatcher?”

“Eight years.”

“Let me ask you something. In those eight years, in which you’ve never lost a client, have you ever, ever, heard of a dispatcher losing two clients in a row?”

“Two failed dispatches in sequence?”

“Yes! Jesus, pay attention.”

“No, sir. I’ve never heard of it happening.”

“Ever.”

“No, sir.”

“What are the odds of that? Two in a row?”

I was suddenly very conscious of the three dice in my pocket. “About one in a million.”

Wooldridge clapped his hands together suddenly. “Yes. That’s right. One in a million. That’s what I was told, too. You have a better chance of being hit by lightning, I was told.”

“Mr. Wooldridge, is this about your wife?” Langdon asked. “Did Mr. Albert fail to dispatch her?”

Wooldridge ignored her and kept his attention on me. “What do you think about God, Valdez? You kill people and then bring them back. Do you think that’s evidence for God? Does your job make you a new sort of priest? A priest who offers the sacrament of the bullet?”

“I don’t know if there’s a God, Mr. Wooldridge.”

“That’s a depressingly equivocal answer, Valdez. You don’t really believe that, do you? People get murdered and they magically reappear after their deaths! At home! In their homes, Valdez! Wherever in the world they’re murdered, they reappear where they live. Are you under the impression that quantum physics knows people have physical addresses? What else can it be but God?”

“I’m not trying to equivocate, sir,” I said. “I say I don’t know because I honestly don’t. I don’t pretend to understand the mechanics at play, except to acknowledge they seem supernatural, and that I understand why people see the hand of God at work. But it seems to me that if I wanted proof of God, or if God wanted to prove to us he or she was out there, bringing back murdered people wouldn’t be the way to show it.”

“No? How would God do it, then?”

“God would make humans stop wanting to murder each other in the first place. Sir.”

Wooldridge stared at me, moving his jaw like he was about to yell something. Then as suddenly as he got worked up, he deflated, and fell back into his chair, sighing. He was silent for a moment, then turned to Langdon.

“I hired Tunney Security because Fintan Tunney is an old friend of mine,” he said, as if the furious interlude between her question and his answer never happened. “We went to high school together. Our paths obviously diverged for some decades there. But when his businesses went legitimate I saw no reason not to use them. It’s a prejudice to hold people to their pasts.”

“You believe Tunney’s interests are all legitimate at this point, then,” Langdon said. She glanced over to me as if to say what just happened but then just as quickly turned her attention back to Wooldridge.

“I believe that if they weren’t then the FBI would know about it. Since they don’t seem to have any objection to Tunney at the moment, neither do I. Why, Detective Langdon? Are you under the impression Tunney is less than legitimate?”

“I have no reason to believe so, no. But we’re following every possible line of inquiry.”

“Was your earlier line of inquiry about Mr. Albert meeting with my security people meant to suggest that you believe they engaged him in some less than savory scheme?”

“It was just a question.”

“Nothing is just a question, Detective Langdon. And for the record that line of inquiry is foolish. Mr. Albert would not have had either the time or the means to engage with Tunney’s less-than-legitimate interests, if they existed, even if he wanted to. Between his work here and the work he was obliged to take from the Agency, his time was filled.”

“When was the last time you saw Mr. Albert, Mr. Wooldridge?”

“The morning Elaine…” Wooldridge stopped with something that sounded like a hiccup and sank further into his chair.

“The morning your wife passed,” Langdon said, gently.

Wooldridge nodded, saying nothing. Then, “After she passed he came over to offer his condolences.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I said he could collect his final earnings from Garrett and then I dismissed him, because obviously I had other things that needed my attention.”

“Our condolences again, sir.”

“Fine, fine.” Wooldridge waved a dismissive hand once more. “Are we done here, detective?”

“I don’t have any more questions at the moment, no. If I have any more I will let you know.”

“You will let Garrett know,” Wooldridge said. “I won’t have time for any more of this until after my Elaine’s funeral.”

Langdon and I stood. “Thank you for your time,” she said, to Wooldridge.

“There’s a security man in the hall. He’ll show you out.”

“I think we can make it down the stairs on our own, but thank you.”

“Fine. If you see Garrett downstairs, tell him to come up. I need him again.”

“We will.”

“Then goodbye, detective.” Wooldridge looked over at me. “And goodbye, Mr. Valdez.”

“Goodbye, sir,” I said.

“You’re wrong, you know.”

“Sir?”

“God exists. God exists and he sees what men do, and what they don’t. And he judges them accordingly, Mr. Valdez. When you meet up with Mr. Albert again, tell him that. God knows. God judges. And God punishes.”

“All right, I don’t know what the hell just went on in there, but I’m creeped the fuck out,” I said, as we left the Wooldridge mansion.

“Keep it together,” Langdon said.

“There’s something going on with him.”

“We don’t disagree. But you’re no good to me creeped out. I need to you to focus.”

We exited the grounds. “I am focused. I am focused on the fact I need a drink.”

“The Pump Room is three blocks away. We can get something there.”

“I’m charging it to my expense account.”

“You don’t have an expense account.”

“I do now.”

“Relax, Valdez. I’ll buy the first round. Fair enough?”

“Fine.”

“Now tell me, specifically, what creeped you out.”

“All the God stuff, for one.”

“You told me before that when you go on dates you get to theological issues.”

“That’s different from this.”

“How is it different?”

“That is friendly, flirty ‘oooh do you think God really exists’ cocktail chatter. What was coming out of Wooldridge was ‘sinners in the hands of an angry god’ level. He’s pissed.”

“His wife just died.”

“Yeah, and I think he blames Jimmy for it.”

“You think he dispatched her, and it failed.”

“It seems like it.”

“I pulled her death certificate data before we came over. It didn’t say anything about it.”

“They never do. ‘Failure to dispatch’ is never an official cause of death. It’s whatever was causing the need for dispatch in the first place.”

“Do you think Wooldridge is involved in Albert’s disappearance?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? He seems pissed off enough.”

“The man’s something like eighty years old. He’d been married for fifty-five years or some ridiculous number like that. If he wasn’t pissed off about his wife being dead his heart would probably have stopped from grief by now.”

“You don’t think he might be involved?”

“I’m saying that I understand why he might be pissed that his wife failed to dispatch.”

“That’s the other thing.”

“What?”

“He asked me if I ever knew anyone to fail to dispatch twice in a row.”

“Implying he thought Jimmy Albert did that.”

“I think so.”

“I’ve been through his official records from the Agency. He’s like you. Officially he’s never failed to dispatch.”

“That doesn’t tell us anything about his private gigs, though.”

“So, what? You think he fumbled a private dispatch sometime recently?”

“He might have.”

“How do we tell?”

“We still think the Tunneys are involved in this, right?”

“It’s our best hypothesis at the moment, yes.”

“Do you have records of known Tunney associates? People who are suspected of participating in the family’s shadier side?”

“We do, but think about what you’re asking. That’s a few hundred low-lifes over the last decade.”

“We don’t need to look at them all.”

“Which ones do we need to look at?”

“Any of them that might have shown up in the morgue in the last couple of weeks. Start with the ones listed as suicides.”

Araceli Fuentes, medical examiner, opened the locker and rolled out the body inside. “Brodie Calhoun,” she said. “Fished him out of Lake Michigan yesterday.”

“He died yesterday?” Langdon asked.

“No, he died five or six days ago. But we fished him out of the lake yesterday.”

“He drowned?”

Fuentes pointed at his temple. “Bullet to the head.”

“So, suicide.”

“Seems likely, for obvious reasons. The angle of the bullet trajectory and powder pushed into the skin of the temple suggest the weapon was in this guy’s hand when it was fired.”

“We don’t have the gun.”

“No. It’s probably at the bottom of the lake.”

“Anyone coming to get him?” I asked.

“There’s a sister coming to get the body released,” Fuentes said. “She’s flying in from Boston. She’ll be here tomorrow. Until then he’s yours.”

“Thanks, Ara,” Langdon said.

“De nada. Roll him back in when you’re done.” Fuentes wandered off to do other things.

“Well?” Langdon asked me.

“Well, what?”

She motioned to the body. “Failed dispatch?”

“It’s possible.” I pointed to the head wound. “The wound makes sense.”

“Explain that.”

“If you’re working for less-than-entirely reputable people, and you’re injured to the point where you need a dispatcher, the dispatcher is going to make it look like a suicide, so just in case it fails no one will ask any questions about what happened.”

“And you know this because?”

“Come on, Langdon. We’re far enough along that we don’t need to pretend I’ve been a perfect angel all my life.”

“You’ve done this.”

“At the very least I know how it’s done. What do we know about this presumed suicide?”

“His sheet is a bunch of low-level bullshit. Some assaults, some larceny, and a couple of drug busts. Did eighteen months at Graham Correctional Center for one of those busts. Model prisoner, completed drug treatment, early release.”

I reached over and moved his left arm. There were needle tracks up and down its length. “I think he might have relapsed.”

“So this one overdoses, gets found, a dispatcher is called to the scene, the dispatch fails, they bundle him up and toss him in the lake. Make it look like he shot himself out on a jetty.”

“Might be. Do we know he’s tied to the Tunneys?”

“He’s been working for a year as a dispatcher—the other kind—at their truck depot. It’s a joe job. He’d be available for muscle work.”

“How do you want to work this?”

“For this part, I go back through his records and do a lot of piecing together of his movements. Then I go through your friend Jimmy’s records and see if there’s any point of contact.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“The good news is that people leave their cell phones on pretty much all the time. A couple of warrants for cell phone data and tower access and I can tell you where both of them ate, slept and took a dump for the last six months. If they connected at any point, I’ll find it.”

“You don’t need me for this, then.”

“No. You’re on your own for the evening. Go…do whatever dispatchers do when you’re not doing this.”

“I think I’ll go home and sleep.”

“Bold choice. Tell me how it works for you. See you tomorrow.” Langdon waved me off and then started to shove Calhoun back into his drawer.

Out on the street I started walking and looking for a cab. A black Mercedes rolled up next to me and a window rolled down.

“I’m not looking for a limo,” I said. I preferred real taxis over the less legal kind. Always seemed like a good way not to get robbed.

The man on the other side of the window smiled at me. He had nice teeth and a good suit and a handgun small enough to be unobtrusive but more than large enough to do me a lot of damage. “I think you’re going to want to take this ride, Mr. Valdez,” the man said.

I stopped walking. “Who are you?”

“I’m an associate of someone whose interests you and Detective Langdon have been asking about today. That someone would like to speak to you, if you don’t mind.”

“And if I do mind?”

“He’d like to speak to you anyway.”

“And if I refuse?”

“I’ll persuade you.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means that one way or another you’re coming for a ride with me, Mr. Valdez. You can take that ride in the back seat of this car, or the trunk. It makes no difference to me. So, you choose. Make it quick, or I choose for you. You won’t like my choice.”

My appointment was on the 43rd floor of a high-rise going up on the corner of Wabash and Van Buren. The floor was unfinished and the evening air vented through the places where windows had not yet been installed. There were two folding chairs. I was placed in one by the men who invited me for a ride. Fifteen minutes after I had been seated, another man arrived to take the other. He was smartly dressed and flanked on either side by two bulky-looking men, one of whom looked vaguely familiar. They stood while he sat.

“Mr. Valdez,” the man said. “A pleasure. Thank you for taking the meeting.”

“I couldn’t miss it,” I said.

“No, I don’t suppose you could. I take your trip here was not uncomfortable.”

“Aside from being kidnapped and frisked, it was fine.”

“Good.”

“One of your people took my wallet and keys and phone.”

“There are reasons for that. I’ll make sure they are returned to you after our discussion.”

“If I find hinky charges on my credit card, I’m going to be upset.”

The man smiled. “You won’t. Now, do you know me?”

“No.” I looked in the direction of the guy who threatened me to get in the car. “This charming associate of yours seemed to imply that I was being taken to meet Fintan Tunney. But you’re too young to be him.”

“You are correct. I’m Brennan Tunney.”

“I’m guessing this means you’re his son.”

“Correct again. His son and CEO of Tunney Holdings.”

“So you’re the legit side of things.”

“It’s all the legit side of things now.”

“I keep being told that. And yet we’re meeting in a building under construction after I’ve been kidnapped by a dude with a gun.”

“There was urgency in our meeting.”

“You could have just asked me to come into your office.”

“Not secure enough.”

I looked around at the open air 43rd floor. “And this is?”

“Yes.”

“If you say so. I’d think if you were that worried about security, you wouldn’t have a meeting in a building you own.”

Tunney smiled. “That’s just it, this isn’t our building. It’s being built by someone else entirely. I called in a favor. I don’t even like the fact it’s being built. My favorite parking lot in the Loop was here. Convenient to my interests. Now there’s just going to be another goddamn high-rise and nowhere to park.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. I will find a way through the pain.” Tunney motioned to the vaguely-familiar-looking man flanking him. “Cody here tells me you were asking after our business today. You and a detective.”

I looked up at Cody and then recognized where I saw him before: He was the security guy in the butler suit at the Wooldridge mansion. “That’s right,” I said. “We asked Orval Wooldridge if Jimmy Albert had been talking with the security folks.”

“Jimmy Albert being the dispatcher who was working with his wife.”

“That’s right.”

“What did Wooldridge say?”

“He said he wouldn’t know and to ask his assistant.”

“Why were you asking after Albert?”

“Because he’s missing. Going on three days now.”

“And you think we have something to do with that.”

“Well, you know. Before I was kidnapped it might have been just a theory. Now I’m feeling pretty sure about it.”

This got a chuckle out of Tunney. “I’m sure you do. But you’re wrong.”

I held out my hands and looked around. “Convince me.”

Tunney glanced up again at Cody, and then back at me. “Cody says you also asked Wooldridge if he spoke with Jimmy Albert after his wife died.”

“Yes. He said he told him to get his final payment and that was it.”

“Cody,” Tunney said.

“That’s not what happened,” Cody said. “I was there. I saw the whole thing. Heard the whole thing.”

I looked up at Cody. “So what happened?”

Cody looked down at his boss and then back at me. “It’s complicated. I mean, I have to tell you more than just about the last day.”

“All right.”

“Jimmy was hired to dispatch Mrs. Wooldridge. He’d done it before and it all became pretty rote. It always went the same way. Jimmy would use that thing he called an ‘applicator’ and she would disappear from the third floor room and reappear in the master bedroom on the second floor.”

“How many times did Jimmy dispatch her?”

“A couple three dozen times, maybe. Maybe more.”

“Jesus.”

“That’s an unusual number,” Tunney prompted me.

“Yes.”

“How so?”

“It sounds like Jimmy was doing remediation. Resetting the client when some medical therapy or procedure isn’t working out. That can happen two or three times, or even more than that. But I’ve never heard anyone being remediated more than a dozen times.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s fucking cruel, that’s why not. You’re killing someone. If he’s using the applicator, it’s pushing a payload into that woman’s head and detonating it, every single time. Have you ever been dispatched?”

“No.”

“I have,” the other guy flanking Tunney said.

I looked up at him. “You remember it, right? All of it? Up to and including the minute you died.”

“Yeah.”

“How was that for you?”

“It was pretty fucked up.” The guy glanced down at Tunney. “Sorry, boss.”

Tunney actually reached up and patted the guy’s hand, then turned back to Cody. “Keep going.”

“So that’s how things went,” Cody continued. “The doctors would try something, it wouldn’t work. Jimmy would dispatch her. She’d come back on the second floor. Me and whoever else was on duty would go get her. Bring her back to the third floor. And then the next day or the day after they’d try something else. But then one day Jimmy dispatched her and she didn’t show up on the second floor.”

“What?” I said.

“That’s what we said. She wasn’t there and we didn’t know where she was. Mr. Wooldridge flipped out and yelled at everyone, and especially Jimmy. We started tearing the house apart looking for her. And then we got a phone call from the security at the Columbia Yacht Club. Mrs. Wooldridge was on the Fairy Tale. Their sailing yacht. She was there and she was naked and we needed to come get her.”

“What happened?”

“Well, me and another guy grabbed one of her gowns and went to go get her.”

“No. I mean, why did she appear there and not back on the second floor?”

“I don’t know, man. But I will say that when we went to get her, she was doing something I never saw her do before.”

“What was that?”

“She was smiling. She had laid down, naked as a jaybird, on the deck of the yacht, arms spread out, eyes closed. Big ol’ smile. And I came up to her with a gown and I said ‘Mrs. Wooldridge, we have to go.’”

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Oh, let’s not. I’m so happy here.’”

I didn’t say anything to this. After a minute Cody figured out I wasn’t going to say anything, so he kept going. “So we finally get her dressed and into the car and back to the house, and Mr. Wooldridge is seriously pissed and is crying at her and yelling at us. Jimmy is watching all of this happen and then when things settle down a bit he comes over to me and asks me what happened.”

“How did he respond to it?”

“He didn’t. He just stood there and then thanked me and walked away. And then the next time he was there, Mrs. Wooldridge died. And when that happened, Mr. Wooldridge exploded at Jimmy. Yelling and cursing and screaming at him. Threatening him. He tried to attack him but one of our guys stopped that. I mean, not that he would have done anything to Jimmy. You’ve seen him. He’s not in the shape to do anything to anyone. But it wasn’t anything like he told you it was. It wasn’t anything like that at all.”

I nodded and turned my attention to Tunney. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Now it’s my turn to tell you a story,” Tunney said to me.

“All right.”

“Once upon a time there was a man who grew up in Chicago, and whose father and grandfather were part of the old Irish gangs that were part of the city even earlier than Prohibition. This man was pretty smart and pretty lucky and by the time he was thirty was running most of what was left of the Irish gangs’ interests in the city and most of the state. You with me so far?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Because what eventually happens is this man has a son. And the son says to the father, come on, Pop, stop being lucky and start being smart. So together the father and son start moving the family’s interests toward the legitimate side. It takes a while, it’s not a smooth process and—” here Tunney smiled as if to acknowledge the current situation, “—certain old habits die hard.”

“Like inviting people to discussions at a point of a gun,” I offered.

“Sure, like that. Or, for another example, like using dispatchers under the table to help out certain employees who have gotten themselves in a bad way and need to be saved from themselves.”

“Someone who might have overdosed, for example.”

“That’s a very good example. And as you know, dispatching isn’t a one hundred percent perfect science. Sometimes people die and stay dead.”

“Yes, they do.”

“And then that’s a mark on the dispatcher’s permanent record.”

“I suppose so.”

“Okay. So, let’s say in this story that this company, which is mostly straight but still has some kinks to work out, was sharing a dispatcher with a certain older gentleman who had a sick wife. The association, as it happens, is completely coincidental—the dispatcher came to the jobs through entirely separate channels.”

“That’s some coincidence.”

Tunney cocked his head at this. “Is it? Or is it that, ultimately, business—legitimate or not—is a small world, and sooner or later everyone knows everyone. You’ve seen both sides of the business world, haven’t you, Mr. Valdez? Can you say there’s a bright line where one side ends and the other begins? Or is it that there’s a big fat gray area in the middle? A gray area you yourself have spent a lot of time in?”

“I take your point,” I said.

“I thought you might. So, coincidence, but it hardly matters. Because the chairman of the mostly-straight company and the older gentleman with the sick wife are friends. Have been since high school. And after the wife passes the chairman goes to visit his friend, and the friend discovers that the dispatcher who couldn’t save his wife also didn’t save the company’s employee. And what are the odds of that? Two failed dispatches one right after the other?”

“One in a million.”

“One in a million,” Tunney agreed. “Or something like that. And so this man, this old man who lost his wife, the one person in the world he loves more than anyone or anything, is enraged. It’s impossible this has happened like it did. It can’t be an accident. Somehow this dispatcher is at fault. He’s to blame. And he has to be punished.”

I was silent again at this. Tunney was mirroring Wooldridge’s own words to me earlier in the day. “And then what?” I asked Tunney, when I finally remembered to.

“Then the old man who has just lost his wife asks his friend for a favor. A lifetime favor.”

I pointed at Tunney. “So you are involved.”

Tunney shook his head. “You’re not listening. Listen to what I said. The old man asked his friend for a favor. Not the friend’s company. Just his friend.”

“That is a very subtle distinction.”

“It’s very subtle, yes.”

“I’m not sure it’s a distinction law enforcement would care to make.”

Tunney spread his arms wide. “And now you know why we’re here.”

“Can we stop telling stories and get to it, then, Mr. Tunney?”

“Yes, of course.” Tunney leaned forward and clasped his hands together. “Let’s get to it.”

“You’re telling me your dad helped Orval Wooldridge abduct Jimmy Albert because Jimmy failed to dispatch Elaine Wooldridge.”

“Yes.”

“You’re telling me that he did this under his own steam, without using any resources from any of your companies.”

“Yes.”

“And presumably you’re telling me this because somehow you want me to pin this all on Wooldridge and not on your dad.”

“That’s about the size of it, yes.”

“Why?”

“You mean, besides that it’s my Pop and that I love him?”

“Yes.”

Tunney looked shocked. “Isn’t that enough?”

“No. Sorry. I just met you, but. No.”

Tunney smiled at this. “Fair enough. Let’s just say that we have some business with the city coming up that, if the contracts are successful, will allow my family to finally cut ties to anything that might even hint of racketeering. Everything above board, everything legal, everything safely in the realm of the white collar, where even if you do something wrong the worst you get is a fine. We’re done, finito, out. Wooldridge asking my father for a lifetime favor this week has been…inconvenient to these goals.”

“May I be honest with you, Mr. Tunney?”

“Of course.”

“We’re already looking at your company. There’s already a connection. Brodie Calhoun, your employee, is in the morgue.”

“A suicide.”

“Come on.”

“You’re a dispatcher, Mr. Valdez. And an ethically shaky one, historically speaking. You know how it’s done. You know they’re not going to find anything that makes it look like anything other than a suicide. It’s nicely arranged and anything that would be able to suggest otherwise has been compromised by a few days in the lake. You know it.”

“Maybe.”

“And as to the company, go ahead and look at it all you want. Scratch that—I want Chicago PD to look at the company as much as they want. Hell, I’ll open the file cabinets myself. Because the company is one hundred percent clean in this.”

“And if they’re looking at the company, they’re not looking at your dad.”

Tunney clapped his hands. “There you go. Everyone who does business knows our past. They expect we’ll get looked at from time to time. That’s a sunk cost, in terms of our business. That won’t strike anyone as unusual. And we’ll come out clean.”

“But your dad is chairman and if something comes out about him, everyone will assume the company rots from the head.”

“Yes. Nothing would stick, of course. Nothing ever sticks to Pop. The city and feds were after him for decades. But perception matters. The company’s clean. Dad isn’t. I want to focus away from him.”

“There’s a hitch to this plan of yours.”

“Tell me.”

“Jimmy Albert is still missing. We can’t find him. And if the only way to find him is through your dad, then you have a problem.”

Tunney glanced over at Cody again.

“What?” I said. “What is it?”

“I’ll give you something that will help you,” Tunney said. “But I need your word.”

“You need what?”

“Your word. That this thing gets steered to Wooldridge and not to my father.”

“Are we children here?”

Tunney sighed. “No, Mr. Valdez, we’re not. We’re two ethically compromised businessmen trying to find our way to a deal. You want to find your friend. I want to keep my dad from jail and my company off the rocks. I’m not stupid enough to try to bribe you and you wouldn’t be stupid enough to take it. Threatening you doesn’t serve my interests and won’t bring you to my side. All that we have at this point to offer each other is trust. So: Give me your word and when you go I’ll make sure you have information. And I will owe you a favor. That’s the deal.”

“And if I break the deal?”

The smile was back on Tunney’s face. “You know it’s hard to murder someone these days. I mean, I know you know that, given your job. But it’s not impossible. No, it’s not impossible at all. All it really takes is patience, and time, and silence. So let me assure you, Mr. Valdez. I am patient. I have time. And I am very good at silence.”

“I thought there wasn’t going to be any threatening.”

“I don’t see that as a threat. I am simply listing personal attributes. So. Do we have a deal?”

“Is the information good? I mean, look at what you’re asking from me. If what you’re giving is fortune cookie quality, we’re both going to be unhappy with what happens. I can’t actually stop the Chicago PD from investigating your father, you know. The only way this works is if you can give me something that lets us find Jimmy, fast.”

“It’s good information. If you’re smart.”

“Define ‘smart.’”

“Let’s hope it’s defined as ‘what you are,’ Mr. Valdez.”

“We have a deal.”

Tunney smiled. “Very good.” He stood up.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I have other appointments this evening,” Tunney said. He pointed to the men who had brought me to the building. “These two will fill you in on the details.”

“Fine.”

“You’ll need to wait about fifteen minutes before you can go home. I hope you understand.”

“I get it.”

“Thank you.” Tunney held out his hand. I shook it. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Valdez.” He slapped my shoulder with a hand and was off.

Fifteen minutes later I turned to the flunkies who brought me to the meeting. “Okay, it’s been fifteen minutes. What are the details?”

“The information you were promised is waiting for you at home,” one of them said to me. It was the one who pulled the gun on me in the first place. “Along with your phone, keys and wallet.”

“You guys broke into my apartment? Jesus.”

“They wouldn’t break in,” the second one said. “They had your keys.”

“Right. Silly me. Fine. Then I’m going home.”

“About that,” the first one said.

“What?”

“You can’t be seen going out of the building.”

“Why not? Your boss already left.”

“Right, but he was probably trailed to the building. Now someone’s probably waiting to see who else comes out of it. When you come out, they’ll want to know what you were talking about.”

“I’m working for the cops.”

“All the more reason, sir.”

“Well, then how do you suggest I get home?”

The first one drew his gun.

“Oh, you have got to fucking kidd—” was as far as I got before the second one, who had slipped out of my field of view while I was arguing with the first, grabbed me from behind, lifted me up, and walked me over to an elevator. The doors had been jammed open. There was nothing but shaft on the other side of the door.

A small part of me was really pissed that I missed that detail about the elevator doors earlier.

I screamed as I was tossed down the shaft.

I did not scream all the way down. That was because about two seconds in I clipped my head on something, felt the top of my skull lift off, and then instantly everything went black.

Then I was on my bed, naked.

“Fuck!” I yelled. I leapt up, lost my footing on the unstable ground of my mattress, and fell to my floor. I narrowly avoided braining myself on my closet door.

That would have been some irony, all things considered. To be murdered, and come back, only to be killed by the edge of a door.

Holy shit, I thought. I was fucking murdered.

I was aware I was going to vomit maybe a tenth of a second before I did. I didn’t even try to make it to the bathroom. I just turned my head and threw up all over my comforter. When I was done I wearily bunched up the comforter, took it to the bathroom, and dropped it into the tub. I turned on the showerhead and directed its flow. I’d take it down to the washing machine in the apartment building basement later.

I had a headache and then for a split second panicked that I was still missing part of my skull.

I checked, to be sure.

All clear.

I had a celebratory session of vomiting. This time I made it to the toilet. It was all dry heaves at that point.

I needed a drink.

My wallet, my keys and my phone were on my kitchen table, along with a piece of paper, torn from a notepad.

I stared at the paper.

I sighed and I picked it up. “You had better be fucking useful,” I said to it.

I read it.

I picked up the phone and called Langdon.

“I’m coming up with nothing,” Langdon said, as she answered the phone, without so much as a hello. “Albert’s phone and Calhoun’s phone never once meet.”

“That’s because they take our phones from us when we’re doing a shady dispatch,” I said. “They know you guys can track phones.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Then, “And you didn’t think to tell me that, did you, before I wasted my entire damn evening.”

“It slipped my mind.”

“I’m docking your consulting fee.”

“Listen, Langdon,” I said, and rubbed my forehead. My headache was getting worse. “I think we need to get to Jimmy’s apartment. Like, now.”

“Why?”

“I’m pretty sure there’s something there we need.”

“What? Something that will tell us where he is?”

“No,” I said. “But it’s something that might convince someone else to tell us where he is.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Langdon asked. We were on our way to the Alberts’ apartment. She was driving. I was in no condition to be navigating roads.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean you’ve said maybe six words since I picked you up. You’ve got a thousand-yard stare going on. I don’t know whether to be concerned for you or drop you off at an emergency room for observation.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’ve known you long enough to know you’re not a good liar.”

“It’s just been a long day.”

“It’s been a long day for me, too. I just wasted a couple of hours of it following cell phone records that didn’t tell me anything, a fact which you apparently knew would happen but didn’t bother to tell me about, so thank you very much for that.”

“Sorry.”

“What I’m saying is that even if you don’t want to tell me what’s going on in your head, I think you owe me. For wasting my time.”

“Fine. I was murdered.”

Langdon jerked the car off the road and slapped on her hazard lights.

“You were what?”

“I was murdered, all right? I was shoved down a fucking elevator shaft.”

Langdon processed this for several seconds. Then, “Why an elevator shaft?”

“Because if I didn’t survive it would look like a suicide. I mean, clearly, Langdon. Where have you been all day?”

“Who did this this to you?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Yes you can. You can tell me. You can tell me right now.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I made a deal.”

“You made a deal with people who shoved you down a goddamned elevator shaft.”

“Yeah.”

“Contracts expire at death, Valdez.”

“Not this one.”

“You need to tell me who did this.”

“No.”

“We’re partners.”

“We’re not partners. I’m a consultant. And if you recall, I didn’t fucking want to be part of this investigation in the first place. Because I figured it might be trouble. And I was right, because someone just threw me down forty-three fucking stories.”

“Sorry.”

“Actually, I think it was more like forty-five, because I’m pretty sure the building had fucking subbasements.”

“You’re yelling.”

“Of course I’m yelling! I’m fucking pissed off! I fucking died today!”

“Yes, you did. But you came back. So come on back, Tony.” Langdon put her hand on my shoulder.

I yelled wordless and started punching the dash of the car. After a couple of minutes of that I was wound down.

“I’m impressed,” Langdon said.

I started at her, confused. “That I punched the crap out of your car dash?”

“No, that you didn’t actually set off the airbag.”

I laughed at this.

“You feeling better?”

“No,” I said. “Now my fucking hand hurts.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.”

“Then tell me how you are.”

“I’m fine. I’m going to be fine.”

“I still want to know who did this to you.”

“Not going to happen. Not for a long time.”

“Then tell me this,” Langdon said. “Tell me that it was worth it. Whatever you got from them. It was worth being chucked down an elevator shaft.”

I pushed my head back against the headrest again. “I don’t know. We’re going to find out.”

There was silence. Eventually I realized the silence had gone on too long and I cracked my eyes open. Langdon was staring at me. “What?”

“So what was it like?”

“What was what like?”

“Being dead, you idiot!” Langdon said. “What happened? Did you feel anything? See anything? Hear choirs of angels? What?”

“I hit my head on the way down, I blacked out, I woke up, I had a headache.”

“That was it.”

“Yeah.”

“So, basically, death is like getting a concussion.”

“Pretty much.”

Langdon paused to consider this. “Well, that’s genuinely disappointing.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s good to know. Now I won’t get my hopes up.” Langdon started the car back up again, and carved her way back onto the road. “Now, listen. When we get to the Alberts’ I want you to stay in the car. I don’t think you’re equipped to handle Katie Albert’s hostility right now.”

I closed my eyes again. “I agree.”

“So that means now would be a good time to actually tell me what I’m going in there looking for.”

“A memory card. For laptops and cameras. You know. Like the size of a stamp.”

“I know what a memory card is. Am I looking for a particular memory card?”

“Yeah. It’s going to have a file on it. A video file.”

“Anything else on the card?”

“Maybe. I don’t think so.”

“So, a memory card with a video on it. And this will be enough for me to go on.”

“Trust me, if the video is of what I think it is, you’ll know it when you see it.”

Langdon found the video. She knew it when she saw it. And then we were on our way to see Orval Wooldridge.

Garrett Trimble was not happy to see us. “It’s eleven-thirty in the evening, Detective, Mr. Valdez,” he said. He was dressed in a polo shirt and slacks; for him I suspect that was the equivalent to padding around the mansion in pajamas. The security guard-slash-butler—not Cody but a different one—was dressed to the nines. As of course he would be.

“We’re well aware of the time,” Langdon said.

“Then you may also be aware that Mr. Wooldridge is elderly and doesn’t keep late hours. Especially now with the passing of his wife, he needs his rest more than ever. I’m going to have to ask you to schedule an appointment for tomorrow.”

“That’s not going to be a good time for us.”

“With apologies for my bluntness, Detective Langdon, I don’t care if it’s a good time. Lester,” Trimble glanced up at the butler, “please escort these two back to their vehicle.”

“Hold that thought, Lester,” Langdon said. She kept her gaze on Trimble. “Mr. Trimble, when a police officer shows up at your door at eleven-thirty in the evening, it’s not for a social call. You do understand that, right? We’re here to talk to Mr. Wooldridge. Now,” Langdon held up her phone. “Either Mr. Valdez and I have a nice little chat with Wooldridge, just the three of us, nice and cozy and informal, or I pull up the number I have for Judge Kuznia here on the speed dial and get a warrant to search the premises. Judge Kuznia has never met a warrant request she didn’t like. I’ll get that warrant in five minutes, tops. And I’ll make sure that every cop in a ten mile radius tracks their dirt all up and down these halls. Pretty sure that’ll wake up Mr. Wooldridge.”

“A warrant for what?”

“To search the premises for information and evidence concerning the disappearance and attempted murder of James Albert.” Langdon lowered her phone.

Trimble looked horrified. “Mr. Wooldridge has nothing to do with Mr. Albert’s disappearance.”

“Mr. Trimble, we both know that’s not true, now, don’t we? And what you decide, right now, determines whether we handle this quietly and calmly, like civilized adults, or whether we drag Mr. Wooldridge down to the precinct in his pajamas, and the pictures are up on the Trib and Sun-Times Web sites by 3 a.m. Your call.”

Trimble looked like he was seriously considering his options. “Lester,” he said. “Show these two to Mr. Wooldridge’s private office.” Lester nodded. He turned to us. “I’ll go wake up Mr. Wooldridge. It may take him a few moments to prepare. See that you don’t flood the foyer with policemen if it takes slightly longer than you expect.” He marched off. Lester motioned for us to enter and to follow him.

“Can you really get a warrant in five minutes?” I asked.

Langdon shook her head. “No, of course not. My personal record is seven minutes.”

I smiled at that.

There were two doors into Wooldridge’s private office. We entered from the one that faced out into the common hall and sat down in the two chairs in front of a massive mahogany desk. Wooldridge came out of the other one, situated on the other side of the desk, ten minutes later. As he did, Trimble following directly behind, I caught a glimpse of the bathroom on the other side of the door, presumably also connected to his bedroom suite. The bathroom appeared roughly the size of my entire apartment. The tub was the size of my bathroom. I admit it. I had envy for a moment.

Wooldridge was yelling at the two of us as he entered the office. “You’ve intimidated Garrett enough to drag me out of bed, but I assure you, Detective Langdon, Mr. Valdez, that I am not so easily impressed or intimidated.” He stood by the chair at his desk, not sitting, signaling that he had no intention of being in the room long enough to sit. “You have exactly two minutes to state your business, all of it. And you better believe tomorrow, Detective Langdon, that Chief Hammond is getting a phone call from me. You won’t like it when he calls you.”

“Mr. Wooldridge, you need to tell us where James Albert is,” Langdon said.

“Is that what you came here for? I already told you I had no idea what happened to him. The last I saw him he was taking a check from Garrett here.”

“The last time you saw him you were trying to attack him, Mr. Wooldridge,” I said. “You had to be physically restrained. You were blaming him for your wife’s death.”

“That’s simply not true.”

“It’s true that he’s not responsible for your wife’s death, sir.”

“Of course he is! He failed at his job.”

I shook my head. “No, Mr. Wooldridge. You remember earlier today, you asked me if I had ever heard of a dispatcher failing twice in a row. You asked me what the chances of that were. I told you it was one in a million. You remember that.”

“Yes of course,” Wooldridge said, irritably. “And now you have one minute left.”

“You said it was practically impossible that a dispatcher would fail twice in a row. And you’re right. It is practically impossible. It’s never happened. And it didn’t happen. Not to Jimmy.”

I nodded to Langdon. She swiped on her phone, which had a video frozen still on it. She held it up for Wooldridge to see.

Wooldridge sighed, exasperated. “I don’t have my glasses on. Tell me what that is.”

“It’s your wife, Mr. Wooldridge,” Langdon said. “It’s Elaine. And she left a message for you before she died. She left it with Jimmy.”

Wooldridge looked confused and desperately unhappy for a moment, and then glanced over to Trimble and started to shake. Trimble quickly crossed the distance to his boss and guided him to the desk chair. Then he looked up at Langdon. “This is a very cruel trick.”

Langdon shook her head. “It’s not a trick. It’s a message to Wooldridge, from Elaine. She made it a few hours before she passed on.”

“What is she saying?”

“I think it’s better just to play the video, Mr. Trimble.”

Trimble glanced down at the suddenly very frail-looking Wooldridge. “I don’t think that’s the best idea right now.”

Wooldridge picked up on that immediately. “Shut up, Garrett. It’s Elaine.” Trimble shut up, straightened up and looked at a spot on the far wall. Wooldridge reached for the phone. “Let me see that.” Langdon gave it to him. He took it and pressed the “play” button on the screen.

“Orval,” Elaine said, and smiled, a small and very weak smile. I couldn’t see the screen right now but I knew she was smiling because I had already watched the video, with Langdon. Elaine’s voice was equally small, weak and tired. “I’ve asked Jimmy to help me make this for you because I know you’ll be unhappy with my choice. I know you will want to blame others. And I know why you will want to do it. So please, if you love me, listen to me now.

“We’ve been fighting this cancer for years, Orv. It’s been eating me up. I’m tired and I’m hollowed out. I’ve kept fighting because you asked me to keep fighting. I’ve kept fighting because I know how much you’ll miss me. I kept fighting because I know you love me. I’ve done this for you. Fighting and dying, and being brought back and fighting again. For years now.

“But I’m tired now, Orv. I’m tired and I don’t want to fight anymore. There’s nothing left to fight, my love. I’ve already lost. I lost months ago, and everyone around you knows it. Everyone can see it but you. You can’t see it. You won’t see it. And it scares me, Orv. It’s turning you into someone I can’t bear to see. Someone old. Someone scared. Someone angry.

“I know you can’t let me go. So I’ve decided to take my leave. Today, when Jimmy helps me, I will be the one in control. He’ll give me the phone he uses to control the applicator. I will be the one pressing the button. It’s my choice. Jimmy has agreed to help me. I don’t want you to hold it against him or take your anger out on him. If you take it out on him, you’re taking it out on me. He’s helping me. And he’s helping you, Orv.

“Oh, Orv. I love you so much. And I know you’re afraid. Afraid of losing me. Of losing me forever. But you should know it’s not like that. In this world or the next, you will never lose me. I’m by your side. I’m by your side right now as you watch this. And I always will be. I love you, my husband. My darling Orv.”

The video stopped, and there was nothing in the room but the sound of an old, very tired man, crying and missing his wife and calling her name.

“She made this just before?” Trimble asked, if for no other reason than to fill the room with something to say.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t we know? Why didn’t Jimmy tell us?”

“I think he meant to. I think he was trying to find a way when Mr. Wooldridge attacked him. And then you and security hustled him out of the house.”

“How did you know? About this video?”

“I was left a note. It said that Jimmy had asked one of the security team to find a camera and a memory card to record on. When Jimmy gave the camera back, the memory card was gone. We found it tonight at his apartment.”

“It can’t be,” Wooldridge said, keening. “It can’t be. She wasn’t tired. She wasn’t sad. She didn’t want to leave.”

“Mr. Wooldridge,” I said. “Do you remember the last time your wife was dispatched before she died?”

“What?” Wooldridge looked up at me.

“The dispatch before the last. You remember it.”

“What about it?”

“Where did she appear after she was dispatched?”

“On the Fairy Tale. On our boat.”

“And she liked the boat, I’m guessing.”

“She did. She loved taking it out on the lake. We would go out, the two of us. We’d watch the sun set. Sometimes we stayed out all night.”

“Sir, the last time we talked you pointed out that when people are dispatched, they always return home.”

“Yes.”

“It’s not quite true, sir. People always return. But they return to a place they love. They return to a place they feel safe.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your wife couldn’t return here anymore, Mr. Wooldridge. It stopped being a place she loved. It stopped being a place she felt safe. She stopped feeling that way…”

“…because I wouldn’t let her go.”

“Yes. And when Jimmy found out it happened, that’s when he decided to help her go. To help her end her own life.”

Wooldridge began keening again, head to desk.

“I think we need to let him be,” Trimble said.

Langdon shook her head. “We need to know about James Albert. We need to know where he is.”

Trimble looked uncertain. “I think we need a lawyer for this part.”

“Mr. Trimble, we already know everything. Get the lawyer if you need to. You probably will need to. But right now, I’m not really concerned about putting Mr. Wooldridge behind bars. I’m concerned about finding Jimmy Albert.”

Trimble looked uncertain. I was beginning to understand this was his default. I turned my attention to Wooldridge. “Mr. Wooldridge, listen to me,” I said. “Now you know that Jimmy didn’t kill your wife. You were right. The odds were impossible. He didn’t fail. He helped your wife. I know you had your reasons for being angry at Jimmy. But you heard Elaine. If you’re hurting him, you’re hurting her. And Jimmy has a wife of his own. Someone who loves him as much as you loved Elaine. Someone who wants him home. By her side. Tell me where he is so he can go home to her.”

Wooldridge muttered something.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Kenosha,” Wooldridge repeated, more audibly.

Trimble started coming around the desk toward me and Langdon. “Okay. We really are going to need a lawyer now.”

“Shut up, Garrett,” Wooldridge said, for the second time that evening. For the second time, Trimble shut up. “It’s over.” He turned his attention to me and Langdon. “We have a summer house in Kenosha. Elaine and I would take the boat up there, and we would have the kids and grandkids there. The basement level is a playroom for the kids and includes a couple of bedrooms. It’s all soundproofed so the kids could be as loud as they wanted and up late as they wanted and everyone else could get to sleep. No one’s using it this time of year. It’s sealed up.”

“That’s where Jimmy Albert is,” Langdon prompted.

“Yes. That’s where he is. In one of the bedrooms. Tied up. Left to die. He’s there. Go get him.” Langdon nodded, stood up, picked her phone up off the desk and started making calls.

I nodded to Wooldridge. “Thank you.”

Wooldridge gave me a sour look. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for my wife. But you can do something for me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When you see your friend, tell him I’m sorry. I misunderstood and I didn’t let him tell me what she said. I was wrong to do that. It was my fault. I’m sorry for not listening and for everything after that. Tell him I said it.”

“It might be better coming from you.”

“I won’t be around to do it. I need to apologize to Elaine personally.” And with that Wooldridge reached into his desk, pulled out a snub-nosed revolver, put it under his chin and shot himself with it.

“Jesus!” Trimble ran to his boss, who had collapsed on the floor. From outside the office I could hear the sounds of security sprinting up the stairs. I moved toward a corner of the room and held up my hands. Langdon did the same, holding her badge in one hand.

“He’s still alive,” Trimble said from behind the desk, and looked up and over to me. “You can save him.”

I shook my head. “It’s too late.”

“You can save him!”

“He doesn’t want to be saved.”

The room swarmed with security, guns drawn.

“Well, he’s not dead,” Langdon said to me. We were at the Kenosha Medical Center, in the intensive care unit, looking at Jimmy Albert. He was unconscious, with IVs running to him.

“He’s not dead,” I agreed. “Dangerously dehydrated and physically damaged from being tied up for three days. But not dead.”

“Tell me something, because I don’t understand this.”

“What?”

Langdon motioned to Jimmy. “If he died in that soundproof bedroom, it would still be murder. He’d still reappear at home. He’d still be alive.”

“It’s not whether he’d be alive,” I said. “It’d be whether he’d stay alive.”

“Explain.”

“When you get murdered or dispatched, when you come back, your body reverts to a state a few hours before your death. For most people that’s great. When you’re murdered, whatever killed you probably did it quickly. You don’t experience trauma for that long.” I motioned to Jimmy. “But here, it’s slow. The body starves and the systems fail and if they manage to stretch out the process long enough…”

“…when you die, it means when you come back your body is still at a point near death.”

“Right. And the second time you die, you die for real because no one’s actively murdering you. It’s just your body failing all over the place.”

“So Wooldridge’s plan was to bind him up and let starvation and dehydration do the job.”

“Yes. Starvation, and dehydration and renal failure and pulmonary congestion and any other number of things that can happen to a body when you tie it up, throw it into a dark room and leave it to die.”

“It feels like a loophole. I mean, in the whole ‘if you’re murdered you get to come back’ thing.”

“It feels like a loophole because it is. And don’t think the bad guys don’t know it. You can’t kill anyone fast anymore. But if you’ve got the patience, and the time, you can do it. Patience, time and silence.”

Langdon looked over at me. “That sounds like a quote.”

“Yes, well. It may have been said to me recently.”

“Which brings me to something I want to talk to you about,” Langdon began, and was interrupted as two Chicago uniformed officers came into the ICU with Katie Albert between them. She spotted the two of us, and broke away from the uniforms to run toward us. When she reached us she grabbed Langdon and started crying “Thank you thank you thank you thank you,” between sobs. Langdon smiled and hugged her back. Eventually Katie disengaged from Langdon, gave me a quick glance, and then went into the room to see her husband. The uniformed cops followed her in.

“You’re welcome,” I said, quietly.

Langdon smiled at me. “I think she might still be holding a grudge.”

“There’s no ‘think’ about it.”

“Maybe I’ll make the point to her that you really did help to save her husband’s life.”

“As long as she thinks it was me who got him involved in the first place, it’s not going to matter.”

“But you didn’t have anything to do with Jimmy Albert getting caught up with any of this.”

“No, I didn’t. I don’t think she will ever care.”

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s all right. Jimmy’s alive and I don’t really care who gets credit for that one. And I have other things to worry about than Katie Albert being angry with me for the rest of our lives.”

We looked into the room to see Katie holding her unconscious husband’s hand, crying into it.

“So you held out on me,” Langdon said, after a minute of this.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“When we were at Wooldridge’s you talked about what really happened after Elaine Wooldridge died. How Wooldridge attacked Jimmy. You never bothered to share that tidbit with me.”

“It came to me late in the game.”

“I guess it did. Along with a note that told you that a video existed. Which you never really got around to telling me either. And of course, that whole being pushed down an elevator shaft for mysterious reasons.”

“It’s been an exciting day.”

“Yes, but for you more than me. So, let’s cut the shit, shall we, Valdez?”

“Okay.”

“You and I both know eighty-year-old decrepit Orval Wooldridge did not sneak into Jimmy Albert’s home, bludgeon him into submission, drag him to Kenosha and toss him into a basement playroom.”

“That’s pretty obvious, yes.”

“I have pretty strong suspicions that the Tunneys, our first suspects in this, if you’ll recall, have something to do with the muscle part of this little adventure.”

“That seems an entirely reasonable set of suspicions.”

“I think that all the things that I suspect are things that you actually know.”

“Huh.”

“And I think you should tell me.”

I nodded at this and pointed toward Jimmy. “So, Jimmy’s alive.”

“Yes, he is.”

“And you and I have a confession from Orval Wooldridge that he was behind his kidnapping and attempted murder. We have a witness to that confession in Garrett Trimble.”

“Yes, we do.”

“We have means, motive, opportunity. All wrapped up in a very neat, very clean bow.”

“Yes.”

“So I think maybe you should stop overthinking this thing and have the good grace to put this one in your ‘win’ column, Langdon.”

She thought about that for a minute. “So that’s how it is, then, Valdez.”

“For this, yeah.”

“Uh-huh. And here I worried you actually believed that line of bullshit you spouted about working the nice side of the street.”

My phone buzzed. There was a text on it from an undisclosed number.

ONE FAVOR OWED, it read. CHOOSE WELL. CHOOSE WISELY.

I looked back at Langdon. “I know what side of the street I like better. But you don’t always get to choose the side of the street you walk on.”

Langdon looked at me for a moment and then directed her attention back to Jimmy.

The door of the ICU opened again and a cop and a woman in surgical scrubs came in. The cop looked around and spotted me, and pointed me out to the woman. She came up to me. “Are you Tony Valdez?”

“I am.”

“You’re a dispatcher.”

“Yes.”

“We need you. We’ve got a real mess of a car accident victim. We’re keeping him alive for you. Come on.”

I glanced over at Langdon. She smiled.

“Go on,” she said. “Go save a life.”

So I did.