face.
Stanley swallowed hard, then his eyes grew vacant. For a brief, panicked moment, I thought he had died. But he hadn’t died. He’d simply grown calm.
“I’m… sorry,” he mumbled. “So… sorry I wasn’t… there for you.”
“Sorry about what?” I asked, shaking his arm.
His face contorted. Tears came from nowhere and rolled sideways down his face, as his head lay on the arm of the chair.
“I miss you so… much,” he said. “I’m coming… to you… I’m coming…”
“He’s going into shock,” Tori said. “We need to get him to the hospital.”
I looked back at Stanley, who was looking in my eyes. “Kill me,” he said, with a surprisingly strong voice. “It doesn’t mat… matter any… anymore.”
“Tell me, Stanley. Whatever you’re doing, it has to stop.”
My tone had instantly changed from punitive and taunting to a plea. This man, I now realized, wasn’t going to talk. I could waterboard him and he wouldn’t crack. Whatever he was doing, he was committed to it.
What was he talking about? Some tragedy in his life? I didn’t know. But I did know that I wasn’t going to get him to talk, and I couldn’t just leave him here.
I scooped him up in my arms and headed for the door.
83
Tori found the nearest emergency room with her iPhone. I burst in and got someone’s attention right away. I told them my uncle had tried to move a refrigerator down to the basement by himself and he’d fallen down the stairs. I figured fractures to the wrists and hands, and a separated shoulder, told that kind of a story.
Stanley could tell a different story if he wished, but I couldn’t see him doing it. His hands were pretty dirty. Why call attention to himself?
I took the medical paperwork with me to a chair and then walked out of the place. Tori had the SUV running outside, and I jumped in.
“That… wasn’t right,” she said to me.
“I agree.” I looked right at her. “You shouldn’t have stopped me.”
“That’s not what I-”
“I’m trying to save lives, Tori. This guy’s plotting to bomb something. I don’t have time for touchy-feely ACLU bullshit. You’re feeling sorry for that asshole?”
“That’s not the point-”
“It most certainly is the fucking point. What, you think I enjoyed that?”
She didn’t answer. Which was an answer in itself.
“Okay, so now I’m the sociopath,” I seethed. “I beat up a homegrown terrorist and I’m the bad guy. Lock me up, but let him plot a mass murder.”
She looked away. “Let’s just go home,” she said in a more subdued tone.
“Yeah, let’s do that. Thanks for coming along, Tori. You were a real help to the cause.”
She didn’t respond. There wasn’t much left to say. I wasn’t the least bit sorry for what I’d done. I only regretted that I didn’t get more out of him. In fact, I got basically nothing, other than confirmation that I was on the right track.
We drove awhile, back onto the main roads, and then the highway. I was exhausted from the adrenaline drain. My head was pounding, and my knee suddenly remembered how much it hurt.
“What’s in the gym bag?” I asked. “What did you get from the upstairs?”
“Anything I could sweep off his desk,” she answered. “A pile of papers that I didn’t have time to look at.”
“What about his cell phone or computer?”
“He didn’t have a laptop that I could see. Just a desktop that I couldn’t have carried if I wanted to. No cell phone that I could see. Really, I didn’t have time, Jason. It sounded like you were killing him downstairs.”
I didn’t have the energy to rekindle a civil-liberties debate. I just prayed like hell that she had found something good.
84
When we got back to my hotel room, I dumped everything out of the blue gym bag Tori had taken from Stanley Keane’s office upstairs. My initial optimism quickly dimmed as I pored over Stanley’s telephone and cable bills, a letter from his health care provider, a summary of year-end payroll for his company, and a notice from Publishers Clearing House informing him that he may have just won a million dollars.
But before I got to a second makeshift pile that appeared to contain similarly irrelevant stuff, my heart did a flutter. Among the pile was a pocket-sized map of the city’s downtown.
I unfolded it and spread it out on the table. It was limited to the commercial district, bordered to the west by the north-south bend of the river and to the east by the lake, covering twelve city blocks with the east-west leg of the river cutting it roughly in half.
I saw markings in red pen. There was a red X near the southern boundary of the district, by the Hartz Building at South Walter Drive. Next to it was the handwritten number 12. Then a red marker traveled north along South Walter to River Drive, then across the Lerner Street Bridge, and stopping at the federal building. There was an X placed at the federal building, as well as another X two blocks away at the state building. Next to both the state and federal buildings was the number 1.
“This is it,” I said to Tori, who was seated on the bed next to me now. “They’re going to blow up the Hartz Building and the state and federal buildings downtown.”
“The Hartz Building?” Tori said. “What’s that? Who’s in there?”
“No idea. I know a couple of law firms there.” I traced the route with my finger. “Assuming twelve and one are times, they’re going to hit the Hartz Building at noon-or midnight-and then hit the government buildings an hour later.”
That seemed odd. I’d never planned a bombing before, so admittedly I had little on which to base this, but I didn’t see why a multiple-strike attack wouldn’t occur simultaneously.
“The question is when,” said Tori. “Tomorrow, a month from now, when?”
That wasn’t the only question. But neither of us knew. And Stanley Keane was no longer available for our questions. Had we handled things differently at his house, we might have had time to review this map and then ask him about it.
But that was over now. No sense relitigating that battle.
“I’m calling the FBI,” I said.
I looked around and found my cell phone. As I reached for it, it began to buzz. I hate it when that happens.
But maybe not this time. The caller ID said it was Wendy Kotowski, my opposing counsel.
“Tomorrow morning, nine A.M.,” Wendy said to me. “The M. E.’s office. You’re one minute late and I lock the door.”
85
Wendy Kotowski, Detective Frank Danilo, and I huddled around a table in the office of the chief deputy medical examiner for the county, Dr. Mitra Agarwal.
