“So you think this is real?” Rodriguez said.
Lawson rubbed the heel of her palm into her forehead. “I don’t know what to think, except that we’re al gonna look like a bunch of assholes if this thing blows up.”
She was thinking about the press conference last night-the case they had already taken credit for solving.
“I’m gonna need to talk to the mayor,” Lawson said. “Maybe get him on the phone with the church.”
“This morning?” Rodriguez said.
“Sooner, the better. Meanwhile, I need to take a minute here with Kel y.”
Lawson waited until the door closed behind Rodriguez before speaking. “I’m sorry, Michael.”
“For what?”
“Mouthing off in the bar last night. Bragging about a case I thought I could bury.”
“Forget about it.”
“I don’t think so. It seems like you’ve had a better grasp of things every step of the way. How is that?”
“Lucky, I guess.”
“You stil meeting Hubert today?”
“Supposed to. Why?”
“I’d like you to run the contents of this letter by him. See what he comes up with.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. And get me everything else he’s got. Including the stuff on your old crash.”
“You buying into that?”
“I’m buying into you being two steps ahead of the field. If the edge lies with Hubert, I’d like to use it, rather than apologize later for ignoring it.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“Good. Now, what are your feelings on today?”
“You stil have a relationship with the archdiocese?”
“I can handle them, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s what I’m asking. Talk to the cardinal. Talk to the mayor. Use whatever pul you have to get into the churches and shut them down until you figure out if the threat is real. And…”
“And what?”
“And hope whatever this thing is, it hasn’t already started.”
CHAPTER 37
Hubert Russel lived in a studio on Division, just west of Damen. The neighborhood was jumping, with new restaurants and bars that actual y smel ed good. Most of that goodness, however, had yet to float up and into the hotbox apartments, crammed into ancient brownstones perched up and down the block.
“Nice place you got here,” I said and put my foot down on a cockroach the size of a smal sofa. The beast squirted out from under and looked up to see if that was my best shot. I put my heel into it until I heard a crack, then a snap. Score one for the good guys.
“It’s a dump, Mr. Kel y. But it’s al I can afford right now.” I settled on the edge of a kitchen chair. Hubert sat at his desk. A wooden fan hung from the ceiling. Between the two of us there was hardly room to take a breath.
“You read the letter I sent over?” I said.
Hubert nodded. “I might have something for you.”
I pul ed a little closer. Hubert had a monitor hooked up to his laptop. Beside the monitor was a bottle of pil s. Pain medicine for the kid’s face. I watched as Hubert began to open up documents.
“After you cal ed, I started pul ing emergency room admissions across the city. Then I ran that data through a program that sorts the information and looks for certain patterns. Actual y there are twenty-seven different filters in this program-”
I cut in. “Hubert, we might have some shit going on here.”
“Yeah, yeah. What did I find, right? Okay, in the past twelve hours there have been sixteen people admitted to ERs in the city, complaining of scorched red skin, blisters, and”-Hubert checked his computer-“weeping sores. Conditions range from serious but stable to critical.”
“So what?”
“So this program also matches symptoms to the signatures of different types of potential threats. These patients, al of them, seem to fit the pattern of an emerging chemical weapons attack. Specifical y, a mustard-based agent.”
“Mustard gas?”
“Some version of that, yes. Then I expanded the parameters to twenty-four hours’ worth of ER admissions. Picked up four more cases.”
I stared at the data on the screen. “How sure are you about this?”
“I’ve had your letter less than an hour, Mr. Kel y.”
“So you’re guessing?”
“It’s a little more than that.”
“Print me out the patient list,” I said.
Hubert hit a key, and a printer somewhere began to hum.
“What do you think?” Hubert said.
“What do I think? I think we might be fucked.”
I picked up my cel and punched in Rodriguez’s number. Hubert, however, wasn’t done.
“I got a little more, Mr. Kel y.”
I disconnected. “Go ahead.”
“I pul ed background on the twenty victims. Started with the hospital admittance forms and dug from there. Focused on any religious affiliations.”
More lines of meaningless text and numbers flashed up on the screen. Hubert highlighted a line of data. “Eighteen of the twenty identified themselves as Catholic. Half of them are registered in Holy Name’s parish.”
A tingle ran down the back of my neck. “Where are the rest registered?”
Hubert waved a hand around the room. “Al over. Stil, it’s interesting.”
“The ones that aren’t registered at Holy Name-where do they work?”
Hubert hit a few keys, and the information reshaped itself on his screen. “Eight of them work in the Loop or River North area. Here you go.”
Hubert flashed up a map with Holy Name Cathedral at its center and smal flags for each person’s workplace. The longest distance was eight blocks.
“They could have walked there from work,” I said, “which means seventeen of twenty have a possible connection to the cathedral.”
Hubert nodded. “Looks like it.”
I picked up my cel again and punched in the detective’s number. Rodriguez picked up on the first ring.
“Yeah.”
“It’s me. What’s going on?”
“Lawson and the mayor have been on the phone with the cardinal. Archdiocese wants us to sit on it until we have something solid.”
“Not too worried about their parishioners, I take it?”
“It’s cal ed damage control, Kel y.”
“Yeah, wel, I got something that might get things moving.”
“What’s that?”
“Hubert’s gonna send you some data. Shows a pattern of hospital admissions over the past day or so. Bottom line is, we have twenty cases of what might be mustard agent exposure. Seventeen with connections to Holy Name Cathedral.”
