He’d told me earlier that he started work at six o’clock yesterday morning. I look at him sympathetically. “How long have you been awake now?”
He shrugs and disconsolately murmurs, “No excuse.”
“What the hell were they doing out there?” I ask angrily.
Zeller shrugs. “Beautiful night for a beer on the porch. For some reason, neither one of them seemed to think anything bad was likely to happen.”
“Why? Ed got shot here a few days ago!”
He shakes his head forlornly. “Sometimes we cops get to feeling a little invulnerable. Maybe Ed figured he could handle any risk that popped up.”
“Like I say, he just got shot. How in hell could he think that?”
“He was still on painkillers, Tony. Add a beer or two. Impaired judgment?”
“Damned costly error in judgment,” I mutter.
We’re ordered out of the house while detectives and crime-scene technicians pore over every inch of the porch and yard. A long night lies ahead while we anxiously await word from the hospital.
Chapter Eleven
My nose follows the smell of freshly brewed coffee when I wake up just after seven o’clock in the morning, two hours after I’d fallen into an exhausted sleep on the sofa in Pat’s office. I stifle a yawn and run my hands through my unruly hair as I come downstairs into the kitchen, tug my sweatpants straight, and give Pat a grateful nod as she pours me a cup of coffee.
“Good morning,” she says. Then she points at the kitchen table. “Sit, before you fall down.”
“Morning,” I mumble.
She’s fully dressed and made up, at least as much as Pat is ever made up. As she walks over and slides the coffee in front of me, I wonder if she’s been to bed since we straggled in just after three in the morning. We’d let Brittany sleep through the night in the second-floor guest room that she’s claimed as her own. I’m not sure where Pat stashed my father.
I lift the coffee to my lips. “Thanks.”
“Uh-huh,” she murmurs in Chicago’s approximation of “you’re welcome.” She looks down at me with concern and rests a hand on my shoulder. “How are you?”
Shell-shocked. Confused. Frightened. Pissed at Papa and Ed. I shrug and turn my hands up helplessly, then steer the conversation elsewhere as Pat settles into the chair beside mine.
“Papa?” I ask.
She tilts her head toward the living room. “Crashed on the couch. Still sleeping.”
“Brittany?”
“She’ll be down shortly. I heard her hitting the shower a few minutes ago.” Pat’s eye settles on me. “I haven’t told her what happened.”
I get it. I’m the parent. Still, I’m not looking forward to telling Brittany about the latest gunplay on Liberty Street. It turns out that I don’t have to. My daughter bursts into the kitchen a minute later in tears, throws herself into my arms, and exclaims, “You’re okay!”
I hold her close. “I am. Papa is, too.”
She smells of soap and shampoo, some sort of citrusy scent. She sobs against my chest a moment longer while her damp hair wets my shirt. Then she turns her eyes up to mine. “I just saw the morning news. They said two people were shot?”
“Ed Stankowski and the guy who attacked them.”
Her startled eyes ask the obvious follow-up question.
I guide her onto the chair beside mine before I answer, “Ed’s in the hospital. It’s bad. We’re hoping for the best.”
“Why?” Brittany sobs disconsolately while Pat deposits a steaming mug of coffee in front of her.
There’s really no satisfactory answer to that, so I wrap an arm around my daughter’s shoulders and hug her to me for a long minute.
“I’m so afraid for Papa,” she murmurs into my shoulder before she sits back and gulps down a shot of coffee.
“We all are, honey.”
Pat putters at the counter while we sit silently, then returns with a big bowl of communal fruit. We pick at it. A stack of buttered toast grows cold beside it. Pat finally breaks the oppressive silence in an effort to get our minds off Ed.
“Sandy Irving broke a new story in the Sun-Times this morning about the Milton crash. Windy City has filed a lawsuit against its insurance company for denying their claim to replace the aircraft.”
“What’s that about?” I ask.
“Ben Larose told me yesterday that the NTSB released the plane wreckage to the insurance company a couple of weeks ago. He’s figured all along that pilot error is the most likely outcome of the investigation, so the denied claim didn’t surprise him. His guess is that the insurance company is probably suggesting that Windy City was negligent in putting Megan Walton at the controls of the aircraft.”
My thoughts turn to how this might affect the R & B case and conclude that it should help us.
Pat glances at the clock and turns to Brittany. “Bobby should be here in fifteen minutes, kiddo. Are you ready to go?”
Brittany nods.
“Lunch made?” Pat asks her.
“I’ll buy something at the caf.”
I meet her gaze. “You don’t have to go to school today.”
“Seeing Bobby will help, Dad.”
Ah, yes. The boyfriend. There used to be a time when Daddy was the Soother in Chief. I miss those days. The ringing doorbell interrupts my pity party.
Brittany scoots to the front door and returns a minute later with a somber Jake Plummer in tow. Jake’s rumpled charcoal suit, red eyes, and the stubble on his face suggest he hasn’t been to sleep. Papa, awakened by the doorbell, stumbles along in their wake and veers off to the bathroom.
Fearing bad news, I capture Jake’s eye. “Ed?”
He wearily shakes his head. “He didn’t make it.”
We’re still sitting in stunned silence when Papa wanders back from the bathroom wearing worn pajama bottoms and a fraying sleeveless T-shirt. He’s rubbing sleep out of his eyes when it registers that something is terribly wrong.
“Ed?” he asks with a frightened tremor in his voice.
I break the bad news. It sends a visible jolt of pain through my father, who sags onto a stool at the breakfast bar and
