Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

“And you’re just going to stay home and watch TV while they sort it out?” He guffawed. “Between us ace investigators, what were you doing down there?”

Black spots were starting to dance in front of me from the resonance of his voice. I moved the earpiece away from my head. “Performing feats of derring-do. I understand it was in all the papers.”

“C’mon, Warshawski,” he said, trying to wheedle. “I do lots of stuff for you. Just a few little words.”

He was right-if I wanted help from him, I had to throw him the occasional quote. I told him everything from the moment Elena called me to my drop from the fire escape.

“Now it’s your turn-what was the fire department doing there so pat?”

Mr. Contreras looked at me as intently as the dog, miffed I was telling my tale to Murray but wanting all the juice. I took the phone over to the couch where I’d dumped my bag and pulled out my memo pad. “Anonymous phone call,” I scribbled on it for Mr. Contreras as Murray boomed the news at me. Someone had called 911 from a pay phone at the corner of Cermak and Michigan. The police didn’t have a clue as to who phoned, except for its having been a man.

“So you think it was someone after your aunt?” Murray asked. “How is she, by the way?”

“I don’t think anything right now. My head hurts like all the cement trucks on the Ryan just ran over it. And my aunt, who has the system of a goat, sat up and took nourishment yesterday. She refused to talk to me, though, when I started asking her pointed questions, and is acting sick enough that the docs are stonewalling the cops for her. You can call Reese and see if the medicine men will let her talk to you, but don’t set your hopes too high. Now you know everything I do. I’m going to bed. Good-bye.”

I hung up before he could say anything else and ignored the phone when it started ringing again. Mr. Contreras solicitously offered to fix me up with pillows and a blanket on the couch, to leave me the dog, to make me tea, to do a thousand things that made the black spots grow into giant spirals.

“I need to be alone in my own bed. I can’t take any more people now. I know you mean well, I know you’re helping like mad, but I’m going to faint or scream or both if you don’t take the dog and leave.”

He was a little hurt but he’d seen concussion cases before, he knew it took time before you really felt yourself, and in the meantime the smallest things got you down-sure, doll, sure, he’d leave me alone, sleep was the best thing for me right now. He gathered up the dishes, clicking over the small amount of steak I’d eaten-gotta get your strength back up, doll, you look like you lost ten pounds the last few days-finally collecting the dog and heading down the stairs. I locked the triple dead bolts and stumbled to my bedroom.

The spirals receded back to spots as I thrashed around in an uneasy doze. The image of Elena, her face sunk into deep canyons, drips in her malnourished arms, kept swarming into my half sleep. She was a pain in the ass but someone had tried to kill her; I couldn’t just abandon her at this point.

I’d tried talking to her before I left this morning but she’d pretended to sleep. “It’s no good playing possum, Auntie-you’re going to have to talk to me sometime,” I’d warned her.

Mez Homerin interrupted my lecture to her, taking me by the arm and hustling me from the room.

“She’s had a severe shock to a system that wasn’t in the best shape to begin with. She needs to be completely free from any kind of stress or harassment if she’s to recover. I’ve forbidden the police to question her. Do you want me to bar you from the room too? She needs your support, not your abuse.”

“Bar me from her life,” I’d snapped at him. “Keep her from calling to demand that I help her one last time- write it on her hospital forms. Make sure she doesn’t put my address in as her own or list me as the guarantor of her bill. Do all those things and you can keep me out of her room with all the righteousness you want.”

Homerin looked at me steadily during my outburst and then said in a gentle voice that he thought I ought to consider bringing her home to convalesce when she was a little stronger. That was when I’d left the hospital-before I gave in to my urge to take his stethoscope and strangle him with it.

Now, though, tossing restlessly, I was tormented wondering how much I owed my aunt. Would my uncle Peter thrash in guilt for saying no? Of course not. I hadn’t even called to ask him-my tired brain wasn’t up to rebutting his smugness. Did I have a duty to Elena that overrode all considerations of myself, my work, my own longing for wholeness?

I’d held glasses of water for Gabriella when her arms were too weak to lift them herself, emptied wheelchair pots for Tony when he could no longer move from chair to toilet. I’ve done enough, I kept repeating, I’ve done enough. But I couldn’t quite convince myself.

Such unquiet sleep as I achieved was broken up for good at four when the police came, represented by Roland Montgomery and Terry Finchley. Montgomery kept a finger on the bell until I couldn’t ignore it, and then said through the intercom that if I didn’t let them up to talk, they’d get a warrant and take me downtown. It was Montgomery who did all the bullying. Terry Finchley, sent by Bobby to represent Violent Crimes, was clearly unhappy with Montgomery’s approach but was too junior to protest very forcefully.

I shuffled into the living room with a blanket wrapped around me. I’d been sweating heavily in my uneasy dozing and felt a chill run through me when I got out of bed. The black spots had gone away but my head was thick, as though someone had stuffed it with wool. I sat on the couch with my legs curled up underneath me.

“Let’s have the whole story, Warshawski. What were you doing in that building? How did it come to catch fire while you were there?”

“The force of my fiery personality,” I mumbled, my tongue thick.

“What was that?” Montgomery demanded angrily. Finchley shook his head slightly, trying to warn me without the arson expert seeing.

“I called Furey,” I said, suddenly remembering. “He wanted to know where my aunt was and I left a message with the night man saying where I was going. Did he get it? Is that why he and Bobby were at the fire?”

“I’m asking the questions,” Montgomery snapped. “Why did you call the station?”

“Get the chip off your shoulder, Lieutenant, and listen to me. I just explained why I called the station. Did Detective Furey get my message?”

Finchley spoke swiftly, before Montgomery could bellow at me. “Furey was at a poker game; he left his beeper in his coat pocket and didn’t get the message until he went over to get a cigar and found the thing vibrating away. Then he called the station, got your message, and went roaring down to the Near South Side. By that time, though, someone had already reported the fire. Lieutenant Mallory gave the night operator a pretty good going-over for not notifying someone else in the unit, but you hadn’t said anything about an emergency.”

“So Furey and Bobby stormed the hospital. How come you’re here now?”

“Miss Warshawski,” Montgomery interrupted frostily, “Detective Finchley is here to help with an investigation. Why the department sent him is none of your business.”

I wanted to make a grandiose statement about how the police worked for the citizens and how I was one, and therefore one of Montgomery’s bosses, but I felt too sick to fight. I just wrapped the blanket closer about me and continued to shiver. And when Montgomery asked me I went back through all the tired old details. About Elena disappearing, about Furey coming around hunting for her, her early morning phone call, and on and on.