Sara Paretsky - Blacklist

the four lawmen, including the deputy from DuPage, who hadn’t spoken since we’d gone inside. He went off to his own car without so much as a good-bye to his partners in crime prevention. At least the U.S. agent thanked the city cops for their “intergovernmental cooperation.”

As I learned in the squad car, the DuPage deputy was sulking because the Chicago cops had overridden his orders. The two men thought this was such a good joke they shared it through the grill with me, but they wouldn’t-or couldn’t-tell me why we were going to Chicago police headquarters.

“You’ll find out soon enough when you get there, ma’am,” the driver said. At least they were calling me “ma’am” instead of “girlie,” and I wasn’t in handcuffs.

The driver covered the ten miles south in twelve minutes, blue lights flashing, occasionally hooting the siren to move cars out of the way. If I’d been president, I’d have felt important, but when we reached the underground garage behind the slick concrete building I only felt motion sick.

Police headquarters had been at Eleventh and State for my whole life. I used to go there with my dad when he had a meeting or needed to turn in special forms of some kind; the chief of the patrol division would ruffle my curls and give me a dime for the vending machine while he and my dad caught up on departmental gossip. I had a kind of nostalgia for the old headquarters’ beat-up linoleum and its rabbit warren of offices. The new building felt cold and unfriendly-too big, too clean, too shiny.

My escort handed me over to a desk sergeant, who busied herself with the phone. I studied the wall notices. These, at least, hadn’t changed in thirty years: armed and dangerous, last seen driving, workers’ compensation, missing since January 9.

The desk sergeant summoned a uniformed officer, a heavyset woman whose equipment belt created a giant M between her breasts and hips. “You got to cross that lonesome valley,” I sang under my breath, following her down the hall to an elevator. “You got to cross it by yourself.”

“Is it that bad?” she asked, as we rode up one floor. “What’d you do to get so many big men in a room together?”

I made a face. “Ran away from an ugly county lieutenant last night. But why that should get a lot of big men into a room, I don’t know. In fact, I don’t even know what big men have gathered on my account.”

She held the elevator door open until I was in the hall in front of her: never leave a suspect alone in an elevator. “Well, honey, we’ve arrived, so I guess you’ll know soon enough.”

She opened a door, saluted, said, “Here she is, Captain,” and left.

I couldn’t sort out how many people were in the room, or which ones I knew, I was so astonished at seeing the man my guide had saluted. “Bobby?” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

Bobby Mallory-Captain Mallory now-had been my dad’s protege on the force; my dad had been best man at his and Eileen’s wedding. If my mother had believed in godparents, Bobby would have been my godfather. But that didn’t bring a jolly twinkle to his pale eyes when he saw me. Nothing about my work makes him twinkle, but tonight he looked as grim as if I’d-well, helped a known terrorist escape.

I felt my knees weaken: Had he somehow learned that I’d taken Benjamin Sadawi to Father Lou’s? I was smart enough at least to keep my mouth shut as I found an empty chair.

I had time now to take in the rest of the crowd at the table. I knew some of the people, at least by sight, but four were complete strangers. The lanky woman with bags under her eyes next to me was a Cook County state’s attorney; we’d met in court several times. Of course I knew Bobby’s own longtime subordinate, my sometime friend Terry Finchley. Lieutenant Schorr had made the long trip in from Wheaton; he was glowering at me like a man who wished his deputies had shot me instead of Catherine Bayard. Stephanie Protheroe, sitting next to him, didn’t look at me. I also had occasionally worked with-or around-the FBI’s Derek Hatfield.

“Vicki,” Bobby said. “We’ve been waiting for you to surface. You have a lot of explaining to do, my girl. The superintendent asked me to head

Chicago’s task force on terrorism, and we seem to have a connection between a terrorist, suspected terrorist, who’s been living in Chicago, and the man you flushed last night in DuPage. All these busy people have been waiting to ask you questions, so let’s get going.”

Lieutenant Schorr and a man I didn’t recognize both started talking at once. “Just a minute,” I protested. “You busy people all know who I am: V I. Warshawski, Vicki only and solely to Captain Mallory. I’d like your names and affiliations.”

A highly polished specimen next to Derek Hatfield was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District. Along with Deputy Protheroe, Schorr had brought an assistant state’s attorney from DuPage with him-a man who looked like the U.S. attorney’s twin brother: young, white, thick brown hair perfectly combed. Everyone in the room had a sidekick but me. I wished I’d brought Peppy.

Mikes were set up on the table; a young woman in a Chicago PD uniform sat in a corner with sound equipment and earphones. The room and the sound system were as modern as anything I’d seen in the sheriff’s office last Sunday night; I hoped Schorr was impressed.

After the pause for civilities, Schorr and the U.S. attorney both jumped in again, Schorr wanting to know why I had fled before he questioned me, the attorney angry because the Feds had been hunting Benjamin Sadawi for four weeks-I’d been within centimeters of him without telling them.

“Benjamin Sadawi? Is that the boy who’s been a dishwasher at that fancy Gold Coast school?” I paused briefly, hoping they would stop picturing a big man in a head scarf and start seeing a skinny teenager. “I didn’t know I was within centimeters of him. Larchmont Hall was empty when I got there. Lieutenant Schorr’s men thought whoever was hiding in the attic jumped out a third-floor window when he-or she-heard me come in.”

“It didn’t make you suspicious when you found Arab-language books up in that attic?” Derek asked.

“The whole situation was so confusing that I didn’t know how to make sense of it.”

“You went upstairs, didn’t you?” the U.S. attorney asked. He and the DuPage attorney had been introduced as Jack and Orville, but they looked so much alike that I couldn’t remember which was which.

When I nodded, he said, “What did you think when you saw that some of the books were in Arabic?”

I wrinkled up my face, puzzled woman thinking. “There were a bunch of old kids’ books with Calvin Bayard’s name in the flyleaf. The house had belonged to the Drummond family-Geraldine Graham’s father-so I wondered why Mr. Bayard’s books were there. Then I saw the Arab-English dictionary and thought maybe Mr. Bayard was coming over in the middle of the night to study Arabic. I thought he might be translating his childhood books or something.”

“You couldn’t possibly have thought that!” Orville or Jack slapped the tabletop.

“No, you couldn’t have, Vicki,” Bobby spoke quietly, but sternly. “Tonight isn’t an occasion for joking. Since September 11, every law enforcement officer in this country has been stretched past the point of endurance. So give us straightforward answers to our questions.”

Terry Finchley suggested I start by explaining what I’d been doing in Larchmont in the first place. For what seemed to be the thousandth time, I went through my litany about Marcus Whitby’s death and his sister’s hiring me to investigate.