Sara Paretsky - Hardball

A sucking in of breath and another buzz around the interrogation circle. “Anytime someone starts throwing bombs around, we’re curious,” Torgeson finally said. “As a citizen, you have an obligation to help us in our investigation.”

“As a human being, I am deeply grieved that Sister Frankie died and that I couldn’t do anything to keep that from happening.”

“So tell us, as a human being, what Sister Frankie said.” Torgeson’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

“Sister Frankie said Iowa was depressing. She’d just come back from trying to help the families of the people your buddies in INS scooped up and arrested for the crime of working in a meat-packing plant. She said it was… Oh, I get it.” I leaned back against the egg-carton hospital mattress. “Sister Frankie was helping people who were in this country illegally. That’s why you’re all here, panting like badly trained bloodhounds.”

Lotty’s fingers gripped my shoulder: Steady there, Vic. Keep your temper under control.

“Do you think her death is connected to her work in Iowa?” I said.

“We’re asking the questions this afternoon, Warshawski.” That was the woman from OEM, determined to be as tough as the men around her.

I smiled tightly. “So you do think her death is connected to her work in Iowa.”

“We don’t know,” Torgeson said. “We don’t know if Sister Frances was the target or another member of the Freedom Center. It might even have been you. You’ve made yourself plenty unpopular with some people in this town.”

The accusation was so ruthless, so unsettling, that I almost missed the woman from OEM saying, “We thought the target could also be one of the families who live in the building. Some are illegals. Some are dealing drugs.”

“You know a lot about them,” I said. “Fast work.”

It’s an amazing thing about lack of sight: you feel people’s emotions more than when you can see them. I could feel Torgeson withdraw into himself, as if a glass wall had slipped between him and the room.

“You know about them because you’ve had the Freedom Center women under surveillance,” I said. “You’ve been watching them, tapping their phones. America is facing international terror threats, and you’re following a bunch of nuns.”

“We are not at liberty to discuss our actions, nor are we required to do so,” the OEM woman snapped.

I ignored her. “You’re dogging the sisters and you couldn’t stop a fire bombing.”

“We moved as fast as we could,” Torgeson protested. “We were undercover. It didn’t look like a serious attack at first, not until we saw the flames in the windows.”

“What in the name of sweet Fanny Adams did you think it was?” I cried.

The room became completely quiet. I could hear the hospital noises, the pages, the squeaking of rubber soles on worn linoleum.

One of the Bomb men cleared his throat. “Tell us what happened inside the apartment.”

I shook my head, exhausted. “We heard the window break. For five seconds, I thought it was street noise. Kids had been setting off firecrackers in the alley. I thought it was an M-80 that had misfired.”

Behind my bandages, I shut my eyes, trying to remember the few minutes I’d spent with Sister Frankie. “Then I saw a bottle come in through the window. I saw the rag, I knew it was a fire bomb. I screamed at Sister Frances to get down, but she went to pick it up. And then another one came through and… and…”

She was on fire. With my eyes shut, I could see the flames engulf her wiry hair, her skin turn white beneath the yellow flames. I was shaking and heaving, and Lotty was telling everyone they had to leave.

“We need to know what Sister Frances told Warshawski here about Harmony Newsome.”

“You are in my hospital by my sufferance only,” Lotty said coldly. “I have told you the time has come for you to leave and you will leave.”

“Doctor, you may mean well,” the woman from OEM said, “but we have powers here from the Department of Homeland Security. That means we talk to Warshawski until we’re ready to leave.”

I could smell Lotty’s fury. I felt my plastic tube move, and suddenly I had slid out of the room, down the waterslide at Wolf Lake, with Boom-Boom yelling my name. He was trying to dunk me in the lake, but Gabriella pulled him away from me, and I started to breathe again.

THANKS TO WHATEVER LOTTY INJECTED INTO MY IV, I slept the clock around. When I woke, the pain in my arms and eyes had subsided to a manageable throb. When a volunteer came in to help me with some kind of liquid goop that I’d been cleared to consume, I asked if she’d also help me with the phone.

I called Mr. Contreras first. He had seen the story on the news, but the hospital was blocking my calls, he said. He had called Lotty, who reassured him, but it was still a relief to him to hear from me in person.

“Don’t worry about the dogs none, doll, on account of I got that service you used when you was in Italy to come around. And Peewee”-his nickname for my cousin-“she’s been rallying around. She took Mitch into work with her this morning, and, last night, she went up to your place to get the sheets changed and everything, and even bought you yogurt, so you’ll be comfy when they let you out.”

That was reassuring, sort of. After the business with my trunk, it made me tense to think of my cousin wandering around my apartment. Maybe she’d collected the Nellie Fox ball and hoped, with her usual optimism, that I wouldn’t notice it was gone.

“Then there’s that nice fella who just moved in, the musician: he’s been helping with the dogs, too,” Mr. Contreras added. “But Murray Ryerson, he’s been around, him and some other reporters. I told him he should be ashamed, acting like a hyena following after the lions, picking up the food they did all the work finding.”

Mr. Contreras has never been crazy about any of the men in my life, but for some reason he actively dislikes Murray. I deflected the complaint as best I could and patiently answered his questions. I even took his rough words of comfort in stride: I wasn’t to blame myself. Nuns who went around working for terrorists knew they were taking risks. It wasn’t my fault someone had fire-bombed her the night I chose to visit.

After he and I finished, I got the volunteer to dial my office so that I could speak with Marilyn, the temp. She was overwhelmed by phone calls. It hadn’t occurred to me, but of course I was a media sensation.

“If it bleeds, it leads” is the old news bromide. And, if a nun bleeds, it leads for days. Julian Bond had called, as had Willie Barrow and other prominent civil rights veterans. Immigrant rights activists had held a vigil outside the hospital, and two men Sister Frankie had helped free from death row were staging a hunger strike outside police headquarters, demanding action in finding her killers. Since I’d been with her when she was murdered, I was understandably a person of interest to the TV crews.

“They keep calling, and some have been here, thinking you were hiding out. What should I tell them?”

“That it will be a week before I’m well enough to talk to anyone, and they should go away and find blood someplace else.”

We went through the more manageable part of my incoming calls. The subcontractor doing surveillance for me in Mokena. Some outstanding reports to clients, which I managed to dictate to her. And messages to various other clients, to tell them I’d be back in my office within the week and would talk to them then.

In the afternoon, I was wheeled to the ophthalmology department, and my eyes were unbandaged. Although the doctor had the blinds pulled and the overhead lights turned off, even the murky gray light made me wince. At first, I could see nothing but spark-filled spirals. After a few minutes, though, shapes swam into focus.