“Yeah, princess. You private operators work when you feel like it and leave the garbage for the cops to sweep up. You’ll talk to me when I’m ready for you,”

The light was dancing in my eyes again. I had moved beyond fatigue to a state where I’d start hallucinating if I wasn’t careful. I followed McGonnigal and Neely into the night without trying to respond.

40

Night Shakes

When Officer Neely had dropped us at my car, I dug the keys from my jeans pocket and handed them wordlessly to McGonnigal. He turned the car in the rutted yard while I leaned back in the passenger seat, releasing it so it was almost horizontal.

I was sure I’d fall asleep as soon as I lay back, but images from the night kept exploding in my head. Not the silent trip up the Calumet—that had already faded to the surreal world of half-remembered dreams. Louisa lying on the cart at the end of the plant, Dresberg’s cold indifference, waiting for the police in Chigwell’s office. I hadn’t been afraid at the time, but the recurring pictures gave me the shakes now. I tried clenching my arms against the sides of the seat to control the shaking.

“It’s aftershock.” McGonnigal’s voice came clinically in the dark. “Don’t be ashamed of it.”

I pulled the seat back to its upright position. “It’s the ugliness,” I said. “The horrible reasons Jurshak had for doing it, and the fact that Dresberg isn’t a man anymore, he’s an unfeeling death machine. If they’d just been a couple of punks jumping me in an alley, I wouldn’t feel this way.”

McGonnigal reached out an arm and groped for my left hand. He squeezed it reassuringly but didn’t speak. After a minute his fingers stiffened; he withdrew them and concentrated on turning onto the Calumet Expressway.

“A good investigator would take advantage of your fatigue and get you to explain what Jurshak’s horrible reasons were.”

I braced myself in the dark, trying to prepare my wits. Never speak without thinking. A cardinal rule to my clients in my public defender days. First the cops wear you out, then they show you some sympathy, then they get you to spill your guts.

McGonnigal tried taking the Chevy up to eighty, but slowed to seventy when it started vibrating. Police privilege.

“I expect you have some cover story ready,” he went on, “and it’d really be police brutality to force you to keep it up when you’re this tired.”

After that the temptation to tell him everything I knew became nearly irresistible. I forced myself to watch what aspect of landscape one could see from the expressway canyons, to push away the picture of Louisa’s disoriented gaze confusing me with Gabriella.

McGonnigal didn’t speak again until we were passing the Loop exits and then it was only to ask for Lotty’s address.

“Would you like to come back to Jefferson Park with me instead?” he asked unexpectedly. “Have a brandy, unwind?”