My voice trailed away uncertainly. I should be spending my energies on Jason Felitti and Diamond Head; it looked as though I might have stumbled onto something hot there. I should stop being a pest in the neighborhood and just let Todd and Chrissie work things out however they chose. After all, Mrs. Frizell wasn’t the most wonderful specimen to be spending time on. But all my hectoring myself on the subject could not stop the nagging in my brain that I should have done something more to protect the old woman and that I should be looking after her now.

Carol squeezed my arm. “You’re too intense, Vic. You take everything too hard. The world won’t stop spinning its way around the sun if you don’t rescue every wounded animal in your path.”

I grinned at her. “You’re a fine one to lecture me, Carol, after leaving the intensity of Lotty for the laid-back leisure of the Cook County trauma unit.”

She laughed, her teeth gleaming white in the dim stairwell. “And on those words I’d better get back there. It was quiet when I left, but now the sun is setting the bodies will start streaming in.”

We hugged each other and went our separate directions. I’d parked the Impala on the street, a few blocks west of the hospital. One thing about driving an old car with a rusty body, you don’t worry so much about strangers helping themselves to it. As I started the engine I could hear sirens in the distance. Ambulances bringing in their first loads of the night.

It was dinnertime and naptime, but I didn’t want to go home just now. I figured I could get one more free pass into the building through the alley before the guys in the Subaru realized how I was coming and going. I didn’t want to waste it on supper.

I parked the car on a side street near Belmont and Sheridan and climbed into the backseat for a brief rest. My late-night visit to Jonas Carver’s Loop office had left me tired and gritty all day. And onto that I’d added treks to the north and west suburbs. Not to mention fleeing flat out from some ugly muscle.

Another good thing about the Impala, I thought as I squirmed around to find a comfortable position—my Trans Am would never accommodate my five-eight frame across its minute backseat.

I actually slept for an hour. Bright lights shone in my eyes and woke me with heart-jolting speed. I reached for my gun and sat up, fearing my pursuers had found me. It turned out just to be a car trying to parallel park across the narrow street from me; it had managed to get turned at right angles to the roadway. Its headlights pointed directly into the backseat.