Molly’s address turned out to be a small warehouse in an industrial park on the northwest edge of the city. The park itself had been shut down for a couple of years. Yet another TIF project, waiting to go into someone’s patronage pocket.
Rodriguez had wanted to come with, but we both knew it was better if he didn’t. So I drove to the address alone and sat in an empty parking lot. Storm clouds grumbled overhead, and it smelled like rain. The package Ellen had given me lay on the seat beside me. I pulled it open and reread the note she’d written. Ten minutes later, I locked up the car and walked toward the warehouse.
The west side was a long face of tired brick. There was a loading dock at the south end, with a double set of rolling doors secured by a heavy chain and padlock. Beside the dock was a single green door. I crept up and turned the knob. Locked. I thought about trying to pick it. Then I just kicked it in.
The room was large, with high ceilings and wooden stairs that led to an open loft. Dull light filtered in from windows cut just under the pitch of the roof. The rest of the room was painted in varying degrees of shadow ending in black. I ran my hand across a wall of rough stone. The floor was broken cement and dirt. The smell of stale grease and cut metal hung in the air. To my left was a large dark lump. I reached out and felt the curved groove of a lathe. An old machine shop.
My eyes drifted up and into the loft. A lamp lit a desk. There was a laptop on it, and a spread of papers. To the left of the desk was a fire exit. The door was ajar, rocking lightly on its hinges.
I took the steps two at a time. My eyes swept over the desk on my way to the door. I pushed it open and stared down a run of black iron stairs that led to a dirt parking lot. The lot was empty. I hadn’t heard a car start. And I should have. Instead, there was gun in my ribs and a voice at my shoulder.
“Why aren’t you more surprised, Kelly?”
He stripped off my coat and checked to see if I was wearing a vest. Then he lashed my wrists together and threw me in a chair. I could see out a window to my left. An old tree, polished branches naked against the darkening sky. A hard patter of sudden rain. I looked back at the man I knew as Peter Gilmore. He was long and angular, with hard, crusted features and a salt-and-pepper buzz cut. My gun was in one hand. His own, in the other.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“What was that?” I said.
“Why weren’t you more surprised when I stuck that gun in you?”
“Next time I’ll make sure to faint.”
“You come here alone?”
“Go on outside and check.”
He seemed to think about that, then shifted my gun to his belt.
“I got a question,” I said.
“I bet.”
“Why?”
“That all you want to know?”
I nodded. Gilmore shrugged. It was my dime. And it wouldn’t play for very long.
“Money,” he said. “If you knew that, maybe you wouldn’t be in the chair.”
“The body bags?”
“A little cash on the side.”
“What about the Fours’ drug stash?”
“Now that’s gonna be a lot of cash on the side.”
“It was a mistake, Gilmore.”
“You’re gonna lecture me about mistakes?”
“Whoever paid you to release the pathogen isn’t gonna like all the extras. Gonna get around someday to thinking you’re a liability.”
“Insurance, Kelly. Gotta have it. And I do. But thanks for the concern.” He waited a beat, to see if I’d make things any more fun. Then he tightened the skin around his eyes and pulled back on the trigger.
The first round hit me in the shoulder. My head snapped to the left and back. I could see the desk behind Gilmore, tilting crazily in liquid swirls of light. I leaned to the right and managed to keep the chair upright. His eyes were back, flat and empty, sitting at the other end of the gun barrel. I zoomed in on the cut iron of the hammer pulling back a second time, then snapping forward. A boom in my ears. Compression in my chest. And a Chicago summer floated in. Grass cut fresh. I was kneeling in the on-deck circle, looking back to talk to my coach. Jimmy McDonald hit a single. I turned at the sound and caught his bat flush in the temple. I fell to the ground and looked up. There was nothing there. Nothing but blue sky, and my brother’s voice.
Except this wasn’t a bat. It was a bullet. And Philip wasn’t here. Just me. Falling backward. The desk toppling until it was standing on its head. Then a row of rafters, slabs of scarred wood, laid across the ceiling. After that it was over and down, heels first through a hole in the floor. The tunnel, black and smooth. The fall itself, fast. A long way up, I could still see the gun. Eyes like boreholes above it. Hammer falling. Always falling. There were voices in my ear. Images reflected in the stygian gloom. I tried to stop my fall, but couldn’t. Silence pressed against my skin. The physical weight of falling. And the wind. Without a shred of pity. Then the fall stopped. I lay in the darkness. Darkness became light. And then they were one. And that one was nothing.