“I know you can’t let me go. So I’ve decided to take my leave. Today, when Jimmy helps me, I will be the one in control. He’ll give me the phone he uses to control the applicator. I will be the one pressing the button. It’s my choice. Jimmy has agreed to help me. I don’t want you to hold it against him or take your anger out on him. If you take it out on him, you’re taking it out on me. He’s helping me. And he’s helping you, Orv.
“Oh, Orv. I love you so much. And I know you’re afraid. Afraid of losing me. Of losing me forever. But you should know it’s not like that. In this world or the next, you will never lose me. I’m by your side. I’m by your side right now as you watch this. And I always will be. I love you, my husband. My darling Orv.”
The video stopped, and there was nothing in the room but the sound of an old, very tired man, crying and missing his wife and calling her name.
“She made this just before?” Trimble asked, if for no other reason than to fill the room with something to say.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t we know? Why didn’t Jimmy tell us?”
“I think he meant to. I think he was trying to find a way when Mr. Wooldridge attacked him. And then you and security hustled him out of the house.”
“How did you know? About this video?”
“I was left a note. It said that Jimmy had asked one of the security team to find a camera and a memory card to record on. When Jimmy gave the camera back, the memory card was gone. We found it tonight at his apartment.”
“It can’t be,” Wooldridge said, keening. “It can’t be. She wasn’t tired. She wasn’t sad. She didn’t want to leave.”
“Mr. Wooldridge,” I said. “Do you remember the last time your wife was dispatched before she died?”
“What?” Wooldridge looked up at me.
“The dispatch before the last. You remember it.”
“What about it?”
“Where did she appear after she was dispatched?”
“On the Fairy Tale. On our boat.”
“And she liked the boat, I’m guessing.”
“She did. She loved taking it out on the lake. We would go out, the two of us. We’d watch the sun set. Sometimes we stayed out all night.”
“Sir, the last time we talked you pointed out that when people are dispatched, they always return home.”
“Yes.”
“It’s not quite true, sir. People always return. But they return to a place they love. They return to a place they feel safe.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your wife couldn’t return here anymore, Mr. Wooldridge. It stopped being a place she loved. It stopped being a place she felt safe. She stopped feeling that way…”
“…because I wouldn’t let her go.”
“Yes. And when Jimmy found out it happened, that’s when he decided to help her go. To help her end her own life.”
Wooldridge began keening again, head to desk.
“I think we need to let him be,” Trimble said.
Langdon shook her head. “We need to know about James Albert. We need to know where he is.”
Trimble looked uncertain. “I think we need a lawyer for this part.”
“Mr. Trimble, we already know everything. Get the lawyer if you need to. You probably will need to. But right now, I’m not really concerned about putting Mr. Wooldridge behind bars. I’m concerned about finding Jimmy Albert.”
Trimble looked uncertain. I was beginning to understand this was his default. I turned my attention to Wooldridge. “Mr. Wooldridge, listen to me,” I said. “Now you know that Jimmy didn’t kill your wife. You were right. The odds were impossible. He didn’t fail. He helped your wife. I know you had your reasons for being angry at Jimmy. But you heard Elaine. If you’re hurting him, you’re hurting her. And Jimmy has a wife of his own. Someone who loves him as much as you loved Elaine. Someone who wants him home. By her side. Tell me where he is so he can go home to her.”
Wooldridge muttered something.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Kenosha,” Wooldridge repeated, more audibly.
Trimble started coming around the desk toward me and Langdon. “Okay. We really are going to need a lawyer now.”
“Shut up, Garrett,” Wooldridge said, for the second time that evening. For the second time, Trimble shut up. “It’s over.” He turned his attention to me and Langdon. “We have a summer house in Kenosha. Elaine and I would take the boat up there, and we would have the kids and grandkids there. The basement level is a playroom for the kids and includes a couple of bedrooms. It’s all soundproofed so the kids could be as loud as they wanted and up late as they wanted and everyone else could get to sleep. No one’s using it this time of year. It’s sealed up.”
“That’s where Jimmy Albert is,” Langdon prompted.
“Yes. That’s where he is. In one of the bedrooms. Tied up. Left to die. He’s there. Go get him.” Langdon nodded, stood up, picked her phone up off the desk and started making calls.
I nodded to Wooldridge. “Thank you.”
Wooldridge gave me a sour look. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for my wife. But you can do something for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When you see your friend, tell him I’m sorry. I misunderstood and I didn’t let him tell me what she said. I was wrong to do that. It was my fault. I’m sorry for not listening and for everything after that. Tell him I said it.”
“It might be better coming from you.”
“I won’t be around to do it. I need to apologize to Elaine personally.” And with that Wooldridge reached into his desk, pulled out a snub-nosed revolver, put it under his chin and shot himself with it.
“Jesus!” Trimble ran to his boss, who had collapsed on the floor. From outside the office I could hear the sounds of security sprinting up the stairs. I moved toward a corner of the room and held up my hands. Langdon did the same, holding her badge in one hand.
“He’s still alive,” Trimble said from behind the desk, and looked up and over to me. “You can save him.”
I shook my head. “It’s too late.”
“You can save him!”
“He doesn’t want to be saved.”
The room swarmed with security, guns drawn.
“Well, he’s not dead,” Langdon said to me. We were at the Kenosha Medical Center, in the intensive care unit, looking at Jimmy Albert. He was unconscious, with IVs running to him.
“He’s not dead,” I agreed. “Dangerously dehydrated and physically damaged from being tied up for three days. But not dead.”
“Tell me something, because I don’t understand this.”
“What?”
Langdon motioned to Jimmy. “If he died in that soundproof bedroom, it would still be murder. He’d still reappear at home. He’d still be alive.”
“It’s not whether he’d be alive,” I said. “It’d be whether he’d stay alive.”
“Explain.”
“When you get murdered or dispatched, when you come back, your body reverts to a state a few hours before your death. For most people that’s great. When you’re murdered, whatever killed you probably did it quickly. You don’t experience trauma for that long.” I motioned to Jimmy. “But here, it’s slow. The body starves and the systems fail and if they manage to stretch out the process long enough…”
“…when you die, it means when you come back your body is still at a point near death.”
“Right. And the second time you die, you die for real because no one’s actively murdering you. It’s just your body failing all over the place.”
“So Wooldridge’s plan was to bind him up and let starvation and dehydration do the job.”
“Yes. Starvation, and dehydration and renal failure and pulmonary congestion and any other number of things that can happen to a body when you tie it up, throw it into a dark room and leave it to die.”
“It feels like a loophole. I mean, in the whole ‘if you’re mur
dered you get to come back’ thing.”
“It feels like a loophole because it is. And don’t think the bad guys don’t know it. You can’t kill anyone fast anymore. But if you’ve got the patience, and the time, you can do it. Patience, time and silence.”
Langdon looked over at me. “That sounds like a quote.”
“Yes, well. It may have been said to me recently.”
“Which brings me to something I want to talk to you about,” Langdon began, and was interrupted as two Chicago uniformed officers came into the ICU with Katie Albert between them. She spotted the two of us, and broke away from the uniforms to run toward us. When she reached us she grabbed Langdon and started crying “Thank you thank you thank you thank you,” between sobs. Langdon smiled and hugged her back. Eventually Katie disengaged from Langdon, gave me a quick glance, and then went into the room to see her husband. The uniformed cops followed her in.
“You’re welcome,” I said, quietly.
Langdon smiled at me. “I think she might still be holding a grudge.”
“There’s no ‘think’ about it.”
“Maybe I’ll make the point to her that you really did help to save her husband’s life.”
“As long as she thinks it was me who got him involved in the first place, it’s not going to matter.”
“But you didn’t have anything to do with Jimmy Albert getting caught up with any of this.”
“No, I didn’t. I don’t think she will ever care.”
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s all right. Jimmy’s alive and I don’t really care who gets credit for that one. And I have other things to worry about than Katie Albert being angry with me for the rest of our lives.”
We looked into the room to see Katie holding her unconscious husband’s hand, crying into it.
“So you held out on me,” Langdon said, after a minute of this.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“When we were at Wooldridge’s you talked about what really happened after Elaine Wooldridge died. How Wooldridge attacked Jimmy. You never bothered to share that tidbit with me.”
“It came to me late in the game.”
“I guess it did. Along with a note that told you that a video existed. Which you never really got around to telling me either. And of course, that whole being pushed down an elevator shaft for mysterious reasons.”
“It’s been an exciting day.”
“Yes, but for you more than me. So, let’s cut the shit, shall we, Valdez?”
“Okay.”
“You and I both know eighty-year-old decrepit Orval Wooldridge did not sneak into Jimmy Albert’s home, bludgeon him into submission, drag him to Kenosha and toss him into a basement playroom.”
“That’s pretty obvious, yes.”
“I have pretty strong suspicions that the Tunneys, our first suspects in this, if you’ll recall, have something to do with the muscle part of this little adventure.”
“That seems an entirely reasonable set of suspicions.”
“I think that all the things that I suspect are things that you actually know.”
“Huh.”
“And I think you should tell me.”
I nodded at this and pointed toward Jimmy. “So, Jimmy’s alive.”
“Yes, he is.”
“And you and I have a confession from Orval Wooldridge that he was behind his kidnapping and attempted murder. We have a witness to that confession in Garrett Trimble.”
“Yes, we do.”
“We have means, motive, opportunity. All wrapped up in a very neat, very clean bow.”
“Yes.”
“So I think maybe you should stop overthinking this thing and have the good grace to put this one in your ‘win’ column, Langdon.”
She thought about that for a minute. “So that’s how it is, then, Valdez.”
“For this, yeah.”
“Uh-huh. And here I worried you actually believed that line of bullshit you spouted about working the nice side of the street.”
My phone buzzed. There was a text on it from an undisclosed number.
ONE FAVOR OWED, it read. CHOOSE WELL. CHOOSE WISELY.
I looked back at Langdon. “I know what side of the street I like better. But you don’t always get to choose the side of the street you walk on.”
Langdon looked at me for a moment and then directed her attention back to Jimmy.
The door of the ICU opened again and a cop and a woman in surgical scrubs came in. The cop looked around and spotted me, and pointed me out to the woman. She came up to me. “Are you Tony Valdez?”
“I am.”
“You’re a dispatcher.”
“Yes.”
“We need you. We’ve got a real mess of a car accident victim. We’re keeping him alive for you. Come on.”
I glanced over at Langdon. She smiled.
“Go on,” she said. “Go save a life.”
So I did.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
John Scalzi, The Dispatcher
(Series: # )
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