A Danger to Himself and Others: Bomb Squad NYC Incident 1 (21 page)

Without identifying himself as a cop, he told the receptionist he was looking for Ms. Ritchie. Was she on today? The elderly receptionist kindly called someone in administration, who informed her that the nurse should just be getting off shift.

“Does this involve one of her patients?” the receptionist asked.

“No,” Diaz said. “It’s personal, but I’d really like to catch her. Where would she get out?”

The receptionist didn’t show a hint of suspicion, maybe because Diaz had chosen to don a suit and tie for the occasion. If she did become suspect, he’d show his badge, but he’d rather not cause people to talk. She directed him to the employee parking lot and he hung around by the door, asking anyone not too old whether she was Sallye Ritchie.

At twelve-thirty, a nurse with bandy legs and an open wool coat stepped out the door and began walking toward the parking lot. She was remarkably thin and she still wore her uniform.

“Excuse me,” Diaz said for the tenth time, “can you help? I’m looking for nurse Sallye Ritchie.”

He saw immediately that he had her. And she also must have known by her hesitation that she’d given herself away. “That’s me,” she admitted. “Who is it wants to know?”

Diaz showed her his badge and introduced himself.

“What’s this about?” she said, clutching her coat closed against the chill.

“I’d like to—” It was then he noticed the bruises. She’d done a good job with the pancake makeup—to a point, anyway—but you’d have to be blind not to see that someone had beaten her up, and not long ago. One eye still had bad swelling around it and the white was mottled yellow and red. The bridge of her nose was swollen, too.

“Listen,” Diaz suggested, “can we sit down somewheres? Get a sandwich and a cup a coffee?”

Her eyes darted, looking for a way to evade him, but Diaz decided right there not to make threats that would turn her more skittish. His instincts told him to play it soft. “Please,” he said. “I drove all the way straight from New York City this morning.”

She wouldn’t look directly at him, but she gave a strained smile. “That where you got that accent, Detective?”

“Born and bred in the city, ma’am.”

Ritchie chewed the inside of a lip and shrugged. “My car’s just there. Can you follow me?”

Diaz readily agreed. He supposed she could bolt, but there’d be no point, now that he knew for sure where she worked.

He watched her climb gingerly into her navy blue Ford Focus, her white sneaker the last thing to disappear. Before he started his car, just to be safe, he wrote down her license plate number.

IT WAS A LEISURELY DRIVE
, Diaz figuring that the nurse drove slowly to gather her thoughts. But he wondered what those thoughts contained. She’d just had a visit from an out-of-state cop and she had no idea what he wanted. Or maybe she did have an idea.

He followed her to a place outside town, a greasy spoon toward the end of a strip mall farthest from the road. She parked between a car and a handicapped space. Diaz pulled through an open spot in the middle so his grille faced out. He was turning off the ignition when his phone rang, O’Shea calling.

Ritchie paused with her hand on the door to the restaurant, sensed that Diaz wasn’t behind her, and turned around. He held up the phone and pantomimed, getting the point across that he’d be right there, and she entered without him.

“What’s up, Brian,” he said.

“I got that fax from your friend.”

“That was fast. Anything there?”

“She treated both of our victims in Germany, but we knew that already.”

“You don’t think it could be coincidence.”

“If it is, I’m pitching for the Yankees tonight.”

“It ain’t baseball season.”

“It ain’t coincidence, either.”

“You got anything else?”

“We cross-checked her patient list with known veterans in New York.”

“That was fast, too.”

“Thank God for computers. In addition to our two vics, only one guy comes up, lives in a post office box—our luck.”

“What’s his name?”

“Lewis Salinowsky. Got a few guys on the street already looking for him.”

“Good.” Diaz wrote it down.

“I called you right away,” O’Shea said, “seeing as you’ve been out front on this. We’re also tracking down an address for the nurse.”

“Don’t bother with that.”

“Why?”

“I’m about to buy her lunch.”

SHE ALREADY HAD ONE THICK
ceramic cup on the paper placemat in front of her when he walked in. Plus one for him. She’d even added the cream. She nodded to it.

“Drink up. It’s getting cold. I ordered you a BLT. Whole wheat toast.”

“Thanks. Do you know why I’m here?”

“I’m guessing my nurse friends called you.”

“Why would they?”

She reached for her bruised cheek. Her arms were also black and blue. “They don’t miss much. A few of them voiced their concerns today.”

“I’m a New York cop.”

“I visited there recently. They know that.”

Diaz shrugged. “Assault and battery ain’t my jurisdiction. I’m with the Bomb Squad.”

He watched that register. It didn’t seem to set off any alarms. She sipped her coffee. “What’s that got to do with me?”

“We’ve had a pair of bombings in the past week. You hear about them?”

She shook her head. “I don’t follow the news much. It’s too depressing.”

“I’ll say. These two guys—army veterans—got blown up within a couple days of each other.” He told her the names. “Mean anything to you?”

“No.” She frowned and shook her head. Diaz noticed that her face had little affect, but he supposed that could be a tool of her trade. You might learn to disguise your feelings to protect the feelings of your patients. It was a valid theory, anyway.

Don’t jump to any conclusions. Just keep pressing.
“They were both patients of yours at Landstuhl.”

“Oh? That’s strange. But, then again, I had so many. When?”

Diaz pulled out a pair of photographs. He laid them on the table. “Does this refresh your memory any?”

She slid them toward her end, looked down, and smiled gently. “Yes, it does. This one’s Gavin and the black guy’s Albie.”

“So you do know them.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“How about Lewis Salinowsky?”

He caught her with that. Something changed in her face, but she shook her head. “You have a picture?”

“No.”

“Did he get blown up, too?”

“Not to my knowledge. How do you know him?”

“Like you said, he was a patient of mine,” she admitted. “They all were.”

There was more to it than that. He could see it flash across her eyes. Something devilish. Consciously or unconsciously, she was suppressing an emotion that wanted to rise inside her of its own accord.

“It’s no joke, ma’am. Like I said, two of them are deceased. And by violent means.”

“I’m not laughing. Not at that, anyway. Just that I have fond memories. Is there a law against that?”

“Depends what those memories lead you to do.”

“You don’t think I’d hurt them!”

“Crazier things have happened.”

She put a hand on her breastbone. “I’m a nurse.”

“That doesn’t disqualify you.”

“What I do is help people, Detective, not hurt them.”

Diaz took a sip of the now-cold coffee. He found it watery and flavorless. He added two packets of sugar but that didn’t help. When he set the cup down for the third time, he said, “I’ll give you the dates of the bombings. Please tell me your whereabouts at that time.”

He used the calendar on his phone, just to be sure, even though he had the dates seared in his memory.

She rocked her head back and forth. “Those are weekdays, aren’t they?”

“Yes, last Tuesday and Thursday.”

“I was here, working.”

“At the hospital?”

“Correct.”

“Their records will corroborate that?”

“Of course.”

Diaz studied her as he ate his sandwich. He knew never to rule out anyone based upon their appearance or livelihood. And there was something strange about her. On the other hand, her alibi was too easy to check. No one trying to cover up would claim to be working in a hospital on those days. Working at home alone, maybe, but not someplace where you signed in and a hundred people saw you during the course of the day. Then again, there was the GPS angle. Whoever did this may have set events in motion days ahead.

“So, how’d you get that shiner, Ms. Ritchie?”

“The shiner?”

“The eye. The cheek.” Now that some lipstick and some cover-up had worn off, he could see that she had a scab at the bridge of her nose and a split lip, too.

She looked into the plate with her half-eaten sandwich. “Tripped and fell down the stairs.”

“At home?”

She shook her head. “In a New York subway station.”

“You report it? Anyone assist you?”

“In the big city? No. They’re all out for themselves.”

He stared at her.

“Is there a law against not seeking help?”

Diaz further gave her the silent treatment.

“I was embarrassed,” she finally admitted.

“Your husband, huh?”

“I don’t have a husband.”

“Your boyfriend.”

“I didn’t say that. I’d rather not talk about it.”

Diaz filed it away. Looked like domestic abuse, but who knew. Maybe she was a member of a gang involved in these bombings, got beat up related to that. He took the pictures off the table and held them at his waist like a pair of cards.

“A person in your field...how many patients? Thousands?”

“I never counted them.”

“Thousands. Yet you came up with the names of these two right away.” He slipped the photos back into his jacket pocket.

“Those two soldiers were in bad shape,” she said. “Memorably so.”

“What did they have?”

“Concussion. Multiple contusions. Missing limbs. What does it matter?”

“Horn and Littel had their missing limbs used against them. Bombs in their prostheses.”

She closed her eyes an extra moment, as if something had just washed over her.

“You know something about this, don’t you, Ms. Ritchie? Wanna share?”

“You can call me Sallye, Detective. I’m a person, not just a nurse. I don’t only know things. I feel them. There’s something about a wounded soldier. Have you ever known a wounded soldier?”

“I’ve been one myself.”

“Really?” That perked her up. “Then you know that some wounds are hidden.”

“So what?”

“So there’s more to it than changing the dressing on a contusion. You have any invisible scars, Detective?”

“More than I can count.”

“How about visible ones?”

“Those, too. A few.”

She squirmed in her chair. “Where’s your biggest physical scar?”

“Right here.” He drew a line across his ribs.

“Let me see.”

Diaz noticed that her eyes widened in anticipation, ready to drink him in. She licked her broken lip.
Very strange.

“I don’t think showing you would be appropriate just now,” he said. But he wanted to string her along, play off the weakness that she was showing. “I can tell you the story.”

“Please do.”

“You first. What makes you so eager to hear it?”

She recovered herself. “Professional interest. That’s all.”

Bullshit!
he wanted to cry. There was something more going on here, though he couldn’t see what from this vantage point. Still, he had to throw her a bone.

“We were in Iraq, a large town near our operating base. I was an EOD officer and we were looking for a bad guy who was placing IEDs in local roads. We got a tip, had to go into town to check it out. Me and a team went along to disarm and secure whatever we found, but a firefight erupted on our perimeter, pinning down our regulars. I saw the guy we wanted bolt upstairs. Me and another guy sprinted after him, up to the roof. We weren’t that high up, but there was a gap between buildings. The bad guy ran across the roof and jumped to the next. I figured if he could do it, I could too. So I attempted to follow. But with fifty pounds on my back I dropped like a stone. Corner of the corrugated roof cut right through my uniform, but I ended up pretty lucky. Landed on the hood of a parked car.”

“Just the cut from all that?”

“Also fractured my left wrist and sprained an ankle. Nothing I couldn’t deal with. Now it’s your turn.”

“How’s that?”

“What do you know about these bombings?”

“I don’t know anything about them, Detective.”

“Then you wouldn’t mind if I had a look around your apartment.”

SHE LIVED IN A HOUSE
, not an apartment. And she seemed too eager to show it to him, Diaz thought. Which could mean one of two things. Either she had nothing to hide and he was just an evening’s entertainment for her. Or she was setting him up. He could call for backup, but he was on someone else’s territory. It might take awhile, and then he’d lose the flow of the interrogation. A better course was to stay alert. But just to be safe, he texted his exact whereabouts to Kahn.

With the single garage door left open for him, Diaz backed his car into the driveway.

“Manuel Diaz,” the voice said in his head, “takes every precaution before approaching the well-disguised heart of darkness.”

The house looked a hundred years old but well cared for, clapboard with a small screened porch facing the side yard.

She hadn’t waited for him. He rested a hand on the doorknob and then thought better of it. With his index finger poised by the snap of his holster, he used his other hand to knock on the door.

“Come in!” she called.

“No. You open it, please.”

After a moment, it swung open away from him and she revealed herself. She’d removed her overcoat and her shoes, still had on the nurse’s uniform and the white stockings over the bandy legs. There was an awkward pause and she stepped aside, waving him into a small vestibule that led past a laundry room into a family room and a small kitchen. All neat and tidy.

Diaz scanned for anything that might be dangerous. Then he relaxed a bit.

“Buy you a drink, Detective?”