Demolition Angel (13 page)

“That what he told you in his little note?”

“We know because he etches the target’s name on the bomb casing. The first two techs he killed, we found their names in the frag during the reconstruction. Alan Brennert in Baltimore; Michael Cassutt in Philadelphia; both sergeant-supervisors who’d been involved in big cases.”

Starkey didn’t say anything. She drew a large
5
in the water rings on the table, then changed it to an S. She guessed it came from “Charles.” Charlie Riggio wasn’t exactly the big dog of the LAPD Bomb Squad, but she wasn’t going to say that.

“Why are you telling me this here in a bar and not in Kelso’s office?”

Now Pell glanced away. He seemed nervous about something.

“We try to keep that information on a need-to-know basis.”

“Well, I’m honored, Pell. I sure as hell have a need to know, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes.”

“Makes me wonder what else you might be holding back.”

Pell glanced back sharply.

“As the lead, you could make statements to the press to help advance his destabilization. These aren’t just little machines that he’s building. These bombs are who he is, and he’s meticulous about them. They are very precise, very exact. We know he takes pride in them. In his head, it could become a one-on-one game that keeps him in Los Angeles and gives us a better shot to nail him.”

“Me versus him.”

“Something like that. What do you say?”

Starkey didn’t have to think about it.

“I’m in.”

Pell sighed deeply, his shoulders sagging as he relaxed, as if he had been afraid that she wouldn’t go along. She smiled to herself, thinking how little he knew.

“All right, Starkey. All right. We believe that he builds the bombs locally. He’ll go into an area, acquire the things that he needs, and build the bomb there, so he doesn’t have to transport anything, risking capture on the airlines. I put a list of the Modex components in with the reports. I want you to run a local check for people with access to RDX.”

Even though Starkey was already running the search, it irritated her that he was giving instructions.

“Listen, Pell, if you want to run a search, do it yourself. You’re not giving the orders here.”

“It’s important, Starkey.”

“Then
you
do it!”

Pell glared at her, then seemed to reconsider. He showed his palms and relaxed.

“I guess you could look at it this way, Detective: If I do it, I’m taking over your case; if you do it, I’m only advising you. Which do you want it to be?”

Starkey looked smug.

“It’s already happening, Pell. I punched it in today.”

He nodded without expression and went on. She found herself irritated that he didn’t acknowledge that she was ahead of him.

“Do we have a photograph of this guy? There must’ve been a security camera.”

“There aren’t any security cameras in the downtown branch, but I’ll have a sketch by tomorrow. The wits described a white male in his twenties with bright red hair. We also have two other sketches from previous incidents. I can already tell you that all three look different. He changes his appearance when he lets himself be seen.”

Starkey shrugged noncommittally. Lester had described an older man, nothing even close to young, but she decided not to mention Lester until they had the sketch.

“Whatever. I want a copy of all three of your sketches when you have them, and I want something else, too. I want to see the bomb.”

“As soon as I get the report, you’ll get the report.”

“You didn’t hear me. I want the bomb. I want it in my hands. I’m a bomb technician, Pell. I want to break it down myself, not just accept someone else’s report. I want to compare it to the Silver Lake bomb and learn something. I know we can do this because I’ve traded comparative evidence with other cities before.”

Pell seemed to consider her again, then nodded.

“Okay, Starkey, I think that’s a good idea. But I think you should arrange it.”

Starkey frowned, wondering if Pell was going to be deadwood.

“Your
people have the damned thing. It would be easier for you to get it.”

“The more I do, the more pressure I’ll get from Washington to take over the case before the FBI comes in.”

“Who’s talking about the FBI? We’re not dealing with a terrorist here. This is domestic.”

“A terrorist is whoever the FBI says is a terrorist. You’re worried about me coming in, I’m worried about the FBI. We all have something to worry about.”

“Jesus Christ, Pell.”

He showed his palms again, and she nodded.

“Okay. I’ll do it myself.”

Pell stood, then gave her a card.

“This is the motel where I’m staying. My pager number is on the back.”

Starkey put it away without looking at it.

“Anything comes up, I’ll give you a call.”

Pell was staring at her.

“What?”

“Mr. Red is dangerous, Starkey. A guy like this in town, you don’t want to be too drunk to react.”

Starkey rattled the ice in her glass, then took a sip.

“I’ve already been dead once, Pell. Believe me, there are worse things.”

Pell considered her another moment, Starkey thinking he wanted to say something, but then he left. She watched him until he stepped out of the bar into a wedge of blinding light and was gone. Pell had no fucking idea.

Starkey returned to her bench at the bar and ordered a refill. She was convinced that Pell knew more than he was saying.

The Sex Crimes dick leaned close.

“Fed?”

“Yeah.”

“They’re all pricks.”

“We’ll see.”

Starkey spent most of the afternoon thinking about the tapes that waited in her car. Those tapes and what was on them were real. After a while, it was the weight of the tapes
that pulled her from the bar. It was almost eight when she left Barrigan’s and drove home.

Starkey’s head hurt from the gin. She was hungry, but there was nothing to eat in her house and she didn’t want to go out again. She put the tapes in her living room by the VCR, but decided to shower first, then read the reports.

She let the water beat into her neck and skull until it ran cold, then dressed in a black T-shirt and panties. She found a box of raisins, ate them standing at the kitchen sink. When she was finished, she poured a glass of milk, struck a fresh cigarette, and sat at the kitchen table to read.

The manila envelope contained seven ATF explosives profiles written at the ATF’s National Laboratory Center in Rockville, Maryland. Each report contained an analysis of a device that was attributed to an unidentified suspect known only as Mr. Red, but each was heavily edited. Pages were missing, and several paragraphs in each report had been deleted.

She grew angry at the deletions, but she found herself interested in the details that were present and read with clear focus. She took notes.

Every one of the devices had been built of twin pipe canisters capped and sealed with plumber’s tape, one pipe containing the radio receiver (all receivers identified as being from the WayKool line of remote-control toy cars) and 9-volt battery, one the Modex Hybrid explosive. None of the reports mentioned the etched names that Pell had described. She thought that the deleted material probably referenced that.

When she finished with the reports, she went into her living room and stared at the tapes. She knew that she had been avoiding them, evidence that could potentially offer a breakthrough in her case. But even now, her stomach knotted at the thought of seeing them.

“Oh, goddamnit. This is stupid.”

She went into the kitchen, poured herself a stiff gin, then loaded the first tape into the machine. She could have watched
the tapes with Buck Daggett or Lester Ybarra, or with Marzik and Hooker, but she knew she had to see them alone. At least, this first time. She had to see them alone because she would be seeing things that none of the rest of them would see.

The image was a wide shot of the parking lot. The Bomb Squad Suburban was in place, the parking lot and the nearby streets cordoned off. The frame did not move, telling Starkey that the helicopter had been in a stationary hover. Riggio, already in the suit, was at the rear of the Suburban, talking with Daggett. Seeing them like that chilled her. Seeing Daggett pat Riggio’s helmet, seeing Riggio turn and lumber toward the bomb was like watching Sugar.

“How you doin’, cher? You gettin’a good air flow?”

“Got a windstorm in here. You?”

“Wrapped, strapped, and ready to rock. Let’s put on a good show for the cameras.”

They checked over each other’s armor suit and cables. Sugar looked okay to her. She patted his helmet, and he patted hers. That always made her smile
.

They started toward the trailer
.

Starkey stopped the tape.

She took a breath, realizing only then that she had stopped breathing. She decided that her drink needed more lime, brought it into the kitchen, cut another slice, all the while knowing that she was simply avoiding the video.

She went back into the living room and restarted the tape.

Riggio and the Suburban were in the center of the screen. The bomb was a tiny cardboard square at the base of the Dumpster. The shot was framed too tightly on the parking lot to reveal any of the landmarks she had paced off that morning. The only figures visible were Riggio, Daggett, and a uniformed officer standing at the edge of the building in the bottom of the frame, peeking around the corner.

When Riggio started toward the bomb, the frame shifted, sliding above the minimall to reveal a small group of people
standing between two apartment houses. Starkey focused on them, but they were too small and shadowed to tell if any wore long-sleeved shirts and baseball caps.

Starkey was cursing the tiny image when suddenly the frame shifted down, centering on Riggio and losing the people. The camera operator in the helicopter must have adjusted the shot, losing everything except the side of the mall, the bomb, and Riggio.

Riggio reached the bomb with the Real Time.

Starkey knew what was coming and tried to steel herself.

She had more of the drink, feeling her heart pound.

She glanced away and crushed out her cigarette.

When she looked at the screen again, Riggio was circling the box.

They were in the azaleas, wrestling the heavy branches aside so that Sugar could position the Real Time. Sugar looked for all the world like some kind of
Star Trek
space invader with a ray gun. She had to twist her body to see him
.

Her eyes blurred as the white flash engulfed her …

Starkey strained to see into the shadows and angles at the outer edge of the frame, between cars, on roofs, in garbage cans. She wondered if the bomber was somehow underground, peering out of a sewer drain or from the vent of a crawl space beneath a building. Riggio circled the bomb, examining it with the Real Time. She put herself in the killer’s head and tried to see Riggio from the ground level. She imagined the radio control in her hand. What was he waiting for? Starkey felt anxious and wondered if the killer was growing frightened at the thought of murdering another human being, or excited. Starkey saw the switch as a TV remote, held in the killer’s pocket. She saw his eyes on Riggio, unblinking. Riggio finished his circle, hesitated, then leaned over the box. In that moment, the killer pressed the switch and …

… the light hurled Charlie Riggio away like an imaginary man.

Starkey stopped the tape and closed her eyes, her fist clenched tight as if it was she who had clutched the switch and sent Charlie Riggio to hell.

She felt herself breathe. She felt her chest expand, her body fill with air. She gripped her glass with both hands and drank. She wiped at her eyes.

After a while, she pressed the “play” button and forced herself to watch the rest of the tape.

The pressure wave flashed across the tarmac, a ripple of dust and debris sucked up after it. The Dumpster rocked backwards into the wall. Smoke rose from the crater, drifting lazily in a swirl as Buck Daggett rushed forward to his partner and pulled off the helmet. An Emergency Services van screeched into the lot beside them, two paramedics rushing in to take over. Buck stood watching them.

Starkey was able to pick out the boundaries she had marked and several times found knots of people at the edge of the hundred-yard perimeter who were hidden behind cars or buildings. She froze the image each time, looking for long-sleeved males in blue baseball caps, but the resolution was too poor to be of much use.

She watched the other two tapes, drinking all the while. She examined the murky images as if willing them to clear, thinking all the while that any of those shadowed faces might belong to the man or woman who had built and detonated the bomb.

Later that night, she rewound the tapes, turned off her television, and fell into a deep sleep there on her couch.

She is kicked away from the trailer by a burst of white light
.

The paramedics insert their long needle
.

She reaches for Sugar’s hand as his helmet is pulled free
.

His head lolls toward her
.

It is Pell
.

The next morning, Marzik walked through CCS like a shy student handing back test papers, passing out copies of the suspect likeness that had been created from Lester Ybarra’s description. Kelso, the last to get one, scowled as if it were his daughter’s failing exam.

“There’s nothing here we can use. Your wit was a waste of time.”

Marzik, clearly disappointed, was stung by Kelso’s words.

“Well, it’s not my fault. I don’t think Lester really saw anything. Not the face, anyway.”

Starkey was at her desk when Kelso approached with the picture. She kept her eyes averted, hoping that neither he nor Marzik wouldn’t notice their redness. She was sure the gin was bleeding through her pores and tried not to blow in their faces when she commented on the likeness.

“It’s a ghost.”

Marzik nodded glumly, agreeing.