Legacy and Redemption (15 page)

Before Keegan had the chance to respond, Galvin reached into his pocket. “I got these from the car. The first one is just a handwritten note of an address in Brooklyn written on a piece of paper. Then there’s the vehicle registration and insurance card. They come back to a Queens address registered to a Nazeem al-Haq.”

Nazeem! The guy in Tel-Aviv was right on the money.

Castillo was overrun by an instant chill. The legitimacy of everything Castillo had heard to date seemed to be corroborated. This brought the urgency of the investigation to the next level.

“Thanks, Sergeant. These could be very useful,” said Castillo as he perused the papers Galvin had handed him.

Castillo picked up the landline on the faded oak desk and punched in the number to his office. “Mike, this is all coming together over here. I need you to run a background check on a Nazeem al-Haq of South Ozone Park.” After reading the address, he continued. “We need an emergency warrant for the location and see if you can come up with an arrest photo, a passport photo, or even a DMV photo of the subject. I want it faxed to Tel-Aviv immediately. If they still have their hands on that source, he needs to see the picture. I’m willing to bet our dead suicide bomber and the guy he helped smuggle into Iran is one and the same.”

Castillo hung up the phone and turned towards Talbot. “Inspector, do you mind if I take the Sergeant and Officer Keegan with me to check out this address? I’m familiar with the area; I’d say it’s most likely a commercial establishment. Probably just a meeting place, but I’d still like to take a look at it while we wait for the search warrant for the residence.”

Talbot was agreeable, and the men walked out of the repair shop just as the bomb squad arrived at the location.

*

Taking the time to carefully assess the situation was the first thing that Detective Second Grade Zachary Lawrence would do. He nudged the remote control robot forward by gently tapping the controller from inside the bomb squad van parked almost two blocks away from the device. Having been assigned to the bomb squad for the last four of his eighteen years in the NYPD, and for six years in Emergency Service prior to that, this was not an unfamiliar scenario to him. Lawrence’s years of training and experience had brought him right here to this very day. While he had never defused a live suicide vest before, he was confident in his abilities.

Still, he wouldn’t rush into anything. Caution and time was on his side—at least as far as this particular suicide bomber was concerned. As he inched ‘
Sparky
’ forward, he also adjusted the robot’s video camera as to get a better look at the man and the device. Lawrence along with the other members of the team sat on the bench in the passenger compartment of the police department van, staring intently at the monitor mounted on the opposite wall. With every movement of the controller by Lawrence, Sparky responded with precision.

The device appeared rudimentary—easy to neutralize. From what Lawrence could see from the partially opened jacket was that the device appeared to be made from C-4; a very stable and safe material to deal with. His major concern would be if there were any secondary devices; either on the man or in the vehicle. Another concern would be if the bomb could be detonated by remote from a second terrorist still at large. That could easily be done with a simple phone call if the device was so wired.

Once seeing as much of the dead man and his vest as the cameras would allow, Lawrence turned his attention to the car. He moved Sparky closer to the open driver’s side door. To an outsider to the bomb squad, the robot was a high tech toy. It’s an assortment of silver gears and rods standing just over four feet tall. An adjustable camera is mounted on the rear and there’s one long arm in the front, capable of many tasks. The four rubber tires allow it to climb over a wide variety of obstacles. To the members of the team, however, the robot is not a toy; in many instances, it’s their life line.

Lawrence was easily able to maneuver the robot to open both the hood and the trunk using the control panel. Once it was established that there were no secondary devices, it was time for Lawrence to disarm the device. Lawrence, with the assistance of his partner, donned the eighty pound bomb suit. The oversized olive green suit was anything but comfortable and limited his mobility greatly. Standing five foot nine and weighing one hundred and sixty-five pounds, the suit was nearly half of Lawrence’s own weight.

Once the helmet was put into place, the extra layers of Kevlar were added to the front of the suit to protect the vital organs and Detective Lawrence was ready to go. The Kevlar suit was designed to deflect even a direct blast, although it was not rated for such a large amount of plastic explosives. He slowly made his way toward the dead man and the device. Almost every inch of his body was well protected; his hands were not. They would need the flexibility to disarm the device and were not afforded the luxury of protection. Gloves were worn by Lawrence, but they were thinner and far less protective than the rest of the suit was.

Lawrence knelt down and remained on his knees as he unzipped the jacket the rest of the way. He studied the way the mechanism was set up and looked to see if there had been any
backdoors
installed in case of a disarming. Not seeing any, Lawrence determined that it was safe to remove the blasting caps from the bricks of C-4 in the pockets. He did so without incident, and the device was rendered inert rather easily.

Once the blasting caps and triggering device was pulled from the rudimentary suicide vest, it was now safe to remove it from the dead man’s body. Lawrence did so and placed it inside a blast resistant container for transportation in the department’s
Total Containment Vessel
. The TCV would be utilized to transport the vest back to the department range where it could be dealt with in a safe and controlled environment. As he placed the vest in the container, something unusual caught his eye.

*

The Halal Restaurant was closed down temporarily while Castillo and Balentine interviewed the workers; there were only three—a counter man and two kitchen workers. They were all very cooperative and seemed oblivious as to why the police were there. Their names were called back into the office to be run for comparison to any watch list or any criminal activity.

After not taking note of anything particularly suspicious in the kitchen, Castillo, Galvin, and Keegan would further examine the rest of the establishment while Balentine remained up front with the workers. Walking through the narrow kitchen, an open trap door was observed next to the pantry. One by one, with Galvin leading the way, the men descended the stairs.

Galvin was the first to comment. “I’m shocked at how clean it is down here; there are frequently mouse or rat droppings in the basement of restaurants. None here.”

Castillo was quick to agree. “Even the walls are freshly painted. I bet they just recently bought the place.”

Keegan felt the need to join the conversation. “They put a fresh coat of paint on the walls, but didn’t bother to patch the ceiling.” Pointing out a few places where the sheet rock was damaged on the ceiling. “And the paint may be new, but the sheet rocker did a shitty job. Look how uneven the walls are. You can see the seams. They didn’t even bother to properly tape and spackle.”

Castillo stopped in his tracks and looked at Keegan. “Is this your area of expertise…sheet rocking?”

Keegan immediately felt a bit foolish and could feel the heat rushing to his face. Galvin was quick to come to his defense. “Tim was a contractor before he came on the job.”

Castillo offered a sideways look. “Good to know in case I ever get my basement redone.”

It was the first time that the detective had spoken to him and although he had no idea why, Keegan felt that Castillo didn’t like him.

Maybe he thinks I should have noticed the suicide vest. I knew I messed up.

They went back upstairs, this time with Castillo leading the way. He walked outside the open back door into an alley way. There was an old white delivery truck with the name of a bakery printed in bold blue letters on the side; it was covered in overgrown weeds and bushes. It probably hadn’t been used in years. There were a few milk crates set in a circle where it was obvious the workers from the row of stores sat on during the warmer months. Dozens of empty beer bottles and empty zip lock bags which once, no doubt, contained marijuana were scattered about the alley.

“Is there anything else that you guys think we need to look at here? As far as I can see this is just a legit business unless the computers tell us something different.”

Galvin and Keegan agreed and they went back to the front of the store where Frank Balentine had just been talking on his cell phone. “They all check out, Louie. The store was bought six months ago by the counterman’s cousin. Everything seems legit.”

Castillo nodded. “Okay, I bet our guy met with someone here for something.”

Keegan, trying to redeem himself in Castillo’s eyes; “Or maybe he just came here for dinner one day and it’s not connected at all.”

Castillo slowly nodded and gave Keegan a once over with his eyes. “Yeah, maybe.”

As they started to walk away, Keegan for the life of him couldn’t figure out what he had done to make the detective give him such a hard time. Castillo called out to Galvin. “Make sure he gets to the morgue tomorrow upon turnout to identify the body.”

The direction was again clearly a slight to Keegan, who was standing right next to Galvin. “What’d you do to piss the detective off?” Galvin inquired.

“Beats the shit out of me, Sarge.” Keegan shook his head and then asked, “Why do I have to go to the morgue?”

Galvin would explain. “The guy that I shot is the victim of a homicide…even if it’s a justifiable homicide. Since I shot him, I can’t be the one to identify him. That job always falls to the first officer on the scene…in this case that would be you.”

Keegan tried to make sense of it. “This guy was a terrorist not a homicide victim. It’s so clear cut.”

Galvin was very patient with his rookies even in such a stressful time as having just been involved in a shooting. “Tim, we have to follow procedures no matter how big or small the case is. They’re put in place for a reason. If you start taking short cuts, your work will get sloppy. Trust me.”

Galvin slapped Keegan on the back; the thud resonated off his bullet proof vest. “Just be happy you can go on a four to twelve. You can bet your life that we’re going to be here for quite some time. It used to be that you had to go and identify the body on a day tour. If that were still the case, you’d be getting no sleep at all tonight.”

Keegan mulled over the explanation then looked back over his shoulder at Detective Castillo getting into his department auto.

That guy really doesn’t like me. I wonder what the hell his problem is
.

He turned his attention back to Galvin. “No problem boss. I’ll be at the morgue at three.”

*

Upon returning to the crime scene, Castillo was summoned to see Inspector Talbot. Castillo noted that the bomb squad had left and that the crime scene was now being processed in a normal fashion. Castillo walked back into the repair shop where Talbot and Wolf were waiting. “You wanted to see me, boss?”

“Yeah, Louie, there’s a couple of things. We have a team at the registered owner of the vehicle’s apartment now executing the search warrant. It’s definitely the right location; probably belonging to our dead suicide bomber out there. So far we’ve got blasting caps, empty military grade C-4 explosive wrapping, a cell phone, and assorted shrapnel. We’re contacting the military to see if the packaging is consistent with the stolen C-4 from Texas. I know my guess.”

Castillo nodded in agreement. “If I were a betting man I’d say that we’re now only looking about five hundred and fifty or so pounds of C-4 out of the six hundred that was stolen.”

“There’s one more thing that I think you should see. I have no idea how it ties in, but it’s possible that the car stop was not random at all.”

Castillo was curious and gave Talbot a sideways glance. “How so?”

Talbot retrieved a folded piece of paper from his pocket, handing it to Castillo as he explained. “When the bomb squad detective removed the vest from the decedent, this folded up newspaper article fell from one of the pockets.”

Castillo examined it, but couldn’t make any sense of it. “Do we have a confirmed ID on this guy yet?”

“Everything points to his name being Nazeem al-Haq.”

Castillo folded the article back up and placed it in his inside jacket pocket. He excused himself from Talbot and went to his brief case which was in the trunk of the department auto. He searched inside for an ink pad and a fingerprint card. He put the card on a clipboard and closed the trunk. Castillo then reached over the driver’s side sun visor and retrieved the composite sketch which had been prepared in Tel Aviv and faxed over from the Department of Homeland Security.

After ducking under the yellow crime scene tape, Castillo pardoned himself as the Crime Scene detectives were still actively processing the scene. “I’ll be out of your way in less than five minutes guys.”

Castillo knelt down next to the dead man and looked at his face. As he had thought, the man died with his eyes wide open. “Hello, Mr. al-Haq. My name is Detective Louis Castillo. Let’s see who the fuck you really are.”