The Murderer's Memories

by T. S. Nichols

  Joe continued. “The bomb itself was what is often referred to as a suicide vest. It is similar in construction to the vests currently more commonly used in the Middle East and in other Muslim-related terror bombings.”

  “But,” the woman interjected, “there’s no evidence here that the bomber was Muslim or had any ties to Islamic terror.”

  “That’s right,” Joe confirmed. “However, all I’m saying is that a vest like this isn’t complicated to make and there are plenty of websites that will teach someone how to do it, most of which are related to Islamic terrorism. From what we’ve been able to gather so far, we think that everything used in making the vest could have been easily obtained at hardware stores and online.” Joe paused for a moment, then went on. “In this case, the vest was packed with small screws, which were clearly included in order to inflict more mortal damage, rather than something like ball bearings, which may also be included to inflict structural damage.”

  “So you’re saying the bomber wanted to kill as many people as possible?” Cole asked.

  Joe nodded. “It appears so.” Another pause. Joe took a deep breath. “The vest was triggered by a handheld detonator, as opposed to a cellphone or timer mechanism.”

  “So, whoever the bomber was,” Cole started. For a moment he was back walking through the mall again, feeling the weight of the bomb around his chest, feeling the sweat bead on his forehead, hearing the laughter of the children around him, seeing the unsuspecting people simply going about their ordinary days. “Whoever the bomber was, they physically had to push the button to set the bomb off?”

  “Yes,” Joe answered. He waited before saying anything more. He could see that Cole was lost somewhere. He was afraid to pull him back before he was ready.

  “Go on,” Cole said once his mind returned to the makeshift conference room.

  “While we know from security footage that both of the suspects entered the mall alone, based on the proximity of our two potential suspects, we believe that they were likely having a conversation when the bomb went off.”

  This information was new to Cole. “Do you have security footage of the explosion?” Cole asked. “Then how can we not know who the bomber is? If you can tell me who the bomber is, then half of my job is done.”

  “We don’t have footage of the explosion,” Joe told him. “The camera set up to film the atrium wasn’t working.”

  “Then how would you know that the two of them were having a conversation when the bomb went off?”

  “Forensics. They can make assumptions based on the condition of the bodies.”

  “And what were the conditions of their bodies?” Cole asked.

  “The bodies were essentially obliterated.”

  “But the heads?” Cole began.

  Joe nodded. He knew that Cole understood.

  “That’s why both of their memories stayed intact?” Cole asked. “Because both of them were close enough to the bomb that it ripped apart their bodies but didn’t damage their heads.”

  “That’s right,” Joe confirmed. “The memories of all the other witnesses who were close enough to see anything were lost when the bomb went off.”

  “You mean that their heads were all destroyed?”

  “Yes,” Joe confirmed again.

  “Do we think that the two potential suspects knew each other?” Cole asked.

  The woman answered him. “We don’t have evidence of that but we’re still gathering information,” she said.

  “What else?” Cole asked Joe.

  “That’s it for me,” Joe said, and then he sat down.

  “Who’s next?” Cole asked the table.

  The question was met with a moment of silence. Joe stood and walked over to the water cooler. “Anyone else need water?” he asked.

  “Who’s next?” Cole shouted, banging his hand on the table. Everyone in the room jumped, though the outburst didn’t seem to faze them. Each of them had dealt with far worse.

  The second man spoke for the first time. “Lisa, why don’t you go first.”

  “Okay,” she said. “We’re here to tell you what we know about the two potential bombers. I’m going to brief you on Ivan. Then Roger is going to brief you on Faith.”

  “Ivan and Faith,” Cole repeated, staring at the ceiling and letting the names roll around in his mind for a moment. Lisa reached down, grabbed a folder out of the briefcase that she had next to her chair, and placed the folder on the table in front of her. “No. No. No,” Cole said, reaching out and placing a hand on top of the folder. “If there are pictures in here, I don’t want to see them. Not yet.”

  Lisa looked up at Cole with surprise. “Why not?” she asked. “Won’t they help you remember?”

  “They might,” Cole said, “and I might need them eventually, but pictures can distort memories too. Sometimes, the memories you get from pictures aren’t the most truthful. I think it’s the lack of depth that does it. They’re too flat. Other triggers are better.”

  “Like what?” Lisa asked.

  “Sounds. Smells. Stories. Words. Feels. Those things have depth. Don’t show me pictures of him. Tell me about him. That’s what will help me the most right now.”

  “Okay,” Lisa said. “His name is Ivan Rivera. He’s thirty-seven years old. He lives alone in a small apartment building in Flushing, Queens. He grew up in Puerto Rico but he’s lived in New York for over fifteen years. He works construction, mostly in Queens but really wherever he can find the work. He’s done a lot of work for the same three contractors over the years. They all say essentially the same thing about him: He’s quiet but reliable. They say that he’s a good worker and that they trust him.

  “All of his family is still back in Puerto Rico except for an older brother who lives in Los Angeles. He hasn’t spoken to his brother in over two years, though. He’s got a few friends, mostly other guys that he’s worked with, but nobody that seems to be really close to him.

  “He has no criminal record. He has no Facebook page”—Lisa shook her head—“no social media presence at all. He’s a registered Democrat but doesn’t appear to be very politically active. He votes but only sporadically. He doesn’t appear to be aligned or outwardly sympathetic to any particular issue or cause.” She stopped, obviously embarrassed by the dearth of information. Cole looked at her. It was clear to him that she’d been hoping the pictures would do that job.

  “That’s it?” Cole asked. Nothing she had said sparked even the slightest image in his mind. “You must know something else about him, about who he was.”

  Lisa looked down at her still closed folder. “He’s a Yankee fan,” she added with a small shrug of her shoulders.

  “Nothing else?”

  Lisa shook her head. “His family in Puerto Rico, they don’t have a lot of money. His father’s dead. He sends money back to his mother when he can.”

  “Where in Puerto Rico did he grow up?” Cole asked.

  “A little town about an hour east of San Juan.”

  “What did his father do?” Cole asked.

  “I don’t understand the question,” Lisa answered him.

  “For a living? What did his father do for a living?”

  “He was a farmer,” she said with only a little more confidence. “He owned a small farm.”

  “What did they grow?”

  “Chickens,” Lisa told him. “I think.”

  “Don’t think. Know. This isn’t an ordinary case. These are the things I need to know. Can you tell me anything else?”

  “He was scouted by the Texas Rangers when he was in high school but they never signed him.”

  “What position did he play?”

  “Shortstop, I think.”

  “Okay,” Cole said. “I’m going to want to visit his apartment later. Can you make sure I can get inside?”

  “Yes,” Lisa assured him.

  “Good, and while I’m there, see what else you can find out about our friend Ivan.” Then Cole turned to Roger, the final person
in the room. “So you’re going to tell me about Faith?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” the man answered him.

  “Fire away,” Cole said.

  “Faith Williams was a twenty-six-year-old account executive at a digital advertising agency in Gramercy. She had a small apartment on the Upper East Side. She lived alone. Her neighbors all thought she was sweet and kind, though she wasn’t particularly close to any of them.

  “Faith grew up in Summit, New Jersey. Her father is a partner at an engineering firm in the city. She had a pretty Rockwellian childhood. A couple of vacations a year. Varsity field hockey. Debate team. Plenty of friends. Nothing unusual.

  “She went to college at Lehigh in Pennsylvania. That’s where her father went too.”

  “What’s Lehigh like?” Cole asked.

  “It’s a private university in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania. It’s pretty much exactly what you would expect it to be. It’s beautiful. Idyllic. Anyway, she majored in business with a minor in history. When she graduated, she moved back home for a little while so she could look for a job. When she landed a job she moved into the city. Three jobs and two apartments later and here we are.”

  “Friends?” Cole asked.

  “Yeah. A bunch of her friends from college moved into the city. She saw them pretty frequently. She also kept a friend or two from each of her prior jobs. She saw them every once in a while. You know, brunch on the weekends, drinks after work, that sort of thing.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “She’d had two serious boyfriends but nothing right now. She broke up with her last boyfriend over a year ago. They stayed in touch online. He’s still single. She was the one who ended it.

  “She was also a registered Democrat. She seemed a bit more politically involved than our friend Ivan but nothing crazy. She voted, gave money to Planned Parenthood and NPR, did charity runs on the weekends sometimes. She had no criminal record and no indications of any sort of radicalization.

  “None of her family and friends believe she could be involved in something like this. We scoured her social media pages and there’s nothing unusual there. Everyone says that she seemed happy.”

  “Anything else?” Cole asked.

  “No. I don’t think so,” Roger said.

  “So, you guys are the experts. When you look at these two, who do you think is the bomber?”

  “Honestly,” Lisa answered him, “we would have expected to find something by now. For an act like this, either some group takes credit or the perpetrator leaves behind some sort of manifesto. Terrorism usually has some sort of political purpose.”

  “You think that this might just be terror for terror’s sake?” Cole asked.

  “We simply don’t know,” Lisa answered him. “But if you look at the two of them, Ivan fits more closely with a particular profile. He’s a man. He’s a bit of a loner. He’s more likely to have dealt with the type of institutional racism that sometimes catalyzes radicalization. He’s had to deal with more economic hardship. Plus, Faith has a completely benign cyber fingerprint. She has a Facebook page and an Instagram account and nothing even hints at violence. When we look at similar situations, there are almost always clues in the perpetrator’s social media accounts, if they have them. Ivan, on the other hand, had no social media presence so he had nothing to corrupt, nowhere to drop clues.”

  “But,” Cole said, knowing that the transition was coming.

  Joe spoke again for the first time in over half an hour. “But Ivan lived about fifteen minutes from the mall, so it makes some sense for him to go to that mall on a Monday morning. Maybe he had some shopping that he needed to get done. As far as we can tell, he didn’t have any work or other obligations that day.”

  Lisa took up the thread from there. “Faith lived about twenty minutes from where she worked. Her apartment and her job were both on Manhattan’s East Side.”

  “So?” Cole prodded.

  “So what the hell was Faith doing in a mall in Queens on a Monday morning when she was supposed to be going to work?”

  “So what you’re telling me is that he fits the profile better but then there’s that one inconvenient fact.”

  “Yeah,” Lisa agreed. “We don’t know why she was at that mall.”

  Cole looked back at Roger. “I want to talk to her parents after I visit Ivan’s apartment. Can you arrange that for me?” Cole asked. The man nodded.

  “Before we go, was anyone able to find out anything about the second bombing? Is there any chatter?” Cole asked.

  All three of them shook their heads simultaneously. “Nothing,” Joe told him. Cole sensed the skepticism in the room. “There are no leads. All we have to go on is you.”

  “Okay,” Cole said, standing up. “Then I don’t have a lot of time. What time is it?”

  Joe looked at his watch. “It’s four A.M.” he said. None of them had realized how late it was.

  “Fuck,” Cole said. “I’ll have to wait until morning to head over to Ivan’s apartment. I don’t want to scare anybody.”

  He walked over to the door and opened it. A man was slumped in the chair next to the door. “Jesus Christ,” Cole mumbled beneath his breath. He reached out and touched the man’s shoulder. He shuddered awake. “Ed, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how late it was. How long have you been out here?”

  Ed, Cole’s partner, lifted his hand and rubbed the dust out of his eyes. “About an hour and a half. The commissioner didn’t give me much choice.”

  “Well, go home,” Cole said. “I’ll need you in the morning. We’re going to Flushing. I’ll fill you in on the way.”

  Chapter 5

  ONE DAY AND ONE HOUR AFTER THE FIRST BOMBING

  He stared at the batter, squinting in a futile attempt to keep the dust from getting into his eyes. He squatted a little bit and then pounded his glove with his right hand. The glove was a soft brown leather. The original webbing had been carefully replaced by a pair of knotted shoelaces. Cole could feel how wonderfully worn the leather was.

  The batter was a boy of about twelve years old. He had brown skin and brown eyes and dark brown hair. He dug the toes of his front foot into the dirt in front of him and took a vicious practice swing, his whole body spinning like an uncoiling spring. He was wearing denim shorts and a dirty red T-shirt. He dug the toes of his front foot into the dirt again. He was wearing old tennis shoes and no socks and Cole could see his skin show through in certain places where the shoe had worn away. “Come on, José. Give me a good one,” the boy shouted at the pitcher. Cole knew that those exact words never actually left the boy’s mouth. He knew that his brain was translating the words for him, taking the Spanish words from Ivan’s memory and regurgitating them in English. He couldn’t know what, if anything, was lost in the translation.

  The catcher squatted down behind the batter and stared out at the mound. He didn’t speak, simply put his glove up to let the pitcher know that he was ready. The catcher was both shorter and skinnier than the batter, though Cole would have guessed that they were about the same age.

  He glanced over at the pitcher. The boy was chubby but that didn’t make him look any less agile than the others. It merely made him look sturdier. The pitcher gave the catcher a small nod and went into a full windup. First, he took a small step backward and then lifted his glove and his ball high into the air. Cole’s eyes followed the ball as the pitcher raised it skyward. The sky was a bright, cloudless blue. Then the pitcher brought his glove and ball back down in front of him and Cole quickly turned his attention back to the batter. Now Cole could only see the pitcher out of the corner of his eye as the pitcher lifted up his front leg. It was then that Cole could feel the excitement in his stomach. Here we go, it said to him. He propped himself up on his toes, ready to move right or left the moment the bat hit the ball.

  The pitcher lunged forward. The ball flew out of his hand toward the batter. Cole couldn’t recall ever seeing a ball move that fast, and still he could see it spinning thro
ugh the air as it moved toward the batter. He could see the dirt stains on it and the red tufts where the stitches were coming loose. The batter’s swing was even harder than his practice swing had been. Every part of the boy’s body moved except for his back foot and his chin. Cole could feel his body lean forward at the ready. He heard the bat strike the ball with a loud smack. Cole couldn’t even remember seeing the ball. He could only remember feeling his body move almost instantaneously to the left. He wasn’t even on his feet anymore. He was in the air, diving sidelong toward the ground as if the ground were a pool of water.

  Cole felt the ball before he saw it, as it popped with satisfying ease into the webbing of his glove. His chest skidded across the dirt for a second. Then he rolled and popped back up onto his feet all in one smooth, glorious motion. He reached into his glove with his right hand and felt the ball without looking at it. The leather on the ball was worn too, but it was different from the glove. It was harder. He reached his fingers around the ball and pulled it out of the glove. Cole felt his feet plant hard into the dirt and his arm whip through the air. Again, he didn’t even see the ball until it was almost in the first baseman’s glove. Cole remembered that moment and that addictive feeling of eternal youth. Then the ball sank into the darkness of the glove with a satisfying pop, beating the runner by at least three steps. Cole saw the pitcher walking toward him with his glove raised. “Nice play, Ivan. Nice play.” Cole remembered Ivan lifting his glove up too and touching it to the pitcher’s glove.

  Cole shook his head, pulling himself out of the memory. He was staring down at a picture that he’d found stuck to Ivan’s refrigerator with a magnet. It was an old, worn photo of a bunch of boys standing next to each other, posing for the camera with their baseball gloves. The two boys at the ends were holding wooden baseball bats. There were no uniforms but all the boys were dressed the same, in dirty shorts, T-shirts, and tennis shoes. He could see the blood running down the knees of a few of the boys from cuts torn by diving or sliding into a base with shorts on.