by Robert Crais
Kelso returned to his desk.
“Agent Pell flew in from D.C. this morning. The information you fed into the system raised some eyebrows back there.”
Pell nodded.
“I don’t have an interest in taking over your investigation, Detective. This is your town, not mine, but I do think I can help you. I flew out because we flagged some similarities between your bomb and some others we’ve seen.”
“Like what?”
“The Modex is his explosive of choice: fast, sexy, and elite. He also likes to use this particular type of radio detonator, hiding it in one of the pipes so you can’t see it with the X-ray.”
“Who are we talking about?”
“If your guy is our guy, he uses the name Mr. Red. We don’t know his true name.”
Starkey glanced at Kelso, but his expression told her nothing. She figured he would be relieved to hand over the case to the feds, so he wouldn’t have to worry about clearing it.
“What are we talking about here? Mr. Red? Is this guy some kind of serial bomber? Is he a terrorist? What?”
“No, Detective, this mutt isn’t a terrorist. As far as we know, he doesn’t care about politics or abortion or any of that. Over the past two years, we’ve had seven bombings that show Modex Hybrid and a radio-triggering device similar to the one used here. Because of the nature of the targets and the people involved, we believe that four of them were done for criminal profit. He blows up something or someone probably because he’s being paid to do it. This is how he makes his money, Starkey, blowing up things. He’s a hit man with a bomb. But he also has a hobby.”
“I’m dying to know.”
Kelso snapped, surprising the hell out of her.
“Shut up, goddamnit, and listen.”
Starkey turned back to Pell, and the gray eyes were as depthless as stillwater pools. She found herself wondering why they might be so tired.
“He hunts bomb technicians, Starkey. He baits them, then he murders them. He’s killed three so far, if we count your man, all with identical devices.”
Starkey watched the gray eyes. They did not blink.
“That’s insane.”
“The profilers say it’s a dominance game; I think he sees it as a competition. He makes bombs, bomb techs like you de-arm them, so he tries to beat you.”
Starkey felt a chill; Pell clearly read it.
“I know what happened to you. I looked you up before I flew out.”
Starkey felt invaded, and the invasion angered her. She wondered what he knew about her injuries and suddenly felt embarrassed that this man might know those things. She made her voice cool.
“Who and what I am is none of your business except for this: I am the lead investigator on this case.”
Pell shrugged.
“You signed the NLETS request. I like to know who I’m dealing with.”
Thinking about it now, Starkey had a recollection of reading an ATF flyer on an unknown suspect who might have been identified as Mr. Red. It was the kind of flyer that passed through their office on a routine basis, but bore little relevance, as the subject was operating in other parts of the country.
“I would have remembered this, Pell, some nut murdering bomb technicians. No one here has heard of this asshole.”
Kelso shifted.
“They’ve kept that part of his activities on a need-to-know basis.”
“We don’t want copycats, Starkey. We’ve kept all the details of his M.O. and bomb designs classified except the components that we list through NLETS.”
“So you’re saying that your guy is our guy on the strength of a components list?”
“I’m not saying anything yet, but the Modex and the radio receiver are persuasive. The other design signatures are distinctive. And you have this letter you’ve found.”
Starkey was confused.
“What letter? What are you talking about?”
Kelso said, “The number we found etched into the frag. The 5. Agent Pell thinks it might be the letter S.”
“Why do you think it’s a letter?”
Pell hesitated, leaving Starkey to wonder what he was thinking.
“We’ve found etchings in Mr. Red’s work before. What I’ll need to do is read your reports and compare your reconstruction with what we know. Then I’ll make a determination whether or not your bomber is Mr. Red.”
Starkey could see her case slipping away.
“Pardon me if I make up my own mind. But if you get to see mine, then I want to see yours. I want to compare whatever you have with what we find here.”
Kelso showed his palms.
“Now, Starkey, we don’t need to be adversaries here.”
She wanted to kick him. That was just the kind of mealy-mouthed thing Kelso would say.
Pell gathered together a short stack of papers and gestured with them.
“That’s not a problem, Detective. Lieutenant Kelso was kind enough to share your case reports; I’ll be happy to give you copies of mine. They’re at my hotel now, but I’ll get them to you.”
Pell rolled the reports that Kelso had given him into a tube, then stood.
“I skimmed through these. They look pretty good, but I want to read them more carefully now.”
Pell turned to Kelso and gestured with the reports.
“Could you set me up with a place to read these, Lieutenant? I’d like to cover as much ground this evening as I can before Detective Starkey and I get down to business.”
Starkey blinked hard twice, then also faced Kelso.
“What does that mean? I’ve got my hands full with this investigation.”
Kelso came around his desk to open the door.
“Just relax, Carol. We’re all on the same side here.”
As Pell walked past with the reports, he stopped beside Starkey, well into her personal space. She would have bet a thousand dollars that he did it on purpose.
“I won’t bite, Detective. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
Kelso called Santos to take care of Pell, then came back into his office and closed the door. He wasn’t happy, but Starkey didn’t give a damn. Her hands were shaking so badly that she put them in her pockets so that he wouldn’t see.
“You couldn’t have been any less helpful.”
“I’m not here to be helpful. I’m here to find whoever killed Riggio, and now I’ve got to worry about the ATF second-guessing what I do and stealing my case.”
“Try to remember that it’s a team effort, Detective. It can’t hurt to let him look. If he can’t tie our bomb to his man, he’ll go back to Washington and be out of our hair. If our bomber and his bomber are one and the same, we might be damned lucky to have his help. I’ve already spoken to Assistant Chief Morgan about this. He wants us to extend our full cooperation.”
Starkey thought that was just like Kelso, call the brass and cover his ass.
“Marzik found a wit who might’ve seen our guy make the 911 call. He says that the person making the call was an Anglo guy.”
That stopped Kelso, who fidgeted with his pencil as he considered it.
“I thought the caller was Hispanic.”
“So did I.”
Starkey didn’t add anything more. She figured that even Kelso was smart enough to see the implication.
“Well, I guess you’d better see to it. Call me at home to tell me what develops.”
“I was going to go see about it, Lieutenant, but I had to come meet Mr. Pell instead. Now it has to keep until tomorrow. The witness had plans.”
Kelso looked disappointed.
“It couldn’t be helped, then. See about it tomorrow and keep me informed. You’re going to close this case, Starkey. I have every faith in that. So does the A-chief.”
Starkey didn’t answer. She wanted to get out of there, but Kelso looked nervous.
“You’re doing okay with this, aren’t
you, Carol? You’re okay?”
Kelso came around his desk again, getting close to her, as if he was trying to smell her breath.
“I’m fine.”
“Good. Go home and get a good night’s sleep. Rest is important to keep your mind sharp.”
Starkey let herself out, hoping that she wouldn’t see Pell when she left. It was after six when she pulled out into the downtown traffic, but she didn’t head home. She turned her car west toward a bar called Barrigan’s in the Wilshire Division.
Less than twelve hours ago she had emptied her flask and promised herself that she would ease up on the drinking, but to hell with that. She ate two Tagamet and cursed her rotten luck that the ATF was involved.
Special Agent Jack Pell
Pell sat in a small white room not much bigger than a coffin to read the reports. He had been provided with the initial findings from the Bomb Squad, SID, and the autopsy of the deceased officer.
After reading them, he felt that LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division and Bomb Squad had done an excellent job of forensics and analysis, though he was disappointed that only a single letter—the S—had been recovered. Pell was certain there would be more, but had a high degree of confidence that the criminalist over there, Chen, would not have overlooked anything. Pell wasn’t so certain about the Medical Examiner’s office. An important step had not been noted in the autopsy protocol.
He brought the reports into the hall and found Santos waiting.
“Do you know if the medical examiner took a full X-ray of Riggio’s body?”
“I don’t know. If it’s not in the protocol, they probably didn’t do it.”
“It’s not, but it should be.”
Pell paged open the autopsy protocol and found the attending medical examiner’s name. Lee Richards.
“Is Starkey still here?”
“She’s gone.”
“I’d better see Lieutenant Kelso.”
Twenty minutes later, after Kelso had made two phone calls to locate Richards, Santos drove Pell around behind the rear of the County-USC Medical Center to the Medical Examiner’s building.
When Santos started to get out with him, Pell said, “Take five and grab a smoke.”
“Don’t smoke.”
“You’re not coming in there with me.”
Pell could tell that Santos was bothered by that, but Pell didn’t care.
“You think I wanna watch an M.E. dig around in a friend of mine? I’ll grab a cup of coffee and wait in the lobby.”
Pell couldn’t object to that, so they crunched across the gravel toward the door.
Inside, Santos identified them to the security guard, then went for his coffee. Richards appeared a few minutes later, Pell following him into a cold tile X-ray room where they waited while two technicians wheeled in Riggio’s body. The body was zipped into an opaque plastic bag. Pell and Richards stood silently as the technicians took the body from the bag and positioned it on the X-ray table. The great Y incision down the chest and abdomen that Richards had made during the autopsy was stitched closed, as were the wounds where the frags had done their worst damage.
Richards eyed the body as if he was assessing his work and liking it.
“The entry wounds were fairly obvious, as you can see. We took area X-rays wherever the entries appeared to be of a significant nature, and that’s where we removed the fragments.”
Pell said, “That’s the problem. If you only look where you see an entry wound, you’ll miss something. I’ve seen cases where shrapnel bounced off a pelvis and followed the femur down to a knee.”
Richards looked dubious.
“I guess it’s possible.”
“I know it’s possible. Where are his hands?”
Richards frowned.
“Hm?”
“Were his hands recovered?”
“Oh, yes. I examined them. I know I examined them.”
Richards peered at the bony stubs of the wrists, then squinted at the technicians.
“Where are the goddamned hands?”
The technicians fished around in the bag and came out with the hands. Scorched from the heat flash and macerated by the pressure wave. Richards looked relieved.
“See? We’ve got the hands. It’s all here.”
Like he was proud of himself that all the body parts were accounted for.
Richards said, “What we’ll do is look over the body with the scope first. We see anything, we’ll mark it, okay? That’ll be faster than screwing around with the X-ray.”
“Fine.”
“I don’t like the X-ray. Even with all the shielding, I worry about the cancer.”
“Fine.”
Pell was given a pair of yellow goggles to wear. He felt nothing as he watched them wheel Riggio’s body behind a chromatic fluoroscope. The fluoroscope looked like an opaque flat-screen television, but when Richards turned it on, it was suddenly transparent. As the body disappeared behind the screen, its flesh was no longer flesh but transparent lime Jell-O, the bones impenetrable green shadows. Richards adjusted the screen.
“Pretty cool, huh? This won’t scramble your ’nads the way an X-ray will. No cancer.”
At Richards’ direction, the techs pushed the body slowly past the screen, revealing three sharply defined shadows below the knee, two in the left leg, one in the right, all smaller than a BB.
Richards said, “Sonofabitch, here you go. Right here.”
Pell had expected to find even more, but the armored suit had done its work well. Only those fragments with a significant mass had carried enough inertia to punch through the Kevlar.
Richards peered at him.
“You want these?”
“I want it all, Doc.”
Richards marked the spots on the body with a felt-tipped pen.
By the time they finished scanning the body, they had found eighteen metal fragments, only two of which had any real size: one, an inch-long piece of twisted metal that had lodged in Riggio’s hip joint; the other, a half-inch rectangular fragment that Richards had overlooked when he’d removed a cluster of fragments from the soft tissue of Riggio’s right shoulder.
As Richards removed them, the taller technician rinsed them of clotted blood and placed them in a glass tray. Pell inspected each bit of metal, but he found no etches or markings.
Finally, Richards turned off the light screen, and lifted his goggles.
“That’s it.”
Pell didn’t say anything until the last of the fragments had been rinsed. It was the largest piece, and he wanted there to be something so badly that his heart was hammering, but when he examined it, he saw that there was nothing.
“Does any of this help, you think?”
Pell didn’t answer.
“Agent?”
“I appreciate your staying, Doc. Thanks.”
Richards peeled off his gloves to glance at his watch. It was a Mickey Mouse watch.
“We’ll send these over to SID in the morning. We have to deliver them under seal to maintain the chain of evidence.”
“I know. That’ll be fine, thanks.”
It wasn’t fine and Pell didn’t like it. A cold rage of frustration threatened to spill out of him.
Pell was already thinking that he was too late, that Mr. Red might have come and gone and be on to another city or maybe had never been here at all, when the taller technician mentioned the hands.
“Doc, you gonna scope the hands, or should I bag this stuff and get out of here?”
Richards grunted like they might as well, then brought over the hands and placed them under the scope. Two bright green shadows were wedged among the metacarpal bones in the left hand.
“Shit. Looks like we missed a couple.”
Richards removed them with the forceps, passing them to the tech, who rinsed them and put them with the others.
Pell inspected them as he had done the others, turning over both pieces without hope when he felt an adrenaline jolt of rage surge throu
gh his body.
The larger piece had five tiny letters etched into its surface, part of a sixth, and what he saw there stunned him. It wasn’t what he expected. It wasn’t anything that he had expected. His heart was beating so hard that it seemed to echo off the walls.
Behind him, Richards said, “Find anything?”
“No. Just more of the same stuff, Doc.”
Pell palmed the shard with the letters and returned the remaining piece to the tray with the other recovered fragments. The lab technician did not notice that he had returned one piece and not two.
Richards must’ve read something in his eyes.
“Are you all right, Agent Pell? You need a drink of water or something?”
Pell put away those things he felt and carefully blanked his face.
“I’m fine, Doc. Thanks for your time.”
Special Agent Jack Pell walked back into the outer hall, where the security guard stared at him with goldfish eyes.
“You looking for Santos?”
“Yeah.”
“He took his coffee out to the car.”
Pell turned toward the door and was halfway down the hall when crimson starbursts appeared in the air before him, followed by a sharp wave of nausea. The air around the starbursts darkened and was suddenly alive with wormy shapes that writhed and twisted.
Pell said, “Shit, not now. Not now.”
Behind him, the guard said, “What?”
Pell remembered a bathroom. A men’s room off the hall. He blinked hard against the darkening stars and shoved his way through the door. A cold sweat sprouted over his back and chest.
The dizziness hit him as he reached the sink, and then his stomach clenched and he barfed into the sink. The room felt as cold as a meat locker.
Closing his eyes didn’t stop him from seeing the shapes. They floated in the air on a field of black, rising and twisting in slow motion as if filled with helium. He turned on the cold water and vomited again, spitting out the foul taste as he splashed water into his eyes. His stomach heaved a third time, and the nausea passed.
He heard voices in the hall and thought one of them might be Santos.
Pell clawed a towel from the rack, wet it with cold water, and staggered into the stall. When he straightened, his head spun.
He slumped onto the toilet and pressed the towel hard to his eyes, waiting.