by Julie Cave
Michael sat and scowled at the shrine. He looked at Isabelle and she read the conflicting emotions in his eyes. His entire body was strung as tightly as a lute, his fingers tapping and feet bouncing. They did not speak, but Isabelle took his hand and squeezed it in solidarity.
Rosa swept into the room with plates of freshly baked garlic bread, lasagna, honey-glazed baby carrots, and broccoli with roasted almonds. After she had served the food and poured wine, she said, "Let's pray."
Isabelle and Michael bowed their heads and Isabelle kept a tight hold on Michael's hand. She knew what was coming and that it would agitate Michael even more.
"Dear Heavenly Father," began Rosa. "Thank You that we could gather tonight to remember Daddy. We intercede for him, Lord, please take his soul into heaven with You. Have mercy on him, Lord, for he was a good man on this earth. He provided for his family and protected us, Lord."
Michael's large hand tightened on Isabelle's, the pressure causing her fingers to go numb.
"Please show him Your grace and mercy. Lord, You know he was a good man. Amen."
Isabelle extricated her hand from Michael's and tried to rub some blood flow back into her unfeeling fingers.
Michael began to eat, concentrating his nervous energy on the mechanics of chewing.
"So how is work, Michael?" Rosa asked.
"Good." Michael didn't even raise his eyes to acknowledge his mother. Isabelle briefly closed her eyes, knowing it was going to be one of those nights.
"Are you busy?" persisted Rosa.
"Yeah, you know."
Please drop it, Isabelle silently begged.
"Is there something wrong, Michael?" Rosa asked.
"Mom, how was your day today?" interjected Isabelle, brightly.
Rosa glanced at her with a frown, clearly misunderstanding her daughter's intent. "Michael?" she repeated.
"Can you leave me alone?" he snapped. "I'm trying to eat."
"I understand if you're missing your father," Rosa said.
Isabelle massaged her temples.
Michael gave a short, contemptuous laugh. "Believe me, I'm not missing him."
Rosa was taken aback.
"You wouldn't believe what happened in class today," Isabelle said. "I have this student who...."
Abruptly, Michael stood and walked over to the sideboard, looking at the mementos of the father he had been pleased to bury. He picked up one of the earlier photos, where Reginald McMahon had been in the prime of life and lord over his small kingdom. Isabelle saw the shudder that traced down Michael's spine as he looked at the photo.
Rosa kneaded her hands together anxiously and asked, "What are you doing, Michael?"
Michael gave a brittle laugh that belied humor. "I'm just remembering our dear departed father."
Isabelle stood and looked between her mother and her brother, unsure of what she should do.
"I wish you would show more respect," Rosa said plaintively. "He was your father, after all."
Michael turned to look at his mother. "You're right," he agreed. His voice was ominously quiet. "He was my father, and I did respect him, particularly in the emergency room at the hospital every few months."
Rosa drew in a sharp little breath. "Well, I know he wasn't perfect. He did his best, he loved us all, and he provided for us. He had a very stressful job, you know, he...."
"Don't make excuses for him!" snarled Michael, suddenly vicious. "He was nothing but a wife beater and a child abuser. I was glad when he died."
"Michael!" Isabelle moved toward him, her cheeks burning with disquiet.
"Don't say that!" cried Rosa. "Don't disrespect him so, Michael! He was a good man!"
"Mom, please, sit down," pleaded Isabelle, but her voice was lost in the crackling electricity of emotion in the room.
"I — hated — him," Michael said through clenched teeth. "When he was sober, when he was drunk, when he was watching TV, when he was hitting me with an electrical cord, I hated him all along." He advanced on his mother, his six-foot frame towering over her tiny one. "How can you defend him? It makes you no better than him!"
Silence reigned, a heavy blanket settling over the room. Rosa was shocked, her dark eyes enormous and shiny with tears. Michael was struggling to get his temper under control, and Isabelle could see the torrent of emotion he was trying to suppress.
"I tried my best," Rosa said, defeated.
Michael let the photo slip from his fingers to the floor, where the glass in the photo cracked with a sharp report. Without a word, he walked out of the room, slammed the front door shut, and was gone in the night.
Rosa bent and picked up the photo frame, stroking the picture it contained. She looked at Isabelle, her guilt and shame naked in her eyes. "I tried my best," she repeated, tears slipping down her cheeks. She had learned to cry silently many years ago, an age ago.
The two sat in silence, Rosa thinking about long-past memories and failures. Finally, Isabelle told her mother that she had to go.
Rosa said imploringly, "I did my best. You know that, don't you?"
Isabelle was thinking of herself when she replied, "Sometimes your best isn't enough."
* * * *
Dinah Harris was sipping her first heavenly coffee of the morning and watching the newscast of the church bombing the night before when her cell phone rang.
"Hello?" she said absently.
"Harris, you busy?" Her old partner Ferguson spoke in his professional voice, and she snapped to attention.
"Go ahead," she said.
"I've caught the church bombing case," he told her. "You want in?"
"You don't even need to ask," Dinah said.
"Okay. You had breakfast?"
Dinah laughed. "Still having eight square meals a day?"
"Absolutely! Meet me at the Emporium Deli, downtown. You know it?"
"Yeah, I remember. You still their best customer?"
"They insist on selling spinach and feta pastries," complained Ferguson. "What's a guy to do?"
"I'll be there in 30 minutes." Dinah hung up and quickly found something professional to wear — gray pin-striped pants and a black blouse with black pumps. She gave her straight black hair a brush and applied some mascara, the only concession she made to makeup.
Rush hour thwarted her attempts to arrive at the deli on time. Dinah, who was spectacularly impatient, found sitting in traffic impossible. She was the one who weaved in and out of lanes, trying to somehow outwit the traffic. This usually made her more irritated than before, so she was trying to curb this behavior. Nevertheless, when she strode into the Emporium Deli near the J. Edgar Hoover building on Fourth St. NW, she was rattled. She spotted Ferguson sitting in a corner and made her way over, after ordering the biggest coffee the deli could provide. "Ferguson, how are you?" she said, then realized that he was sitting with another man.
Ferguson's companion turned around and Dinah was hit with a bolt of electricity. Her hair stood on end and she stood stock still, momentarily stunned. Ferguson sat with one of the most gorgeous men Dinah had ever seen. His hair was blue-black, like hers, his jaw line and cheekbones were perfectly sculpted, and he possessed brilliant, silver-blue eyes that were locked onto her.
Ferguson stopped tucking into his breakfast to see Dinah's expression and he smiled to himself. "Dinah," he said. When there was no response, he said louder: "Dinah!"
Dinah shook herself and realized she was behaving embarrassingly. "Sorry. Hi, Ferguson."
"Nice to see you can join us," he said. "May I introduce you to Special Agent Aaron Sinclair?"
The gorgeous man stood up, and Dinah noted that he was also very tall, and that he filled out his sober black suit very nicely. He held out his hand to shake. When she shook it, she observed that his hand was large, strong, and gave a firm handshake.
"This is Dinah Harris, consultant," said Ferguson. "Normally, she can speak for herself quite well."
Dinah gave herself a mental slap. She was acting like an infatuated teen
ager, for Pete's sake. "Nice to meet you," she said, sitting down. She didn't dare meet his eyes again. They seemed to possess the ability to rob her of the power of speech.
"Sinclair is a bomb expert," explained Ferguson. "He'll be working with me." Addressing Sinclair, he said: "Harris used to be my partner and has always been a pretty decent investigator. So it'll be the three of us working on the church bombing case."
"What do you know about it so far?" asked Dinah, trying to kick herself into professional mode.
"ANFO bomb," said Sinclair, his ice-blue eyes turning to her. "That means an ammonium nitrate-fuel oil bomb. It's an extremely easy bomb to make, and the current favorite among suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a dry slurry mixture made up of nitrate — usually extracted from fertilizer — and diesel fuel, for example. The bomber used dynamite and an electric blasting cap to detonate the bomb. The blasting cap was detonated remotely."
Dinah nodded. "Any CCTV near the area?"
"No, we didn't see anything," Ferguson said. "No witnesses either. The van was pulled up on the curb, near a fire hydrant. We found the remains of the temporary fencing that city workers use when they're repairing roads, for example. So it's possible the bomber used the fencing to pretend he was a city worker, so that nobody would question the presence of the van on the sidewalk."
"Any organization claimed the credit for this?" asked Dinah.
"The usual fundamentalist nut cases," said Sinclair. "But nobody plausible."
"The news said the casualty list was two dead, 35 injured," said Dinah. "Is that right?"
"Yes. The deceased are a junior priest who was helping with the service, and a member of the congregation, a middle-aged woman."
"Anything about those victims that would suggest they were specifically targeted?"
"Not yet," said Sinclair. "But I'm not convinced that would be the case anyway. The ANFO bomb wasn't big enough to damage the entire building, and the bomber would have known that the payload wouldn't be big enough to kill many in the church."
"Can I take a look at the bombsite?" Dinah asked.
"No," said Ferguson.
Dinah frowned at him. "Why not?"
"I haven't finished breakfast."
Dinah rolled her eyes and noticed Sinclair smirking at her. Her heart flipped.
Ferguson shoveled the remainder of his breakfast down his throat, threw the keys to Sinclair, and said, "Let's roll."
* * * *
The whole block, the corner of which the church had once occupied, was roped off by the police and would be until the investigation was complete. Dinah drank the scene in, noting the bitter, burnt smell of ammonia that hung over the church; the charred remains of the vehicle used in the bombing; the leaning, precarious position of the church; and the enormous hole that had been blasted through one wall.
It was immediately obvious why the bomber had chosen this church. Dinah had been given a crash course in bomb making by Sinclair in the car on the trip over. An ANFO bomb was reasonably powerful but didn't have the payload of a more sophisticated bomb made of Semtex or other military grade explosives. This was of particular importance when the bomb was not actually inside the target building but adjacent to it. A modern building with reinforced concrete and steel would not have sustained as much damage as the old church, built of bricks and mortar.
The three investigators climbed out of the car and Sinclair led them to the remains of the van. "This is where most of our evidence will occur," he explained. "This is where our perp has been, physically and emotionally. All you'll get from the church is an indication of how much damage was done and who the victims were."
The van had essentially been reduced to an engine block and chassis, surrounded by twisted scraps of metal and shards of glass. One of the cabin seats was torn in half and resting on the nearby sidewalk, and Dinah had to pick her way past all kinds of debris from deep within the van's construction.
The engine block had not been badly damaged and Sinclair wrote down the vehicle's identification numbers. "If you can believe it," he commented, "when bombers use a vehicle as the primary blast site, some have been stupid enough to rent the car in their own names, build the bomb in it, and then detonate it. A day later, they wonder how we found them so fast."
"Let's hope this bomber is that dumb," said Dinah, peering absently through the debris.
Sinclair went through what was left of the glove box but found only what looked like a map of D.C.
"So who responded to the scene last night?" Dinah asked.
"Emergency 911 was flooded with calls, so uniforms and paramedics were first to arrive," explained Sinclair. "There were two deceased victims and 35 injured. Due to the nature of construction of the church, extraction of the dead and injured was relatively easy. Nobody was trapped underneath a steel beam or layers of concrete, for example."
Dinah nodded, trying to concentrate but distracted by the bomb expert's deep and melodious voice.
"Metropolitan police then sent in sniffer dogs to determine whether any further devices had been placed in the vicinity," continued Sinclair. "A security perimeter was established and the FBI notified. It was obvious to all concerned that this was an incendiary device, thus falling under the jurisdiction of domestic terrorism."
"You speak like a true Feeb," Ferguson told him, appearing alongside Dinah. "Cut out the jargon and speak like a normal person, will you?"
Dinah hid her smile. "Were there any witnesses?" she asked.
"I have some preliminary statements taken by MPD uniforms," said Sinclair, shooting his boss an injured expression. "We'll need to check those out ourselves and interview the victims."
"Did the forensic lab technicians come through already?" Dinah asked.
"Yes, including bomb investigation specialists," confirmed Sinclair. "They were looking for trace explosive residue, the appearance of chemicals, materials used in the construction and transportation of the bomb, fragments, and your standard list of blood, hairs, fibers, and so on."
"Materials used in the construction of the bomb?" Dinah echoed. "Didn't you tell us that it was made of fertilizer and fuel oil?"
"Yes," agreed Sinclair. "But there are other markers which narrow down who might have made the bomb. The type of fertilizer and how readily available it is for sale, for example. Or how the bomb was built and what it was stored in."
Sinclair crouched down and pointed to the corner of what had once been the back of the van. "Here's something," he said. "The lab people will have already documented this, but it's good to have for our records, too." He picked up a scrap of thick plastic.
"This looks like the type of plastic used to make thick industrial bags," he continued. "The type used to store agricultural grade fertilizer or pesticide. I wouldn't be surprised if we find trace amounts of ammonium nitrate on this."
"What would the perp have built the bomb in?" Dinah inquired.
Sinclair pursed his lips. "Because the main ingredients are stable and dry, it doesn't really matter. He could have used a barrel or a thick plastic bag, like this scrap here. The most important thing is that it must be contained to achieve maximum force."
He stood up and stretched. Using a camera he'd been carrying around his neck, Sinclair snapped more than a dozen photos of what was left of the van.
Then he moved to the area between the van and the church. "Now I'm looking for blast effects," he explained. "That means structural damage to buildings, bent signs, fragmentation, and so on. We can see the structural damage pretty clearly." He pointed at the church, tilted away from the van as if trying to escape the deadly blast. "However, I wouldn't think there is much damage to surrounding buildings other than windows blown out or walls peppered with debris. If the bomb wasn't powerful enough to bring down the church, I doubt it was powerful enough to substantially harm other buildings."
The three investigators walked toward the church.
In silence, they observed their surroundings as they approached the mo
rtally wounded building. Glorious stained glass windows now lay in shards around their feet, lethal weapons in themselves. Red bricks were torn in half, as if no more substantial than foam. Wooden pews were splintered into matchsticks, and severed electrical cables twisted and danced like dying snakes.
The damage was incredible, and Dinah wondered how only two people had been killed in the midst of such carnage.
Sinclair said softly: "The deceased victims were both standing close to the impacted wall. One was a priest, the other a member of the congregation."
Dinah sighed and rubbed her arms as a chill ran up her spine. "Who would target a church during evening mass? Are we looking at Muslim radicals?"
"This is the bomb of choice for insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan," conceded Sinclair. "I wouldn't rule out anything yet."
Dinah shook her head, wondering why she was surprised by the destruction and bloodshed wrought on each other by human beings.
* * * *
The bomber, unable to invent a nickname for himself, decided it was time to check out his next target. He knew from the newscasts that the Catholic Church he'd bombed was still roped off by investigators and that nobody could get within a block of it. That was okay. His new target would have nothing to do with that part of the city and nothing to do with the Catholic Church.
He drove a stolen Impala, a car that would fade in a person's memory like no other. He made a habit of using a different stolen vehicle every time he went out on a mission so that any wily witness might be foiled.
He headed in the opposite direction of Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church on Fourth Street, which is to say he didn't want to be anywhere near the center of D.C. but out in the suburbs. He drove through the suburbs toward the beautiful, rolling countryside of Virginia, where residential developments were continuing to spring up at a rapid pace.
Eventually he rolled into the town of Manassas, Virginia, a city of about 35,000 souls that was part of the D.C. metropolitan area. Manassas had gained notoriety in 2002 when the 11th Beltway sniper attack killed a man pumping gas near Interstate 66.