Final Seconds

by John Lutz

  With an X that filled the box, Anthony crossed off today, April 6. There were now fifteen days to go until April 22, the date he’d blocked in in red. Thirty-nine days to go until May 15, the last date on the calendar.

  Anthony didn’t wait until midnight to cross off a day. Steve had been wrong about that.

  7

  The second week of April brought springlike weather to the Northeast. The Harpers opened their windows wide for the first time since October. Mild breezes wafted into the house the usual sounds of a Brooklyn night: boom boxes, sirens, and car alarms.

  None of the noises reached Will Harper. He was absorbed in rereading the file on the Wylie case. The dining room, in which he was sitting, was a high-ceilinged, wainscoted room that was going to need a lot of work to return it to its original Victorian elegance. The parquet floors were dull and stained and there were gaping holes in the walls, through which you could see laths and wiring. But the room did have a table, a stout cherrywood piece long enough to seat ten. And table space was what Harper needed.

  Piled on either side of him were the bulky files on the Sothern and Wylie cases that Addleman had given him. There was also other information Addleman had sent him since then, via computer. Then there were Harper’s own heavy technical manuals, some of them still bearing their PROPERTY OF NYPD stencils. And finally there were the models Harper had built: reconstructions of the bombs, based on what he’d read in the files, and models that looked like miniature stage sets, representing the rooms where the bombs had gone off. Some of them were shattered and blackened. He’d blown them up with firecrackers in the back garden as he experimented with the effects of blast.

  He looked up to see Laura standing in the doorway, wearing old surgical scrubs, her favorite lounging outfit. He hadn’t heard the door open. To judge from her expression, she must have just said something to him, and he hadn’t heard that, either.

  “Sorry,” he said. “What is it?”

  “I might as well be speaking Tagalog, for all the effect it has on you. You scrawl notes to yourself and leave them all over the apartment. You get up in the middle of the night to pace and mutter. You leave your keys in the front door and the milk on the kitchen counter.” She grinned at him. “Oh, Will, it’s great to see you like this again.”

  “It is?”

  “You’re excited about what you’re doing. You’re all the way alive again.”

  “I’m frustrated, if you want to know the truth.” Pushing back from the table, he stretched his arms above his head. He’d been working for several hours straight and there were kinks in his back.

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “Well, maybe there is.”

  She sat down across from him. They hadn’t yet found chairs to match their splendid table; for the present, they were using a few rickety deck chairs.

  Harper opened the Wylie file and took out a photo, which he placed in front of Laura. It was a close view of a portion of the pipe bomb, blackened and misshapen from the explosion. “Do you see anything there? On the surface of the pipe, I mean.”

  He handed her a magnifying glass and she peered through it, frowning. “It’s hard to tell. This photo’s a little grainy.”

  He nodded. “Addleman downloaded it from the NCIC computer. It’s not as good as the original photo.”

  “Well, I don’t see anything, Will. Sorry.”

  He sighed, unsurprised but still disappointed. “See that mark, right in the center of the picture? If that was a letter of the alphabet, which letter would it be?”

  Laura picked up the photo and experimented with the magnifying glass, moving it closer and then farther away. Finally she said, “E.”

  He nodded morosely. “Yeah. It looks like an E to me, too. I was hoping for a C.”

  She put down the magnifying glass and photo. “Why?”

  “Brand showed me a picture of a fragment of the Buckner bomb.”

  “And there was a C on it?”

  “I thought so. Brand didn’t.”

  “Well, if Captain Brand doesn’t see it, maybe it’s significant,” said Laura, smiling. “How about the other bomb?”

  “The Sothern bomb? No, I couldn’t see anything on that one.”

  “Maybe he’s spelling out celebrity bomber, a letter on each bomb, not in any particular order.”

  “Possible, but not likely. We call him the Celebrity Bomber, but for all we know he thinks of himself as the Fame Blaster or some such thing. Or maybe he doesn’t have a name for himself.”

  “Still, it’s possible.”

  Harper nodded but said nothing.

  She picked up the photo again. “And why would he put a C on each bomb? You think it’s his initial?”

  “I don’t know. But it would be a common factor.” Harper was getting stiff from sitting for so long. He got up and started to pace. “Something that would prove the three bombs were the work of the same person. But I haven’t found anything to indicate that so far.”

  “You think Addleman’s wrong, then? There is no Celebrity Bomber?”

  Harper paused in his pacing and looked at her. “No, Addleman’s right. The guy’s for real. He’s out there.”

  For a long moment, Laura stared back at him without saying anything. Finally she murmured, “I see. Well, if you’re convinced, how come you can’t prove it?”

  Harper returned to his chair. “Maybe it’ll help if I talk this all out. You mind listening?”

  She shook her head and leaned forward, watching him expectantly. He reached into the Sothern file. “Can you stand a gory crime scene photo?”

  “I’m a nurse, remember?”

  He placed the photograph on the table between them. The Racquets Etc. sporting goods store in the Mall of America looked as if it had been picked up by a giant hand and given a hard shake. Clothing and other merchandise that had been on the shelves was lying in mounds on the floor. Wall hooks on which racquets had been displayed were empty. Windows had been blown out. In the center of the wall-to-wall carpeting was a large red stain.

  “Is that where your fatality was standing?”

  “Tim Sothern, the tennis player. Yes. His right arm was blown off at the shoulder.”

  “How awful.”

  “He was opening a box he thought contained a pair of tennis shoes. Actually, it contained a pipe bomb.”

  “That’s a length of iron pipe stuffed with explosive?”

  “Right. All three bombs were pipe bombs, but nobody will be impressed with that as a common factor. It would be like saying because three murders were committed with revolvers, must be the same guy who committed them.”

  “I see. Nothing special about the pipe bomb in the Sothern case?”

  “The pipe must have come out of a junkyard somewhere. But the bomber had beaten out the dents and sanded off the rust.”

  Laura frowned. “Why?”

  “We don’t know. But he’s a guy who doesn’t mind taking trouble. The explosive was match heads and black powder. He got the powder from shotgun shells.”

  “You’d have to pry apart an awful lot of shotgun shells, wouldn’t you?”

  “Hundreds. His detonator was homemade. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I couldn’t exactly reconstruct it, but basically when the flaps of the box were opened, a hinge drove a nail into a blasting cap. Kind of a Rube Goldberg device.”

  “But obviously it worked,” said Laura, glancing at the bloodstain in the photo.

  “Yes, but not as well as he’d hoped. The idea with a pipe bomb is that the explosive is so tightly compressed, it blows the pipe to pieces. The pieces act as shrapnel.” Harper looked again at the photo. “That store was full of people who’d come to see Sothern. They would have been cut to pieces. But the bomber only got Sothern himself.”

  “What did the bomber do wrong?”

  “He didn’t plug one end of the pipe tightly enough. So most of the force of the explosion went out that end. It was enough to finish Sothern. But I imagine our bo
mber wasn’t happy, after all the work he’d put in.”

  Harper returned the photo to the Sothern file and reached for the Wylie file. “Next case.”

  He laid down a crime scene photo in front of Laura.

  “Oh my God,” she murmured.

  The store in Minnesota had still been recognizable as a store. But the hotel suite in Cozumel was nothing but a scene of horrific violence. The windows had been blown out and the steel railing on the balcony beyond had been twisted out of shape. Interior walls were reduced to a few spars of wood and piles of plaster. Heavy pieces of furniture had been upended or blown across the room. The blast had even flayed sections of wallpaper off the wall, revealing plaster pockmarked from the impacts of shrapnel. And blood was everywhere.

  Laura stared at the photo for a long moment, then turned it over. She said somberly, “I suppose you’re going to tell me that this is what happens when you do a pipe bomb right.”

  “Yes,” said Harper. “If the other was a do-it-yourselfer, this one was state-of-the-art. A new length of pipe, straight from the plumber’s supply store. Cast iron, which gives you shrapnel with a nice, sharp edge. The explosive was a mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder. Not difficult to get hold of the ingredients, but tricky to blend them right. This guy did. The detonator was electrical, attached to a timer. All very slick.”

  “And I assume the bomb was sealed tight at both ends. The bomber made no mistakes?”

  “No mistakes.”

  “And the Buckner bomb—”

  “Different kind of pipe, different explosive, different detonator. And all of them much more sophisticated than the Wylie bomb.”

  “I see your problem.” Laura frowned and folded her arms.

  “So why is this ‘common factor’ you keep talking about so important?”

  “Bombers don’t experiment, as a rule. They hit on a design that works and stick with it. They want to spend as little time as possible putting the bomb together.”

  “Reasonably enough. Less chance of blowing yourself up that way.”

  “This one is different. He doesn’t care how long it takes. Doesn’t follow the usual procedures. He’s making it all up out of his head, and he does it differently every time. The common factor is that there is no common factor.”

  Leaning forward, Harper picked up the Sothern file again. “You know what was the clincher? Convinced me it was the same guy? It’s that he learns from his mistakes.”

  Harper opened the file and took out the picture of the bulging, twisted pipe bomb. “Remember, he didn’t fasten the one end tightly enough on this bomb. Well, on the Wylie bomb he took no chances. He welded the caps on.”

  “Wait—you mean he used a welding torch on a pipe full of high explosive?”

  “The guy is very confident about his workmanship. Also, of course, he’s insane.”

  “And did he do the same with the Buckner bomb?”

  “No, damn it! He bought the pipe prethreaded and screwed the caps onto it.” Harper slapped the file shut and sat back. “So if Addleman and I take this to some FBI guy with a master’s degree in forensic science and no imagination, he’s going to say, ‘You’ve got three bombs of widely varying degrees of sophistication and that means three different bombers.’ I’ll say it’s one guy who’s getting better and more dangerous all the time, and he’ll say that’s just my theory.”

  Laura’s eyes widened combatively. Twenty years of working with doctors had expunged every trace of diffidence from her own character, and she hated it when Harper was modest. “Just your theory? Your theory counts. Because of who you are, what you’ve accomplished.”

  Harper shrugged. “It would be different if I was going to NYPD detectives. Guys I’ve cracked cases for in the past. With them, my opinion counts. But the Feebs are different.” Harper slumped in his chair and wearily surveyed the cluttered table.

  After a moment, Laura said, “Will? I think you should call Addleman.”

  “Why? I haven’t got anything we can take to the Bureau.”

  “Just to tell him you believe him. From what you’ve told me about Addleman, that’ll mean a great deal to him. Besides, two minds are better than one.”

  “Even if they’re deluded?”

  She gazed evenly at him. She loathed self-pity as much as he did. “Don’t piss me off, Will.”

  He thought he’d better not. “Okay, I’ll make the call.”

  She smiled. Much better.

  8

  Laura was right.

  After Harper finished talking, there was a moment of silence so long he wondered if Addleman was still on the other end of the line.

  Finally, Addleman spoke. “Thank God, Will. I admit, there were times when I wondered if I was crazy. But you’ve proved me right.”

  “No, I haven’t,” Harper said. “Maybe there are two of us who are crazy.”

  “Come on, Will! You’ve shown that what I said is true. This guy’s varying methodology, constantly improving, setting new challenges for himself, and meeting them. The son of a bitch is practicing, for Christ’s sake! He’s building up to something really big. The Bureau’s got to listen to us.”

  “Without a common factor other than celebrities, they won’t listen.”

  Addleman subsided. For a moment, there was no sound over the line except his excited breathing. “So what do you think? It’s impossible? There is no common factor?”

  Harper thought for a while. He said, “There has to be. In some way or other, our guy’s put his stamp on all three bombs. I haven’t seen it yet, but that’s because I don’t know him well enough yet.”

  “Explain,” said Addleman tersely.

  “I think the problem is, I’m working from pictures and lab reports. When I was with the NYPD, I worked with the actual bomb fragments. I handled the same pieces the bomber had handled. That was how I figured out how his mind worked. I know it’s kind of weird, but—”

  “Not at all. It sounds like something I’d do.”

  This didn’t set Harper’s mind at rest. “We’re going to have to get access to one of the bombs. The Sothern one, ideally. It’s the most intact. You know anybody in the Minnesota State Police Crime Lab?”

  Addleman thought a moment and said, “No. But I must know someone who knows someone there.”

  “Or maybe I do. Tomorrow, let’s start working the phones.”

  At nine the next morning, Harper started placing calls to old friends in various branches of law enforcement. It didn’t surprise him that no one was in to take his call; working cops were notoriously hard to reach. He left messages.

  But when lunchtime came around and the phone hadn’t rung, he began to worry. He placed second calls. This time he caught several people at their desks. They were apologetic about not returning his call. They were even sorrier they couldn’t help him. No one was interested in why he wanted to see bomb fragments. In fact, it was clear to Harper that they wanted to get him off the line as quickly as possible.

  Finally a fellow pensioned-off cop, Al Thomas, who owed Harper, told him what the problem was.

  “You heard of the Domenic Fortunato case, Will?”

  Harper remembered the six-year-old Queens boy who’d died in a blaze caused by fireworks his father, a police sergeant, had obtained illegally. He said, “Yes, I know the case. Captain Brand said he was worried about it, last time I talked to him.”

  “Well, he’s a lot more worried now.”

  “You mean the fireworks came from the Bomb Squad dump on Rodman’s Neck?”

  “Yeah. Apparently that’s what Sergeant Fortunato is telling IAD now.

  “But what’s all this got to do with me?”

  Thomas hesitated.

  Harper’s stomach muscles grew taut. With an effort, he kept his voice level. “Is Fortunato saying he got the fireworks from me?”

  Thomas sighed. “The rumor is, there’s pressure being put on him to make him say that.”

  “But I never met the guy. Never h
eard of him till this case came up.

  “Sure, Will. But it’s a question of what he can be made to say. The poor guy’s in terrible shape. You can imagine how guilty he feels about his son’s death. And IAD is really working him over. So far, all he’s saying is that he obtained the fireworks years ago and he can’t remember who his contact was. But they keep running names by him. Yours, most often. Yours every day, in fact, the way I hear it.”

  Harper gripped the phone. His heart was pounding with anger, but he could still think calmly. He was fairly sure who’d suggested his name to IAD: Captain Brand. The captain and Harper had their longtime grudge, and their last meeting had been none too friendly. Besides, Harper, being both well-known and out of the Department, would suit Brand’s purposes perfectly.

  “They need a scapegoat,” Harper said.

  “You think that’s it?”

  “Sure it is. They want to contain the damage. They don’t want the Fortunato case turning into a wider inquiry. The problem is, Al, people are always pilfering fireworks from the dump at Rodman’s Neck. And it isn’t just John Q. Patrolman, wanting some sparklers for his kid’s birthday. It’s the Borough President, wanting to liven up his fund-raising picnic. It’s the D.A., having a Fourth of July party at his country place. People on the Squad tell me they’ve gotten calls from Gracie Mansion. From Albany, even.”

  “Yeah, I see the problem,” Thomas said. “A lot of higher-ups would rather see your head roll than theirs. But Will, this is just rumors so far. Fortunato hasn’t named you. It may not go any further.”

  Harper thanked Thomas and hung up the phone. It had already gone too far, he thought. Even if Harper was never charged, even if his name never went out to the media, the rumors were already getting around, staining his good name at the worst possible time. From now on, he would have a whiff of corruption about him. Some would even go so far as to consider him a sort of accessory in the killing of a child.

  In the afternoon, he called the Minnesota State Police direct. Out there they hadn’t heard the rumors about him. They explained that the Sothern bombing was still an open case, so of course an outsider couldn’t be permitted to handle the fragments. Evidence might be contaminated. The chain of custody might be broken. They were sorry, but—