by John Lutz
The newspaper story laid it all out. A piece of wood splashed with blood had been found in a yard fifty feet from the blast site. This wasn’t significant in itself. Debris from the explosion was strewn over the whole block. And, since so many people had been injured by flying glass, a good deal of blood had been spilled in the area too. But laborious checking of all the hardware stores in the area and exhaustive lab analysis of the woodgrain had established that this piece of wood came from Markman’s workbench. Then DNA analysis had proved beyond doubt that the blood was Markman’s.
All this was quite true. While waiting for Harper to close in on him, Markman had broken off a piece of his workbench. Then he’d drawn a syringe of blood from his arm and poured it onto the piece of wood. Finally he’d planted it in the neighbor’s yard. Markman had long known the time might come when he’d want to fake his death in such an explosion. He’d had preparations, a plan. As he planned for everything.
And of course his pursuers had been fooled. Markman had turned their own science against them. DNA had become their religion, and if DNA evidence suggested Tony Markman was dead, in the minds of the FBI, he was dead.
Wrong. He was very much alive—but he couldn’t say undamaged. His ears had never stopped ringing from the explosion, and he suffered from bad headaches. Some heavy piece of debris—maybe a brick—had fallen on his arm. The pain had been so excruciating that he’d feared the bone was broken. But it was now just a bruise.
Markman had taken only two items with him. One was the block of C-4. He’d used dynamite to blow up the garage, because he had other plans for the hard-to-obtain plastic explosive. The other was a wallet containing driver’s license, Social Security card, and Visa card in the name of Jim Monninger. Monninger was a solid and carefully prepared identity, which he’d been intending to use for his getaway after May 15. But thanks to Will Harper, all plans had to be changed.
The bus from Norfolk came rumbling and hissing into the station. Some of the people slouching in the wooden benches stood up and moved toward the glass doors leading out to the arrival and departure area. Within minutes, passengers began streaming into the terminal, lugging or rolling suitcases. The damp outside air and diesel fumes came into the station with them, along with the steady, rhythmic thrumming of the idling bus engine. A weary-looking woman trailing two preschool-age girls straggled past, trying to catch up with the husband hurrying toward the exit to the parking lot. He seemed angry about something, and the woman kept begging him to tell her what was wrong. One of the little girls was complaining about having to use the bathroom, but the procession didn’t slow as it left the terminal. It seemed suddenly quiet without the clamor of the two kids and their imploring mother.
Markman glanced over at the kiosk where newspapers and magazines were sold. He could see half of one of the displayed headlines: ER KILLED IN BLAST. When he’d been young, and had craved fame, it used to make him almost sick with excitement to see his name in print—usually very small print, in the entertainment ads at the back of a newspaper. Now a pleasant tingling sensation grew deep inside him. He was famous at last. What he’d done had made everyone sit up and take notice. And they only thought they’d seen the last act.
He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t resist. He had to get a closer look at the papers and newsmagazines, maybe buy one. His name would be in the headlines, surely. The headlines!
He stood up, leaving his cheap, scuffed suitcase on the bench, and wandered over to the kiosk.
Feigning casualness, he stared at a Newsweek cover of the ruins of the garage under the heading DEMISE OF A BOMBER. There was an inset in the upper right corner, a photo of Will Harper looking noble, the hero of the moment. Markman smiled but didn’t reach for the magazine. He picked up instead a newspaper with his photograph on the front page. DEAD IN FIERY BLAST read the caption. A warm rush of well-being flooded through Markman. Then something else.
Disgust.
With himself, his momentary loss of self-control. He’d thought he was beyond feeling the lure and narcotic of fame. Above it. And he was! He was above it!
He hurled the newspaper into a nearby trash receptacle, then immediately realized he hadn’t paid for it. The old man seated on a stool near the kiosk was staring at him.
Markman smiled and shrugged, then dug in his pocket and placed two quarters on top of the stack of papers. “Lost a political bet,” be explained, his own words muted by the ringing inside his head.
The old man gave him a look, then returned to reading the folded racing form in his lap.
Markman slunk back to the wooden bench and sat down next to the scuffed attaché case. He shivered slightly. The ringing in his ears grew louder, more shrill. His shame at his temporary lapse of control made him all the more determined to carry out his mission.
To strike his deadliest blow at the cult of celebrity.
Three days later, May 12, Markman was in Wilmington, Delaware. It was his last stop before Washington. He was staying in a suburban motel located on a busy highway lined with shopping malls. He was buying tools and materials to replace what had been lost in the blast, taking his time about it. Resting up.
It was odd, but the nearer he came to May 15, the calmer he felt. He put it down to the soothing knowledge that now she had only three days to live. And for only three more days would she be loved and admired. In a single blow, Markman would end her life and extinguish her fame. No one would mourn her.
As he was walking from the parking lot into Wal-Mart, he passed a newspaper vending machine. Ever since that moment of weakness in the West Virginia bus station, he’d managed to avoid newspapers and television. But when he glanced through the clear plastic of the vending machine, he saw something that froze him in mid step.
The Aquila pattern. Drawn on a map of North America with bold, straight, bloodred lines.
Markman felt naked and defenseless. He looked dazedly around at the shoppers hurrying past him into the store. No one gave him a second glance. He forced himself to step closer to the vending machine so he could see the paper better.
The headline read: CHILLING NEW LOOK INTO BOMBER’S MIND. On the map, the name of each of his victims was superimposed over the name of each city where he’d struck.
So they knew Washington, D.C., was to have been the next city. They just didn’t know who was the target. Instead of a victim’s name, there was a question mark.
Markman’s thoughts were whirling. With trembling fingers, he fumbled a few coins into the slots and took out a newspaper. Then he returned to his rented car and sat down to read the story.
When he finished it, he felt better. There was no threat here to his mission. No one quoted in the story had any doubt that Markman was dead. The fact that this story had come out only indicated how confident the authorities were that there was nothing to be feared from the Celebrity Bomber anymore.
Still, it was unsettling to Markman to read that they’d known about the Aquila pattern for some time. This leak had come from someone in the White House, who said that the Secret Service had been on the highest level of alert ever since the death of Speed Rogers, and was only now relaxing its vigilance. Special Agent Frances Wilson was quoted as confirming the report. She suggested, without quite saying so, that the FBI had figured out the pattern. The reporter seemed to think it was really Will Harper who had figured it out, but Harper couldn’t be reached for comment. The last paragraph of the story mentioned a former FBI profiler named Harold Addleman, whose connection with the case was only now emerging.
Markman folded the paper and stowed it under the car seat. As long as they thought he was dead, none of this mattered, he told himself. But the new information was jarring all the same, and he decided that from now on he’d have to monitor the news media more carefully.
Being dead didn’t mean he could relax.
36
That evening, when his errands were done and his purchases packed away, Markman lay down on the bed in his motel room and reached f
or the remote.
Stories about the Aquila pattern featured prominently in all the network newscasts, but there was nothing more than he’d read in the paper. It was even more comforting to Markman that the tone was the same: Everyone assumed that the bomber was dead, the danger was past, and it was safe to indulge in a tasteless guessing game about who the last victim was to have been.
He’d intended to switch off the set as soon as the network newscasts ended. Instead he pressed the up-button on the remote and began to flick idly through the higher-numbered cable channels. The sight of a familiar face stopped him.
It was a middle-aged man with a paunch and a head of frizzy blond hair. Markman struggled to put a name to the face. Another man, a thin, stoop-shouldered man, came into the shot. He looked familiar too. The two were beaming at each other. They embraced.
Markman turned up the sound. A female reporter with a well-practiced throb of sincerity in her voice was explaining that this was the reunion of Jake Blake, the Celebrity Bomber’s first victim, with his once and future friend Sam Sugar, who’d been wrongly convicted of the crime. Almost choking up herself, the reporter called the reunion a “heartwarming sidelight on this bloody tale of the late Tony Markman, a man twisted by hate and envy.”
Jolted, Markman pulled himself upright on the bed. The last time he’d allowed himself to watch television, he’d been the unknown and fearsome Celebrity Bomber. Now he was only the late Tony Markman. Of course the media were going to trivialize him. He should switch the set off now.
But he felt a curiosity that was both nauseating and irresistible. He couldn’t help continuing to flick through the channels, stopping whenever he saw a familiar face.
The journalists had been busy. They’d found comedians he’d performed with, to testify to his lack of talent. They’d found people from his childhood who he’d assumed were dead—teachers, servants, relatives. These people said the most shameless and infuriating things about him. Markman found himself wincing, muttering sarcastic replies. A housemaid’s comments about how his mother had spoiled him brought him to his feet, shouting at the screen.
That was it. He’d watch no more. He could not permit such a humiliating loss of self-control. He muted the sound and turned away from the screen to pace in the narrow space alongside the bed.
He was near despair. It seemed to him that he’d lost his struggle with the celebrity-glorifying media. They’d made him out to be a spoiled rich kid, a sore loser, determined to tear down those wonderful, talented people who had achieved what he couldn’t. Instead of exposing the celebrity cult, he was contributing to the greater glory of celebrities.
He glanced up. The Tonight Show was coming on. He’d wasted an entire evening watching television. He picked up the remote to switch it off.
Jay Leno walked onstage. He was carrying a bomb.
It was a big, round bomb with a wick sticking out, the kind of bomb cartoon characters throw. Markman brought up the volume. The audience was whooping with delight. Leno handed the bomb to his bandleader and went into his monologue. Whenever a joke fell flat, he’d go over and get the bomb and threaten to throw it at the audience.
The audience was roaring with laughter when Markman switched channels—to Letterman, who was doing the Top Ten Reasons Not to Heckle Tony Markman.
Markman hit the off switch. He sank down on the bed and buried his face in his arms. This was the worst yet. He’d become a national joke. Why had he allowed himself to look at Tonight, of all programs?
He hadn’t watched it in almost twenty years. The show brought back memories he usually tried to keep out of his mind. Now he couldn’t help it. He was a boy again, sitting on the couch with his mother watching Johnny Carson. His father, having made the usual complaints about it being way past Tony’s bedtime, had gone to bed. Now it was just the two of them, laughing at Johnny. His mother was whispering to him that one day he’d be a famous comic too. The whole world was going to love him just as much as she loved him.
Now Markman opened his eyes. The remote was still grasped in his fist. He drew back his arm to hurl it at the blank television screen.
But at the last moment, he managed to get control of himself. It was a long time since he’d allowed those memories to upset him. Shoving them into a back corner of his mind, he lowered his arm and dropped the remote on the bed.
This was no time for emotional self-indulgence. This was a time for cold, clear thinking. He was an engineer like his father, and he’d reexamine his plan as if it were a malfunctioning machine. Find a way to repair it.
The problem, he decided, was that his identity had become known before he had a chance to complete the pattern with his final strike. The other bombings were only preparation. It was the final strike that would have spelled out his message to the world in a form that could not be trivialized or ignored. The final strike would have shown people that the celebrities on whom they lavished so much adoration didn’t care about them at all. People would have seen through the false allure of celebrities. They never would have allowed themselves to be seduced and used again. If they hadn’t discovered Markman’s identity until the pattern was complete, they would have looked at him with awe, as someone who’d taught them a hard but necessary lesson.
It all would have happened according to plan—but for Harper.
Markman’s hands curled into fists. His nails dug into his flesh. He could have killed Harper back in St. Louis—and he wished he’d done it.
He gave in to the anger, but only for a moment. It was another emotion he couldn’t allow himself. He reasserted his control.
He sat up straight, opened his fists, and put his hands flat on his thighs, so that the sweat would be absorbed by the cloth of his trousers. He breathed deeply and evenly until he was calm.
This whole evening had been a waste of time, he decided. That was what always happened when he allowed his emotions to get the better of him. What did it matter if people were laughing at Tony Markman now? The laughter would cease on May 15. His plan was still on track. The pattern would be completed. She would die.
There was no reason to be angry at Harper, either. Markman had spared him in order to use him—and he’d proven useful. The plan had worked.
It crossed Markman’s mind that he couldn’t be certain Harper himself had fallen for the trick. Among the major figures in the case, Harper was conspicuous by his silence. Several of the newscasts had reported that he and the other guy, Addleman, were going to be in Washington tomorrow, in their capacity as consultants to the FBI.
Here was the only potential threat to his plan, Markman thought. Harper. He shouldn’t have allowed all the media coverage to distract him. He should have been thinking about Harper.
Markman got up from the bed and sat down at the narrow desk against the wall. For the next few hours he sat there motionless, his gaze abstracted, just as he used to do at his workbench in the garage.
Weighing possibilities.
Laying plans.
Markman could think of several ways he might use Harper. Some of these plans involved his destruction. But Markman felt no hatred for the man. In fact, he felt an admiration for Harper, who in some ways was not unlike himself. He didn’t seek vengeance on Harper for the media humiliation Markman had just gone through. No, Harper was just a tool. If he died, it would be for a useful purpose. Nothing personal.
Markman smiled. He hoped Will Harper would appreciate the distinction, but he probably wouldn’t have time.
37
The plane landed at Washington’s Dulles airport on time at 8:10 A.M. Neither Harper nor Addleman had checked-in luggage, so they headed for the rental car counters.
Rounding another turn in the long, crowded concourse, they saw a phalanx of journalists coming toward them. Neither man was surprised. Most were print journalists, but Harper saw at least two shoulder-mounted Minicams with TV news logos on them.
“What are you going to tell the FBI at your meeting today?” asked the woman in the
lead, wielding a microphone like a gun. Addleman stared at Harper.
“Sorry, no comment,” Harper said, shifting his garment bag strap to his other shoulder.
“Who really figured out the Aquila pattern? It was you, wasn’t it, Mr. Addleman?” a man asked. The lens of a Minicam was peering over his right shoulder like the huge, intent eye of a giant insect.
“I—I really can’t say.” Addleman was blinking rapidly, looking straight ahead, trying to keep moving.
The crowd of reporters had attracted onlookers. They stared and pointed and asked who it was. This happened to Harper whenever he went out in public. He’d learned how to lip-read his name.
“Do you have any comment on the FBI’s handling of the case?” asked the woman with the wireless microphone.
“No,” Harper snapped.
“Oh, come on, Will, you’ve got to give me something,” said the woman, as if they’d known each other for years. In fact, he’d never seen her before.
Another reporter jostled forward to get in Harper’s face. “Do you concur with the Bureau’s conclusion that Markman is dead?”
“Let’s get out of here,” Harper muttered to Addleman.
A reporter stuck the toe of his wingtip shoe in front of a wheel of Addleman’s rolling suitcase to slow them down. Several of the media people were forging ahead to circle around in front of them, to trap them.
“Faster,” Harper whispered to Addleman.
“They’ll be on us at the car rental counter,” Addleman said, gazing around with disbelief at the mass of media and onlookers.
“Forget about the car,” Harper said, picking up speed and causing Addleman to struggle to keep up. “We can rent one at the hotel. Let’s get a cab.”
They pushed their way through the crowd at the carousels, then ran out of the terminal to a cabstand. A cab was letting someone out about a hundred feet beyond the lead taxi in line. Harper and Addleman reached the vehicle just as the driver was closing the trunk lid.