by Chris Mooney
‘That’s our boy,’ Coop said.
The gunman stepped on to the sidewalk. He stood there, looking around as if to get his bearings. When the bus pulled away, he walked into the street then stopped and, looking directly at the camera, removed a cell phone from his jacket pocket.
‘It’s a burner,’ Coop said.
‘How can you tell? I can barely see it.’
‘Howie called right after I got off the phone with the bomb squad. The call that came into the taxi dispatch, the number belonged to a burner.’
As the gunman began to dial a number, a BPD patrolwoman appeared in the doorway. ‘Bomb squad wants to deploy the robot for that backpack,’ she told them. ‘We need to clear the area.’
‘Tell them to hold off for a minute,’ Darby said, watching the screen as the gunman, his back now to the camera, began walking up Drummond, heading for the social security office.
‘That backpack underneath the bench,’ Coop said. ‘He didn’t plant it.’
The gunman hung up but he didn’t put the phone back in his pocket. Instead, he held it somewhere in front of him, reading the screen or maybe dialling another number. They couldn’t see what he was doing.
Then, further up the street, he turned to a city garbage can chained to a streetlight. His back was still towards them, but they saw him glance over his shoulder, as if to check to see if he was being watched or followed. Then he leaned forward and shoved something down into the trash, one quick movement.
‘He dumped the burner,’ Coop said.
‘That, or he left something else for us.’
He noted the tone in her voice and turned his head to her. ‘You think he planted an IED in there?’
‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘So what’s bothering you?’
‘EOD guys are going to want to check out the garbage can. To do that, they’ll need to suit up and get the bomb robot ready, their equipment. That’s going to eat up time.’
‘Not much of a choice.’
‘I know, I know.’ There was something else bothering her, though, something she couldn’t put a finger on. ‘Who’s handling the evidence, you or BPD?’
‘Us,’ Coop replied as he dialled a number on his phone. ‘We’ve got two Evidence Response Teams on standby.’
There are strict procedures to follow when dealing with a potential IED. The procedures cannot be skipped, and they can’t be rushed. There are no shortcuts.
Charlie, the bomb disposal robot, was a hydraulic, bendable arm attached to a massive chassis with six ATV wheels that could climb over kerbs and up stairs. Darby waited in the back of the EOD vehicle and watched the monitor as Stu Lewis, senior bomb disposal engineer for the Mass. State Police, remotely controlled Charlie to look inside the garbage can. The video feed mounted above the retractable claw provided high-definition clarity; she could see the ribbed edges of a used condom stuck to a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup.
‘You guys have no idea what he might’ve put in there,’ Lewis said. A statement, not a question.
‘We think he might have dumped a cell phone in there, but it could be anything. We couldn’t see what it was.’
‘We’ll have to check everything, then.’
Charlie had brought along a plastic garbage can and had set it up next to the city one. Darby watched as he, as Lewis insisted on calling the robot, pulled out the coffee cup with its dried condom stuck to the side and dumped it into the plastic can.
Charlie went to work on the next item, Lewis examining it closely before picking it up and hauling it away, the same procedure repeated over and over again.
Darby kept time in her head. Each item of garbage, from examination to disposal, took anywhere from one to three minutes.
It was maddening to wait. She didn’t want to wait but she had to. There was nothing she could do. On the screen, she examined the artwork on the brick wall behind the cans. Some of it was quite detailed. In the midst of big cartoon characters, and gangster and rap phrases like ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’ and ‘Fuck the Police’ someone had painstakingly drawn, using spray paint, a big fat white baby with a black heart and, next to it, the portrait of a scowling black man wearing a dark green hoodie that shrouded his eyes, doves flying above his shoulders painted with purple wings and above his head, two lines of text: ‘Sean Ellis, Never Forget”.
When the graffiti no longer held her attention, Darby closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. In her mind’s eye, she saw the second hand of a clock spinning wildly, like a roulette wheel.
The back door opened. Coop was standing there, motioning for her to join him outside.
They stood on a sidewalk in a cordoned-off street four blocks away from where the bomb robot was working.
‘Got some preliminary info on what’s happening in Quincy,’ Coop said. ‘Given the blast patterns, the bomb guys think the IED used dynamite. Bomb site is a residential home, belongs to a BPD detective.’
‘Who?’
‘Danny Hill.’
‘Mr Murder?’
Coop nodded. Everyone knew Hill. The detective had an unbelievable clearance rate on homicides, had solved some of the city’s toughest cases over his nearly three-decade career. He loved the press, and the press loved him, nicknaming him ‘Mr Murder.’
‘Hill is still on active duty, works out of the Kenmore district now,’ Coop said. ‘He called in sick this morning. Bomb guys found his personal car and unmarked car, what’s left of them, in the driveway. They’re sifting through the rubble as we speak. They also found part of a leg on a car roof a couple of blocks away.’
‘It’s definitely Hill?’
‘No positive ID yet, but yeah, it looks like it’s him. Blood type matches Hill, and there’s a small and slightly faded Marine crest tattooed on the upper thigh – exact same one Hill has, according to people who know him.’
‘Any other casualties?’
Coop nodded sombrely. ‘Next-door neighbour,’ he said. ‘Elderly woman who lives alone, they think she had a heart attack when all her windows exploded.’
‘Any connection between Hill and Anita Barnes’s grandson?’
‘I’m working on it.’ Coop studied her face for a moment. ‘What is it?’
‘We’re several steps behind this guy. We need to find something we can use as leverage.’
The EOD’s back doors opened.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ Lewis said. He was looking directly at Darby.
They all looked at the monitor. On the screen was a rolled-up brown paper sandwich bag, the kind given to you at a deli or liquor store. Across the bag, two words written in thick black block letters:
DARBY MCCORMICK
25
+03.48
Darby rode with Coop in the back of another vehicle, this one an Evidence Response Team van owned by the Boston FBI. An ERT agent sat across from her, a man with black curly hair and fingernails bitten down to the quick. They didn’t talk – couldn’t, over the wail of sirens – but the agent, whose name was Sonnenberg, kept looking at her.
Darby kept her attention on the pair of sealed evidence bags sitting on the floor between the man’s legs. One held the cell phone the gunman had left for her inside the garbage can. The other evidence bag contained the phone’s SIM card, which the gunman had snapped into two peices.
The van took a hard right. Darby grabbed the armrests. Her head swam and she felt slightly nauseated, as though she was experiencing motion sickness.
The gunman hadn’t stopped to write her name on the bag on his way up Drummond Ave. Her name was already written on it when he wrapped up the cell phone and then shoved the bag deep inside the garbage can, which meant he had intended to include her in his plan from the very beginning. It meant he had been thinking about her for some time. Thinking and planning and dreaming. About her.
But how did he know she was going to be in Boston this weekend, and how did he know she was going to BPD headquarters this morning? Her BPD friend and colleague,
Anna Lopez, had asked her last night at the wedding reception to come by this morning.
Had the gunman been following her?
Stalking her?
Was he at the wedding?
What if this whole thing centred on her and not the former mayor Briggs? What if the gunman had waited not for Briggs to be out of the state but until she was in Boston?
Word had no doubt gotten out about the gunman leaving behind evidence with her name written on it. That kind of news travelled fast; no doubt BPD Commissioner Donnelly was grinning ear-to-ear like some goddamn Cheshire cat. Now that evidence had been linked to her, she couldn’t work the case. Now there was a clear conflict of interest. Howie Gelfand didn’t have a choice: he had to bench her.
Darby was jostled out of her thoughts when the van came to a sudden, jarring stop. She checked her watch. Two hours and eleven minutes until the second bomb went off.
When the back doors opened, she expected to see Donnelly waiting for her. No one was there. Coop motioned with his head for her to follow him. She did, ducking and weaving through the emergency vehicles and personnel crowding the lot. She caught sight of the MCP and wondered what was going on in there, if Briggs’s special convoy was getting ahead of the storm or was caught in it.
SAC Gelfand was waiting for her by the back steps for the mobile lab. A young female agent with a round face and flawless skin, her blonde hair worn in a ponytail, stood with him.
Here comes the boot, Darby thought, straightening.
All eyes were on her when Gelfand said, ‘You touch or handle any of the evidence?’
‘No, nothing,’ Darby replied.
‘Good. You know I can’t let you work the evidence or do the documentation – conflict of interest and all that. Cooper’s going to be hung up in the lab, and I need someone to consult and report back to me. Hang back, take notes, feel free to advise on any forensic matters, but under no circumstances are you to touch the evidence or the equipment.’
‘Understood.’
‘This lovely young lady standing next to me is Agent Marion Kelly. Kelly here’s going to put her Yale law degree to work and stand by your side, make sure everything’s on the up-and-up so we don’t get any blowback later from BPD or the city. She’s going to record everything. When you’re finished, she’ll take you to the MCP and we’ll reconvene. Get to work everyone.’
Howie had more than enough causality to sideline her. Instead, he had created a flimsy legal loophole for her to slip through, to keep her front and centre of everything involving the case.
But why? Darby wondered, as she followed Coop into the trailer. Was Howie throwing his support behind her because he needed her? Or was he using her as a pawn to play some sort of political angle?
The same company that built the MCP had constructed the mobile lab. Darby saw the same grey flooring and aluminium walls. The counters and surfaces, though, were a bright white, and there was plenty of light to work with.
Coop removed his overcoat and suit jacket and looked to Agent Kelly. ‘Is the recorder set to the correct date and time?’ he asked.
‘Set and ready.’
‘Good. Once you start recording, don’t stop it or pause. Keep everyone in frame at all times.’
Coop looked at the digital video camera and introduced himself and everyone standing inside the room. He described the items that were recovered and where they had been found. Then he gave the date and time just in case there was a trouble with the recording, or a mistake. They couldn’t afford either. Every single step and moment needed to be documented in the event a lawyer tried to contest the procedural handling or validity of entered evidence.
Darby shadowed Coop as he brought the brown paper bag to a large white counter where two agents stood, waiting. One had a forensic camera, the other a clipboard. A microphone hung from the ceiling to augment written notes, but it wasn’t necessary as both audio and visual were being captured on the digital recorder.
Coop cut the piece of clear tape on the bag and then slid the contents on to the counter.
‘One SIM card, snapped in half, a pair of Samsung rechargeable batteries, and a Samsung cell phone that, at first glance, seems to offer basic calling and nothing else.’ His gloved hands worked quickly, placing the forensic rulers beside each item. Then he stepped away to give the photographer room to work.
Darby was going to suggest that he perform a swab-DNA test on the phone’s mouthpiece, to collect the epithelial cells that were expelled on a person’s breath, but Coop had already grabbed the necessary equipment from the counter behind him.
A true DNA sample would take two days. A Polymerase Chain Reaction analysis – and from what she could see, the lab had the appropriate equipment to do PCR – could take the smallest trace of DNA and amplify it in just under four hours to produce a DNA fingerprint suitable for a search inside the federal DNA database, CODIS.
The photography done, Coop leaned forward across the counter and looked through an illuminated light magnifier to check the phone for any possible trace evidence – a hair or fibre that might have been caught between the keypads or in one of the crevices of the hard white plastic shell. Finding nothing, he swivelled the magnifier to the agent standing next to him, and as the man went to work examining the inside of the paper bag, Coop used what was essentially a big Q-Tip to swab the phone’s mouthpiece. He performed a second, separate swab against the receiver to collect possible DNA that might have been left behind by the gunman’s ear.
Coop cocked his head to her. ‘The keypad?’
‘On the convenience store video he was wearing gloves when he dialled. But if he used the phone on a previous occasion and used his fingers … DNA will help us with a conviction, but if he has a record and we’re looking for an ID, we’re better off going with fingerprints than through CODIS. I’d hate to swab it for DNA and destroy evidence when he might have left a print behind.’
‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘Let’s check for prints.’
26
+04.04
First, Coop bagged the broken SIM card.
‘We’ll deal with this last,’ he told the group. ‘Agent Kelly, make sure you record the seal on the bag, right here – and record me initialling it.’
Then he made Kelly record him bringing the SIM card over to the evidence locker. He signed the form hanging on the clipboard in front before locking it away inside the cabinet. He was taking no chances with evidential procedures. He didn’t want anything to come back and bite him in the ass.
Coop placed the phone and the paper bag in separate trays. The group followed him to another counter where a portable super glue chamber had been set up. Dusting the phone with black powder would have been quicker, but fuming with cyanoacrylate, the main chemical ingredient of super glue, would keep the print stable for dusting and allow him to make numerous lifts off the same print without destroying the latent.
After he stood the phone on a nonporous block of laminate, one of the agents handed him a small plastic cup of warm water, which would rehydrate the prints on the phone’s plastic shell. Coop pulled apart the developer and clipped the sheet of cyanoacrylate to a plastic hanger inside the centre of the chamber, then pulled down the plastic sheet and tucked it in along the bottom of the base. It could take up to thirty minutes for the cyanoacrylate to react with the fatty deposits left behind by fingers and palms.
An agent stood next to the chamber, watching as Coop took the second tray and moved further down the length of the counter. He needed some room to work on this next part.
He cut the paper bag along the seams so he could lay it flat on the counter. Then he placed the appropriate rulers for comparison and measurement purposes next to the bag and moved back away from the table to let the evidence be photographed, recorded and documented.
Coop turned to the lab gear folded on top of the chairs, all of it chemical-resistant: clothing, lab coat, goggles, a breathing mask and a box of nitrile gloves. Nitrile was thicker and offered better pro
tection against harsh and toxic chemicals like Ninhydrin, the go-to method for detecting fingerprints left on paper. The chemical was especially toxic to the eyes and lungs. Darby wondered if he was going to spray the paper bag or try to minimize his exposure by using either dipping or painting the paper.
Coop spoke as he worked the protective clothing over his own. ‘Take multiple pictures of the writing, then move the rulers next to it so we have exact measurements,’ he said. ‘Kelly, make sure you get a close up on it – I want everything documented, every single step. There a photocopier in here?’
‘Yes,’ replied the agent manning the clipboard.
‘Good,’ Coop said. ‘After you guys finish, make several copies of the writing – and make sure you wipe down the copier plate before you do it. We’ll all need to walk to the copier so Kelly can keep everyone in frame.’
Darby couldn’t take her attention off the bag. Seeing her name written there set off a high, ringing sound in her head and made her feel cold all over.
Who are you?
And what do you want with me?
After the writing was photocopied, the bag was handed to Coop, who carried it in a tray with him back to the counter where one of the agents had already set aside a photographic developer tray containing the chemicals Coop had called ahead for. Coop carried everything with him into a small, ventilated room equipped with a fume hood.
Agent Kelly didn’t have to be told what to do next. She carefully moved back until she had everyone and the evidence in the frame of her recorder. She needed to capture it all, in real-time, without a single interruption in the recording; otherwise, a lawyer could contest the validity of what had happened in here. She didn’t need to enter the room with him in order to record his work; a thick glass window allowed her to watch him.
Coop preferred fresh-mixed solutions, as they were more dependable than premixed pump spray dispensers and aerosol cans. Inside the photographic developer tray he mixed Ninhydrin with ethyl acetate and acetic acid. Darby was glad to see him add one litre of heptane to the solution, as using heptane made inks less susceptible to running or dissolving.