by Diane Capri
He was taller and tighter than he’d looked on television. His charcoal black suit stretched across broad shoulders like a second skin, leaving no doubt that regular workouts had winnowed all visible fat from his body.
His nose was twisted like it had been punched more than once over the years. Brown eyes darker than hers peered impassively across the table.
“I’m talking to you as a favor for Morris,” Remington said as if he had a few trust issues of his own. Which was probably normal for a skeptical FBI Agent.
“I understand.” She’d have argued about the public’s right to know, and the value of basic justice, but her instincts said he didn’t give a crap about the first and felt he was on the right track for the second. Besides, she needed a favor. Antagonizing him immediately wasn’t the way to get one.
He cocked his head. “We’ve done plenty of press briefings already. You’re late getting into this.”
Jess nodded. “Taboo doesn’t just cover crimes, though. We’re looking for—”
“I know what you do. We don’t need your help with this case.” His tone implied the day would never come when he’d need help from her or anyone else.
Which got her back up. “I’m here because someone I trust thinks you have the wrong suspect in custody. She says Alex Cole is not your guy.”
“That sounds to me like you’re trying to butt into my case.”
“Agent Remington, you like Henry Morris, right? Respect his judgment? We’ve worked together before. Which is why he recommended me. Shouldn’t that be enough?”
He narrowed his eyes to study her briefly and, after a moment, nodded. “Look, Ms. Kimball, we’ve got more leads than we know what to do with and a ton of follow-up to do. It requires patience and legwork, but that’s what we do. We’ll tie up all the details. It takes time. And we’ll let you, and everybody else, know what we find out.”
“You’ve already arrested Alex Cole, though.” Jess nodded. “Tell me why you did that, at least.”
“I’ve already released the details supporting the arrest warrant, which is also a matter of public record.” When she didn’t reply, Remington shrugged and ran down the summary. “His phone was used to detonate the bomb. We found bomb-making supplies on his property. He owns several weapons, various types, all lethal. He even had a homemade rail gun. You know what that is?”
Jess gritted her teeth and exercised patience of her own instead of smacking him down with exactly how much she already knew about his case, and how much worse the actual facts were than what he’d covered so far.
She knew, for example, that the FBI had separated mangled equipment from the remains of the bomb. The explosion had vaporized most of the bomb’s elements. After an extensive search on Saturday afternoon, they found thin wires connected to a circuit card.
The card’s components were destroyed. Only the remaining solder allowed engineers working overtime to guess the card’s origin.
But the significant evidence didn’t come from the card itself.
At the other end of the thin wires were the melted remains of a tiny loudspeaker.
An industry search had revealed the circuit card and speaker were used in several types of cell phones.
Sifting through the rubble, crime scene techs finally found a portion of the plastic casing of a SIM card on Sunday.
With careful image enhancement, long strings of numbers on the casing were visible enough to decipher.
Cell phone records had narrowed the list of matching phones down to seven in the Chatham area.
By Monday morning, they’d discovered that only one of those phone numbers had received a call at the exact instant of the explosion.
That phone belonged to Alex Cole.
Monday afternoon, Alex Cole was arrested.
She said none of this. Not yet.
Patiently, she displayed understanding. “You’re saying Cole owned an electromagnetic gun.”
Remington’s eyebrows shot up. As she’d suspected, he thought she was unprepared or unsophisticated, or worse. Her best cases often developed because her opponents underestimated her preparation and tenacity. She hid her smile behind a quick cough.
He nodded. “Those things can fire projectiles like nails at speeds of thousands of miles an hour. Nails make nasty, lethal weapons when fired at those speeds. They’ll rip up a human body in ways that can never be repaired. There’s no reasonable recreational use for a rail gun.”
“I see. But no one used a rail gun connected with this explosion.” She cocked her head. “Why did Alex Cole bomb the Kelso Products factory?”
“Who knows? Right now, he’s not talking.” Remington shrugged. “Could be lots of reasons. Wasn’t happy with his employer. Or his colleagues. Jealousy. Maybe one of the victims stole his research or his girlfriend. Hell, maybe he was hungry, and someone swiped his lunch out of the company refrigerator in the break room.”
“All possibilities,” Jess nodded agreeably to hide her irritation. “But what evidence do you have? For any single motive?”
“We’re six days into the investigation. We’ve got some ‘plain as the nose on your face’ evidence. Alex Cole is our best suspect, and he stays behind bars unless a fancy lawyer gets him out.” Remington’s expression made clear what he thought of fancy lawyers. “Like I said, plenty of legwork left to do. We’ll get the rest of it.”
What an ass. Jess squared her shoulders and questioned the facts head on, speaking in the most reasonable tone she could manage. “What explosive did he use?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Type of detonator?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“Size of the bomb?”
“Again, I can’t tell you. It was smaller than you might think, though, given the extent of the damage.”
“Suitcase size, or handbag?”
He glanced at Jess’s fifteen-inch nylon tote bag resting on the floor. “Handbag.”
“He’d need access to a powerful explosive to do so much damage with a small bomb, then.”
Remington raised his eyebrows to indicate the answer was obvious.
“But you’re saying this was not a fertilizer bomb, which just about everybody around here has access to, with all these farms.”
“Definitely not a fertilizer bomb.” Remington shook his head. “This was a professional job. Made from the sort of chemicals you don’t just throw together and hope for the best. Chemicals Alex Cole has in his workshop.”
Jess nodded. “Where was the bomb planted?”
“We covered this in the press briefing already,” Remington practically snarled as if she was deliberately wasting his time. “The factory produces one main product, which is a powder. The powder is stored in several large tanks. The bomb was in one of the tanks. The powder and oxygen mix increased the intensity of the blast, spreading the fire. Pipes conducted the explosion to a second tank. Some of the labs were damaged.”
“Which labs?”
He frowned. “Three and four. Four took the brunt of it. Damage there was much worse.”
“How was the bomb planted?”
“We’re still gathering evidence, but we believe strongly that Alex Cole put it there.”
“Surveillance cameras don’t show him or anyone else placing this handbag-sized explosive in or near the tank?”
“Nothing more than the footage you’ve already seen plastered everywhere online.” Remington shook his head. “The company doesn’t believe in spying on its workers.”
“Very noble of them in this day and age,” Jess smirked.
He grimaced. “Not really. The union threatened court action.”
She nodded. Security cameras inside workplaces were a touchy subject for a lot of people. “No incidental video? Nearby stores? Gas stations?”
Remington shook his head. “It’s a big factory on a large tract of land. There’s nothing near enough to the explosion site.”
“Security guards?”
“Several,
but no one saw anyone unusual near the tanks.”
“Visitor logs?”
“Still checking.”
Jess cocked her head. “Alex Cole was home sick on the day of the explosion. He wasn’t at the plant at all that day.”
“So I’ve heard. How convenient.” Remington’s turn to smirk.
“Does he have any corroboration? Doctor visit? Over the counter medications? Anything?”
“Again, he’s not talking. But we’ve found nothing like that.” Remington shook his head. “He called in sick in the morning, but that’s the only evidence we’ve got that he was actually home sick that day. People call off work for all sorts of reasons. When the company doesn’t give them a list of available play dates, they say they’re sick. Nothing unusual about that. Happens millions of times in America every day.”
“Cole called in using a cell phone?”
“Home phone. Landline.” He held his palm facing out to curb any protest. “Seven-forty-three in the morning. Five hours before the bomb went off. Proves nothing. He had plenty of time to spare between the phone call and the explosion.”
Perhaps not, but at least he’d been home at seven-forty-three. It was a place to start. “If the detonate command came from a cell phone, there must have been a phone in with the bomb to serve as a remote trigger, right?”
Remington nodded. “Burner phone. Purchased with cash a month earlier from a supermarket chain here in Chatham. Never used until that day. Standard procedure, as anybody who’s ever watched a crime show on television would know. Extremely common.”
Which it was. So common and so easy that some DIYers even used old cell phones to set off fireworks. All it takes is a phone, five bucks worth of parts, and a few minutes to watch any of the tutorials online, followed by a bit of tinkering. Put the phone in with the explosive and then place a call to that phone. The incoming call sets off an electrical current on the modified cell phone and, well, just about anybody can get a very big bang.
Jess chewed the inside of her bottom lip. “No ownership records on the phone?”
“Nothing.”
“And the cell phone used as the remote trigger for the bomb? Who owned that one?”
Remington grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “Alex Cole. Hadn’t been used for thirty-two days. Prior to that, a few calls with friends and some with his mother.”
Jess did not reply.
“Now you know everything we’ve released.” Remington glanced at his watch and stood up to signal her time had expired. “We may release more details in a few days, depending on how the rest of the investigation goes.”
Jess glanced at the clock behind him. He’d promised her thirty minutes. She hadn’t used them all yet. She remained seated. “Do you think a guy smart enough to get a Ph.D. would be dumb enough to use his own phone to set off a bomb?”
Remington frowned. “It’s a head-scratcher, sure. But at the moment we’re going with the evidence. Which is that Alex Cole detonated that bomb and killed three people. There’s three more in the hospital that might not live, so the death count could go higher. If you’ve got anything proving otherwise, now’s the time to tell me.”
Jess shook her head. “Not yet. I just got here. But when I find the proof, I promise you’ll be among the first to know.”
Remington offered a flat smile. “Cole is downstairs. He says he wants to talk to you. No surprise.”
Jess wasn’t surprised, either. Partly because Marcia McAllister had probably pleaded with him to see Jess. And partly because, unlike the calls from distraught families of crime victims, which she never ignored, she received hundreds more calls from inmates than she answered. The system had many resources to help the accused. Her mission was to help the victims that the system too often failed.
Right at the moment, it was unclear on which side of the line Alex Cole rested. It was only her commitment to Marcia that motivated Jess. Otherwise, the evidence would have persuaded her to agree with Remington.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tuesday, August 16
12:35 p.m. CDT
Chatham, Iowa
Perhaps names were destiny after all because Alex Cole’s hair was coal-black and curly. Big eyes, rimmed with blue-black lashes, moved lazily. He was reed thin. In the videos she’d watched, he’d seemed six feet tall. Perhaps he was. At the moment, she couldn’t tell because he was seated on the other side of the thick safety glass that kept him separated from her.
The speaker on her side of the partition reproduced his voice clearly. She assumed he could hear hers perfectly, too. She tried to get comfortable in the molded plastic seat.
“I was sick that day. Really sick.” His voice was medium range, cadence neither fast nor slow. If he was nervous or distraught, neither was reflected in his words. “Bad seafood. My mother’s friend did the cooking.”
“A useful alibi.”
“Remington says that, too. But it’s true.” He shrugged. “I was sick. I stayed home from work. Last I heard, that’s not a crime.”
Jess nodded. Cole’s demeanor was quiet. Calm. Almost as if he considered his situation as an interesting puzzle to be solved. Jess had met many engineers and lawyers and other analytical types who approached life the same way. Most of them weren’t accused of murder, though. Defendants were usually more animated, in her experience.
Cole shrugged. “If I’d known I’d need an alibi, I’d have come up with a better story, don’t you think?”
Possibly. Some defendants did have better excuses. Many didn’t. “You worked in one of the destroyed labs?”
He shook his head. “Lab One. We do the fundamental stuff.”
“Where is Lab One?”
“At the other end of the plant from the explosion. The bomb was in Lab Four.”
She cocked her head. “So if you’d been at work, you wouldn’t have been caught in the blast.”
“Not even if I’d been chained to my desk.” He shrugged, as if being charged with murder was exceptionally curious, under the circumstances. “Remington says either I planted the bomb knowing I’d be safe, or I stayed away, just in case my calculations on the explosion were wrong.”
“Lab Three was also damaged.”
“Four took the worst of it, though. Good thing really.”
She frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“Four is used mostly for storing samples. Not as many people work there. Means fewer people were hurt by the blast.” Cole shook his head. “Remington says I knew that which is why I put the bomb over in Four.”
Jess nodded. “The FBI found the chemicals for the explosive in your workshop.”
He raised his eyebrows “Which chemicals were those?”
“They didn’t tell me.”
“It’s possible they’d have found small amounts of whatever they were looking for.” He shook his head. “I did a lot of experiments in my workshop, but I didn’t have significant quantities of any chemicals.”
“They said they found gallons.”
He shrugged. “Not me. Not mine.”
“They said they found other weapons in your workshop, too.”
He smiled. “My attempts at building a rail gun? I did that just for fun. To see if I could do it. The one I built is not much of a weapon. It’s bolted to the floor, for one thing.”
“It works, though, doesn’t it?”
“Of course,” he pushed his chin out, somewhat offended. “It’s a small-scale thing. Not that complicated. Just a linear magnet moving a piece of metal. I didn’t try to build one of those fire-breathing things you can find on the internet. Mine shot nails across the room. That’s it. Nobody’s claiming I used it for anything else, I hope.”
“Not as far as I know.” Jess shook her head. “How many cell phones do you own?”
“You mean did I own the one used to detonate the bomb? Remington says the remote signal was sent by a call from my cell phone. He’s probably tracked that down, so it’s likely true. But my cell phone had disappeared. I
hadn’t used it in a while.”
“There was a second cell phone on the bomb.”
He nodded. “The detonator, Remington says. A disposable cell phone.”
“Was that one yours?”
“I’m a single guy who lives alone. I have one cell phone and one landline.” His tone became curious. “How many do you have?”
“Just one. I’m not home enough to justify the cost of a landline.” Jess smiled. “Have you found your cell phone?”
“Before they arrested me yesterday, you mean?” He squeezed his lips together and shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t remember leaving it anywhere. The most likely place is my workshop, but I looked in there and didn’t find it. I suppose it could have been stolen, but that doesn’t seem likely, does it?”
“Doesn’t it?”
“Well, I haven’t had a break-in or anything like that. My closest neighbor is a mile away. The only people around my place are those who come to see me. Chatham is not exactly New York City, Ms. Kimball. We don’t have home invasions here.” He smiled genuinely as if he weren’t wearing chains and sitting in jail, accused of crimes that carried the death penalty.
“Did you talk to anyone the morning of the explosion? Tell anyone you were sick?”
“I made two calls that morning. My boss, and my mom. Both before eight o’clock.” He smiled somewhat sheepishly. “After that, I surfed the internet on my home computer. I’m sure the mighty FBI can confirm that for you. A big desktop setup with lots of screens and peripherals attached to it. The system isn’t mobile at all, so I had to be sitting there to use it.”
“What time were you using the computer?”
“Ten to eleven, maybe. I wasn’t watching the clock.”
“I’ll ask Remington about it. Did you do anything traceable after that? Preferably before the explosion? Something that puts you somewhere away from the Kelso Products plant?”