by Scott Frost
“Breathe.”
A pungent rush of ammonia filled my nostrils and I reeled back. A few colors began to surface in the soft field of grays and whites. The outline of a face appeared for a moment, then drifted away.
“Breathe.”
Another wave of ammonia struck me like a slap to the face. His eyes came into focus, looking through me as if I no longer existed.
I looked down and saw the vague outline of my hand in my lap. I slowly lifted it to my face. I took a breath, then another and another.
My hand came into focus. Consciousness rushed toward me like a car out of control, weaving and turning as it careened toward a final impact. The urge to vomit welled in my stomach. My eyes drifted in and out of focus. My hand found the Glock in its holster, and I instinctively grabbed it, thrusting it to where Gabriel’s outline had hovered before me—the car was empty. I lifted myself up in the seat and looked up and down the street. It was nearly empty, a few stragglers rushing toward the steady stream of people heading to the parade on the adjacent blocks. Gabriel had vanished.
I set my gun on my lap and took several deep breaths. My head pounded from the effects of the narcotics. My watch read a quarter to eight. The parade would begin in forty-five minutes. There were things, instructions I was supposed to remember, but the details eluded me.
And then I noticed the extra bulk under my jacket and the weight on my chest and shoulders. Carefully, I took hold of the zipper and slowly slid it down, revealing the vest. The brick-shaped explosives were in pockets arranged in a neat row around my chest. Wires appeared to encircle the vest and then gathered at a small terminal just above my heart. Below the explosives, shrapnel bulged against the nylon of the vest, the tips of nails poking through the fabric. The image I had formed while blindfolded was remarkably similar to what I was now looking at, except for one item: In the center of it all was a small glass cylinder with what looked like mercury inside—the motion device. Expose the wire just under the surface of the mercury to the charged atmosphere inside the cylinder and the circuit is completed. It didn’t take an expert to figure out what would happened then. I exhaled heavily and watched the mercury in the tube quiver from the slight movement of my breath.
The pounding in my head immediately ceased, and I remembered every word Gabriel had spoken, every detail of how I was to die.
“Run, you die,” I whispered. I looked around the car. “Stay, you die.”
I slid across the seat, then opened the door and carefully stepped outside. As I stood up, my knees buckled and the pavement rushed toward me. I lunged for the car door, my left hand slipping down the glass, my right grabbing the top of the door as if it were a ledge on the fiftieth floor of a high-rise. I glanced at the motion sensor. The mercury rolled back and forth, the thread of wire just becoming visible with each pass of the liquid.
“Fall, you die,” passed my lips. I closed my eyes and a shudder ran the course of my body. “Lacy dies,” I whispered.
I tightly gripped the door until my legs steadied and my head cleared enough to stand unassisted. I looked up and down the street trying to locate where I was. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, not a breath of wind. The people heading south to my right had to be walking down Orange Grove. The mix of commercial and apartment buildings I was looking at put me on Walnut, north of Colorado and just outside the perimeter Chavez and the FBI would have established. Harrison would be looking for me, but where? How detailed had Gabriel’s journal been? I had to find a cop, but to do that I would have to walk at least a block in the middle of the stream of people moving on Orange Grove. And if Gabriel got impatient or made a mistake, or if I tripped, a stupid, simple misstep off the curb or a bump from an overexcited eight-year-old, how many would die?
I eased away from the car, taking several small steps to test my equilibrium. My legs held. I reached down and carefully slid the zipper of my jacket back up, covering the bomb, then started walking toward the stream of people a block away.
Forty minutes left.
In the distance I could hear the sounds of bands warming up. A drum roll, a scale from a trumpet, the bright, mournful sound of a French horn.
Three blocks south, two police helicopters were moving slowly up and down the parade route. Looking for what? The enemy? I was the enemy.
“That won’t help,” I said angrily.
With each step I took, every sound, every movement, every color became more vivid. The collective din of a hundred thousand spectators’ voices began to fill the air like the hum of a generator as they took their places along the parade route. From somewhere I smelled the sweet scent of cotton candy, then it was coffee, then the perfume of thousands of flowers covering the dozens of floats a few blocks south. Was this what your last steps are like, or what they would be like if you knew the end was around the next corner—an animal-like awareness?
A hundred feet from Orange Grove, I stopped. The people walking to Colorado were no longer just a river of shapes and brightly colored clothes. They were individuals now, thousands of them. Single, distinct human beings, all different, all unique, every one of them with their own story, their own history. I could make out faces—old, young, parents pushing strollers, lovers holding hands, families walking in tight little groups, smiling, laughing, innocence. It was all there. A collective time-out from everyday worries and pain and the global insanity that had attacked our illusion of peace.
I took a tentative step, then another and another until I was on the edge of the crowd. I tried not to make eye contact, but it was impossible. I was drawn to the eyes, they demanded to be looked at, to be understood, to be given value.
I stepped into the crowd and joined them walking south. A young woman holding a small child in her arms looked at me. She began to smile, but it slipped away. I could see a change in her eyes. The flash of a question, of distrust. Her arms tightened around her child and she looked away. A horrible sense of betrayal spread through me like a virus. I didn’t belong here. I was a traitor. Why had I even come this far? Why hadn’t I stopped when I was alone and could hurt no one but myself and . . .
The memory of Gabriel’s words intruded.
“Choose.”
A small Mexican girl with jet-black hair and dark brown eyes looked at me as if she were asking the same question. She disappeared into the crowd and another face replaced hers, then another face and another, all oblivious to the danger walking among them.
I now knew the answer. I would easily give my own life for my daughter’s, but I wouldn’t do this. They weren’t strangers walking toward the parade. It was the one thing Gabriel didn’t understand. We were all part of the same cloth, the same fabric that wove its fibers through our lives. We ignore it most of the time, pretend it doesn’t exist. We hurt each other, steal, cheat, lie, and then a single moment reminds us, connects us. It never lasts. But it does exist. Lacy understood it, had voiced it more eloquently than I had realized.
“Fuck him,” I said silently.
A kid ran past, brushing my arm, but I maintained my balance. His mother yelled at him to come back, then glanced at me.
“I’m sorry,” she said in apology.
I tried to reply but couldn’t. My voice hung in my throat. I began walking faster and faster. I couldn’t be here, I had to get away from them, away from their dreams and laughter, from their still-normal lives. Ahead, the stream of people slowed and began to form a line.
A security checkpoint. Cops. I saw the roof lights of several squads blocking the road. I removed my badge from my pocket and began working my way around the outside of the crowd. The line of people was being pinched through a narrow set of stanchions just wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Every face was being scrutinized, every bag searched. No one was complaining, not anymore. It’s how things are done now.
Two CHP officers and a uniformed officer from the PPD were on the flank where I was approaching. As I walked up, I recognized Officer James and saw the look of surprise register in
her eyes. And then just a momentary hesitation as she settled back on her heels, her gaze planted firmly on the windbreaker covering the bomb strapped to my chest.
“Get me away from these people,” I said desperately.
“Everyone is looking for you—”
“Now! Do you understand? Right now.”
She hesitated for a second, then motioned to the two CHP officers, who cleared a path through the barricades, and she began walking me away.
“I need to get to Harrison.”
She nodded nervously. “We thought—”
“I don’t have much time,” I said, pressing the point.
I glanced back at the crowd. A woman with a child in her arms was watching me suspiciously, sensing the danger. I could see it in her eyes. That stare. That understanding of how fragile it all really is.
James led me to a waiting squad and we quickly got in.
“They thought you were dead, Lieutenant.”
She hit the lights and siren and started south on Orange Grove.
“We need a place where no one else can get hurt,” I said, unzipping the windbreaker.
James stared at the bomb for a moment, unable to mask her shock.
“They’ve set it up down in the arroyo.”
Her eyes glanced nervously at me, then turned and focused on the road ahead.
I picked up the handset of the squad’s radio.
“This is Lieutenant Delillo. I need to talk to Harrison.”
James stepped on the gas and swung around two other squads blocking the road, then cut west toward the arroyo.
“If you hit anything, Officer, we’re both going to die.”
I noticed a faint flush of color in her cheeks, then she pulled back on the speed and tightly gripped the steering wheel with both hands. The squeal of feedback pierced the radio’s speaker. Then Harrison’s voice came through.
“Lieutenant, are you all right?” he said.
“Did the journal say where Lacy is?”
There was a pause on the other end.
“Harrison?”
“No . . . it didn’t.”
The words took my breath away. I sank into the seat and let the mike lie on my lap. That was it. The only chance of finding Lacy was if Gabriel had told us. It couldn’t be, it couldn’t. Not like this. I had just been in a room with her, heard her voice. She had been just feet from me.
Maybe I had not made myself clear. Maybe he misunderstood.
“You’re sure? You read everything?”
He hesitated. I pictured him looking at Chavez, searching for an answer.
“Are you sure?” I demanded.
“I’m sorry,” Harrison said.
I lost the sound of the siren. The faces of the people passing by became a blur. The color of the sky began to fade until the blue had vanished and all that was left were colorless shades of gray.
“Tell me about the bomb,” Harrison said. But I didn’t hear him.
James turned onto Arroyo Boulevard and started south along the edge of the canyon. The houses lining the street were perfect examples of nearly every architectural style that has tried to capture the California dream: Tudor, ramblers, Craftsman, Spanish. They looked like artifacts of a faded empire. It was no longer my landscape; I was a stranger now.
I picked up the radio and cued the mike.
“Did it say anything about Lacy?”
Only static came back for a moment.
“We need to focus on the bomb,” Harrison said.
“Damnit, tell me what it said.”
Chavez’s voice came over the radio. “Alex, we think she’s gone.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head as he spoke.
“I don’t believe that.”
“Alex—”
“No.”
I turned the radio off and caught a glimpse of the fifty-three floats lined up for the beginning of the five-and-a-half-mile parade. Block after block of what looked like animated Hallmark cards the size of semi trucks with every inch covered in flowers as if they had sprouted naturally as a result of the winter rains. It was the perfect symbol that all that was needed to make anything happen in California were dreams and water. And nothing had ever stopped the parade, not for 115 years.
We reached the turn to the arroyo and drove past the squad securing the entrance. Down below, a hundred feet from where the Mexican major had been found floating in the pool, a bomb disposal container sat in the center of the parking lot surrounded by a fifty-foot safe zone in case I . . . in case I went off.
James drove the squad past the waiting officers and into the center of the safety zone, then opened the door.
“You’re supposed to wait here.”
I nodded.
“Good luck, Lieutenant. I hope they’re wrong about your daughter.”
She walked away quickly as Harrison, carrying a bag, approached, wearing a large Kevlar vest and a helmet with a bulletproof visor. In the distance I could see Chavez and Hicks watching helplessly. I opened my door, placed my feet on the ground, and remained seated until Harrison crossed the fifty feet and knelt down in front of me. His eyes met mine.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded, such as it was.
His eyes moved to the bomb. There was none of the college whiz kid visible in his eyes when he saw what he was facing.
“This is more complicated than the other one,” he said matter-of-factly.
He reached up and slipped his helmet off and set it on the hood of the car.
“I wish you would put that back on.”
“If this goes off, that helmet won’t help.”
He reached around his back and unfastened the Kevlar vest and slid that off, too.
“How much time do you think we have?” Harrison asked.
I looked at my watch.
“Thirty minutes.”
He shook his head. “That’s not enough.”
“He’s expecting me to walk out onto Colorado when the first band rounds the corner at Orange Grove.”
He studied the vest for a moment, then shook his head at some private calculation.
“I need you to take off the windbreaker so I can see the back of it.”
I stood up, and he moved behind me and gently slid the jacket down my arms.
“How does it look from back there?”
“A lot like the front.”
He stepped back around and continued studying the wiring.
“Did he tape anything to you, or can you feel wires touching your skin?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good.”
“How good?”
“He could be running a low-voltage circuit through your body. Break the circuit . . . bang.”
He covered every inch of the device looking for a weakness, a flaw in the conception.
“I need you to tell me something,” I said.
His eyes paused momentarily in their search.
“Okay.”
“Did he say that he killed Lacy in the journal?”
He reluctantly nodded.
“Did he specify when in relation to the other events?”
He thought for a moment, working his way through the text. “No.”
“Then she’s still alive.”
Harrison looked up from the bomb.
“Okay,” he said, gently questioning.
“He won’t kill Lacy until the phone call.”
“I don’t follow.”
“When the parade begins and I walk out onto Colorado.”
Harrison nodded. “That was in the journal.”
“The phone in the vest rings, and I’m supposed to hear that she’s all right. That’s when he would tell me she’s about to die. I would hear her cry for . . . He wouldn’t miss that opportunity to manipulate and control. He lives for it, needs it as much as we need air to breathe.”
Harrison thought about it for a second and then nodded in agreement.
“Godlike.”
�
�Not any god I know.”
We looked at each other in silence for a moment, then his eyes returned to the vest.
“I’m figuring there’re at least four triggers. The motion sensor’s one. All the wires wrapped around the vest are the second; one of those is attached to a detonator. We try to cut the vest, or slide it over your head . . .”
“And the other two?”
“The other two I’m not sure about. I need to check under your shirt to make sure there’re no leads attached. Are you wearing a bra?”
“Is there some misinformation about my figure that’s given you the impression I need one?”
Harrison’s eyes softened for a moment and he nearly smiled. He reached out and unbuttoned my pants, then carefully pulled my shirttails out as he stepped around behind me.
“Try not to move. This will be tight, but I think there’s just enough room.”
He slid his hand under the shirt and gently felt his way up my back to my neck.
“Nothing back here.”
“If you say that about my chest, you’re in big trouble.”
He stepped around in front and slipped his hand under my shirt and began walking his fingers up my stomach. Just below my breast, he stopped, and I felt the wire that I hadn’t noticed before. My heart jumped and my breath came up short.
“Oh, God . . . Can you—”
“Just breathe normally.”
He looked into my eyes reassuringly. “I have to find the other lead.”
I nodded and closed my eyes as his hand worked its way to just below my other breast, where it stopped on the other wire. He then slipped his hand out from under my shirt.
“Is this one a problem?”