Déjà-BOOM!

by Wally Duff

  “Got it,” she said.

  “Sweets, why are you in his apartment in the first place?” Tony asked Cas.

  “Jamie took a lot of my classes,” she said. “He invites me over to hang out. I do it, but he makes advances. I resist. He won’t take no for an answer. I resist some more. He attacks me. I fight back. You save me.”

  “Not sure if I’m comfortable with any of this. Too many moving parts. Kinda pushing the edge of breaking a few laws here.”

  “Please, Tony,” I said. “We really need to get this guy before he gets us.”

  He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.

  “Question,” he said. “What if the dude isn’t there?”

  “I’ll hide the evidence and come up with a new plan,” I said.

  30

  I opened the Hummer passenger door and stepped out. Cas jumped out of her side. We shouldered our backpacks and walked toward the back of the building.

  Tony parked his BMW and climbed out of his car. As we neared the back corner, I saw him slowly begin to walk past the front of the apartment building so he could hear Cas if she began screaming.

  Digging into my backpack, I pulled out the electric lock pick gun and torque wrench. “Shield me while I open the lock.”

  “Done,” Cas said.

  She stood with her back to me, blocking the view of anyone who might approach from the alley. I inserted the device into the door lock and turned it on. It bucked in my hand and stopped. I inserted and twisted the torque wrench. The lock clicked open.

  I put my equipment away, and we stepped into the first-floor hallway. The ceiling was low, and the brown, patterned carpet was cheap but new. I heard the thumping from a stereo in one of the upper-floor apartments. The pungent odors of several different types of cooking hung in the air.

  Cas sniffed. “Another reason I could never live in an apartment building again. I hate the stink of curry, and,” she sniffed again, “it smells like some of these people are bathing in it.”

  “I’m going to the vestibule to buzz Jamie’s apartment. If he answers, I’ll let Tony know we’re going in.”

  “And if Jamie’s not there?”

  “I go into his apartment alone. If it looks like he’s still living there, I plant the evidence and we leave.”

  She bounced up and down on her toes. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

  Cas waited for me in the hallway. I ran to the vestibule and buzzed Jamie’s apartment. He didn’t answer. I jabbed the button several more times. Still no answer.

  I rejoined Cas. We walked down the hallway to apartment 111. Cas knocked on the door. No one answered. She knocked again. Nothing. She turned to me and shrugged her shoulders.

  I reached into my backpack and pulled out my tools. The lock was part of the doorknob. “This won’t be a challenge.”

  I slipped on latex gloves. It took me fifteen seconds to unlock it. I put the equipment into the backpack. I grabbed the Glock and popped the clip. I reinserted it and chambered a round.

  Cas removed her contact Taser and can of Raid wasp spray from her backpack. I placed my backpack outside the door.

  “You wait out here and make sure he doesn’t surprise me if he unexpectedly comes home,” I said.

  She scanned the hallway. “I’ll stand over there where I can see both entrances. If he comes in one of them, I’ll call and then go out the other one.”

  My pulse thudded in my ears. Holding the Glock in my right hand, I opened Jamie’s door.

  31

  I ran through the apartment. It was empty. I took out my cell phone and texted Cas.

  Me: not here.

  Cas: k.

  I stepped into the hallway and grabbed my backpack. I pulled it inside and shut the door. There was a security latch in addition to the door lock. I secured the latch to give me time to run to the patio if Jamie came home and Cas somehow missed seeing him.

  Slipping my cell phone in my back pocket, I kept the Glock in my other hand. I placed the backpack next to the door.

  I sniffed as I stepped forward into the living room. Stale cigarette smoke.

  Jamie smokes?

  It was hard to believe since he appeared to be a fitness freak.

  I started in the living room. It was larger than the typical overpriced Chicago rental units. The walls and carpet were off-white. There was a two-cushion light blue couch and a dark blue stuffed arm chair grouped around a low glass-top table. On the table was a TV remote for a fifty-inch HD TV on the far wall.

  I searched under the cushions but didn’t find anything. Ditto beneath the couch and chair. There were no pictures on the walls or personal items of any kind anywhere.

  I needed documentation of everything I saw in his apartment, so I slid the gun into the back waistband of my pants and pulled out my cell phone. I took pictures and then videoed the entire room.

  Moving to my right, I went into the bedroom. The walls and carpet matched what I’d seen in the living room. The bed was made. A brown wood, three-drawer nightstand stood next to the bed. There was a lamp on it but no clock or anything in the drawers.

  On the adjacent wall was a chest of drawers. It matched the nightstand. I checked the four drawers, but other than neatly arranged underwear, workout gear, and socks, I didn’t find anything suspicious.

  The closet was full of a man’s clothes hanging in an orderly fashion. Patting down the clothes didn’t reveal anything. Once again, I took out my phone and snapped both individual photos and a video of the room and the closet.

  I went into the bathroom. I didn’t find anything other than the usual men’s toiletries. I didn’t see any moisture in the sink or bathtub. The bar of soap in the shower looked dry. I repeated the process of taking pictures and video.

  No man is this clean and tidy.

  I walked back out into the living room and then into the kitchen. His kitchen drawers were pristine. I searched the cabinets. The cereal boxes were arranged according to height. I took more pictures.

  I put the phone back in my pocket. I was getting a weird vibe, like he’d moved out but purposefully left his stuff behind.

  But why?

  Maybe he anticipated me coming there and wanted to make sure I stayed long enough to look around.

  A disturbing possibility.

  I opened the refrigerator door. It was empty except for the top shelf. Sitting on it were what appeared to be two baggies full of a clear jelly. There was a cell phone behind them. Wires ran from the cell phone to the baggies.

  Bombs!

  32

  Déjà freaking boom!

  Grabbing the first baggy, I threw it as hard as I could against the far wall adjacent to his bedroom. The contents splattered over the wallpaper.

  The cell phone lit up as I turned and grabbed the other one. I tossed it in the same direction with the same result.

  I sprinted toward the front door and fumbled with the security latch. The phone rang from inside the refrigerator.

  Hurry up!

  I flipped the latch back, ripped the door open, and dove into the hall. Cas saw what was going on and began to sprint toward me. I waved my arms to stop her.

  “Get out!” I screamed. “Bomb!”

  A barely audible third ring of the phone was followed by the loud thump of an explosion from inside the refrigerator.

  I jumped up. Cas hadn’t moved.

  “Go!”

  “But…”

  “I’ll be right behind you.”

  But I need evidence.

  I rushed back through the still-open apartment door. The main room was beginning to fill up with acrid black smoke. Through the haze, I saw that the refrigerator door had been blown off its hinges.

  Running to the far wall, I scraped off some of the jelly-like substance that dripped down the wallpaper. I closed my hand around a blob of it and ran back out the apartment door.

  I was almost to the back door when I realized I’d forgotten my backpack. I ran back to the open apart
ment door. Smoke billowed into my face. I couldn’t see anything. Still holding onto the blob, I got down on my hands and knees. I felt around and finally found my backpack.

  People yelled at me as I ran down the hallway. I ignored them and sprinted into alley.

  Cas waited for me in the hazy late morning sunlight. With my free hand, I texted Tony to leave. I didn’t want him to have to explain why he was here.

  Before I could call the fire department, sirens began blaring in the distance. It sounded like they were still a couple of blocks away.

  “We need to split right now!” I yelled.

  Cas took off on a dead sprint toward her truck. I did too.

  We hopped into the Hummer.

  “Okay, what just happened?” she asked.

  I told her.

  “Why the heck did you go back inside?” she asked when I finished.

  “For this.” My left hand shook as I held up the blob. “It’s a sample of the C4 from the bombs.”

  Reaching in my backpack, I grabbed one of the lunch sacks I always carried for emergencies. I wiped the C4 into it.

  “Like I told you before, C4 has a signature,” I continued. “With this,” I held up the sack, “I can prove Jamie was part of the ‘industrial spy’ group the FBI caught at O’Hare.”

  33

  The cops arrived before the firemen. A police car with its lights flashing and siren blaring screeched to a halt. The driver double-parked in front of the apartment building. The siren stopped. Two officers jumped out and ran inside. The black and white’s lights still flashed.

  Thank God Tony left.

  We watched them enter. I took out my cell phone and took several more pictures.

  “How did Jamie know you were in the apartment?” Cas asked while I did this.

  “I think he had cameras and maybe even microphones hidden in his apartment. That’s how he knew I was there.”

  “Did you take pictures in his apartment?”

  “I did.”

  “Why don’t we check them out?”

  I ran the video of the main rooms first. Cas watched over my shoulder.

  It took five minutes. “There it is,” Cas said.

  “Where?”

  “Look at the black bolt in the middle of the kitchen light fixture. It’s moving.”

  I enlarged the picture. She was right. The “bolt” that held the fixture to the ceiling moved when I opened one of the kitchen cabinets.

  Uh-oh.

  My stomach began to churn. “He left his name on the building’s directory to lure me to his apartment.”

  “But if he could see you, why didn’t he blow you up as soon as you walked into his apartment?”

  A chill ran down my spine. “He was sending me a ‘gotcha’ message before he killed me.”

  Two people ran out the front door of the apartment building. Three more followed.

  “He left his clothes to make it look like he still lived there so I would take my time searching the place and eventually find the bombs.”

  “So he could blow you up while you stood directly in front of the refrigerator.”

  “Yep. He watches me open the door of the refrigerator. He dials his phone and blows me up. He wants me to know it’s him just before he kills me.”

  “But you survive.”

  “I do, but I have to admit that his plan was ingenious. He murders me, and that puts the rest of you on notice he can do the same thing to any of the Irregulars whenever he wants to.”

  “His plan wasn’t that good. He didn’t anticipate that you would throw the bombs at the wall and escape before he exploded the detonator.”

  Black smoke began to float out of the building’s front door. More people exited the building.

  “How far away do the monitors have to be to receive the videos?” she asked.

  “I don’t know for sure.”

  “Do you think he’s still in the apartment building watching the video monitors from another unit?”

  “It’s possible he’s still inside or in another building close by.” I scanned the neighborhood. “Or sitting out here in a car monitoring the video feed on a laptop.”

  A fire truck screeched to a halt in front of the apartment building. Firefighters in full gear rushed into the building. Thicker black smoke billowed out of the front door.

  Suddenly, flames shot out of several windows on the third and fourth floors. “It looks like the entire apartment building is on fire,” she said.

  I pictured the bombs. “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh, what?”

  “He blows me up. What does he not want to leave behind?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Any evidence of the C4, because that would connect him to the ‘industrial spies.’ ”

  “But you scraped some off the wall, didn’t you?”

  I patted my backpack. “I did. Now we’ve got him.”

  34

  Two more fire trucks rumbled to a halt in front of the building. Three firemen appeared on the roof. They chopped holes over the apartments that were on fire below them. Other firemen assisted people out the front door. I could see more residents standing behind the building.

  “I’m only a nurse, and I don’t know much about stuff like this, but how the heck did a fire spread from apartment 111 to the upper floors so quickly?” Cas asked.

  My question too.

  Windows blew out on other floors, followed by thick smoke and flames. More people from other homes and apartments in the neighborhood wandered outside to see what was going on. Even with the Hummer’s windows rolled up, the acrid smoke seeped inside the vehicle and irritated our eyes and noses.

  The only person who didn’t seem interested was a lady with long blond hair and big sunglasses driving a white Prius. She pulled out from a parking spot four cars in front of the Hummer and drove away without a second look at the disaster.

  “Like I said, Jamie isn’t a rookie at stuff like this,” I said. “Notice how the fire seems to be skipping units.” I pointed to the one of the apartments on the fourth floor. “Twenty-two girls were part of the ‘industrial spies’ plot. They lived in that building. They’re gone, and their apartments are empty.”

  “Maybe he had their door keys.”

  “If he did, he could have put incendiary devices in those units and rigged them to explode after he blew me up. A fire is a terrific way to destroy evidence.”

  I pictured standing in front of the open door of the refrigerator and discovering the bombs. “I threw the bombs against the wall and dove out the front door. The detonator went off behind me. Did you smell anything in the hallway?”

  “Smoke.”

  And then it hit me. “Smoke followed by a whiff of what you smell when an appliance shorts out.”

  “Like ozone.”

  “Exactly. Maybe he also had his cell phone attached to a detonator for the wiring of the refrigerator to make it look like an electrical fire too.”

  “I bet the fires in the other units will also appear to be electrical.”

  “The fire department’s arson team will do an investigation but they’re understaffed. Once they think it’s an electrical fire, they’ll stop looking for another cause and never find the C4 residue.”

  Cas pointed to the people standing on the street and behind the building. The fire raged out of control. “These poor people are going to lose everything. I hope the owner has good insurance.”

  Owner?

  “That might be a problem. I learned that, through a shell corporation, one of the ‘industrial spies’ owned this apartment building and the surgery center where Micah did the operations. I would be surprised if the owner had any more than the basic coverage.”

  “Then these poor people won’t receive anything, and in addition, some of them could have been incinerated as collateral damage.”

  “Jamie didn’t care what happened as long as he accomplished his goal of killing me.”

  Cas pulled out and drove two blocks
before she suddenly stopped. “Oh, my God! You think he’s burning down the apartment to destroy the evidence of the C4 he used?”