by Robert Pobi
“Doctors said you’d be fine,” Kehoe said wryly. “Which is not bad for a guy they wheeled in with someone else’s arm dangling off his wrist like a charm bracelet.”
Lucas looked at his wrist and there was a dark blue bruise—now turning purple with a green halo—where the handcuffs had bitten in. His arm was peppered with small scabs. He didn’t remember stepping off the mine, although he knew he must have.
“They pulled nine ball bearings out of your body, but none of them were life-threatening, which makes you one very lucky man.”
“I was under pressure, so I rolled the dice.” Lucas pushed the button on the wired remote and the bed whirred slowly up, folding him into a relative sitting position. He picked up the water with his good hand and raised it to his lips. He somehow managed to suck down almost as much as dripped down his chin before putting the cup back on the tray. He was grateful that water didn’t shoot out of a bunch of holes in his body like Daffy Duck after a run-in with Elmer Fudd and his shotgun. “Saarinen.” He didn’t bother trying to form it as a question—his operating system could execute only simple commands.
“You came in wearing his face, chained to his arm. The rest of him?” Kehoe shook his head. “He went from solid to liquid in one big boom.”
Basic physics and chemistry.
Lucas looked around the room for his arm and leg. “Have you seen my prosthetics?”
“They’re downstairs in a box, but you’ll need new ones. They took the brunt of the blast; Saarinen took the rest.” Kehoe’s body language was slowly returning to normal, which meant the concern and friendliness would soon be gone. “I told them to save them for you.”
“Good.”
They stared at each other for a few silent moments, and there was nothing awkward or forced in the time. Lucas wondered how many moments like this Kehoe allowed himself.
Kehoe finally asked, “Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”
“I do it to other people, too, but they don’t seem to be as robust.” Lucas made another run at the sippy cup. The water tasted better than anything he had ever tried before, and he recognized the phenomenon—gratitude.
“So this was all about revenge?”
Lucas didn’t waste any energy by shrugging. “I didn’t get a chance to ask Saarinen about his motives, but they seem pretty obvious. He was trying to fuck the Hockneys. Probably because they had something to do with the death of his son.”
Kehoe nodded as if that had been the right thing to say. “The Hockneys owned the company that manufactured the LAWS rocket used to kill Saarinen’s son—Horsuch LLC out of Ukraine.”
“And they used Jonathan Makepeace to buy the company.”
Kehoe gave him an approving nod. “Very good.”
Lucas tapped the side of his head with his index finger. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
Kehoe’s face flattened out, and the concern was now gone. “Did you figure out how Frosst factored in?”
“I assume money was the common currency.”
“Frosst’s boyfriend was on the same bus as Saarinen’s son.”
Which knocked all kinds of pieces into place. “I didn’t see that one coming. Especially with that haircut.” He looked at the cup, but he was no longer thirsty. “And Hockney the Younger?”
Kehoe’s face made all the necessary adjustments. “Our people from the Air National Guard were escorting him to a base in Southern California when his plane blew up midair.”
Lucas wanted to be surprised, but he didn’t have any more left in him. “Saarinen was very thorough—he crossed everyone off his shopping list.”
“Everyone except you.”
This time Lucas did shrug.
Kehoe took a step toward the bed and put his hands on the footboard. “Why didn’t you call me when you figured out he was the Machine Bomber?”
“I only figured it out about two seconds before I stepped on that device hidden in his floor.”
“How?”
Lucas managed a shrug again, and it felt good to move. But painful. “I kept asking myself who profited the most by the bombings—I was too blinded by my own bias to realize I was asking the wrong question. It wasn’t about someone profiting, it was about someone losing.” He paused to catch his breath, and when he swallowed, it felt like his pump was once again working. “And Saarinen was the exception to the rule, the thing that shouldn’t have been there—a survivor. The bomber was way too precise to have screwed up killing Saarinen, which meant he had intentionally been left alive.”
“And that was how you figured it out?”
Lucas shook his head. “I suspected, which is why I called Nadeel and had him check out Saarinen’s son’s murder. But I couldn’t get it to gel. Not the way I needed it to. But as I kept seeing Saarinen’s reflection in the window as I looked out at the museum across the street, something was off. Curtis said the undetonated IED we found at the Eighth Avenue internet hub had been made by a right-handed individual. The device that blew up Donnie Rich and his mother in that farmhouse upstate had been assembled by a left-handed individual.” He took another sip of water and emptied the cup. He held it out and shook it in a gesture that bartenders the world over see in their sleep.
Kehoe came around the bed, refilled the cup, placed it down on the tray table over Lucas’s lap, then retook his position at the foot of the bed.
“And what was off in Saarinen’s reflection was that he was left hand dominant. And I remembered the scissors at William Hockney’s apartment and the bomb upstate, and, well, I got it.”
“Scissors?”
“There was this pair of scissors at Hockney’s apartment the night I went to visit him. Beautiful hand-crafted bonsai clippers that cost more than a car; maybe three artisans in the world can make something as beautiful as those. And I picked them up and they fit me, which should have set off all kinds of alarm bells because I’m left-handed. So the scissors were made for a left-handed person. And Hockney was right-handed—I saw that in the way he handled his whiskey tumbler. And someone had been using the scissors that night. And there was a paw print in the elevator. Then the next morning you said that Saarinen had visited. I just didn’t put it all together until I saw his reflection.” He shook his head. “His reflection. Wow. Like I said, I needed a new perspective.”
Kehoe was just staring at him and it was impossible to guess what he was thinking. “Impressive.”
“Yeah, well—” And there wasn’t anything else to add.
Kehoe’s face had morphed back into business mode and he crossed his arms. “We found another kid that Saarinen had recruited.”
“Alive?”
“Alive. He’s an intern at Cornell—cardiology. He downloaded the patch to their system that enabled Saarinen to access their data and initiate William Hockney’s heart attack. His lawyer is claiming that he didn’t know that’s what it was, and we’re cutting him some slack through a deal we made—he’s the only surviving component of Saarinen’s little army.”
“How’d you find him?”
“We cracked Saarinen’s laptop, which was synced to his phone, which, incidentally, you blew up. We ran down all the numbers in his contacts; Curtis figured he might have planted more IEDs out there with cell phone triggers. Every number in his contacts was a legitimate contact except one, which was a prepaid burner phone. We ran it down, and GPS showed that it was stationary in a parking garage on East Seventieth. We checked cell tower records, and the number had been activated a few weeks before the Guggenheim bombing—it traveled the same route six days a week, the only variance being where it resided in the garage. The phone had never placed or received a call. It was connected to an IED under the seat of an Audi belonging to one Franklin Kisber—a twenty-seven-year-old intern at Cornell. When he found out that he had been driving around with a bomb under his seat—and that he was slated for execution like those five other young men—he decided that sharing what he knew was in his best interests.”
<
br /> “Did Kisber attend that TED Talk in Vegas?”
“No, he was recruited later than the others, just after William Hockney had his pacemaker installed.”
“Saarinen crossed all of his Ts and dotted the lowercase Js.”
“He certainly didn’t leave much to chance.”
“How did he recruit those kids?”
It was Kehoe’s turn to shrug. “Saarinen met Kisber on 4chan, on one of the message boards. We’re not sure about all of them yet, but it looks like your kid, Jespersen, was right—he went after angry young men. The bureau has been following the incel movement for a couple of years now—the general personality makeup is remarkably similar to young Muslim men who become radicalized.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“He made contact, then communicated through an encrypted app.”
“And the other kids?”
“Most of his files are encrypted, but there are hints here and there that he spent time on a lot of radical environmentalist sites, and those kids thought they were really signing up to do some damage to the system.”
Lucas let that sink in for a few moments. He was continually amazed at how many broken people there were out there. “And Vegas?”
“Saarinen was supposedly in Los Angeles over those three days, but I’m sure with a little more digging we’ll be able to place him in Vegas—it’s a four-hour car ride.”
“I think he was more careful than that. I bet he got them there just to see that talk, and none of them knew they were in the room together. And Frosst and Hockney Jr. were just window dressing for us, when we finally put it all together. Like I said—Ts and lowercase Js.” Lucas sucked on the sippy cup again, emptying it. “Which means that when Frosst and Cristobel were in Makepeace’s apartment, either one of them could have planted that bomb in the humidor—mutual alibis that were actually accomplices. Wow.”
Kehoe stepped out of the conversation for a few seconds to type something on his phone with his thumbs. When he was done, he pretended to be back in the room. “Once again, Dr. Page, you impressed me.”
“Nadeel and Jespersen did all the work.”
“Which is why I offered them both jobs.”
“And what were their excuses for turning you down?”
“Jespersen said she’d be bored working in such a stiff environment—she said something about Caltech, which I understand is one of your old alma maters.”
Lucas had earned his second PhD there—working at the Palomar Observatory. “And Nadeel?” he asked.
“He said I couldn’t afford him.” Kehoe looked puzzled. “Those kids went to the wire for you—how do you foster that kind of loyalty?”
Which was a good question. “I push them to be the fullest people they can. I’m hard on them. And they rise to the occasion.”
Kehoe’s mouth bent into a small smile with that. “That’s an interesting approach.”
Lucas almost told Kehoe to go fuck himself, but he had walked himself into that one. “I’m tired. And you have shit to do.”
Kehoe nodded at that. “Well, Dr. Page, I appreciate your help. Oh, there’s one other thing—well, two, actually. The first is I made arrangements with that school you were supposed to get your daughter enrolled in before last Friday—LaGuardia. They held her place. She got a letter of recommendation from me, and the promise of a lecture from a world-famous astrophysicist once he’s back on his feet.”
Lucas was surprised by that, and his voice cracked when he said, “Thank you, Brett.”
Kehoe waved it away.
“And the other thing?”
Kehoe held up his phone. “What’s with your ringtone for me?”
For the first time in days, Lucas managed a real smile.
105
Columbia University Medical Center
Lucas was asleep, or at least almost asleep, when a voice at the edge of the void brought him back from the medicated darkness. “Twice?”
He opened his eyes and couldn’t see anything but the ceiling overhead. So he closed them again.
Once again, a voice asked, “Twice?”
Which meant that it wasn’t a hallucination. He reached over for the remote on the end of the cord and began raising himself to a sitting position. When he was halfway up, he saw her.
Whitaker was beside his bed in a wheelchair.
They didn’t say anything for a few moments, they just examined each other.
She looked good. Or at least better than the last time he had seen her. There was a single bandage around her neck, and her foot was in a cast balanced on a rest. Her plaid pajamas and flannel robe were not in the least bit girlie. The only thing that hinted at how serious things had been for her was the weight loss—she was down an easy fifteen, maybe even twenty, pounds.
“Twice what?” he asked.
Whitaker shook her head as if she was dealing with someone who didn’t speak English. “You blew yourself up twice?”
“Actually, I blew other people up twice.”
“I stand corrected—you were in two explosions.”
“Technically, I have been in three explosions.”
“I meant recently.”
“Well, all time happens at once if you believe in eternalism. Which means that all three explosions I’ve been in were recent. Simultaneous if you want to quibble.”
Whitaker began to wheel herself out of the room.
“Okay, okay. Yes, I blew myself up. Twice. Does that make you happy?”
She swung around, and it was easy to see that she had become pretty adept at using the wheelchair. “The time that saved my life certainly does.”
“Yeah, well, we all do stupid things.”
“What is it with you? Not even in the hospital—with me being all shot up and you having survived two explosions, one that tore off an ear, another that filled you with stainless steel balls—can you be nice. Why the fuck not?”
Lucas shrugged. There were a lot of things he could say—some of them even kind. He opted for “Tough shit.”
Which made her laugh. “I give up.”
“I’m glad you’re okay.” He looked over at her. “Really. I am.”
“Yeah, well, thank you. Kehoe told me how you got Frosst off me and I owe you one. That was—” And she just stopped as she began to cry.
“Are you all right?” He waved his hand toward her many injuries, hoping to distract her so she’d stop the waterworks.
She wiped her eyes on the cuff of her robe. “I’ll need a cane for a while. And I’ll probably have a limp. But nothing that will keep me out of the field. The bullet that hit me in the chest went through my right lung, and they managed to patch it all up. I’ve lost some breathing capacity, but nothing a little exercise and caution won’t compensate for.”
He pointed up at her neck. “I thought that one was it.”
“You and everyone else. Frosst used military rounds and it just zipped straight through. It missed the carotid and my vocal cords, and only clipped the vertebra. I got lucky. I can’t move my neck very well yet, but the muscles should heal good as new.” Her features softened a little more, and there was tenderness in her voice. “And you? Are you all right?”
“Define all right.”
“You look a little … older.”
“If getting old is the price I have to pay for not dying young, I’ll take it.”
Whitaker wheeled closer to the bed and engaged the brake. “I have some news.”
“Your plastic cactus died?”
She smiled at that. “Remember Owen McCoy?”
Lucas punched into his recall center. “That deputy from the Medusa bombing? The one who liked you?”
“How do you know he liked me?”
“You know how all women can tell what other women are thinking?”
“Men have that, too?”
Lucas shook his head. “Not at all. But for a cop, McCoy was terrible at hiding what he was thinking.”
“He saw what happened to yo
u and me on the news and came into town to visit me. Twice. Brought me flowers. Real flowers. We’ve been FaceTiming.”
“Does this mean your neighbors are going to have to find someone else to throw into a volcano?”
She grinned at him. “Maybe.”
“Well, you definitely have some paid sick leave coming. Maybe you can spend it up in Medusa.”
She nodded fatalistically. “God does have a sense of humor.”
“Don’t start with the God stuff.”
“Really? You still don’t believe in God after he saved your ass. Twi—three times? If there’s no God, what’s the meaning of life?”
“That’s the wrong question.” He pointed at her. “Because it implies that there is a meaning.”
“You never turn it off, do you?”
He thought about that. “I guess not, no.”
They were silent for a few moments, and then she reached out and took his hand. It felt odd, but he appreciated it.
“It was Saarinen?” she asked. “All of it?”
“It looks like, yes. He planned this for years. He ran everything, including Frosst. It’ll take months to run everything down, but he’s the spider at the center of the web.”
“And Kehoe filled you in on everything?”
“He was by this morning.”
“Yeah, he visited me, too. He was almost … paternal. It was weird.” She squeezed his palm. “So, what’s next for Lucas Page?”
Lucas squeezed back. “That, Special Agent Alice Whitaker, is an excellent question.”
106
The Upper East Side
The little bulldog was on its back in his lap, snoring like a small goblin, balls out.
Lemmy sat in the middle of the big Kazak rug, watching Lucas and the puppy. His tail was still and his ears were up in a perfect canine radar array, his head ticktocking from side to side in a slow beat as he tried to figure out the beast piglet in Lucas’s lap. They never let Lemmy off leash at the dog park when anyone else was there; he could be rough with other dogs. So Lucas had his doubts about the puppy—who was still just called Dog. This was Lemmy’s joint, and Lucas didn’t know if he was open to new friendships.
