[2017] The Extraction

by Steven F Freeman

“That means he might be living in an ethnic community,” said Sampson. “Does Atlanta have one?”

  “Yep,” replied Petran. “Northeast of the city, up I-85…mostly in Lawrenceville.”

  I glanced at Sampson. “This could be the break we’re looking for.” I returned my attention to Petran. “So why didn’t you want to share this?”

  “Romanian Americans still get a bad rap from some of the older agents…the whole ‘gypsy’ thing.”

  “For real?”

  “Believe me, I’ve caught flak more than once, so I’m not so keen on flaunting my heritage. You have your information, and that’s the important thing.”

  “Thanks for sharing. We’ll pass this along as late-breaking news.”

  You’d think that with this much inferred description at our fingertips, we would’ve nabbed the Kudzu bomber within weeks if not days. But it didn’t turn out that way. The description was still quite vague. The Romanian community, fearful of getting a bad rap, circled the wagons and cooperated as little as possible with our agents.

  The man’s choice of crime also turned out to be an obstacle. From George Metesky—the first criminal caught by a modern profiler—to Ted Kaczenski to Eric Rudolph, serial bombers have proved notoriously difficult to track down. Kaczenski, the Unabomber, was found only because his brother tipped off the police. These guys are never easy to find.

  The Kudzu bomber was no exception. The bomber’s pattern of mixing up all elements of his crimes continued to enjoy success. A small explosion outside a Mississippi post office five months later was attributed to him, but not everyone at the FBI was convinced it was our perp’s handiwork. The bomb caused no injuries, and the idea of the post office as a source of authority looked suspect.

  The three-year anniversary of the first bombing came and went. At this point in my career, with a decade and a half of profiling under my belt, I’d never had an offender on my assigned list evade capture for so long—except this perp.

  This guy was nothing if not inventive. Hell bent on avoiding the trap of falling into a pattern, he continued to mix up his MO with each job—different times, places, targets. You never could guess where he’d strike next. And as the pursuers of Ted Kaczynski discovered, tracking a bomber is an inherently challenging task. Unlike murder or rape, a bombing doesn’t require the perp’s physical presence. He can prepare his surprise package and be hundreds of miles away when the crime goes down. All investigators are left with is tattered bomb fragments and the long-shot hope of an eyewitness.

  After the post-office attack, the hunt for this perp dragged on for another half-year, until…

  CHAPTER 45

  “Grinder, did you hear?” asked Sampson, leaning over her desk towards me on a bright October day.

  “Hear what?” I replied.

  “A natural gas main downtown exploded ten minutes ago.”

  “Here? As in downtown Atlanta?”

  “Yeah. And Atlanta PD already found bomb fragments. Looks like it might be the Kudzu bomber.”

  “Shit! Let’s go.”

  Sampson tore downtown, pushing her trusty Camry to its limits. If the Atlanta PD hadn’t had its hands full with the downtown bombing, we surely would have been carted off to jail for her NASCAR-worthy driving.

  Exiting the interstate in the heart of downtown, we threaded along several back streets until reaching Centennial Olympic Park, a twenty-one acre oasis of grassy fields, brick-lined trails, fountains, and playground equipment nestled in the heart of the city.

  Sampson parked on a side street, right in front of a “no parking” sign, and we leapt from the sedan.

  To the left of the park, a yawning crater in the middle of the street and the blast zone around it bore silent witness to the annihilation that had occurred minutes earlier. Firefighters had put out the blaze, but plumes of angry gray smoke continued to pour into the sky.

  Sampson and I affixed our FBI IDs to our shirts and proceeded into the crime scene, standing to the side to let the forensics team do their work but mindful of the crime scene’s many details.

  It had been one hell of an explosion. The leaves of nearby trees that hadn’t already fallen had been ripped from their branches. Parking meters lay bent away from the blast. Opposite the park, the blackened remains of four or five cars littered the street, thrown about as if by a vengeful giant.

  On the park side, a uniformed officer hurried towards the sidewalk closest to the blast. He carried a bundle of yellow “death sheets,” the kind all cops carry in the back of their cruisers to cover up fatalities.

  Trailing him, my partner and I watched the man. He approached three bodies charred so black I hadn’t until that moment recognized them as human remains.

  Stepping closer, we saw that two of the figures were small, and the third adult sized. A scrap of purple fabric clung to the adult casualty.

  The horror of the situation set in. This had been a mother and her two children, presumably visiting the park.

  I took a knee. “Christ. Oh, Christ.”

  “Grinder, are you okay?”

  In a few terse words, I shared my observations with Sampson, who grew pale and quiet.

  My mind fell into a fog, as if I were slipping down a mossy embankment into a turgid, treacherous river. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “But the crime scene—”

  “I’m no good here. I’m think I’m going to throw up.”

  I staggered back to the Camry and rested my forehead on the cool metal of its roof. Another wave of nausea rolled through me. How my breakfast stayed down I have no idea.

  Sampson met me a quarter hour later. “You were right about the mom and her kids. Two other pedestrians died, too. And nine are wounded, three critically.” She stopped to examine me. “Geez, Grinder, you going to be okay? I’ve never seen you look like this.”

  “I need a minute.” I knew at that moment the image of the family would haunt me the rest of my life, a realization that has unfortunately proved to be true.

  After the worst of the nausea passed, I fell into the passenger seat of Sampson’s ride. I stared at the floorboards as she joined me in the car.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “I knew I wasn’t going to be any good back there.”

  As Sampson drove us back to the FBI building, I sat in silence, wondering for the hundredth time that month if I was in the wrong line of work. And chastising myself for not finding this fucker earlier and saving five lives.

  CHAPTER 46

  Two days later, Kyle emerged from her office and came over, standing between my desk and Sampson’s.

  “We got a break in the Kudzu bomber case,” she said.

  “Good,” I said. “What’d they find?”

  “He used a pipe bomb again for the downtown blast. Only this time, he didn’t seal one of the ends tight enough, and it blew right off. If not for all the natural gas, it would’ve been a pretty small explosion. Anyway, looks like he was counting on the blasts turning his bombs into shrapnel, so he didn’t bother wiping off his prints after he planted the bomb. We got an intact thumbprint and a partial index finger.”

  “Thank God!” breathed Sampson. “Any match yet?”

  “They’re running it now. Should hear back pretty soon.”

  In fact, Kyle did hear back within a few hours and swung by to share the news. “The Kudzu bomber’s name is Nicolae Dalca.”

  “He has a criminal history?” I asked, wondering how we already had his prints already on file.

  “Nope. When he was seventeen, he immigrated with his parents…” said Kyle, pausing to add emphasis to her next statement with a penetrating gaze, “…from Romania.”

  “Son of a bitch!” I exclaimed. “He is Romanian. His pals in Lawrenceville were covering for him.”

  “Grinder,” said Kyle, a pensive look on her face. “You can’t be too hard on them. Remember what you said Petran told you? About some people not trusting Romanians in the first place?”

  “Well, h
iding a criminal is for sure going to make me not trust them.”

  “I’m just saying…look at it from their point of view. They don’t want to willingly admit there’s a murderer in their midst. It’ll just make people mistrust them more.”

  “Yeah, but when cops cover for their own, they get arrested and reamed through the press. It doesn’t help people trust them.”

  “Cops haven’t been a persecuted minority for centuries. Anyway…we have the bomber’s name. Now it’s time to track him down.”

  I wasn’t there when our agents broke down the front door to the house of Nicolae Dalca’s parents. I’m told the guy was in his bedroom playing online video games, the way he passed most of the time when he wasn’t working his job at Smartee’s Burgers.

  At first, they couldn’t locate any of Nicolae’s bomb-making materials, a snag if you’re trying to bring charges against someone. But finally, they tracked a ton of online orders that had been shipped to his grandmother’s house. His relative was too frail to check her own mail, so Nicolae gathered it for her several times a week. This provided the perfect opportunity to have some of the most unusual ingredients of his bombs sent to a household that would raise no suspicions.

  Turns out Nicolae had a beef with the Immigration Service. He blamed them for the delay that pushed out his move to America to his seventeenth year. Trying to learn the language at that age proved to be a challenge, causing him to withdraw socially. Self-conscious about his speaking skills, he failed to garner friends or a girlfriend. He’d pleaded with his parents to return to Romania, but they had established a new and better life in their new country and had no intention of leaving it.

  When Nicolae’s schizophrenia appeared and grew progressively worse, his anger reverted to Immigration Services. If only they had allowed his family to move earlier. Growing paranoia led him to spread blame to any American institution, the authority of which was part and parcel of the country that had refused him entry for so long and that—in his mind—actively worked to keep him oppressed.

  So he lashed out, leaving a trail of dead and wounded innocents in his wake…until we put an end to his bombing spree. Like every criminal, he had a blind spot. His belief in his superiority to those around him supplied him with an inflated opinion of his bomb-making skills. Convinced they could never malfunction, he didn’t bother to wipe his fingerprints off the last bomb. Ironically, the disease that led him to start to his bombing spree also led to his capture.

  CHAPTER 47

  Standing in the cemetery near Alyssa Catalán’s grave, I continue to hold the borrowed cellphone against my ear.

  Sampson doesn’t speak for a good ten seconds. She’s probably taking a walk down memory lane of the Nicolae Dalca case herself, trying to connect it to this last note.

  At last, she speaks. “You said Nicolae Dalca is ‘tricky to wrangle,’ like the note said. I have to agree with you there. Now, let’s assume it’s him. Do you think the final clue will reveal where the kidnapper is keeping Trin?”

  I pace through the cemetery’s tombstones, still clutching the note in my hand. “This is the last of the five boxes. If the kidnapper is true to his word, I don’t know what else he could be keeping at the end of this clue except Trin. That’s a big if, though.”

  “We won’t know if we don’t find the spot. Now…what do the last two stanzas suggest about where to go?”

  I read them again.

  The feast’s all prepared

  Tell me Farr, are you scared

  To sit down at the table I’ve laid?

  A hot dog and a side

  Of pop to imbibe

  And a view of the panic I made

  I glance at my watch. An hour and forty minutes remain. My mind threatens to lock up again, but I manage to bottle the tide of panic.

  “The ‘table I’ve laid’ thing is weird,” I tell her. “I don’t get that at all.”

  “Maybe the menu is the important thing,” suggests Sampson, “although I’m still not sure what to make of a hot dog and a pop.”

  “And a view of panic,” I remind her. “Maybe it…wait, could he be talking about the blast outside Centennial Park? The one you and I visited right after it happened?”

  “How would that tie in with the clue?”

  “The World of Coke museum is a few hundred yards away. That could be the ‘pop.’ And panic certainly happened in that spot.”

  “Yeah, I like it,” says Sampson, warming to the idea. “But what about the hot dog?”

  “I’m not sure how that…”

  I freeze as an epiphany explodes through my mind.

  I’ve heard people describe a spinning sensation when they’ve experienced surprise or shock. I always figured that was just hyperbole. But at this moment, I discover the statement is true. A wave of lightheadedness washes across me, and my stomach lurches as the truth crashes in.

  Finally, it all makes sense.

  I know where Trin is being held. And I know who’s behind the insanity of the last twenty-two hours.

  CHAPTER 48

  Reeling from the shock, I click off the borrowed cellphone just as Sampson says, “Grinder, are you—?”

  Jumping back into my borrowed ride, I peel out of the cemetery—not respectful to the dead, I know. But I’m more interested in keeping my fiancée from joining their ranks.

  The time required to reach my destination would normally be a bit over an hour from here. I’ll have to make sure I don’t cut it that close. My borrowed ride races along the interstate. Only the potential disaster of a ticket-happy cop pulling me over restrains my speed to double digits.

  The truth sickens me. Like the criminals I pursued, I’ve been a victim of my own blind spot, a yawning chasm that should have been obvious years ago. The regret of this oversight mixes with the horror of the tragedy it has produced. Yet offsetting these feelings of dismay is a glimmer of hope that I might actually save my fiancée.

  After forty minutes of frenetic driving, I exit the interstate. Another fifteen minutes on side roads brings me to a long, gravel lane.

  Halfway down this path, I pull to the side of the road so the sound of the Camry won’t give me away. I exit the car and ease the door shut, careful to avoid the noise of a slamming door.

  A glance at my watch reveals I’m forty-four minutes shy of the 2:00 deadline.

  My pounding heart threatens to erupt through my chest. One thought drowns out all others: is Trin still alive? If she is, it’s my job to keep her that way.

  I pull the Glock from my rear waistband. Holding it ready, I make silent progress through a carpet of grass lining the gravel’s edge. A lonely November wind howls through evergreens bordering the lane.

  No lights appear in the edifice ahead, but I know that’s where Trin is held. Keeping a wide berth, I move around the entire building, looking for signs of life.

  Nothing.

  I double back to a side entrance. Maybe I’ve already been spotted, but I can’t linger outside, not while Trin’s life ticks away.

  Using as much stealth as my trembling hands allow, I twist open the side entrance’s doorknob and crack the door.

  I flash my head across the opening for a split second, then draw it back.

  Still no signs of life.

  Ducking low, I pass through the entrance and move into the shadow cast by a tall, oak china cabinet.

  The sounds of a television reach my ear—not loud enough to discern dialog. Just background noise, bubbling like a brook.

  I examine every corner of the room before moving. Then I glide across the kitchen floor and pause at the entrance to the room housing the television.

  Am I about to walk into an ambush? Only one way to find out.

  CHAPTER 49

  I peek my left eye across the door’s threshold, just enough to study the room.

  My adversary lounges in a chair, one leg draped over the overstuffed arm of an aging couch and staring at a television mounted on the opposite wall.

&nbs
p; I step through the door’s opening. “Hey, Dani.”

  My twin jumps so hard, she probably pisses herself. As she struggles to dismount her leg and twist around in her seat, I catch a glance of a Sig Sauer Subcompact grasped in her hand.

  Fighting back tears, I raise my Glock. “Don’t do it. Drop it to the floor.”

  She freezes, neither complying nor advancing. “And if I don’t?”

  I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. “You of all people should know I’ve got what it takes to drop you.”

  She raises an eyebrow in acknowledgement and lets her handgun clatter to the wood floor. “How’d you know, Dec? How’d you know it was me?”

  “The last note. It referenced Nicolae Dalca’s bombing of the natural gas line near Centennial Olympic Park.”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “It wasn’t a homeless guy’s dog that died. It was a mom and her two kids. They were walking along the sidewalk when it blew. I knew I’d never forget that scene. And I sure as hell didn’t want to put that image in your head. So I softened the details when I told you about it…said it was a dog instead.”

  The light comes on in Dani’s eyes. “So in the note…”

  “Yeah, the clue mentioned a ‘hot dog.’ At first I couldn’t figure out how that fit with the crime. Then I realized it didn’t fit the crime. It only fit what I told you about it—a dog that had literally become hot from the explosion. And you were the only person I told that particular lie to, the only person I could spill my guts to. So I knew it had to be you behind all this. And it fits. The kidnapper knew all the facts from my cases, nonpublic details I shared with you over the years.”

  “And coming here?” she said, gesturing to our parents’ cottage on Lake Lanier.

  “This is where you always come when you have something heavy on your mind. Plus, what better place to keep a kidnap victim than privately owned property that’s never used this late in the year?”

  “Damn, you are a good investigator.”