And Grant You Peace (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 4)

by Kate Flora

  They all knew the Iron Angels liked to blow things up and didn't much care who got in the way but he couldn't help reminding them. Why Stan Perry kept calling him "Dad."

  * * *

  There was blood. Plenty of blood, but Ismail Ibrahim, lying in the middle of it, wasn't dead. Not yet. He was moaning and begging for relief, the way people in awful pain did. Seven feet away, on the other side of the wrecked kitchen, a woman was tied to a chair, positioned so she had to watch Ibrahim's agony, and wired with explosives so that she didn't dare move. An innocent victim of a struggle between two sets of remorseless men manipulated into competition and unnecessary violence by their puppet-master, Addison Westerly.

  When she saw him looking in the window, her eyes widened. There were the streaks of tears on her face. She startled, then forced herself to be still. In a loud voice, Burgess called, "We're going to get you out of there. You and Ismail. Is the door wired? Don't move, just blink if the answer is yes."

  She blinked.

  Today was not going to be a day when they got good news.

  "We're going to get you some help," he called. She blinked again.

  "I'd like to send that fucker Westerly in to defuse that thing," Kyle muttered. "We should have let the bastard choke himself when we had the chance."

  "We just bring 'em in, Ter, remember. We don't get to play God."

  "I was always so certain," Kyle said. "My certainty is eroding, Joe, seeing stuff like this."

  "Two Hail Marys and a nice family vacation," Burgess said.

  Perry had pulled out his phone.

  "Don't!" Burgess said. "Take it out to the street, Stan. You never know what might set these things off."

  As Perry moved off, eyes on his phone, Burgess called, "And watch your feet."

  So easy to forget. To get careless in the moment. Perry shuddered and walked carefully to the street.

  Burgess stayed at the window, where Rihanna could see him, the small bit of reassurance he could give her, as Kyle circled the house. "It's a bitch, Joe," Kyle said, when he'd finished his tour. "Lotta wires. We hadn't been careful, a couple eager beavers back at 109 would be getting themselves promoted to detective."

  "Then let's stay careful."

  "Roger that," Kyle said. "Stan calling the bomb squad?"

  "And Melia."

  "I'm imagining a scenario," Kyle said, "where Melia tells the captain about this, and Cote, always wanting to grab the moment, rushes out here and tries to do a press conference in front of the house, and—"

  "Don't go there," Burgess said. "We'd have to pick up the pieces. Literally. Tell Stan to get patrol to seal off this street. Don't want some dumbass blood maggot getting himself blown up either."

  He needed his mind in the here and now, but was seeing a friend from long ago, shredded by a landmine, tattered, dripping pieces of him hanging in the trees. He closed his eyes and wrestled the pictures back into his lockbox. He couldn't go there now. The sun was bright and hot, a perfect spring day, and he was very cold.

  "There's no way to do this quietly. We've got to evacuate the street," he said. "And the houses behind this one. You get Press Devlin on the phone, see if he can get us any inside information. Types of bombs they use, anything that will help us get those people in there out alive."

  Another half hour, and this street was going to be jammed with personnel and equipment. Standing here in the treeless yard, he would be cooked. It would be nice to go back to the car, shed his jacket, get someone to bring some bottled water. Hollering through the window was a pretty ineffective method of communication, but Rihanna Daud's desperate gaze clung to him. Like it or not he was here for the duration.

  Whoever had devised this had a very clear understanding of torture. Torturing the intended victims, like Ismail Ibrahim, whose strong young body, slashed in more than a dozen places, wasn't giving up despite blood loss and pain. Torturing the innocent victims, like Rihanna Daud, whose only crime was loving the wrong man. Torturing the police officers who had to deal with this situation with what they were forced to see and hear, as well as with the very real danger of the situation. The press might call writing on the mosque a hate crime. Burgess thought this was the real hate crime.

  So he stood outside the window where Rihanna Daud could see him. Stood when Melia tried to order him to a safer place. Stood while a pissed off bomb tech suited him up. He stood while that same sweating tech, Tom Burns, and another, dressed like a pair of Michelin men, moving with the speed of snails and the care of a mother touching a newborn, painstakingly defused the bombs around the perimeter and got themselves into the house through a window.

  When they let him go inside, to continue to comfort Rihanna and survey the crime scene in case it later got blown up, he stood, he and the girl gritting their teeth, as a screaming Ismail was carried out. They let him stay because his presence kept her calm, which made their jobs easier. And once he was inside, he and the terrified young woman began to talk.

  Little things, at first. Then she said, "It may be that this is my last day, Detective, so may I tell you my story?"

  He stood and listened while she told of how their parents had been killed. How her brother, Hussain, had been a college student and one of his teachers, an American who had gone to Somalia to teach, had helped the two of them out of the country. She told of how they'd lived in a camp while her brother's American friend tried to get them refugee status so they could come to America. How she'd been raped and nearly killed when she'd ventured outside the camp, and other women she was with had driven off her attackers and dragged her to safety.

  Her voice was soft and surprisingly calm as she told her story, as though the two of them were people talking in a normal way, and not one of them a weary, jaded cop on shaky legs, the other wired to explode and surrounded by cautious technicians trying to disarm the bomb.

  She had met Ismail one day when her car broke down and he stopped to help. That chance meeting had led to more meetings, until the Imam had learned about them, and forbidden them to see each other. She smiled as she told him that it had worked exactly as it always did when headstrong young lovers were forbidden to meet. The Imam's edict had strengthened the bond between them.

  "I hope that Ismail will be okay," she said. "I feel like this is all my fault."

  God. It was so far from being her fault.

  Inside the bomb suit, it must have been a hundred degrees. His side ached. His head ached. He was hungry and his legs were shaking from the effort of standing so long. He reminded himself that his suffering was nothing compared with hers. Or the techs who labored in these suits with death only a single misstep away.

  They had been in this room for a hundred years.

  "Tell me about you," she said. "Are you married? Do you have children?"

  "Three children," he said. He told her about Nina and Neddy and Dylan, and how he came, so late in his life, to have this sudden family.

  "I would like to have a family," she said.

  He had thought the techs weren't listening, but when she said it, Tom Burns's hands froze. Then Burns took a breath and returned to his task.

  She was a tiny woman with great poise and dignity, and despite the circumstances, she smiled, and he thought she was beautiful. He had long ago fallen away from the church, but now it seemed to him that if there were ever a time for prayer, this was it.

  Somehow, she knew it. "Are you talking to your God?" she said.

  He nodded.

  "Then I will also talk to mine."

  * * *

  "You have to go now," Tom Burns told him. "For this last bit, we're clearing everyone out except me."

  "I promised her I'd stay."

  Burns didn't back down. "And you have stayed as long as you could. Before you risk unnecessary heroics, Sergeant, tell me what I'm supposed to say to your wife and your three kids, who are waiting down there at the end of the road for news that you're okay? And your sisters? I'm supposed to tell them you wouldn't leave even thou
gh there was nothing you could do in here? Not even when you knew it was a direct order from your lieutenant, because you were just too damned stubborn to listen? Is that supposed to comfort them when we have to scoop up pieces of you to give them something to bury?"

  Burns's words came from behind his Darth Vader helmet, making him sound ominous and otherworldly. "You've done what you needed to do. You've kept her calm so we could work, and you've comforted her. Now you need to get out of here and let me work."

  Burgess looked at Rihanna Daud, small as a child in her chair. "Please go," she said. "Please. God willing, I'll see you soon."

  "God willing," he said.

  Burns had to put a hand under his arm to get him started. His legs were frozen in place. After a few awkward steps, he managed to get himself to the door, and through it. Partway across the scabby lawn, Kyle and Perry appeared out of nowhere, seized his arms, and practically dragged him down the street. When they were safely behind the barrier, they helped him out of the protective gear. He had sweated so profusely his clothes were black. It looked like he'd been swimming.

  Kyle handed him a bottle of water and they made him sit in an empty patrol car. The engine was running and it was deliciously cool.

  "Chris and the kids are down the street," Kyle said. "And Michelle. And my kids. Soon as you can, we'd better get our asses down there and show them we're still alive."

  "Am I still alive?"

  He felt spacy and disconnected. Rihanna's story, running in his brain, seemed more real than here and now. Pulling himself together was like gathering straw in a wind. "Let's give it a couple minutes, okay. Until Burns does—or doesn't do—what he's trying to do in there."

  He could not go down there and tell Chris and the kids that everything was fine while Tom Burns and Rihanna might be blown to bits. It needed to be over, one way or another.

  Melia leaned into the car and studied him. "You look like hell, Joe. I'd send you to the hospital to get checked out, but I know you wouldn't go."

  "Just praying for a good result here, Vince."

  "As are we all."

  * * *

  Time seemed to stand still. There were no voices in the street, not even whispers, only the sounds of running engines, the unattended chatter on police radios. Everyone stood behind the barriers, all eyes on a shabby white house where a single man now worked, risking his life to save another.

  It would be slow. Painstaking. Exquisitely careful. The ultimate struggle between life and death. Burgess was holding his breath, and no one around him was breathing, either. It was as though their collective will was directed toward that kitchen, toward the man who toiled, and the woman who waited, her face and her story seared into Burgess's mind.

  There was a commotion, the watchers stirred, and then Burns came running around the corner of the house, half dragging Rihanna with him. They had just reached the street when the house exploded.

  Burns pushed her to the ground, covering her body with his, as pieces of the house showered down on them.

  Chapter 36

  When the ambulances carrying Rihanna Daud and Tom Burns had driven away—both in need of patching, both going to survive—he and Kyle headed for their families, Stan Perry trailing along behind them like a little brother. Probably his girl, Lily, was waiting there, too.

  They were leaning against the car, Chris in the middle, flanked by Dylan and Nina, Neddy in front of her, her arms clasped around him. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. As he gathered them all into a hug, he recalled Tom Burns's words. "Your wife and kids are waiting down at the end of the street."

  "I'm sorry that I scared you," he said. "I'm sorry you had to go through this." He buried his face in Chris's apple-scented hair, felt Nina's bird-thin shoulder under one arm and Dylan's strong one under the other. In the middle, Neddy squirmed and complained he was being smothered.

  He never wanted to let them go.

  To his right, Kyle's long arms were wrapped around Michelle and the girls. To his left, Stan Perry was kissing his dark-haired girlfriend with the passion born of coming so close to death. The other bomb tech and the SRT commander were huddled with Tom Burns's family, assuring them that he would be okay. A firm blue line was keeping the press at a distance.

  Chris had tears in her eyes as she asked, "You coming home or going back to 109?"

  He had no idea what time it was. There was so much paperwork waiting. And Joe Burgess, tight-assed stickler for following the rules about writing it down, really didn't care. He took a deep breath, and the air coming in surprised him. He wasn't sure he'd been breathing over the last few hours. He'd woken from a long bloody nightmare and found himself still in the midst of a lovely April day, in the midst of a family.

  He was going home.

  "Just got to pick up my car," he said, "and I'll be home."

  It took a while to extricate himself. His kids didn't say much, they just weren't letting go. Finally Chris got them pried loose and back in the car. Michelle did the same. The Three Musketeers got in Kyle's car, Perry in front and Burgess sprawled across the back seat, and headed back downtown to get their own cars.

  "Puts things in perspective," Kyle said. "All that we put them through. I'm thinking it's time to make Michelle a honest woman."

  "She's always been an honest woman," Perry said. "You just haven't been an honest man."

  "As honest as I could be."

  "It does change things," Perry said. "I've been feeling like this thing with Lily was nothing but a big pain in the ass. Now I'm thinking—"

  "Oho!" Kyle punched him in the shoulder. "Portland's biggest swinging dick bites the dust."

  "It's just—"

  "We understand," Kyle said.

  Burgess rested, eyes closed, listening. Crips. Three musketeers. Whatever they were called, they were a team. Often disgruntled. Sometimes dysfunctional. But together, they caught bad guys.

  Tomorrow, the next day, the rest of this week or longer, they would be up to their ears in paperwork. Over at the hospital taking statements. Rounding up the rest of the bad guys. They would get the Imam. They would find out who tortured Ismail and rigged those bombs. Right now, what they needed was to be with the people they loved. All those years of going home to his empty apartment, where his friend Jack Daniels would be waiting for him, family was what he'd tried to avoid. Family was what he'd gotten anyway. A gift he probably didn't deserve.

  * * *

  He stopped at a market on the way home and bought huge bunches of flowers. The smiling checker said, "Boy, you must have really done something wrong."

  "Actually, I think I did something really right."

  He gave Chris the flowers, then went to change and shower. He rummaged around in the back of his bottom drawer and found the little blue box. His mother's ring. It was just a small stone, but it had graced the finger of the most wonderful woman he'd ever known.

  Chris and the kids were in the kitchen, waiting. The table was set and there were three large vases of flowers around. His mother's vases. It seemed so appropriate. He smelled chicken.

  His knees were bad and he was so tired he wasn't sure he could get up again if he got down, so he skipped that part of it. He just took Chris's hand. "Today, in the midst of that situation, Tom Burns, the bomb tech said to me, 'Your wife and kids are down at the end of the road, waiting to see if you're going to be all right.' Those two words—'your wife'—they rocked me. The next time someone says that, I want it to be true. So, Chris Perlin, will you be my wife?"

  People probably didn't often propose in front of their kids, and for good reason. He barely heard her reply over their clapping and cheers. She said yes.

  The End

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  Reviews & Accolades

  "A triumph in the police procedural genre. Highly recommended"

  ~Library Journal Starred Review

  "Flora has created one of the more intriguing protagonists to come along in a few seasons."

  ~David Pitt

  The small black dog skittered into the street, shining eyes registering canine astonishment that a vehicle dared to be out at this hour. Burgess stomped on the brakes, the Explorer responding with orgasmic ABS shudders, stopping just short of the beast. Four-wheel drive beating out four-foot traction. With a look Burgess decided to take as gratitude, the dog turned and trotted away. A good result. The cops waiting with the body wouldn't have taken kindly to freezing their nuts off while their detective worked a dead dog scene.

  Dog was right. Three a.m. on this icy bitch of a February night, even a murderer should have known enough to stay home. February in Portland, Maine wasn't a benign month. Tonight, with the temp at minus ten, a roaring wind and black ice under foot, it was winter at its worst. But that was the cop's life. Get a call there's a dead body in a car on a lousy night, you don't roll over and go back to sleep, planning on working it in the morning. You get up and go.

  Not that Burgess had been asleep when Remy Aucoin called it in. He'd been finishing the report on an unattended handgun death, detailing the reasons they'd concluded it was suicide. He preferred working nights. He liked his landscape gray and quiet, regarded the day's flurries of activity—all those sounds and smells and people—as intrusions into the peace that was possible at night. Some cops didn't like nights. They got used to it—when you were low man on the totem pole, you got stuck on late out—but always found it a little spooky. He'd seen it. Touch a guy on the arm in the afternoon and he'd act one way, touch him the same way at night and he'd wheel around, hand on his gun, a little wild around the eyes.