Blonde Bomb Tech

by Lara Santiago

  Councilman Peters put his hands in the air as if to now convey peace, “I’m leaving. You better get your house in order, Captain, or heads will roll. Keep your people in line, or else.”

  “We established that in my office and your feelings are well understood, Councilman. In the future, do not speak to my personnel. Now get out.”

  As he exited, Sabrina saw Murphy, Brian, Chief Cochran, and Suzanne Forrester just inside the office. Sabrina looked around for the crazy old woman and her son who entered the room shortly after Councilman Peters left. So her humiliation was complete and everyone was a witness. Great.

  “Should I say I’m sorry for something?” Sabrina asked Hennessey, not looking directly at him. She stared at his shoulder.

  “Are you sorry for anything?” he countered.

  “No. Except…I’m sorry Councilman Peters is such an evil little prick, and I’m sorry you have to listen to him scream at you every day,” Sabrina said quietly, her head facing the floor.

  “Yeah. Me too, but that’s not likely to change.”

  “Any apologies for accosting the fireman?” he asked.

  The memory of Jake’s lips from last night burned through her. She licked her mouth in reflex.

  “No, I’m definitely not sorry about that,” Sabrina said defiantly.

  “Okay, then. Let’s get to work, it’s getting crowded in here,” Hennessey said. He escorted Mr. Henderson and his mother to the conference room, calling for someone to record her statement, and they all trooped into the viewing room.

  Mrs. Henderson didn’t remember last night at all. Her son explained her dementia didn’t usually allow her to remember short-term things. Sabrina watched for a while then told Hennessey she wanted to come in to the room and maybe jar her memory. He gave her the signal to enter.

  Sabrina entered and said, “Hi, Mrs. Henderson.”

  “Well, hi Maggie. How is that little bun in the oven?”

  Sabrina should have been prepared, but she flinched anyway before shaking it off quickly. She said, “The bun is fine, Mrs. Henderson. Could we talk about the little pumpkin?”

  “Well, certainly dear. Where is she?”

  “I’m looking for her,” Sabrina said.

  “Well, she should be around somewhere.” Mrs. Henderson looked around the room as if she were somewhere else.

  “Could you call her for me, Mrs. Henderson?” Sabrina asked and tried to brace herself for what she suspected.

  “Sabrina. Sabrina Morgan. Come out, come out where ever you are,” she said in a singsong voice. “Daddy’s little pumpkin needs to come out.”

  Sabrina looked at Hennessey. “It would seem that I am the little pumpkin.”

  Hennessey didn’t respond. He got up, left the room, and returned with Suzanne Forrester. Mrs. Henderson started all over again with the bun-in-the-oven routine. Alice didn’t have any other relevant information to impart, so they let the Hendersons go peacefully with a stern warning to stay in town.

  Mrs. Clancy, the apartment building landlady, was the next witness ushered into the interrogation room with the two-way mirror for questioning.

  “Tell us what you remember about the Morgan family, Mrs. Clancy,” Hennessey began.

  “Well, it’s been a lot of years since they lived in the apartments,” she began, “David Morgan was an accountant for the government, and he paid the rent on time every month. Maggie Morgan was a housewife and a mother. They had a sweet little girl named Sabrina. The baby was due in early June. They mostly kept to themselves. Terrible tragedy when they got killed. Just terrible,” she said, and crossed herself.

  “Do you remember any enemies they may have had? Any bad blood with any of the other tenants?” he asked.

  “Oh no. Back then it was quiet and respectable place. These days…eh…you do the best you can.”

  “Any relatives come to visit them?” Hennessey asked.

  “I never saw anyone, and no one came for the contents of the apartment, so I had to clean it out, you understand. I waited as long as I could.”

  “Of course. If you remember anything else and think it’s important, please let us know.” He gave her his card and released her.

  Hennessey led Sabrina to a conference room where Suzanne and Chief Cochran already waited. He’d obtained the adoption records for Suzanne, which included the coroner’s detailed report of her parents’ cause of death. First they had to rehash all the old memories from the day of the explosion. Sabrina wanted to be anywhere else, but listened in as Chief Cochran told his story.

  “I’d only been a fireman for a couple years,” Chief Cochran began. “We were the second responding truck at the Fireside Inn Restaurant. Not the first on scene.” He stopped as if gathering strength. “I stepped off my truck and the first thing I saw was Maggie Morgan, barely alive, being loaded into the ambulance. She looked nine months pregnant. My own wife was due any day with our second baby and it just plain horrified me.” He repeated the story of visiting the baby, he’d thought was Sabrina, at the hospital. Only it hadn’t been Sabrina. It had been a newly born Suzanne instead.

  Sabrina haltingly told them her three-year-old-child’s version of what she remembered that day, mostly drawn from flashbacks in her nightmares. The thumpity-thump of her mother’s heartbeat that Sabrina remembered from her nightmares had undoubtedly been the baby her mother had been pregnant with on that fateful day. Suzanne Forrester. Her sister. Her family...and a complete stranger.

  A few hours later, Sabrina sat alone in the conference room thinking about how fast things changed. Everything she thought she knew to be true was now different. Or was it? No one had confirmed Suzanne was related to her. No one had proved they were sisters.

  One of her earliest memories at the orphanage slid into her mind with heart-wrenching clarity. At three years old she wasn’t a baby, but she’d been paraded in front of potential ‘adoptive’ parents several times. Each time the nameless strangers had apparently found her lacking because she would never see them again. A few months later the exact scenario would happen again. The next set of strangers would look her up and down again and again until Sabrina became suspect of the idea of ever getting new parents. She was right, too, since no one had ever adopted her.

  Sabrina was a complete cynic on her best day. Just because someone paraded Suzanne past her as her long lost sister didn’t make it true.

  Hennessey sent Suzanne home with a message to stay close. He and Chief Cochran departed to his office discuss the direction of the case. Brian and Murphy stepped out to get coffee. After she told her story, she stopped talking altogether and stared off into space. She’d needed a minute and had been grateful to get it.

  Sabrina couldn’t get past the graphic visual of her mom being pregnant. A feeling she would never ever experience, she thought, which made a tear erupt from her eye and run silently down her face. Suzanne was an orphan two minutes after she’d been born. Their mother died from a massive concussion, never waking to see her child.

  Sabrina’s father had massive internal damage as a result of the fallen debris he endured as he tried to protect his loved ones. The report said he ‘probably’ died instantly from the trauma. Covering his pregnant wife and child had been gallant and successful…for Sabrina and then her sister, but not their mother.

  Suzanne Forrester had been born the day of the explosion, but in her recently unsealed adoption records…she’d been listed as baby girl Morgan. They’d performed a cesarean on Maggie minutes before she succumbed to her injuries, according to the limited records.

  Suzanne Forrester was the baby Chief Cochran had visited at St. Catherine’s hospital. Her sister. Was Suzanne truly her sister?

  Another report listed Sabrina as the ‘small child unearthed from the scene.’ Sabrina had later been separated from the woman covering her and had gone to another hospital. St. Marks.

  Sabrina suddenly had a memory flash through her brain she’d not thought of in years. She remembered that, after the very loud
terrible noise, she had been taken to a new place. She remembered telling the people at the new place over and over that her name was Sabrina and that she wanted her mommy. Sabrina fought sudden tears.

  Soon after being taken to the first new place, she had been lost in a paperwork shuffle. She became a new orphan in an overburdened system, ending up in an orphanage at age three where she spent the duration of her childhood waiting for her mommy to come and get her.

  Sabrina hadn’t given up waiting for her mother until age eleven. She got up enough nerve to ask one of the seemingly endless parade of social workers when her mother was coming to get her. The fifth social worker she’d seen since being at the state-run orphanage had blithely informed her that her parents had died in the restaurant explosion after saving her. He said no next of kin had been found and she was basically too old to be adopted.

  Sorry, kid.

  Chief Cochran hadn’t visited her after all. He’d thought she was baby Suzanne. Sabrina heard Hennessey, Murphy and Brian coming down the hall to the conference room. She quickly wiped her face and grabbed the first piece of paper from the stack in front of her.

  Murphy entered and handed her a cup of coffee. “You okay?” he whispered. She gave him a wan smile and nodded. He winked back and sat down.

  “Let’s sift through some more of this paperwork. Maybe something will jump out,” she said with pretended enthusiasm.

  The three of them spent a few minutes discussing strategy, and then everyone took a report to read. Sabrina immersed herself in endless reports from the past as protection from her girly emotional thoughts trying to escape.

  In the heap delivered from the fire investigator’s office, Sabrina found the report from the fire station detailing the rescue of the two kidnapped children tied down in the apartment. It was a more detailed account than the one being shared with the media.

  According to the statement from the children, the masked man had tied them down with baling wire, leather, and duct tape, sealing the girls in so they couldn’t move, let alone get out. However, the little girls couldn’t identify him with so much as race. They had been too scared. Sabrina didn’t blame them.

  The tapping Sabrina had heard was one of them tapping her foot on a piece of baling wire, which had come loose. The two girls had been trapped in the very apartment Sabrina and her parents had lived in at the time of the explosion. The very thought sent an involuntary shudder down her spine.

  The detonation from last night was that of a medium impact directionally designed bomb. It was built to deliver a payload, which would go straight up into the apartment above. Right where the kidnapped girls were tied down. The tenants of the now destroyed apartment were on a recently won free vacation, skiing in Colorado. The neighbors had told the authorities about the vacationing tenants, which was why the apartment hadn’t been checked earlier.

  The lab called with frustrating results from trying to separate the page of the diary. Margaret Elliot was presumed to be Maggie Morgan’s maiden name. They found a reference to someone she was hiding from whom she deemed insane. She didn’t want this mysterious person to find her or to find out that she’d gotten married or about her children. They had no idea the name of the person. They promised to keep working on it.

  The reference to the little pumpkin knowing why this had to happen, had Sabrina completely stumped. How was a three-year-old supposed to know or remember what the hell had gone on in the mind of ‘a mad bomber’ who’d terrorized the city twenty-three years ago? The general consensus in the room decided he must be crazy, which didn’t help them at all predict what he would do next, what his ultimate goal was, or if there was any goal.

  There was almost no information on Sabrina and Suzanne’s parents. They finally located a social security number for David Morgan in a notation from the contents of his wallet, but it had been partially destroyed due to his injuries. Brian sent for a work history after acquiring a warrant to have access to the information in the first place. He placed a call to Social Security and they promised to send the information over as soon as their computers were back online after a scheduled upgrade. There might possibly be another few days wait for that information.

  At the end of the day Sabrina felt like they were no closer to solving this case than when they had started. Murphy had gone down to get more coffee. She was slumped at her desk alone mulling over the waste of a day when her phone rang. Jake?

  “Hello,” she said, more eagerly than she felt.

  “Sabrina?” It was a woman’s voice.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Suzanne Forrester. I was wondering if you had time to chat?” Her bubbly tone of voice danced through the telephone line and Sabrina could picture her smiling face. The woman who might be her sister sounded like an optimist.

  “I guess so. Did you remember something for the case?”

  “Um. No. I thought perhaps we should get together.”

  Sabrina was stumped for a moment. Her brain was not functioning from lack of sleep. “Get together? Why?” she asked quizzically.

  “Well, my limited understanding of today’s discussion was that we are related.” She stated this more coolly. More guarded. The happy tone of voice disappeared quickly replaced by a wariness Sabrina recognized and was embarrassed to have used far too frequently herself. Taking the gleeful tone out of Suzanne’s end of the conversation was a little like kicking a puppy down. Sabrina took a deep mental cleansing deep breath and calmed down. Suzanne was not her enemy. She was making an effort with this unexpected overture. Sabrina could at least be civil.

  “Oh. Right. Sisters. Yes. Forgive me. It’s been a really long day,” she stopped, stuttering.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I saw how difficult it was for you to remember everything from your past.”

  “Yes. Well, it was necessary.” She thought maybe Suzanne Forrester might actually understand. She’d grown up not knowing her biological parents either.

  “Would it be too hard for you to tell me about them? Our parents.”

  “I…no…but I don’t remember much more than what you heard earlier today.”

  “Well, I’m off of work tomorrow. It’s Saturday. Would you like to meet for coffee or something? Perhaps we could get to know each other.”

  “Sure. That would be great,” Sabrina said, and almost meant it. She didn’t have any close girlfriends. Murphy was her best friend after all these years…until Jake. They agreed to meet at a local restaurant the next morning.

  Sabrina wasn’t sure how to proceed with the relationship. Through the haze of her fatigue, she decided that she regarded Suzanne as an unknown beacon of light emerging from a tunnel. Until she explored it, she wouldn’t know whether she had new friend or a train bearing down on her. Maybe they would become inseparable comrades and she could confide her feelings about Jake, because tonight was going to be another lonely night to endure. She was warming to the idea of having a sister, foreign as it was.

  Murphy entered just then with two cups that smelled like badly burnt machine coffee.

  “Bless you,” Sabrina said when he sat one down in front of her. She took a sip, forgetting to grimace at the taste.

  “Who was on the phone? You had a look on your face that I haven’t cataloged yet.”

  “Suzanne Forrester. She wants to be sisters. I’m not sure what it means. Barely having a boyfriend has made me so soft and girly I don’t recognize myself. Having a sister will probably turn me in to a complete marshmallow. Next, I’ll be worrying if my purse matches my shoes.”

  “You don’t carry a purse. Half the time you don’t even bother with a wallet. I know because that’s why I always have to buy the coffee.”

  “Exactly my point, the fact I suddenly know purses should match shoes scares the crap out of me.”

  He laughed. “Did you two do the blood test thing already?”

  “Yeah, just after lunch. But I mean, it is just a formality. We do look alike. Don’t you think?”

  “S
ure, but maybe she’s just a doppelganger or something.”

  “Doppelganger sounds too sinister. I’d rather have a sister.”

  “Not to rain on your parade or anything…but Suzanne Forrester is still the only person who has a connection to all three bombings. Could she be the one doing it? Shouldn’t we check her out further?” Murphy asked.

  “What?” Sabrina had only had a sister for five minutes and suddenly had the urge to pound her partner for hinting she was culpable in a crime. She looked into his amused face and realized he was just yanking her chain, “We’re having coffee tomorrow. I’ll ask her if she had any demolition classes in college.” Sabrina slumped over as she realized she was turning into a total, soft-centered, toasted marshmallow.

  “Perfect. Case solved.”

  The desk on Sabrina’s desk rang again. She picked it up. “This is Morgan.”

  “You have the sexiest voice I’ve ever heard.”

  “Who is this?” she demanded in a mock angry voice. Sabrina sat down at her desk with a smile, soaking up Jake’s slow inviting voice. Murphy rolled his eyes and stepped away as he sipped his coffee.

  “The man who misses you desperately and seriously wishes he hadn’t been a nice guy and agreed to this extra shift. I swear it won’t happen again. I agreed to it before I ever met you.”

  “Well then, I guess I forgive you.”

  “I miss you, babe. Seems like a year since I saw you and…touched you…and…the list goes on. Are you sleeping? I’ve thought about you the last two nights.”

  “I miss you, too, especially at night. Especially the touching,” she whispered. Murphy cleared his throat, rolled his eyes, and picked up the phone pretending to make a call.