Why had a man who loved animals and clearly enjoyed children backed off when his girlfriend started getting serious? Nora wondered. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have pegged Sam as the settling-down type. Which, of course, made him unsuited to her in yet another way.
“Cigarettes are dangerous from a fire standpoint even if you don’t smoke or eat them,” he went on as the children listened raptly. “A lit cigarette can smolder for hours deep in a chair and burst into flames while everyone’s sleeping. Which is why we need—what? Anybody know what we need to wake us up in case a fire starts at night?”
Several children chorused, “Smoke detectors!”
“Very good,” Sam said. “And make sure your parents check the batteries twice a year when they change the clocks for Daylight Saving Time.” She doubted most of the children would remember, but some might, and she saw that the information was also printed on the handouts he’d given them.
While returning the hamster to its lair, he chatted about emergency exit plans, then took questions until the lunch bell rang. The three adults escorted a line of children to the cafeteria, and found a table apart from the students.
The spaghetti turned out to be overcooked, as advertised, but no worse than Nora herself had done plenty of times. She found the sauce delicious.
“Do they make this from their own recipe?” she asked.
“I think it’s the kind you buy in the bottle.” Mary named a well-known brand.
“Really? I usually get my sauce from a can. This is much better.”
“You’re kidding.” Sam regarded her in disbelief. “You heat spaghetti sauce out of a can?”
“What are you, a gourmet chef?” she retorted.
“You don’t have to be Julia Child to make decent spaghetti sauce.”
“You know firefighters,” his sister put in. “They have to learn how to cook because they take turns during those twenty-four-hour shifts. Our dad had more skill in the kitchen than our mother.”
“My best skill in the kitchen is rapid-dialing the pizza place.” Seeing Sam’s dubious reaction, Nora added defensively, “I mean, of course I can cook.”
“Oh, really? What’s your best dish?” he demanded.
He would have to pose a tough one like that, she thought in annoyance. The term best dish implied lots of chopping, baking and sauce-stirring. As if she had time!
“Does making tuna salad count?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Mary.
Sam shook his head. “No.”
“Wait! I know! My best dish is that freeze-dried Indian food you get at Trader Joe’s.”
“You don’t have to cook that,” Sam said. “You just heat it.”
Nora refused to accept his objection. “A microwave is an oven. If you put food in the microwave and press the buttons, you’re cooking it.”
Mary burst out laughing. “You two make quite a pair!”
“We fight all the time,” Nora admitted.
“How can you possibly work together?”
“We’re still trying to figure that out,” Sam said.
In her pocket, Nora’s phone rang. After a quick apology, she answered it.
She forgot their silly argument when she heard the police dispatcher’s voice. The bomb squad had been summoned to the hospital along with a backup fire truck and paramedics.
An explosion at a medical center presented one of the worst scenarios Nora could imagine. “What’s going on? How bad is it?” She tried to keep her voice low, but Mary and Sam both reacted with alarm.
“All I know is we got a call about a possible explosive device,” came the response. “I haven’t had any reports that it detonated.”
“Inside or out?” Carl Garcola lay in the intensive care unit, Nora remembered. They’d posted a guard, but they hadn’t considered the possibility that the Trigger might be willing to cause widespread casualties simply to wipe out one target.
“The woman who called said the device was outside,” the dispatcher told her.
“Did she give her name?”
“It’s Fran Garcola.”
The witness had been on her way to the hospital right after Sam and she had left, Nora recalled. Apparently Fran had run into trouble. “I’m on my way.” Nora gave her companions a terse, one-sentence explanation.
Sam jumped to his feet. “Thanks, Mary. We’ve got to go.”
“I understand completely,” his sister said. “Thanks for coming.”
As the two of them swept out of the cafeteria, Nora saw the children watching with wide, awestruck eyes. She so rarely spent time around kids that she’d forgotten how sweet and funny they could be.
But there were people in this world who didn’t hesitate to injure innocent bystanders, children or anyone else, she thought grimly, and broke into a lope.
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CHAPTER SIX
AS NORA FILLED SAM IN on what she knew, he attached a red light to his car roof and activated the built-in siren. Then he hit the gas.
Her mind zoomed ahead. According to bomb squad procedure, a containment unit should be on its way or already at the scene. If the device hadn’t yet exploded, they needed to neutralize it as quickly as possible.
Before her arrival, the city had had the foresight to purchase a Total Containment Vessel capable of providing protection from fragmentation as well as the blast itself. Mounted on a hydraulic transporter and towed on a trailer behind a response vehicle, it could be placed close to the device.
Squad members in protective suits, using a robot if possible, would perform the extremely dangerous job of moving the device into the vessel. Nora needed to be with the team. They would have extra suits on hand, since team members often had to be summoned from other assignments.
The Courage Bay Hospital lay at the north end of the city’s central section, just a few blocks from City Hall. The fact that the area was heavily trafficked meant that an outdoor bombing risked widespread injuries.
As Sam steered, Nora activated his fire department radio, which shared a frequency with the police. Although she half expected to hear accounts of major damage, to her relief, the dispatcher indicated emergency teams were now searching for the unexploded device.
Although it hadn’t gone off, it might at any second. The searchers were putting their lives on the line.
No one mentioned over the radio exactly what the device looked like, but Nora had a good idea. “Mrs. Garcola phoned in the report. What if the Trigger tampered with her phone, hoping to detonate it while she was with her husband?”
“If he did, he’s one step ahead of us,” Sam said unhappily. “When could he have gotten to her?”
“I can’t imagine she’d have been foolish enough to leave the phone anywhere accessible, not after our discussion.” Nora leaned forward as if her body language could speed their way to the hospital.
“Maybe he’d managed to rig it before we interviewed her.”
That they might have been blown to pieces in the Garcolas’ living room was a chilling thought. But Nora didn’t buy it. “This bomber isn’t sloppy. If he’d planted the charge too early, someone else might have phoned Mrs. Garcola and set it off accidentally. I’m betting he waited till the last minute.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But obviously, something he did tipped her off. This could be our first real break.”
As she’d mentioned to Sam, bombers tended to be smarter than the average criminal, perhaps because their work called for more planning and organization. Despite the possibility that the Trigger had made an error that alerted Fran Garcola to her danger, Nora refused to underestimate him.
So far, he—or possibly she—had moved through the town undetected, coolly choosing his victims and gaining access to targets while blending into the surroundings. He could be monitoring the police radio right now, tracking every move the investigators made. More than ever, Nora felt the urgency of finding and stopping him.
; They halted on Poppy Avenue, where a small crowd had gathered behind a line of fire engines and police cruisers. After glancing at their badges, a police officer waved Sam and Nora through. “Stay behind the perimeter unless you plan to suit up.” He pointed toward an area of landscaping defined by yellow police tape. “It’s somewhere in those bushes.”
“Thanks,” Nora said.
A bomb tech approached, almost unrecognizable in his full-protection suit. Aside from the clear polycarbonate face shield, the suit swathed his entire body with flexible armor made from aramid fiber, a manmade organic polymer. Although the getup weighed more than sixty pounds, at least it came with a ventilation system. Nora had heard the latest suits were equipped with built-in cooling systems as well. She couldn’t wait to try one.
“What have you got so far?” she asked.
“We’re looking for a cell phone.”
No surprise there. “What happened?”
“We got a call from a woman that someone switched phones on her. I guess you know about her husband—the same thing happened to him. We figured we should take her seriously.”
“Good decision,” Sam said.
The tech indicated the roped-off area. “She tossed it into the bushes. We’re going in as soon as we get the containment unit in position.”
“Let’s wait,” Nora blurted, obeying her instincts, although she hadn’t had time to analyze them.
“Why?”
Sam’s quirked eyebrow echoed the tech’s question.
She searched her mind for the answer, and, mercifully, it came to her. “Because from what I’ve learned about this bomber, I’ve got a hunch he’s going to activate it any minute.”
“But if he waits and detonates it later, we’ll miss the chance to capture a fingerprint or DNA evidence,” Sam pointed out.
“I don’t want to risk somebody getting blown up,” she argued. Effective as bomb suits might be, they had limits. At close range, an explosive could still cause severe harm.
“Neither do I.” Sam gritted his teeth, obviously frustrated at missing a chance to collect clues.
“Besides, I don’t think he’ll delay,” Nora said. “Either he knows we’re here and doesn’t want us to get our hands on the evidence, or he’s left the scene and is calculating when Mrs. Garcola should reach her husband’s room. Which surely she’d have done by now.”
“You’re right. I’ll tell the others.” The tech headed toward a couple of heavily suited men waiting for the containment unit to be angled into position.
By luck or instinct, Mrs. Garcola had flung her phone well away from both the building and the sidewalk, Nora noted. “Have you evacuated the building?” she asked a nearby officer.
“All the adjacent areas.”
Although usually it was preferable to clear out an entire building, Nora knew it might do more harm than good to relocate so many patients reliant on life-sustaining equipment. Besides, a cell phone didn’t hold enough plastic explosive to bring down the structure.
However, glass shards could shoot for long distances, especially outdoors. “We need to move back the perimeter,” she told Sam. “I’ll go tell the—”
Before she could finish, a boom shook the adjacent fire truck, followed by the shriek of windows shattering and the screams of bystanders. Whatever Nora had meant to say vanished as she stumbled backward and lost her balance.
The shock thrust her into Sam’s reassuringly solid form. He enclosed her with one arm as he hung onto a handle projecting from the truck.
Her heart thundered and the breath rasped from her lungs. She could feel Sam’s muscles straining as he braced for a secondary blast. You never knew if a bomber had planted an additional charge nearby to increase the damage, distract authorities and spread confusion.
Mercifully, a second blast never came. An eerie silence descended, as if the detonation had frozen everyone in place.
Nora leaned back, unable or unwilling to stir. Although she thrived on excitement, she harbored no illusions as to her own vulnerability. The roar and the sensation of being flung helplessly backward had aroused a primitive fear mechanism—or at least, that’s what she blamed for this sudden yearning to take refuge.
Sam’s free arm tightened in a protective gesture, holding her close, and his cheek grazed her hair. He seemed in no hurry to release her.
In the silence, she heard the thrum of his blood and the rapidity of his breathing. The relief at finding safe harbor gave way to an unexpected longing to merge into him. For a suspended moment, Nora ached for Sam purely as woman to man.
The wail of an approaching siren broke the spell. Officers sprang into motion, a buzz went up from the bystanders and a woman began loudly demanding how she was supposed to get all this glass out of her hair.
Determined to assess the damage, Nora looked around the edge of the truck. Bushes had been ripped up by their roots and a small crater blasted into the ground. There appeared to be only cosmetic damage to the hospital, and its safety glass had cracked in starburst patterns. The windows of nearby buildings gaped jaggedly.
She let the suited-up squad members approach to check for unexploded ordnance. Some time later, they signaled the all-clear.
While Nora conferred with them, Sam went to talk to firefighters and assess the damage. He returned a short time later. She hated to admit how reassuring she found the sight of his confident figure as he approached.
Her brain told her that this man had no more control over the forces of destruction than she did. Yet right now, with her nerves strained by the blast, she savored the air of strength he projected.
“A few people suffered cuts and some of the vehicles acquired interesting etchings in their paint,” he reported. “Other than that, it appears we got lucky. No serious injuries.”
“Let’s hope not.” It would take hours and possibly longer before the total picture emerged. Nora hated to think how much damage the exploding windows must have caused inside adjacent offices, and there remained the possibility of someone experiencing a heart attack from stress. Still, it appeared that well-designed emergency measures and good fortune had blunted the damage.
A short time later, she spied Fran Garcola, blond hair askew and eyes rimmed with red, talking to Chief Max Zirinsky. Catching sight of them, the witness gave a small, self-conscious wave.
Nora and Sam joined her. “Are you all right?”
“I want to thank both of you for saving my life. If you hadn’t warned me about the cell phone, I’d be dead by now, and so would Carl.” Fran’s voice trembled.
Sam caught the woman’s arm as she sagged. “You may be suffering from delayed shock.”
“You’ve got to catch this guy. Look what he did!” Fran indicated the scene teeming with emergency personnel, ripped-up vegetation and bits of debris. “All to kill my husband. And if you don’t stop him, next time he might succeed.”
Max nodded. “We’re going to move your husband to a wing that’s being remodeled and is closed to the public. All visitors will be searched.”
“Thanks. But this guy won’t stop, and you can’t keep Carl locked up once he recovers,” Fran replied.
Sam pulled out his notebook. “I’m sure you’ve already told the police what happened, Mrs. Garcola, but we’d like to hear it again. We might pick up details that will tie in with our investigation.”
“I’ll be glad to tell you anything I can,” she said.
With the police chief, the three of them adjourned to an undamaged outdoor picnic area and took seats around a concrete table. Nora was glad to get off her feet. Although she struggled to hide it, her legs had begun to tremble. All her experience notwithstanding, the blast had shocked her.
The others had been similarly affected, she gathered. Both men held themselves more stiffly than usual, as if to keep a tight rein on their emotions, while the color had drained from Fran’s face.
Clasping her hands on the table, the witness soldiered on. “I was walking toward the entrance when a
man bumped into me. My purse flew into the air and everything spilled on the sidewalk. He stuffed a few things back inside, apologized and hurried away.”
“What did he look like?” Sam’s eagerness reflected Nora’s own excitement at discovering that, at last, someone had seen the Trigger.
“I’m afraid I got distracted picking up my stuff and hardly noticed the guy,” she admitted. “He was a big fellow, I remember that.”
“By ‘big,’ do you mean tall or heavyset?” the chief asked.
“Tall and muscular—beefy, I guess you could call him,” Fran said. “He wore sunglasses and a dark blue baseball cap. And work gloves.”
“What about the rest of his clothing?” Sam put in.
“Jeans and a flannel shirt.” Fran blew her nose into a tissue.
Nora knew that most witnesses observed much more than they initially realized. Sometimes bits of information came back to them later. “Any logos on his clothing?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How about the cap?” Most such headgear bore the name of a sports team.
Fran reflected. “Wait a minute. It did have an emblem. Some kind of black-and-white animal. A skunk—you know, the cartoon type.”
Nora made a note. She couldn’t immediately associate the symbol with any sports team. “When he spoke, did he have an accent?”
“No.”
“Pale skin? Dark? Ruddy?” Sam put in.
“Ruddy, I guess. I’d describe him as some kind of workman, but it might have been the clothing that made me think that.” Fran released an uncertain breath. “He seemed so normal. You could pass him in a crowd and you wouldn’t think twice.”
Nora had already guessed that. A bizarre-looking man wouldn’t have had such an easy time planting his explosives. “What made you decide to alert the bomb squad?” she asked.
“You,” the witness said.
“Me?”
“Both of you.” She included Sam in her wan smile. “See, after I collected the stuff from my purse, I checked around for my cell phone. When I didn’t see it, I realized the man had already put it in my pocketbook.”
The Trigger Page 8
