by Steven Henry
Erin hurriedly laid her box of office supplies on the most deserted-looking desk and went straight back outside. Rolf followed.
She’d just gotten out the door of the precinct house and was reaching for a shoulder radio she wasn’t wearing when she remembered she didn’t have a squad car, either. Mentally kicking herself, she used her phone to call in to Dispatch to get the address. She could’ve gone back inside and asked Holliday how to access the motor pool, but time was ticking at the crime scene and she was already embarrassed. She’d improvise. The important thing was to get there. She hailed a cab.
* * *
The site of the blast was an underground parking garage off Second Avenue, between 24th and 25th Street. Erin paid the cabbie and took in the scene. She was definitely at the right location. Squad cars had cordoned off the garage and a large number of bystanders were milling around at a respectful distance. As she and Rolf approached, she heard a woman say, “I’m sure I saw the bomb squad. Is it terrorists, do you think?”
“Muslims, probably,” her companion replied. “Al Qaeda.”
Erin inwardly rolled her eyes at the rubberneckers as she passed. The apartment complex was middle-class, about fifteen floors, built of tan bricks with a row of restaurants at ground level. There were no signs of structural damage, no clouds of smoke pouring out of the garage. If this had been a bomb, it hadn’t been too big. Going out on a speculative limb, she was willing to bet it didn’t indicate a massive terrorist strike on New York City.
She showed her shield to the uniforms at the entrance and identified herself. They stepped aside and she and Rolf went down the ramp. Partway down, the dog abruptly froze in his “alert” posture. A moment later, Erin smelled it too. Rolf was trained in explosives detection, and something had definitely blown up not long before. There was a smell of smoke, burnt fuel, and charred metal.
A small group of men and women were standing around the wreckage of the car. There was a big guy with a broken nose and a blond buzz cut. Next to him was a man in a trench coat, holding an unlit cigarette. A woman with hair dyed electric blue at the tips glanced up, saw Erin, and smiled a little nervously at her. Another woman in a white lab coat was kneeling next to something black and smoldering. The smell told Erin she didn’t really want to look closer at it, but figured she’d have to. The last guy was poking around the car. He had a T-shirt emblazoned BOMB SQUAD and a heavy-looking helmet, though it was in his hand instead of on his head.
“Lieutenant Webb?” Erin guessed, looking at the guy in the trench coat.
“That’s me,” he said. “You must be O’Reilly.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry I’m late. I went to the precinct first.”
Webb shrugged. “Glad you could join us. This is Vic Neshenko,” he indicated the big man to his right, who grunted and worked a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “And this is Kira Jones,” pointing to the woman with the dyed hair, “and our Medical Examiner, Dr. Sarah Levine,” finishing with the lab-coated woman. He didn’t introduce the bomb-squad guy.
“Good to meet you,” Jones said, offering her hand. Erin shook it, noticing deep crimson fingernails through the translucent glove. “That your dog?”
“Yeah, this is Rolf,” she said.
“How long have you had him?”
“We’ve been partners for three years.”
“Okay, great,” Neshenko said. “And we’ve worked together for thirty seconds. Can we look at the dead guy so we can go home?”
Erin leaned forward to peer at the corpse at their feet.
“New girl?” Levine said from below.
“Yeah?”
“Move. You’re blocking my light.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Erin stepped to the side, feeling her face flush. She accidentally elbowed the guy in the T-shirt.
“Hi,” he said, extending his hand. “Skip Taylor, Bomb Squad. I’m not in your unit, of course. And don’t worry, the device fully activated. There’s no further danger. Say, is your dog trained in EOD?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But mostly he does suspect tracking and apprehension.”
“That’s great,” Taylor said. “We’ve got a K-9 in our unit, but he’s training this week, counter-terrorist stuff with Homeland Security and the Feebies. But check out this device, this is some great shit. Took our boy clean out of his shoes. Seriously. You see the shoes over there by the car?”
Erin felt a queasy lump in her stomach. “Yeah, I see,” she muttered, turning her attention back to her new commanding officer. “Lieutenant, what’d I miss?”
“Not much,” Webb said. “We only got here a few minutes ago. The area’s been secured, and Taylor’s right. There just seems to be the one bomb. It was enough for this guy, though. The uniform who responded didn’t even bother calling for the EMTs.”
“I can see why,” Neshenko said. “Even dental records aren’t gonna do much good. It must’ve gone off right in his face. His head’s practically gone.”
“Do we know who he is?” Erin asked.
“We think so,” Jones replied. “William O’Connell. His wife called it in, said it was their car.”
“It’s a nice car,” Taylor said. “Expensive Audi, maybe three years old. Well, it was. Now it’s scrap metal, with a pretty amazing blast pattern.”
No one else seemed too eager to indulge Taylor’s enthusiasm for explosive mayhem, but Erin figured there had to be some useful information there. “What’s amazing about it?”
“Okay, so the device was under the dash and the driver’s seat. It’s a two-stage blast, which is unusual by itself,” he said. “I’m thinking the initial charge was wired to the ignition and went off right under the steering wheel. That set off the secondary, which was a sizable chunk of what I’m guessing was nitro. But what’s weird is, he wasn’t sitting in the driver’s seat when he got blown away.”
“How can you tell?” she asked.
“He’s over here,” the bomb tech explained. “If the charge had gone off under his ass, it would’ve blown him straight through the roof of the car and he’d have painted the ceiling.”
“Nice,” Jones muttered.
“Instead, he got tossed this way. That tells me the device went off when he was standing or maybe bending over. I’m guessing he saw something under the dash, maybe spotted some loose wires or even the device itself, and it went off while he was bent over.”
“There’s some tools over here,” Neshenko said, pointing to the garage floor. “I’ve got a socket wrench, a screwdriver, and what looks like part of a wire cutter, but it’s blown to pieces.”
“Jesus,” Webb said quietly. “You think he found the bomb and tried to defuse it himself?”
“It’s possible,” Taylor said. “Stupid of him, but possible. Real civvie move.”
“Skip, were you in the service?” Erin asked suddenly. The way he talked, the way he carried himself, and his haircut, all reminded her of Paulson, the former Army Ranger she’d worked with back in Queens.
“EOD, two tours in the sandbox,” he said. “Came back with all my parts.” He held up a hand and wiggled his fingers.
“What kind of idiot finds a bomb in his car and tries to take it apart instead of calling us?” Webb wondered aloud, returning their attention to the shattered body on the concrete.
“The kind who doesn’t want cops around, maybe,” Neshenko said, kneeling beside Levine, who was still engrossed in studying the corpse. The big detective flipped back the dead man’s suit coat to reveal a shoulder holster, a pistol still strapped in it.
“Damn,” Jones said. “He was packing.”
“Didn’t do him any good,” Levine said. “Death was instantaneous. COD was blast trauma and shrapnel that penetrated his face, chest, and neck. The right arm has been amputated just below the shoulder and separated from the torso, coming to rest approximately ten meters away from the principal remains. The left hand has been partially amputated, with the second, third, and fifth fingers missing, bu
t once we analyze the blast pattern a little better, we have a good chance of finding…”
“We get the idea,” Webb said. “So he was pretty close to the bomb when it went off?”
“He had his hands practically on it,” she confirmed.
“She’s right,” Taylor said. “I saw some wounds like those in Iraq. There was this one kid, he was screwing around with a landmine…” His voice trailed off and his smile faded.
“Okay,” Webb said. “So he had a sidearm and was doing something with the bomb, either trying to figure out what it was or trying to defuse it. Sounds like he might have military experience. What else have we got on him?”
“There’s a wallet in his hip pocket,” Levine said. “It was shielded from the blast by his body, so appears undamaged. There’s a rolled-up necktie in his left front pocket and keys in his right front.”
“Car keys?” Erin asked.
“Car, house, safe-deposit box,” Levine said.
“Well, that proves he didn’t set it off by starting the engine,” Erin said. “They’d still be in the ignition otherwise.”
“Seat belt wasn’t fastened either,” Taylor said. “Not that that proves anything. If he was dumb enough to monkey with a homemade nitro bomb, he probably wasn’t smart enough to buckle up.”
“What else have we got from the car?” Webb asked.
“Driver’s side door over there,” Neshenko said, pointing with his thumb. The door had been blasted away from the car at an angle, leaving a streak of black paint on the garage wall before coming to rest in a twisted heap.
“Yeah, I think the door was open when the bomb went off,” Taylor said. “If it was only secured by the hinges, it would’ve angled forward like that. If it’d been closed, it would’ve gone in more of a straight line.”
“So our victim was leaning over the seat with the door open, standing about where his shoes still are,” Webb said.
“Just like car crashes,” Erin said, her Patrol experience still fresh in her mind. “You can usually judge point of impact when a pedestrian gets run down by where you find the shoes.”
“That’s right,” Webb said. “Okay, we’re getting a picture.”
“Trunk’s open,” Neshenko reported. He was prowling around the edges of the crime scene like a restless junkyard dog. “I got a toolbox, open lid, a triple-A kit, and a spare tire.”
“All right,” Webb said. “So you’re all telling me this guy comes down to the garage, is all set to get into his car, and what? Sees a bomb wired to his ignition switch. For some reason he doesn’t call the cops and decides to take care of it himself. Probably because he’s a moron. He takes off his tie, stows it in his pants pocket, pops the trunk, opens his toolbox, gets out his tools and tries to take the bomb apart. He screws the pooch, the bomb blows up in his face, and here we are. And there he is.”
Erin looked around at the others. All of them were nodding.
“So why doesn’t he call the cops?” Erin asked. “Is this guy on the FBI Top Ten? There’s nothing illegal in the trunk. Has he got diamonds in the door panels? Cocaine in the glove compartment?”
“We’ll go over the car,” Taylor said. “I need to confirm the explosive. I’m only guessing it was nitro. I’ll know more when I run the lab tests. If there’s anything else in there, we’ll find it. We’re taking the entire vehicle to the department lot.”
“We need to talk to the wife,” Jones said.
“Where is she?” Erin asked.
“Upstairs, in their apartment,” Webb said. “We’ve got uniforms with her.”
“And she’s a real piece of work,” Neshenko said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You’ll see.”
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Acknowledgments
I used to think books were solo operations. But that’s not even close to true. There are a large number of people whose time, efforts, and emotional energy have gone into this book. I owe all of them my thanks, and I’d like to list them here.
First off, thank you to Ben Faroe of Clickworks Press, who read this book and liked what he saw. I really appreciate your advice and assistance refining the raw manuscript and cover design. Thank you Ben and Kristen for your hours of careful editing!.
A great big thank you to Kara Salava for the gorgeous photo on the cover and tweaking it to make it perfect. Kristin Salava, you have a handsome beast of a German Shepherd, Kubistraum’s All the Right Moves, TC, CGC, TDI, also known as “Bosco”. Kelly Foehl, thanks for coordinating your sisters and setting up the photo shoot. And thank you, Bosco, for being a real trooper. Good dog.
Thank you to the Burnsville, MN Police Department and their Citizens’ Academy program. You taught me a lot about Patrol work and the life of a police officer. Thank you for teaching me how to do field-sobriety tests, traffic stops, pistol and rifle shooting, and how to take a Taser jolt. You really go out and do what I only write about. Stay safe out there.
Thank you to my first-draft readers: Carl and Mary Caroline Henry, Dave and Marilyn Lindstrom, Kira Woodmansee, and Andrew Peterson. Every writer would like to think our first drafts are good enough to publish. We’re always wrong about that. Your feedback, both positive and constructive, made this book better.
This list wouldn’t be complete without a shout-out to the PI team. This group of gamers provided the original creative spark for the Erin O’Reilly series. You dreamed up several of the main characters we’ll be seeing in later installments. You also gave me the creative spark to build this mirror version of our own world. David Greenfield, Justin Moor, Hilary Alweis, Mark Murphy Jr., Bridget Johnson, and Ben Lurie, you made it possible, and you made it fun.
And last, but certainly not least, I want to thank my lovely wife Ingrid, without whom this book wouldn’t exist. You not only came up with the character of Erin O’Reilly, you made her live and breathe for me. You listened to my rough-copy night after night, smoothing out the rough spots. More than that, you’ve always believed in me more than I can ever quite manage on my own.
About the Author
Steven Henry learned how to read almost before he learned how to walk. Ever since he began reading stories, he wanted to put his own on the page. He lives a very quiet and ordinary life in Minnesota with his wife and dog.
Also by Steven Henry
Ember of Dreams
The Clarion Chronicles, Book One
When magic awakens a long-forgotten folk, a noble lady, a young apprentice, and a solitary blacksmith band together to prevent war and seek understanding between humans and elves.
Lady Kristyn Tremayne – An otherwise unremarkable young lady’s open heart and inquisitive mind reveal a hidden world of magic.
Robert Blackford – A humble harp maker’s apprentice dreams of being a hero.
Master Gabriel Zane – A master blacksmith’s pursuit of perfection leads him to craft an enchanted sword, drawing him out of his isolation and far from his cozy home.
Lord Luthor Carnarvon – A lonely nobleman with a dark past has won the heart of Kristyn’s mother, but at what cost?
Readers love Ember of Dreams
“The more I got to know the characters, the more I liked them. The female lead in particular is a treat to accompany on her journey from ordinary to extraordinary.”
“The author’s deep understanding of his protagonists’ motivations and keen eye for psychological detail make Robert and his companions a likable and memorable cast.”
Learn more at tinyurl.com/emberofdreams.
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