Lethal Measures

by Leonard Goldberg

  “One heel is worn down a lot more than the other,” he observed.

  Gupta restudied the shoe, trying to come up with an explanation for the difference in heel size.

  “Perhaps our man had a limp or deformity of one leg.”

  Joanna carefully eyed the shoes, then pointed to the laces.

  “That wouldn’t explain why the shoelaces on one shoe are tied differently than the laces on the other.”

  Gupta quickly looked at the laces. One pair had a double knot. He sighed loudly.

  “I’ve been out in the sun too long.” “It’s tough when you’re working in a field strewn with body parts,” Joanna said.

  “It’s easier when you’re inside and have time to go over each piece carefully.”

  Gupta looked out across the crime scene and watched the miniature flags fluttering in the breeze.

  “I never thought I would see this in America,” he said sadly.

  “I still can’t believe this could happen here.”

  “Ever hear of Oklahoma City?” Hurley asked.

  Gupta continued to stare at the flags.

  “But this happened here, in the city where I live.”

  “Which is the bomb capital of the world,” Hurley said.

  “What!” Joanna and Gupta spoke almost simultaneously.

  “Oh, yeah,” Hurley went on.

  “We’re busier than Beirut and Belfast put together.

  Our bomb squads respond to over a thousand calls a year.”

  Joanna was stunned by the numbers. That averaged out to almost three bomb threat calls a day.

  “Why so many?”

  “Because Los Angeles is so volatile,” Hurley explained.

  “We have every nationality on earth here, and every little country has its own axes to grind, its own hatred of other countries. And we also have the world’s largest collection of crazies and nuts. So it was never a question in our minds of ;/ a blast like this would occur in Los Angeles. It was only a question of when.”

  “And when is now,” Joanna said sourly.

  “And there’s another reason for Los Angeles being the bomb capital of the world,” Hurley told them.

  “Our nice weather.”

  “What the hell does the weather have to do with making bombs?” Jake asked.

  “Before bombers explode something, they like to do practice runs,” Hurley said grimly.

  “And our climate and great outdoors are perfect for that.”

  “Well, something went wrong with this little practice session,” Jake said.

  “Indeed.” Gupta motioned to an assistant medical examiner and handed him the shoes with the blown-off feet, then turned back to Joanna.

  “As you can see, we’ve used small flags to indicate where the various body parts were found.

  We’ve uncovered eighteen pieces of human tissue so far and still have a lot of rubble to sift through.”

  “Could I make a suggestion or two?” Joanna offered.

  “Of course,” Gupta said, ears pricked.

  “Do you know where the kitchen was located?” Gupta hesitated.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Lieutenant Hurley will show you,” Joanna said.

  “I would like you to determine the exact center of the kitchen and let that be your reference point. Then measure the distances from that point to each of the planted flags. It would be very helpful if you could make a map showing the location of each flag and its distance from the center of the kitchen.”

  “Shall I wait until we’ve searched through all the rubble and uncovered every body part?” Gupta asked.

  “No,” Joanna said promptly.

  “Please do it now. And as you mark each flag on the map, take the body part and place it in a plastic container, then put the specimen in a refrigerated unit. Once you’ve ” “Hold on a minute!” Hurley interrupted abruptly.

  “We don’t move anything until it’s cleared with central command. That way we don’t do something we later wished we hadn’t. Everything stays as is.”

  “That’s not a good idea,” Joanna said.

  “Everything stays put,” Hurley said firmly.

  “My orders are to freeze this crime scene, and that’s what I plan to do.”

  Joanna’s jaw tightened.

  “Well, while you’re freezing the area, give your superiors a call and tell them we have pieces of human tissue lying out in the sun, rotting away by the minute. And remind them that the longer the tissues sit out there, the better the chance they’ll become infected with worms and maggots, which will destroy what little evidence we have.”

  Hurley stared at her, trying to control his temper. He knew she was right, but he didn’t like her condescending manner. He had the feeling she was going to end up being a real bitch. Slowly he turned to Gupta.

  “Come on. I’ll show you where the center of the kitchen is.”

  Jake watched the men walk away. He could feel the lingering tension between Hurley and Joanna.

  “I don’t think Hurley is accustomed to working with women.”

  “There are plenty of females in the LAPD,” Joanna said.

  “Not on the bomb squads, there aren’t.”

  Joanna thought for a moment.

  “Why do you think that’s so?”

  Jake shrugged.

  “Probably because they have more sense and value their fingers more than men do.”

  Joanna’s mind flashed back to Hurley’s missing fingers, knowing that he

  had to be thinking about those fingers every time he got near a bomb site. She wondered what could induce a man to accept such hazardous duty. Did these men have exceptional courage? Or were they just big risk takers? Or maybe they had a secret death wish. Whatever it was, there was a long waiting list to join Los Angeles County’s six full-time bomb squads.

  “Hurley is a good guy.” Jake broke into her thoughts.

  “We’re going to need him if we ever hope to crack this case.”

  Joanna glanced out at Hurley, who was stepping into a crater in the cement slab where the house had once stood.

  “I sounded pretty hard a moment ago, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  She walked across the rubble, realizing it wasn’t only Hurley who had set her off. It was a combination of things, like being pressured by Simon Murdock.

  Joanna came to the cement slab and caught Hurley’s eye.

  “Lieutenant, I could have phrased my response to you a moment ago a lot better.”

  “Forget it,” he said evenly.

  “You made your point, and it was a good one.”

  Joanna moved back across the debris and stepped over a yellow flag. Next to it was a lemon-size piece of dark maroon tissue. It was probably liver or spleen, she guessed. She came to the sidewalk.

  “I apologized.”

  “Good,” Jake said.

  “Now tell me what’s bugging you.”

  “A lot of things,” Joanna said evasively, watching two uniformed cops and a detective she didn’t recognize pass by.

  “Where’s your partner, Farelli?”

  Jake took a deep breath and exhaled.

  “He got shot.”

  “What!” Joanna blurted out.

  “When?”

  “Last month,” Jake told her.

  “We were on a stakeout and some asshole appeared out of nowhere with a semiautomatic. Lou caught one in the leg. He lost a lot of blood, but he’s okay now. He’ll be back next week.”

  “You should have called me,” Joanna said, upset. Farelli was a favorite of hers.

  “You could have picked up the damn phone.”

  “I know, I know,” Jake said.

  “But I had my hands full. Between checking on Lou and talking with his wife and kids and a million other things.” He let his voice trail off.

  “You still should have called.”

  “Like I said, I had a lot on my mind.” Joanna gave him a long look, wondering how he could be so gene
rous and considerate one moment, and so insensitive and oblivious to another person’s feelings the next. It was like an intermittent blind spot in Jake. And it was becoming more noticeable and more irritating.

  An assistant medical examiner called out.

  “I’ve found a digit!”

  “Let’s hope it’s a thumb,” Joanna said and stepped back into the rubble. Her heel caught in a cracked board, and she stumbled. Quickly she grabbed Jake’s arm and steadied herself.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, concerned.

  “I’m fine,” she said, cursing herself for wearing heels to a bomb site. She tested the heel, making sure it was intact, then pushed the board aside. Beneath it was a small piece of skin attached to a bit of shiny orange material.

  Jake leaned down for a closer look.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Human skin with something attached to it.”

  “Do you think it’s a body part?”

  “No,” Joanna said.

  “It looks like it’s either plastic or ceramic.”

  Jake took a small white flag from his coat pocket and planted it next to the unusual material.

  “A white flag means it’s an unidentified body part.”

  They walked over to the western edge of the property, where Hurley, Gupta and the assistant medical examiner were standing.

  “It’s a toe,” Gupta was saying.

  “A second or third toe.”

  “That’s no damn help,” Hurley grumbled.

  “A bucket of toes isn’t going to help us here.”

  “Perhaps things will become clearer once we’ve uncovered all the body parts,” Gupta commented.

  “Perhaps some of the vagueness will disappear.”

  Joanna shook her head.

  “I wish you were right, but I’m afraid it’s going to take months and months to sort this out.”

  “We don’t have months,” Hurley said.

  “We have to come up with answers in a matter of weeks.”

  “There’s no way we can do this in a matter of weeks,” Joanna told him.

  “It’s absolutely, positively impossible.”

  “Then do the impossible,” Hurley said and walked away.

  Joanna turned to Jake.

  “He’s not serious, is he?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jake said.

  “Hurley figures we’ve got a month at the most before it happens.”

  “Before what happens?”

  Jake gestured with his hand to the giant mounds of rubble. “Somebody was playing around with a lot of C-four here last night. And you don’t need that kind of power to blow up a stucco house. With this much C-four, I think it’s safe to say these guys were planning on blowing up something big.”

  “Like what?”

  “That’s what we have to find out,” Jake said.

  “And we’ve got to find out before the bastards actually do it.”

  Joanna looked at him strangely.

  “Weren’t all the terrorists killed in the explosion?”

  “We don’t think so,” Jake said.

  “At about ten-forty last night a man who lives a block and a half away from here was letting his cat out of the house. He saw a car drive by with its lights off. Now this street is poorly lit. You can barely see unless your lights are on. Twenty seconds after the car passed, the bomb went off.”

  “Suspicious,” Joanna said.

  “But not very solid.”

  “There’s more,” Jake went on.

  “At eight o’clock last night a woman who lives directly across the street from the house that exploded saw a car pull up to the curb. A man got out and went into that house. The woman is a nurse and works the graveyard shift at a nearby hospital. When she left her home at ten-thirty, the car was still there.”

  “So?”

  “That car is no longer here,” Jake said.

  “Sometime between ten-thirty and ten-forty p.m. somebody moved it.”

  “Which means some of them are still out there,” Joanna said quietly.

  “Oh, they’re out there all right.” Jake nodded slowly and again glanced around at the devastation and the miniature flags marking the body parts.

  “And what we’re looking at now is just a preview of things to come.”

  Friday, March 12, 12:04 p.m.

  Eva Reineke looked like a tourist. She was wearing faded jeans, a dark sweatshirt and a New York Yankees baseball cap with a fake blond ponytail attached to it. A camera was draped around her neck. She fitted right in with the crowd of tourists behind the crime scene tape at the explosion site. To the rear a food vendor was hawking hot dogs and soft drinks.

  Eva brought her camera up and scanned the area through the viewfinder. Cops and medical examiners were carefully sifting through the rubble. Specially trained dogs were sniffing around in collapsed houses, looking for the bodies of those still unaccounted for. An ambulance waited off to the side just in case someone was found alive.

  Eva moved her camera back to the center of activity, estimating the killing radius of the blast. It had to be at least a hundred feet. And that was with the bombs clustered together. If the men carrying the explosives had been appropriately spaced, the killing radius could have easily been doubled. And that would have been more than enough for the target she had in mind. Too bad her original plan had had to be discarded. But she wasn’t overly concerned. She had a backup plan that was just as good. Maybe even better.

  A fat woman holding a hot dog elbowed her way through the crowd and came up to the tape. She stood next to Eva and stared out at the destruction.

  “Holy shit!” the woman said, chewing away on her hot dog.

  “Look what some son of a bitch did.”

  “Terrible,” Eva said quietly.

  “I hear twenty people were killed.”

  “Terrible,” Eva said again.

  “I’ll bet it was some damn foreigner who did it.” “Probably,” Eva agreed. She had considered planting evidence in the house that would have pointed to some foreign fanatical group, but she hadn’t had the time to think it through. And she hadn’t wanted to make a mistake. Sometimes bogus clues boomeranged, particularly if the group being falsely accused found out about them.

  A search dog began barking loudly.

  The crowd grew silent and watched. The dog frantically tried to paw its way through a mound of brick-covered rubble. Rescue workers rushed in with pickaxes and power saws. Moments later they uncovered the body of a teenage boy wearing a UCLA football jersey.

  “That makes twenty-one,” the fat woman said somberly.

  “I hope they catch the bastards,” a man behind them muttered.

  “Oh, they will,” the woman said.

  “I heard on the radio that they’ve got an eyewitness.”

  Eva stiffened. Quickly she brought the camera up to her eye to cover any change in her expression. She stayed close to the fat woman, not wanting to miss a word.

  News of the eyewitness spread through the crowd and started a buzz of conversations.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Yeah, an eyewitness who saw everything.”

  “How close was he?”

  “I don’t know, but he saw it happen.”

  Eva cleared her throat and moved even closer to the fat woman.

  “Has he given the police any descriptions?”

  “I don’t think so,” the woman reported.

  “He’s in pretty bad shape over at Memorial. But if he survives, the police have got themselves an eyewitness.”

  “Let’s hope he makes it,” Eva said evenly.

  “Damn right.” The woman nodded as she chewed the last of her hot dog.

  “That hot dog looks pretty good. Where’d you get it?” Eva asked.

  The woman pointed to the rear with her thumb.

  “There’s a vendor back there. And tell him to double up on the mustard. It’s really tasty.”

  Eva moved through the crowd, p
ulling the bill of her baseball cap over her brow to cover most of her face. She walked around the vendor, then

  past two vacated police cars. Keeping her head down, she opened her camera and appeared to be checking the film. An eyewitness!

  A damn eyewitness! Who was he and where was he standing and what did he see? A streak of fear went through her, but she pushed it aside and concentrated. The witness couldn’t have been very close and survived. And it was dark and the street was poorly lighted and they had kept the headlights of their car turned off. But apparently he had seen something.

  Eva stopped to close the camera, then bent over to tie her shoe. With her peripheral vision she looked up the street to make certain no one was following her. The sidewalk was clear, but a cop was approaching one of the police cars, his partner right behind him. Eva watched them get into the car, then quickly began retying the laces on her other shoe. Out of the corner of her eye, she continued watching them. The car didn’t move. The cops were just getting out of the sun, she decided.

  Eva strolled away, her pace slow and even, like a person in no rush. Now the street was curving and widening, the crowd and police cars no longer in sight.

  Ahead Eva could see the intersecting boulevard. She came to an alleyway and waited for a truck to back out before hurrying down it. Glancing over her shoulder, she entered the rear of a music store.

  At the rock and roll section she paused to browse through the new CDs. She stayed there a full minute, peeking at the rear door every ten seconds. Again satisfied no one was following her, she left the store via the front door and went to a nearby public phone. She dialed the number of a cellular phone.

  “Yeah?” Rudy answered.

  “We have a problem.”

  “I heard.”

  “Fix it,” Eva said and hung up. Friday, March 12, 8=40 p.m.

  Paul du Maurier has been delayed but will arrive shortly,” the maitre d’ told Joanna.

  “Would you prefer to wait at the bar or at your table?”

  “The table, please,” Joanna said.

  She followed the maitre d’ across the beautifully appointed restaurant.

  Everything was done in white except for the sparkling crystal chandelier, which gave off a pleasantly muted light. The tables were spaced generously, giving the patrons a sense of privacy. Off to the side, waiters stood silently and watched for anything the diners might require.