"You changed the subject," said Hawkes.
"I thought I did it rather skillfully," Custus said with a sigh. "All right. The scars. I don't like to talk about them. War wounds."
"Which war?"
"I'll keep that one to myself," Custus said with a smile.
"Burns," said Hawkes. "From explosions. Different explosions. The scars are from different times. Traces of the explosive material can be found in those scars, and judging from the color and healing rate, there were at least three different explosive materials."
"I've never had good luck," said Custus. "No, take that back. I'm still alive. I'd call that good luck, wouldn't you? I think I'll do my meditation thing now."
He was shutting down, or pretending to shut down.
"Is Detective Bonasera up there?" Hawkes yelled.
"I'll get her," called Devlin.
"I need to send something up to her."
"I don't think we should- " Devlin began.
"It's light, a digital photo clip. A string will be good enough."
Hawkes wiped the rain from his eyes. His legs were beginning to feel numb.
"Hawkes?" Stella called.
"I'm sending you pictures. Get them back to the lab and find someone who can check out the scars on the body of the man down here. His name is Connor Custus."
"You got it," Stella said.
Something moved behind him. Hawkes turned and saw Custus fling something into the darkness. Whatever it was made a splash and was gone.
"Dr. Hawkes," Custus said. "You are disturbing my meditation."
Custus was turned slightly and painfully on his side. Hawkes could see the blood-soaked gauze just above the water level. Hawkes reached into his kit and came up with a small black plastic object about the size of a hand-held flashlight. He flicked it on and placed it against Custus's stomach.
"I swear to you I am not pregnant."
Hawkes didn't answer. He pinpointed the metal detector and slowly ran it across Custus's stomach and side. It let out a beep. Hawkes kept moving it around, getting more beeps till the beeping was almost furious. A flick and the metal detector went quiet.
"I think the bullet may be in or near your gall bladder or liver."
"But I shall survive?" he asked.
"If the bullet doesn't move. So far the flow of blood doesn't indicate a sudden rupture."
"But it could happen," said Custus.
"Yes."
"And you're considering going in there and getting the bullet out of my side."
"Yes," said Hawkes. "It can't stay where it is."
"You've removed bullets from organs in the past?"
"Yes," said Hawkes.
"Many?"
"Many."
What he didn't tell the pale Custus was that almost all the people from whose bodies he had retrieved bullets had been dead.
* * *
The last of the four students who had been in Alvin Havel's class that morning was Cynthia Parrish.
She walked across the floor of the dining hall, her shoes clacking in time to the beating of the rain on the windows. Danny had set the scene so that each student would have to take a long walk to the table. You could learn a lot by the way someone walked. This girl walked with bouncing confidence.
Cynthia Parrish was red haired, freckle faced and cute. Her teeth were white and her grin was simply perfect. She wore no makeup. Her navy blue skirt ended below her knees and her Wallen white sweatshirt was a size too large. She had pushed the sleeves up past her elbows.
Danny knew that Cynthia Parrish, a sophomore, was taking senior level and college credit courses and was easily the smartest student in the school. The file in front of him made that clear.
She sat with hands folded on her lap, waiting.
"Can I look at your hands?" he asked.
"You mean 'May I look at your hands,' right? I don't doubt that you have the ability to look at my hands."
"May I look at your hands?" Danny asked.
"Sure," she said, holding out her palms. "You'll find traces of chemicals, the same chemicals you'll find on the hands of the other students in Mr. Havel's class."
Danny examined her hands, took a scraping of residue from her palms and deposited it in a clear plastic bag.
"Any idea who killed Mr. Havel?" he asked.
"Sure," she said. "But I don't think I'll share it. I'm probably wrong and you asked if I had 'any idea.' 'Any idea' can get someone in trouble."
"You liked Mr. Havel?"
"Everyone liked Mr. Havel," she said. "He worked at being liked. He could have run for Congress and gotten the teen vote if teens could vote."
"But not your vote," Danny said, meeting the girl's eyes.
"Not my vote," she agreed, making a popping sound with her lips.
"Why's that?"
"You want me to speak ill of the dead."
"Just the truth will be fine."
"He made me uncomfortable. Like he was one of those pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You know, big smile and a kind word, but something was missing or lurking."
"Lurking?"
"I have a vivid imagination," she said with a shrug.
"Who was the last person to leave Mr. Havel's class?" asked Danny.
"Me," she said. "But anyone could have turned around and gone back. Want a suggestion?"
"Go ahead," Danny said.
"Check the clothes of everyone in that class for blood," she said.
"You too?"
"Why not?"
"Thanks for the suggestion."
"You're already doing that, aren't you, checking for blood I mean?"
He reached down into his kit on the floor and came up with a flashlight with a blue light. It was dark in the cafeteria, dark enough for the light to work. He turned it on and aimed it at her. Nothing.
"You change your clothes today?"
"No," she said.
"I can ask the other students," said Danny.
"You think they'd remember what I was wearing this morning? You've got the wrong girl."
"Okay, what about the others. Did they change clothes?"
"Don't remember," she said. "I think they're wearing the same things they had on in class, but then again, I haven't really been looking."
"You don't like them, do you? You're the smart kid. The others say things- "
"Detective," she said with a smile. "You've got the wrong school. This isn't inner city anti-nerd. I'm fine with the other kids, have lots of friends. My boyfriend is on the track team and I'm on the cross-country. Our school won the history, math and literature New York private school competition. I was captain, the youngest ever. Every one of the students were behind us. Strange as it may seem to you, I'm a popular girl."
"Every one of the students was behind us," said Danny, adjusting his glasses. "Every one is singular."
Cynthia Parrish smiled.
"Mr. Havel's dead," said Danny.
Cynthia Parrish's smile faded. "I know."
"What do you know?"
"He had trouble remembering his table of elements," she said. "He's been distracted for a while."
"How long?"
"A few months," she said.
"You know why?"
"No," she said. "But something changed. Something happened. He had trouble keeping his mind on the class. Seven times he asked me to take over the class. That was fine with me and the other students. He tried to make it look as if he wanted to give me the chance to teach. But that wasn't it. He just wasn't up to doing it."
"You want to be a teacher?" Danny asked.
"Not anymore," she said.
6
DJ RIGGS STOOD UNDERNEATH the doorway overhang of Rhythm & Soul Music on 125th in Harlem. The streets were clear, except for the few fools trying to make a dash for who-the-hell-knew-where, most of them eventually being pelted to the nearest doorway by the rain.
DJ smiled. The rain from hell was a gift. They would expect him to make a dash for the s
ubway station. DJ was too smart for that.
DJ was twenty-seven, a two-time loser, last time for dealing. Two undercovers had broken into his crib less than fifteen minutes ago. DJ had made it out the window and down to the street and looked back knowing that a third and final stretch upstate was only a hundred yards behind. The undercovers might have been faster than he was and in better shape, but DJ was highly motivated.
He ran until the rain and his failing breath told him running was no longer an option. Rhythm & Soul had been there, not yet opened. Might not even be open later on a day like this.
DJ didn't pray for the rain to continue. If there was a God out there, DJ was definitely not on his good side. He wasn't bad enough for help from the devil either, at least he didn't think so. Ride out the rain. Stay off the street, out of sight. They would give up.
DJ heard a cry and wasn't sure what it was at first. Then he connected the cry with what he saw shuffling along the curb. A toddler, dark skinned, in diapers, crying, arms stretching out for someone who wasn't there. DJ couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl.
He looked around, didn't see anyone. Where had this kid come from? Must have wandered off from his mother in the chaos of rain. The toddler was now about twenty feet in front of him.
Someone would come, DJ was sure. The kid was just getting wet, he wasn't hurt or anything. It was DJ who could be hurt if he tried to help. What good would he do? What could he do without getting caught?
Just wait. The baby toddled along. Then the horror hit DJ. He realized that the toddler had stepped off the curb and been knocked down by the rushing water in the gutter. The child was now being dragged along by the current toward an open drain whose mouth was definitely wide enough to welcome the child.
It was DJ's turn to cry out. He didn't even think, just ran from the doorway, watching the baby inch toward the drain, toward the sewer, toward the rats, the filth, no-doubt-about-it death.
DJ ran, almost crying, until he reached the child, right in front of the open gushing drain. He held tight to the baby's arms in spite of his slipping grip. He pulled the baby to him onto the sidewalk, felt its heart beating against his chest. When he opened his eyes he could see the two undercover cops splashing their way toward him in the middle of the street.
* * *
Leonard Giles, head of the tech lab, drove his wheelchair to the computer and keyed up the photographs Hawkes had taken of Custus. He had already run tests on the bits of wood and remnants of metal and plastic Stella had sent him.
"I think it was a bomb," Stella had said when she called. "More than one bomb."
"Someone wanted to blow up a bar?" Giles said.
"Looks that way," Stella said.
"Al Qaeda gone mad? Seeking unlikely targets to terrorize the nation?"
It wasn't funny and Stella didn't laugh. After a long silence Stella said, "Hawkes may be trapped in a sinkhole with the bomber."
"I'll take care of it," Giles had said soberly.
Now he sat in front of the large computer screen. He typed in instructions and a geometric form appeared, a circle of Os and Cs with six H3Cs around them.
TATP, triacetone triperoxide, the explosive used in the London subway bombings, found in the shoe of Richard Reid, favored by Hamas, was highly unstable. The bomb maker, Giles knew, was almost as likely to blow himself up making it as he was to finish and deliver it. At least two bomb makers in Ireland had been victims of their own TATP bombs and more than forty bomb makers in Gaza and the West Bank had lost their lives to the unstable explosive.
TATP can be made of common household items such as drain cleaner, hydrogen peroxide and acetone.
Giles downloaded and saved the information, then inserted a CD. The information on the CD had been sent as an attachment from London and had been received less than half an hour ago. On the screen appeared a photograph of a man, his shirt off, his hair tousled, his left eye blackened. His chest was a jungle of hair parted by rivulets of scars, some white, some red, some ridged. The man's left hand was missing. Under the photograph of the man was information on the kind of explosive that had caused the scars. Next to the screen showing the CD were photographs Hawkes had taken of Custus. On the screen, the bare-chested Custus now appeared next to the redheaded man with one arm.
Giles moved slowly through the photographs on the CD that had been sent from London. He had no trouble finding a match for the scars, actually several matches. Giles concluded that the man in the pit with Hawkes was a survivor of at least four different kinds of bomb, including nitroglycerin and TATP.
* * *
"Definitely," Lindsay said.
She and Danny were standing in the laboratory with the blood-soaked heads Lindsay had been testing. One head was currently in almost the same position in which they had found Alvin Havel.
Lindsay, dissatisfied with commercial artificial blood, had developed her own formula that she constantly changed as she searched for the perfect texture and color.
Danny examined the blood splatters, looked at the crime scene photographs she had handed him and said, "Right."
"Blow to the neck came when he was standing, head up," she said. "Blow to the eye came when his head was on the desk."
"When he was dead," said Danny.
"Dead at least ten minutes. Sid agrees. No blood splatter from the eye wound. He was already dead."
"And your explanation?"
"One of those kids killed Havel, then waited around before stabbing him in the eye and leaving."
"Why?" he asked.
"We've got one really angry kid here."
"Not necessarily," said Danny.
Lindsay looked at him and waited. He took his mini-tape recorder out of his pocket.
"Wayne O'Shea, the kids call him Brody," said Danny.
"He's the one who found the body."
Danny clicked on the recorder. It whirred to the number Danny had remembered, stopped and began.
Danny: And no one was in the room or outside it when you went in?
O'Shea: No one.
Danny: What did you-?
O'Shea: I saw Alvin. I saw…I'll never forget what I saw.
Danny: And you were in your classroom the entire period?
O'Shea: Yes. I went in to ask Alvin about lunch and we'd heard this noise through the wall. So…
Danny: Do you know if he was having any trouble with any of the students or other teachers or parents?
O'Shea: Everyone liked Alvin. He was smart, a good teacher, maybe a great teacher. He won the Wallen Award, the Dorwenski Award, the Student Favorite Award, all the awards. The students admired him.
Danny: And you?
O'Shea: He was my best friend here. I'll miss him. I'll be haunted by what someone did to him.
Danny: What was the last time you saw him before you found him dead?
O'Shea: He was coming out of the closet.
Danny: He was gay?
O'Shea: No, a real closet, at the back of his laboratory behind the white board. The board slides. He used it as his storeroom.
Danny pushed a button. The tape recorder stopped.
"You looked in the closet," Lindsay said.
"I looked in the closet."
Danny was smiling.
"Okay," Lindsay said. "What did you find?"
"Traces of blood."
* * *
The limping man stood outside the door and listened to the pacing footsteps and the occasional grumbled words inside the apartment. The hallway was dark and smelled of urine and rotting food.
He had entered the building through the lobby door, though it wasn't much of a lobby and it wasn't much of a door. He had stood outside, hooded against the rain, and looked up at the words HECHT ARMS cut into the gray stone over the door.
There were signs that someone at some time had dutifully replaced the broken lock on the lobby door. The wooden doorjamb was cracked, the broken lock loose in a door that just didn't give a damn any longer.
The lob
by was just big enough to stand in and look at the eighteen mailboxes, some of which stood open, some of which were protected by small flimsy padlocks.
Some of the mailboxes bore names printed in black magic marker. Some had names scratched directly into the thin metal. Some bore no name at all.
He didn't need to find a name. He already knew the right apartment. He had been here before, once before. This visit would be very different.
There was an inner lobby door. No lock. He went in and walked down the first-floor hallway, weaving past a pile of newspapers in front of one door, a tricycle with a bent front wheel in front of another. Voices, vague, crying, someone shouting in anger, television sets droning relentlessly on, laughing, applauding.
The limping man paused in front of the door at the dark end of the hallway. He knocked. No answer, though he could hear muttering, pacing beyond the door. He knocked again, louder, much louder. The muttering stopped. The pacing stopped.
"Who is it? What the fuck do you want?" said a voice.
"Adam."
Silence beyond the door.
Then it opened a few inches.
"Adam?"
Timothy Byrold opened the door wider and looked at his visitor. Timothy, shirtless in a baggy pair of dirty white painter's overalls, needed a shave and a strong comb. He was big, taller than the limping man by three inches, heavier by twenty-five pounds. Timothy seemed to sense the man's disapproval and ran a hand through his thick hair. It did nothing except make the dirty hair stand up. He looked like a clown about to put on his makeup. The image did not strike the limping man as funny.
"What are you doing here?" asked Timothy.
"Can I come in?"
"It's not fit out there for man nor beast," said Timothy, stepping back.
The limping man stepped in and shut the door behind him.
The studio apartment looked very much as it had the other time he had been here, cot in a corner with the sheet untucked, a single sweat-stained pillow, a rough khaki blanket in a tangle, a sagging sofa that had once been orange but was now a sooty burnt bark color, a small wooden table with two chairs, a battered chest of drawers with a small color television on top of it. A refrigerator sat near the only window.
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