And then there was only darkness.
CHAPTER
3
WASHINGTON, DC
Private detective?” the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department detective whose ID read “Rogers” asked Brixton, handing him back his wallet in the makeshift trauma center that had been set up on the Metro platform closest to where the damaged train had ultimately come to a rest.
Fortunately, the station in question was only a few hundred yards from that point, easing the chore of getting the injured treated and of safely evacuating the train’s passengers on the backmost three cars, which had been separated by the blast set off by the suicide bomber. The entire Metro system had been shut down as a precaution; DC authorities were very wary that this attack might have been part of a more coordinated, orchestrated effort. Brixton imagined both city and transit officers checking anyone wearing the kind of bulky clothing that might conceal a suicide vest of the type the young woman had triggered when she slipped between the train cars.
Brixton was sitting upon a treatment table set off by itself amid the triage arrangement, which left him as a lower priority, after an initial examination had revealed no more than a possible concussion. He wasn’t sure how Detective Rogers had learned of the role he’d played, and Brixton chose not to consider the result if his suspicions had not resulted in his chasing the bomber from the Metro car. Only the fact that she’d triggered her suicide vest between the two cars had kept casualties to a bare minimum, in stark contrast to the attack that had claimed his daughter’s life five years before.
“You said you’re a private detective,” Rogers repeated.
Brixton’s decision to open his own private investigation agency in Washington, DC, hadn’t been an easy one, given that nothing good ever seemed to have happened to him in the nation’s capital. Born in Brooklyn, he’d begun his career in law enforcement in the city, spending four years as a uniformed officer. He’d also met and married his now ex-wife there. The marriage had proven no more successful than his stint as a Washington cop. But it had yielded two wonderful daughters Brixton deeply loved, one of whom was gone.
“Presently,” Brixton affirmed. “I used to work as an adjunct for the State Department.”
“Adjunct?”
Brixton nodded. “I was attached to a private security arm that served State’s interests, mostly keeping their diplomats safe in overseas deployments.”
“Diplomats,” Rogers repeated, leaving it there and jotting down something on a memo pad he was holding.
Brixton didn’t bother elaborating further on the more clandestine nature of SITQUAL’s job description, waiting for the detective to continue instead. He tried to study Rogers closer, but his mind wouldn’t focus, to the point that Brixton had to continue looking at the man to remind himself what he looked like. He noticed a tablet of some kind, likely an iPad, protruding from one of the side pockets of Rogers’s rumpled sports jacket.
“You mentioned there was something about the woman that made you suspicious, Mr. Brixton.”
“What I didn’t mention was that this wasn’t my first experience with suicide bombers.”
“Did the others come while you were deployed overseas?”
Brixton shook his head. “Just a few miles from here, actually. Five years ago.”
Recognition flashed in Rogers’s expression. “I thought your name sounded familiar.”
Brixton looked about the platform, amazed by the rapid response a combination of Washington and federal officials had managed. He knew there were teams from nearby hospitals who acted as a kind of medical SWAT team, prepared to deploy at a moment’s notice in an emergency. He imagined that all the equipment in view now—from the portable exam tables to the various medical instruments and supplies—had been prepped and ready, stored on mobile transport units in anticipation, even expectation, of a moment like this.
Fortunately, none of the injuries he witnessed being treated extended beyond bumps, bruises, and wounds that required minimal stitching. By now, anyone more seriously injured would have been transported to local emergency rooms turned trauma centers. Brixton found himself wondering what this scene would have looked like had the bomber detonated her suicide vest inside the car instead of outside it. The mere thought made him shudder.
“We’ll be able to pull shots of the bomber off the security footage,” Rogers said, as if reading his mind. “My guess is we’ll have a name by dinnertime. She’s likely to be in the system somewhere. Anyway, I understand now.”
“Understand what?”
“What triggered your suspicions,” Rogers told him. “Strange, isn’t it, how your being on that particular Metro car at that particular time may have saved dozens of lives?”
“I don’t know if I’d call it strange. Fated maybe, but not strange.”
“Life does have a way of evening things out.”
“Sometimes. Not often enough, in my experience, Detective.”
“So you acted on impulse.”
“More like instinct,” Brixton corrected. “I spent twenty years as a cop before I got into the security racket.”
“And now you’re a cop again, only with your own shingle. Does your work still involve security?”
“Sometimes. I have an office with a DC law firm,” Brixton explained, thinking of his best friend, Mackensie Smith. “And I draw much of my business from their caseload. Not exciting, but it pays the bills.”
“And gives you license to carry a gun in the city.”
“Good thing, as far as this morning goes.”
“Still a pretty rare commodity these days.”
Something in Rogers’s tone irked Brixton more than the substance of his words. “Are you suggesting something, Detective?”
“You don’t fancy yourself a hunter, do you, Mr. Brixton?”
“Hunter?”
“Staking out public places to relive the worst moment of your life in the hope of a better ending.”
“Was that a question?”
“Do you have an answer?”
“I was on my way to my office, Detective. The only thing I was hunting was work.”
“So you had a feeling, like a premonition. Tell me, Mr. Brixton, what would you have done if the bomber hadn’t been sufficiently spooked to change cars?”
It was a question Brixton had avoided asking himself. “I don’t know.”
“Would you have shot her? Made a citizen’s arrest?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you don’t work for the government anymore.”
“No.”
“Or anyone private along a similar track.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Were you following the bomber? Did you have reason to suspect something you were following up on behalf of a party or parties unknown?”
“I had reason to believe she was a suicide bomber. I already explained that.”
“Who was she working for?”
“ISIS, al-Qaeda … Take your pick.”
“I’d rather take yours, Mr. Brixton. Was she attached to a cell? Might that cell still be active in the city? Are there more attacks coming?”
“Whoa, slow down, Detective,” Brixton said, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his voice.
“Then answer my questions.”
“The answer to all of them is a definitive ‘I don’t know.’ I just happened to be there.”
“Right place, right time?”
Brixton turned his gaze again on the relatively minor injuries being treated in the makeshift trauma center. “I’d say so. Wouldn’t you?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“The truth.”
“Which I’ve been telling you.”
“That fate or coincidence put you on that Metro car five years after another suicide bomber killed your daughter.”
“I once read that coincidence is another word for God.”
“So you’re God now, Mr. B
rixton?”
“No, but maybe he’s the one who made sure I was on that train this morning.”
Rogers’s expression remained flat, empty. “Do you have any reason to suspect the young woman may have had an accomplice?”
“No.”
“You didn’t see her engage with anyone else, either before or after she boarded the train.”
“She didn’t speak to anyone on the train. I don’t know about before because I wasn’t there. She was already on the train when I boarded.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I’m sure she was already seated.”
“Maybe she got on the train before you. Maybe you followed her on.”
“Why don’t you check the footage from the security cameras? That will confirm what I’m telling you, that she didn’t board the train at the same station I did.”
Rogers nodded, not looking at all convinced by Brixton’s assertions. “What do you suppose the odds are of the same guy being on the scene of two separate suicide bombings that fit virtually the same M.O.?”
“Pretty high, I imagine. But this one was plenty different from the first.”
Rogers flipped his memo pad closed. “How’s that, Mr. Brixton?”
“My daughter didn’t die this morning, Detective.”
CHAPTER
4
WASHINGTON, DC
Shortly after Detective Rogers had finally taken his leave, Brixton was escorted up to street level to be transported to Georgetown University Medical Center to be fully checked out. He boarded the back of an ambulance, joining two other passengers he vaguely recognized from the crowded Metro car, who’d also suffered potential concussions. The street had been shut down to allow the area outside the Metro station to become a way station for emergency vehicles and first responders. There weren’t many bystanders or onlookers about; the city was likely undergoing a soft evacuation, given the possibility that the Metro attack presaged a wider, 9/11-like wave of them. So far there had been no further reports, and by the time the ambulance in which Brixton was riding reached the medical center’s emergency room, the potential code red had been dimmed to yellow.
Upon arriving at the already chaotic emergency room, Brixton insisted on going to the back of the line to be checked out. Others were clearly in more need, as much for reassurance as for treatment. The injured knew to a man and woman that no matter how shaken they were, they had come very close to being part of an unspeakable tragedy. While they might not have been aware of the specific physics of what the typical deadly contents of a suicide bomb could have done in an enclosed environment like a Metro car, as Brixton was, they certainly understood that the vast majority of them would be nursing far more than minor injuries if the bomb had gone off inside it.
He looked about the jam-packed area where his fellow passengers had been brought and, for the first time really, considered his own actions. What would have happened if his suspicions hadn’t provoked the bomber to flee the car? What if he had ignored his instincts and had not studied her in a way that had clearly unnerved her? In that sense, the death of his own daughter may well have saved dozens of lives, at long last lending a measure of sense to that tragedy. He had told Detective Rogers that he’d once read that coincidence was another word for God. But there was another quote Brixton found even more oddly appropriate to explain his presence on that Metro train this morning, from John Lennon no less: “There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.”
And fate had placed him in that Metro car, just as it had placed him in that restaurant with his daughter five years ago. He’d been plagued so much over that period by the question of why Janet had died while he had lived. Perhaps, at long last, this morning had provided the answer.
He continued rotating his gaze about, occasionally encountering a grateful look from someone who recognized him and clearly understood that his actions were what had forced the suicide bomber from the car. He took no special pleasure in being proclaimed a hero, especially since he’d felt like the polar opposite of that after he’d failed to save Janet.
The sound of the automatic doors sliding open turned his gaze in that direction, and he spotted Mackensie Smith barreling in. He hesitated only long enough to spot Brixton before resuming his charge.
“Oh my God, Robert, oh my God…”
Brixton rose to greet him and Mac swallowed him in a hug, his trembling making Brixton quiver himself.
“Thank God you called. If you hadn’t, when you didn’t show up at the office, I might have…”
Mac let his remark trail off. No reason to complete the thought, since the rest was understood.
“Thanks for coming down, Mac,” Brixton said, squeezing the older man’s shoulders.
He’d lived with Mackensie Smith and his wife, Annabel, in their apartment after the media circus had camped outside of his, in the wake of his gunning down of a sitting congressman’s son, whom he was certain was complicit in the terrorist bombing five years ago. And it had been Mac who had invited him to set up shop in one of his law firm’s offices to both take much of the firm’s investigative work while also having a base to find his own. In that moment, Brixton remembered he’d been on that particular train this morning specifically because Mac had asked to see him earlier than he normally came in—something else, in other words, he had to thank his friend for.
A couple who’d occupied the next two chairs over got up to leave, freeing space for Mac when Brixton sat back down. Mac clutched his forearm and showed no signs of letting go.
“I thought you’d be answering questions from the police by now,” he said.
“They questioned me at the scene.” Brixton laid his free hand atop the one with which Mac was clutching his forearm. “Don’t think I’m going to need your guest room this time.”
“Offer’s always open, Robert. You know that.”
Brixton finally slid his arm out from Mac’s grasp. “What’s wrong, Mac?”
“Are you really asking me that? First, news of the vice president’s tragic death, and now this?”
At that, Smith moved his gaze to one of the emergency room’s wall-mounted flat-screen televisions, now featuring a split screen of the bombing’s aftermath and the tragic news about Vice President Stephanie Davenport, who had died of a heart attack the previous night.
“There’s something else,” Brixton said.
“That’s not enough?”
“What did you want to see me about this morning?”
Smith hedged. “What’s the difference? It can wait.”
“New case?”
“I said it can wait.”
Smith seemed suddenly reluctant to meet Brixton’s gaze. “That’s what I thought.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Then why are you lying?”
“About what?”
“The fact that it’s about nothing. Whenever people say that, it’s almost always quite the opposite.”
His best friend very much seemed like he desperately wanted to be somewhere else. “How many lives did you save this morning, Robert?”
“I wasn’t counting.”
“Could have been as many as fifty, if that bomb had gone off inside the car.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
Smith nodded. “Anything to take my mind off the vice president. I knew her, you know. Quite well in fact. Did you ever have the pleasure?”
“You’re changing the subject again, Mac.”
“I thought you could use the distraction.”
“What did you want to see me about this morning?”
“It can wait, Robert.”
“You said that already.”
“And it’s still true.” Smith fidgeted, shifting in search of a more comfortable position. “You call Flo?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“We’re no longer together.”
“Something I’ve never quite understood.”
“We
grew apart, Mac. What can I say?”
“More than you have already, for starters,” Smith scoffed. “You don’t think she’s worried out of her mind, regardless?”
“She’d have no way to know I was on that train, unless my name’s already gotten out. Please tell me it hasn’t, Mac.”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Because I don’t want that kind of attention again.”
“Flo called Annabel, you know.”
“No, I didn’t,” Brixton said. “When?”
“Last week, the week before maybe. She was worried about you.”
“I’m sure Annabel reassured her.”
“As much as she could.”
“What’s that mean?”
“We’ve been worried about you, too, Robert.”
“Is that what you wanted to see me about this morning, Mac?”
Mackensie Smith’s expression changed, his thoughts veering. “You were carrying on the train, I assume.”
Brixton tapped his holstered SIG Sauer, giving his friend a pass on not answering his question. “Sure.”
“Did you think about shooting the bomber?”
“I followed her up the aisle when my presence made her uncomfortable. I couldn’t see her hands, Mac. Figured she might be holding the trigger cord, and I was afraid if I shot her she would have yanked it, even involuntarily, inside the car.”
“Makes sense. You’ll come out of this one just fine,” Smith assured him.
“I already have—relatively, anyway.”
“Mr. Brixton. Mr. Robert Brixton. Please come to the reception desk,” a voice blared over the emergency room’s PA system.
Brixton stood back up, feeling a bit woozy on his feet.
“Easy there,” Mackensie Smith said, rising to support him.
“Must be my turn.”
Smith accompanied him over to the reception desk, which was nearly blocked by people milling about, waiting to ask about loved ones. Before Brixton could make his way to the front, a pair of men with DC Metro police badges dangling from their necks slid before him.
“Who said you could leave the scene, Mr. Brixton?” asked a detective who looked vaguely familiar to him.
Murder on the Metro Page 3
