Irish Car Bomb

by Steven Henry

  Also by the Author

  The Erin O’Reilly Mysteries

  Black Velvet

  Irish Car Bomb

  White Russian (coming soon)

  The Clarion Chronicles

  Ember of Dreams

  Irish Car Bomb

  The Erin O’Reilly Mysteries

  Book Two

  Steven Henry

  Clickworks Press • Baltimore, MD

  Copyright © 2018 Steven Henry

  Cover design © 2018 Ingrid Henry

  Cover photo used under license from Shutterstock.com (Credit: wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock)

  NYPD shield photo used under license from Shutterstock.com (Credit: Stephen Mulcahey/Shutterstock)

  Author photo © 2017 Shelley Paulson Photography

  Spine image used under license from istockphoto.com (Credit: Blixtphoto/iStockPhoto)

  All rights reserved

  First publication: Clickworks Press, 2018

  Release: CP-EOR2-INT-E.M-0.1

  Sign up for updates, deals, and exclusive sneak peeks at clickworkspress.com/join.

  ISBN-10: 1-943383-37-5

  ISBN-13: 978-1-943383-37-5

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and events are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  For the dedicated members of Precinct 8: The diehards, Ingrid, David, and Justin, who went the distance, beginning to end; and those who joined us for part of the journey: Hilary, Bridget, Mark, and Ben. This story exists because of all of you.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Sneak Peek at Book 3

  Ready for more?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Steven Henry

  More great titles from Clickworks Press

  Irish Car Bomb

  Pour 1 pint of Irish Stout into a pub glass. Float ½ shot of Irish whiskey on top of ½ shot of Irish Cream in a shot glass. Drop the shot glass into the stout. Serve straight up, without ice. Drink quickly.

  Warning: This drink name is considered offensive in many places, especially in Ireland. It is a reference to the infamous car-bombings which were common during the Troubles. Ordering it in an Irish pub can be tactless at best.

  Chapter 1

  Erin O’Reilly sighed. She had a shield on her belt and a Glock automatic on her hip, but after eleven years of working Patrol, she wasn’t used to going to work without the uniform. It wasn’t until this moment, her first day on her new job, that she’d realized all the little rituals she’d gotten used to performing at the start of a shift. She’d always adjusted her hat to just the right angle, and made sure the shield on her chest was perfectly aligned. The uniform centered her, made her feel like part of a team. Now she was bareheaded, her hair in a ponytail, wearing a modest, professional blouse, black slacks, and sensible boots, the soles cheating an extra two inches onto her five-foot-six frame. Even the shield she carried was different. Cops talked about getting their gold shield, the mark of a detective, but now that she had it, she wasn’t even sure she felt like a cop anymore.

  “I don’t know about this, Rolf,” she said to her partner.

  Rolf wagged his tail. He wasn’t worried, but then, he never had to think about what to wear. The German Shepherd was always ready to go.

  Erin shook her head and let herself out. Though she’d gotten up early for her usual morning run with Rolf, she didn’t have time to hang around mooning. She hadn’t been able to find a place in Manhattan, so she was still living in her old studio apartment in Queens. That meant a daily commute into the big city. Just another thing to get used to.

  She walked briskly to the nearest Number Seven Line subway station, Rolf trotting at her side. She carried a fold-together file box with some supplies she thought she might need. It was a straight shot in to Grand Central Station, then an easy walk to Precinct 8.

  The subway ride gave her plenty of time to worry about other things than her wardrobe. She was a newly-minted detective, going to work in an unfamiliar precinct with a bunch of cops she’d never met. She had no idea what to expect. At least Captain Holliday had seemed friendly enough and her dad, a retired cop, had only positive things to say about him.

  “He’s good police,” Sean O’Reilly had said when she’d told him about her transfer to Holliday’s new Major Crimes unit. “Totally honest, a real straight shooter. He came up the right way, from Patrol through Homicide. Just do your job, do it well, and you’ll be fine. If you’re one of his, he’ll have your back.”

  “He can’t be worse than Spinelli,” Erin said to Rolf, remembering the Queens Homicide detective she’d made an enemy for life by taking the credit for his biggest case.

  Rolf cocked his head at her. He didn’t understand much human speech, but that didn’t stop him from trying.

  “We’re gonna be fine, boy,” she said, scratching him behind the ears. But she didn’t even sound convincing to herself. It was normal to partner a new transfer with one of the old hands in a department, so the new girl could learn the ropes. But Erin didn’t want any partner but Rolf. She’d had some friction with police guys before, especially the ones who assumed having a female partner meant extracurricular favors.

  The train finally pulled into Grand Central. Erin was familiar with the station. Her parents had taken her into Manhattan dozens of times while she was growing up. But somehow, even when she’d been a little girl, it had never looked quite so big. She reminded herself that first-day jitters were the most common thing in the world and that she was a veteran cop, not a rookie.

  Her shift started at eight. She glanced at her watch as she came up on the precinct. She had almost fifteen minutes to spare, having given herself a cushion for the first day. The building didn’t look like much, five stories of beat-up brick built over a basement garage. It was overdue for a renovation, but that was typical of every police station she’d ever been in.

  Erin swallowed, took a deep breath, and climbed the stairs.

  *

  The duty sergeant at the front desk raised an eyebrow. “Help you, ma’am?”

  “I’m looking for Major Crimes,” she said.

  “And you are?”

  “O’Reilly, transfer from Queens 116.”

  “Okay, sign in,” the sergeant said. “Shield?”

  She flashed her ID and signed the spiral pad.

  “Welcome to the Old Eightball, O’Reilly. You want the second floor.” He angled a thumb. “Stairs and elevator.”

  Riding the elevator to the second floor would be ridiculous. Erin took the stairs.

  She and Rolf emerged into a wide-open space. The second floor of the precinct had structural columns dotted throughout. The only walls were around the captain’s office, the break room, and the bathroom. She saw a handful of desks with outdated, boxy computer monitors, a whiteboard, a copy machine, a fax, and a meeting table. The table and desks were scarred and scratched. No one was in sight.

  “I guess they don’t get here early,” Erin said. She glanced into the break room. There was a coffee machine, which was good, and a pot of coffee already made up, which was even better, but the couch and coffee table were just about the most dis
reputable pieces of furniture she’d ever seen.

  Her police instincts nagged at her. If a pot of coffee was brewed up, then someone had beaten her here. Where was he, or she?

  Even as she thought it, she heard the sound of a faucet from the direction of the bathroom. She turned in time to see Captain Holliday come through the door, drying his hands.

  “O’Reilly,” he said. “Morning. Glad you’re here.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, stiffening her spine. “Am I early?”

  He smiled through his mustache. “Far from it, Detective. I’m sorry about this, but it looks like you’re going to have one of those first days.”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “You’ll have to learn on the job,” he said. “The call from Dispatch beat you here by a quarter of an hour. When the call comes in, the cavalry rides out. You’ll need to meet your unit on site.”

  “We’ve got a case?” she asked. Her heart was suddenly pounding, her jitters forgotten with the rush of excitement that always came when she went into action.

  “Apparently a man got blown up on his way to work this morning,” the captain said dryly.

  “Blown up, sir?”

  “Car bomb,” Holliday said. “Don’t ask me, I wasn’t there. You’d best get moving. Call Dispatch. They’ll tell you where to go. When you get to the scene, ask for Lieutenant Webb.”

  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 she 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, Doctor 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 partnered 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, who’d wandered over.

  “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, he can do explosives detection,” 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 cu
tter, 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, but 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.