by Rachel Lee
“Have you been inside the building?” she asked Charity.
“Sure. Fortunately, the blast didn’t escape the shop rooms in there. Stopped dead at the corridor wall.”
“More cinder block?”
“I believe so. I’m sure we have all that info back at the department. The paint is blackened but I was mostly looking at the containment. You can probably tell a lot more. Let’s walk around to the door, though. I don’t want to disturb the ground out here any more than necessary.”
“Agreed,” Darcy answered, surprised at how glad she was to have Charity as a teammate in this. Someone to show her around, someone who could answer questions because she knew the area and the people. Alex could do as much and in some instances more, if he was willing. She wished she knew what had happened to him in the BSU. She had no difficulty imagining the ugly minutiae he must have dealt with in that job, but something had pushed him to a breaking point. One that had cost him a whole lot.
She walked with Charity, ignoring the twenty-five or thirty people who’d gathered, nodding briefly at Jackson Castor, who still held the bag of cooling coffees that hadn’t been claimed by the workmen.
“Have a coffee, Jack,” she said. “No point letting it all cool down.”
He grinned and nodded.
And if she were him, she’d probably have wandered away in boredom by now. He was what, seventeen or eighteen? Most people that age wouldn’t want to stand around being bored, because sure as heck nothing exciting was happening right now.
Which caused a quiet ping on her internal radar.
Just as they rounded a corner of the building to face large steel doors with small windows, one of the doors opened and the Viking appeared. Well, it was Alex, but he still reminded her of a beardless Viking, one that reminded her she was still very much a woman. She wondered if that reaction would wear off. She hoped so because she’d spent a lot of effort developing a cool, professional persona in a career field dominated by men. Now that she was leading an investigation, it would be a bad time to mess that up by giving in to a sexual attraction.
Alex greeted her with a nod and a pleasant smile, and eyes that slipped over her body like a caress. “All set. You can use the gymnasium as long as we spread some of those tarps on the floor. I can get some help doing that for you. Gotta protect that finish, you know.”
Darcy smiled. “I get it. That gloss on a basketball floor is expensive and essential.”
“Oh, yeah.” His smile widened a shade. “Going to look around inside?”
“Charity’s showing me.”
“I’ll come along. I promise not to touch.”
He said it humorously. She was quite sure he knew all about preserving evidence. Still, he was offering friendliness. He was also sending signals that he didn’t want to be left out of this. Good. She didn’t need him to take over, but she was sure his brain might be worth picking. A complete 180 from her initial reaction. She just hoped it wasn’t hormone-driven.
The shop rooms were at the back of the school, in what appeared to be a separate wing. As they turned into the corridor leading to them, she stopped. From this vantage point, it appeared that farther down, near some doors on the right, the wall had bulged outward.
“What?” Alex asked.
She pointed. “Look down the right wall. What do you see?”
Alex drew a breath. Charity muttered something. “It’s bulging,” Alex said. “Good God. What kind of force would be needed to do that?”
“I need to do some calculations,” Darcy answered. Her gaze swept down along the wall, then to the ceiling overhead. A drop ceiling, it should have showed some sign if it had been affected, but it appeared to be perfectly all right. She’d need some measurements to be sure, but her eyes were telling her it was still square.
Then she looked at the bulge again. “The bomb was fairly low. Right now I’d guess it was outside of the building when it detonated. Look what it did to the exterior wall. If it had been inside I think we’d see more than some bowing on that wall.”
Alex nodded. “I think you’re right.”
“I still need to see inside the rooms. I’m just guessing.” But a picture was beginning to build, and it didn’t include access to the school when it was locked up overnight. Another piece to the puzzle perhaps.
They continued down the corridor and Alex pulled out a key ring. “This seems ridiculous now,” he said as he slipped a key into the lock on the nearest door. It turned easily. “Well, I didn’t expect that,” he remarked. “I thought it would be busted.”
It turned out, however, that the door was out of line and didn’t want to open easily. “I imagine,” he said, “that you don’t want to take an ax to this.”
“I’d rather see the original damage. Then I want to measure that bulge and how far it is from the bomb opening.” She glanced at Charity. “Can I get a surveyor out here?”
“I’m sure you can get anything you want.”
Alex spoke. “I know just the guy. He’ll be able to tell how deformed the wall is.” He leaned into the door while holding the latch open and pushed. It moved just a little. “Okay...” He gave another shove, harder, a grunt escaping him this time, but the door opened four inches.
“We’re on our way,” Charity remarked. “Should I get a pry bar from the truck?”
“Let me give it one more try. It feels like something is behind it.”
He leaned backward into the door, this time using his entire body for leverage, and slowly, scraping every inch of the way, it opened wide enough that Darcy could slip inside.
There the story was very different. Not only were shop machines and tables twisted and tossed everywhere, but the ceiling had also burned and collapsed, leaving exposed wires dangling. “Circuit breakers off?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Alex said, easing his way in beside her.
“Surprise,” Darcy muttered. “It looks like a bomb went off.”
“No kidding,” he answered. “Do you know what I’m seeing?”
She turned her head toward him, curious. “What?”
“A lot of opportunity smashed. A lot of really good projects my students were working on, destroyed. We might be able to get this shop up and running by next fall, but there are a lot of seniors who had some really fine stuff underway here, and it’s gone. Son of a...” He stopped himself, but while his face remained emotionless, she could feel anger seething in him. Then he looked at her. “They don’t get their dreams back. Their excitement over all they were achieving.”
“No.” Her answer might have been flat, but she felt her heart squeeze. He’d hit on the part she tried to avoid thinking about. “Collateral damage.” There was always collateral damage.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Collateral. Such a cold word.”
No point standing here and grieving. Tucking her hands into one of the many pockets on her overalls, she passed him some disposable booties, then donned a pair over her work boots. “Less contamination,” she remarked out of habit. God, was she becoming one of those people who persisted in telling others what they probably already knew? But Alex didn’t take it amiss.
“I’ll stay out here,” Charity said. “God knows what’s on my boots and you don’t have any of those that’ll go over these things.”
It was true. Darcy tossed her a smile, pulled a couple of high-intensity penlights out of another of her pockets and began to scan what she could see without moving from top to bottom. Alex took the other flashlight and followed suit. “Anything unusual?” he asked.
“Anything. Just point it out to me if it catches your eye.”
“Got it.”
“Charity? I don’t smell the fuel oil in here. It’s all outside. It wouldn’t dissipate in here, not as fast, so...”
“I read you. Excessive fuel oil was used, so there ought to be some scent in here
. Definitely seems like the explosion was just outside.”
Darcy nodded. “I suspect that what we’ll find in here will mainly be blast debris, not much from the device itself. But we still have to look.”
And what a job it was going to be, she thought as she looked around. She’d seen plenty of scenes like this; she had no illusion about the painstaking work facing her. No illusion, either, about the fact that she’d get on-site help only if some were freed up elsewhere. Conard City, Wyoming, was kind of off the map and radar with so many other important things happening. Unless she found some kind of indicator signifying militants or terrorists in the area, she was pretty much on her own. A vanguard without follow-up.
“Damn,” Alex said emphatically.
“What?” Darcy immediately followed the beam of his flashlight. He wiggled it over some blackened heap that seemed to have at least one thick leg attached.
“Chuck Ingram was working on that. A butcher-block island for his mother. She’d wanted one for years, but they were out of reach, so he saved up money for the last two years from his part-time job to buy the best, hardest wood. Glued the wood together, braced it, tooled the legs... He was going to give it to his mom for Mother’s Day. He was almost done.”
Darcy stared at what was now a charred lump and felt a growing flame of anger deep inside. This was about a lot more than a bomb, how it was built and who built it. This was about lives, hopes, dreams. “Hell.” She usually avoided swearing, but that word seemed mild right now.
“There are other projects like that in here,” Alex said grimly. “We gotta get this guy. That’s the only way I can help these kids now.”
With that, he passed back the flashlight and eased out of the room. Darcy saw Charity watching him as he left the building.
Then Charity leaned her head through the door. “It’s probably too late to clean up this mess,” she said. “I mean, we could get more wood for Chuck, but we can’t give him back the hours he spent on that. Even if we could arrange for him to work in the shop at the college.”
“No.” Darcy scanned the room some more. “Okay, I’m going to need to take a lot of photos before I even start looking around. Then the tarps.”
“My guys can help you on the roof, when you’re ready to check it.”
“Thanks. I’m definitely going to need some help with this.”
She eased back out of the room and pulled off her booties, folding them inside out in case they’d picked up something that might prove useful.
“I’m surprised you’re alone,” Charity said.
“I wouldn’t ordinarily be. Bad time. The bureau is overtaxed right now. Hopefully that’ll change soon. Either that, or I find a lead to the bomber. Meantime, preserve the evidence.” The endless mantra. Preserve the evidence.
And try not to think too hard about all the students who’d just had their work blown up by some jackass.
Chapter 3
Two days later, all the debris that had been bagged and tagged had been moved into the gymnasium, laid out in a duplicate of the grid outside, preserving positions. Off-duty firefighters and cops had volunteered to comb the ground outside, many of them on their hands and knees, gently raking over soil that had been trampled. A tarp covered the hole in the building. Surprisingly little had been found on the steel roof, arguing that the bomb had indeed been placed low.
With Alex’s help, Darcy had taken measurements of everything: the size of the hole in the building, the blast radius, the area of damage in the shop. A surveyor had accurately measured the bulge in the interior cinder block wall.
Diagrams had begun to sprout on her computer—vectors of force running outward until she was fairly certain she’d localized the center of the explosion. All of this she’d sent back to the field office for analysis along with carefully preserved samples of the ground, the burned wood, the soot. Soon they’d be able to tell her more about the bomb’s force and content.
But the smell of fuel oil outside still bothered her. A couple of evenings later, Alex asked her to join him at the diner for supper and she agreed, even though she knew she should feel wary of the attraction she felt for him. Boy, it was getting bad, so bad that she couldn’t even think of him without tingling in her most feminine places. She couldn’t remember the last time any man had made her feel that way just by virtue of existing.
She desperately turned her thoughts back to business and ordered her body to shut up.
Maybe she’d get the opportunity to talk to him in a more speculative way than she could allow at the scene. There she had to be the ultimate science expert, relying on proof, on actual evidence. That would be Alex’s trained inclination as well, which is why she trusted him not to misunderstand if she discussed her thoughts tentatively. Brainstorming was something you could do with a colleague.
But Alex’s thoughts were headed in a different direction, so she let him lead the conversation. Her opening would come and maybe she’d stop trying to imagine that spark she saw in his blue eyes reciprocated her growing desires.
“So how’d you get into the ATF?” he asked as they ate a delicious beef stew accompanied by fresh crusty bread.
“Probably the same way you got into the FBI,” she said humorously. “A recruiter came to my college.”
He laughed. “Uh, yeah. Same here. Except they didn’t want to snap me up right away. I had a double major in criminology and psychology. They suggested that there’d be a job waiting for me if I did well in civilian police work.”
“I guess you did.”
“So it would seem. Three years into my work with Miami PD, they came knocking again. I thought they’d forgotten me.”
She shook her head. “Now you know they never forget.”
He laughed again. “You?”
“I majored in chemistry and physics, and the way they explained the work intrigued me, made me feel I could do some actual good. They snapped me up just before I graduated and sent me for intensive training. They wanted a scientist more than a law enforcement officer. I’ve been working with explosives ever since.”
He slipped his fork back into his bowl. “Do you ever wonder how they settled on you to begin with? I wasn’t the only double major in criminology and psychology.”
“And I wasn’t the only one majoring in chemistry and physics. I don’t know about you, but I poked my head up. They had an interviewer on campus and I was just curious, so I went. I walked into their field of attention. But you didn’t?”
He shook his head. “I still don’t know why I was approached, and I doubt anyone could even tell me now. It was a while ago. Then, like you, I went through a whole lot of training and testing and wound up in the BSU.”
“Not a good thing, I gather?”
He shook his head a little. “You know, it’s ugly. That kind of work is always ugly. But for a long time I was able to live with it because we were helping take some horrible people off the streets. It seemed like a fair trade-off. I was proud every time we could provide information that helped narrow the search and bring a creep to justice. For a while that was enough.”
She hesitated, eating a bit more stew before taking a dangerous step. “Then it wasn’t.”
He pressed his lips together before speaking again. “No. It wasn’t.” He forgot all about his meal and stared into space, seeming to be lost in memory. Then he shook his head. “You hear of the bicycle killer case?”
Oh, she had. She drew a sharp breath. Even the bits she’d heard had been sickening. Little girls, a murderous serial pedophile, torture. “Alex, I’m sorry.”
“Anyway, that was my last case. I had a daughter that age.”
He didn’t need to say more. He probably saw his own child in every victim profile that crossed his desk, in every bit of suffering and torture. She didn’t even want to try to imagine it. She was sure he’d learned to keep a certain level of d
etachment, just as she had, but having a daughter the same age as the victims? Her own detachment would have shattered in the face of that, too.
He probably carried scars and nightmares that would never go away.
“Your daughter?” she asked presently.
“She lives with her mother. I tipped off the rails for a while. Anger, not sleeping, nightmares... I wasn’t good for either of them. Hell, I wasn’t good for myself. But I don’t want to get into that.”
“Of course not.” But she couldn’t quash the ache in her heart for him. God, she hoped none of her jobs ever brought her to that precipice. She lowered her head, giving him privacy, appreciating the honesty he’d just shared with her. He needn’t have been so frank with her, a woman who was nearly a complete stranger. What did they have in common, after all, except a background as federal employees?
Eating halted conversation for a while and then Alex spoke again. “You probably don’t want me in the middle of things, since I’m so protective of my students.”
She hesitated again, putting down her fork and dabbing her mouth with a paper napkin. “Depends on how you want to help.”
He raised his head a bit from his intense study of the bowl in front of him and smiled faintly. “I know next to nothing about your technical end of it. I couldn’t intervene or interfere in any way. But I know quite a bit about human psychology.”
She didn’t doubt it. Aberrant psychology mostly, but still useful. “Well...I was disturbed by something. I wanted to mention it to you, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“When I arrived, the smell of fuel oil was still evident. The smell, as you must know, comes from the volatiles in the fuel—benzenes and xylenes for the most part. The fact that the odor was still apparent outdoors two days after the bombing means an awful lot of fuel soaked into the ground, rather than burning, and too much to evaporate quickly. Today the smell was gone, but I wouldn’t have expected it to be there as long as it was.”
