by Tyler Dilts
Joe said, “Yes.”
Patrick tapped the point of his pen on the pad. “This is weird. There’s this sales record from BevMo? You didn’t buy the bottle of Glenlivet until Thursday morning.”
He looked at Joe.
For just a moment, I thought Joe might not crack, but then he blinked three times in rapid succession and looked down at the table. Patrick had him. I turned to Jen and whispered, “Winter is here.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket and I sent the call to my voice mail without looking at the screen.
“Here’s the thing I don’t get,” Patrick said. “Remember those fingerprints Detectives Beckett and Tanaka took the day after Bill died?”
Joe nodded.
The phone rang again in my pocket. This time I checked it. Julia’s name was on the screen. She knew I’d be watching the interview this morning, so she wouldn’t have called unless it was important. I stepped out into the hall and answered.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s up? I’m in the—”
“Beckett?” a man said.
“Who is this? Where’s Julia?”
“She’s here.” His voice was even and strangely calm. “I asked her to call you, but she wouldn’t.” I had heard his voice before but I couldn’t place it.
“What’s going on?” I said, my voice rising. “Put Julia on the phone.”
“No,” he said. “You need to come here right now.”
“Come where? Tell me what’s happening.” I struggled to maintain my composure. Something was very wrong.
“She’s all right,” he said. “So are the others. But they won’t be unless you come here right now.”
Julia was supposed to be teaching her workshop. Who were the others he was talking about? Her students? What was he planning to do?
Someone yelled something in the background. It sounded like “He has a bomb.”
“Shut up,” he shouted.
De-escalate, I told myself. De-escalate.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll come. Tell me where.”
“The gallery,” he said. “You know which one.”
“I’m coming. Don’t do anything. Don’t hurt any—”
“Just you. No one else. Come now.”
“I need more information. How many people are with you? Are you armed?”
“You should have left her alone.”
A wave of nausea rose through me and before I could speak again, he ended the call.
I knew, that night on Signal Hill.
The first time I had been with Julia had ended with awkwardness and embarrassment. For me, at least. I hadn’t been in a serious relationship with anyone since Megan died. And apart from a few casual encounters, I hadn’t been with anyone at all. That first night, we’d only been together a few minutes when her hand found the premature wetness in my crotch and I fled as quickly as I could. I wanted nothing more than to forget the incident and move on, but Julia wouldn’t let me. She called the next day. And when I didn’t respond she called again. And again. When I finally agreed to meet her for lunch, I asked her why she kept calling. What made me special?
“Nothing,” she said. “But I couldn’t leave it like that. Let that be our last memory of each other.”
Those first weeks were tentative and hesitant. I felt like a child on a bicycle with training wheels. But she was there, her hand on my back, and gradually I came to understand she wouldn’t let me fall.
We were walking down Second Street on our way to dinner at Nick’s, and we came across an elderly homeless man near the Rite Aid. He was sitting on the sidewalk, a cup in front of him with a cardboard sign that said “PLEESE HELP.” I would have walked right past him, but Julia looked down at him and said, “Elliot?” He looked at her, but there was no recognition in his eyes, only fear and confusion. He tried to say something, but his speech was too slurred to understand.
She turned back to me and quietly and calmly said, “Call an ambulance.”
I took a few steps back and called 911.
She sat down next to him, took his dirty hand in hers, and, in the same soft and warm tone, began talking to him. She mentioned the VA and the support group they’d both apparently been a part of. She was still talking to him when I heard the siren in the distance. He didn’t seem to understand and his eyes were going in and out of focus, but she was calming him, easing his fear.
The paramedics loaded him in the back, and she told them she’d be riding with him. I followed in my Camry.
It was a stroke, they told us. As we waited for more news, she called the VA to arrange support services for him. She spent more than an hour and talked to six different people before she was satisfied. We sat in the waiting room for two hours until the doctor came out and told us he’d stabilized.
Instead of the expensive dinner we’d planned, we drove through the In-N-Out up on Signal Hill and ate Double-Doubles and fries well done, in the front seat of my car, while we looked out through the windshield at the city lights in the distance.
And I knew.
I parked around the corner on Linden where he wouldn’t be able to see me from the gallery. There was no way I could get a look inside without him also being able to see me.
Julia’s phone rang three times before he answered.
“Where are you?” he said.
“Outside.”
“Come in.”
“No. Not until you send everyone else out.” I positioned myself on the corner, in line with the storefront windows. Looking inside the gallery was still impossible, but I’d be able to see if anyone came out of the door.
“If I do that,” he said, “why would you come inside?”
“Because I say I will.”
He ended the call and soon half a dozen people ran out through the door and hurried down the side. Five women—none of them Julia—and Trev, the gallery owner. “This way!” I called out to them.
Trev recognized me and ran in my direction. He was panicked and rambling. I took him by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Trev,” I said, as calmly as I could. “What’s going on in there?”
He was hyperventilating and his man-bun had come undone.
“Calm down,” I said. “Breathe slowly. You’re safe. It’s going to be all right.”
“He has a bomb,” he said. “A suicide bomb.”
“Who has a bomb?” I asked as calmly as I could.
“The man. He just came in. Out of nowhere.”
“What man?”
“From the photo.”
“What photo?”
“The photo!”
I didn’t know what he meant but I didn’t want to waste any more time. “Is Julia still inside?”
His head moved up and down in a vigorous nod.
“Go half a block up there.” I pointed north up Linden. “Wait there, okay?”
More nodding. I gave him a gentle push and he started moving.
Walking slowly toward the door of the gallery, I took my own advice and inhaled deeply and let the breath out slowly. Then I did it again and again. A few steps in from the corner, I was finally able to see inside.
The lights were turned off, but I could see two shapes, shrouded in shadow, all the way back in the corner. As I looked, I was gradually able to make out more detail. The bomber was behind Julia. Still unable to get a good look at him, I moved toward the door. I took one last deep breath, reached for the handle, and went inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WALL OF DEATH
“Julia,” I said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said.
I didn’t believe her. With the sun shining in through the large windows behind me, my eyes began to adjust to the light, and I was able to see more clearly. But I still couldn’t get a good look at the bomber. There was a distance of at least twenty-five feet between us. On the floor inside the door lay an oversized coat. He must have worn it to conceal the bomb.
“Come back here,” he said.
�
��Nope. You let her go, then I come back there. That’s the only way this works.”
“I’m not leaving,” Julia said.
He leaned forward and said something to her that I couldn’t hear.
“It’s all right, Julia. Trust me, okay?”
“Danny, don’t—”
“Trust me,” I said.
The bomber said, “She takes one step forward, you take one step forward. Got it?” He nudged her gently and she began to move.
I matched her, step for step. As we approached the center of the room, I thought about grabbing her and breaking for the door. But I dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. There was no way we’d make it.
My eyes were locked on Julia’s as we closed the distance between us. I could see her fear and it made me hate him even more intensely.
I wanted to reach out to her as we passed each other, and I could see she did, too. But how would he react?
As the backs of our hands brushed against each other and I lost sight of her face, I heard her whisper, “I love you.”
My eyes found the bomber and I was hit with a shock of recognition. It was the soldier with the prosthetic leg from Julia’s photo. That’s what Trev was talking about. He was standing in front of her section of the exhibit. Behind him I could see the edge of the photo she’d taken of me on her balcony, turned away from the eye of the camera.
“Hi, Terry,” I said.
“Stop there,” he said. “Don’t come any closer.”
I stopped. But I was near enough to see the device strapped to his chest. There were six blocks of what I assumed to be C-4 or something similar. He held a triggering device in his right hand. I’d stopped moving about eight feet from him and looked over my shoulder just in time to watch Julia slip out the door. The cold burn of adrenaline flowed down through my abdomen.
“What the fuck, man,” I said.
“Why didn’t you just stay away from her? This wouldn’t have happened if you’d just stayed away.” There was genuine pain in his voice, and I could see it was torturing him. He had deep lines in his face and dark circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there when I’d met him before at the opening. “I saw you with her, you know. At Buskerfest. I saw you. What you did to that guy.”
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“That lady he was messing with? I would have done the same thing for her if I’d been where you were.”
“I’m sure you would have.”
“But I wouldn’t have lost it. You didn’t even see how Julia was looking at you when you did that. She was scared. Of you. Why couldn’t you have just stayed away like I told you?”
“I thought you were talking about someone else,” I said.
“Really?” he said.
I nodded. “Really.”
The implication that I would have stayed away if I’d known he was talking about Julia seemed to register with him. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true.
He wore a blue T-shirt under the black vest to which the explosives were attached. The tattoo on the inside of his forearm that I’d seen a portion of at the opening was fully exposed. It was the same design that Gonzales had on his biceps.
“You did bomb disposal in Iraq?” I asked.
“How’d you know that?”
“The ink on your arm.” He seemed vaguely impressed that I recognized it. “Is that a dead-man’s trigger in your hand?”
“If I let go of the button, the bomb goes off.”
I nodded. “Why don’t you deactivate it?”
“No.”
“I know you don’t want to kill me.”
“You’re wrong.”
“If you wanted me dead, I’d already be dead. You had two chances and both times you warned me off. You don’t want my blood on your hands.” I watched his eyes, but I couldn’t read them. “You’re a pro, Terry. You know what you’re doing. You don’t want it to end like this.”
“How do you know what I want?”
“I don’t. But I know what Julia wants. It’s not this.”
He looked down at the floor and closed his eyes. I thought about rushing him, but I’d never be able to get my thumb on the trigger in time to prevent the detonation. There were a lot of explosives on his vest, and even though I was no expert, I thought it might be enough to take down this whole corner of the building.
“I was gonna let it go. I was. When you didn’t listen and stay away. I saw how she was with you, thought maybe I was wrong, maybe you could make her happy. She has to be happy.”
I took a step toward him.
“Stop! Don’t come any closer.”
I spread my hands and backed up.
“She was the only one. When I came home. The support group. She understood.”
“I get it,” I said.
“No, you don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t have scared her like that. How could you do that?”
“I screwed up. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I’ll stay away this time.”
He stared at me and I felt like he could see more deeply into me than anyone I’d ever looked in the eye.
“No you won’t,” he said. “And she has to be happy.”
“She does,” I whispered.
“She saved my life,” he said. Tears were collecting in the corners of his eyes.
“I know, Terry. She saved mine, too.”
He grimaced as if someone had pierced his chest with a knife and I knew I’d made a horrible mistake.
Everything shifted into slow motion and it seemed as if it took minutes for him to raise his right hand and lift his thumb off of the trigger button.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WALKING FAR FROM HOME
I felt the concussive blast and heard the thunderous crack and saw the bright flash. Something cut my face, and my ears rang and circles of brightness floated in my field of vision. I was sitting on the floor, disoriented, my head spinning, trying to count the lights in front of me. Were there four or five? I couldn’t hear anything but the deafening shriek in my ears.
What happened?
Why wasn’t I dead?
I tried to blink away the spots in my eyes. There was a haze of smoke and dust. The taste of it in my mouth made me gag. Terry was on the floor in front of me. His chest was ripped open in a mass of viscera and smoldering black nylon. His prosthetic leg had come off. The wall behind him was painted red.
I wasn’t dead.
Someone was in front of me trying to get my attention. His mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear any words. Gonzales, I realized, it was Gonzales. He was waving his hand in front of my face.
Someone else lifted my arm and wrapped it around his neck and lifted me off the floor like a weightless ragdoll. His shoulders felt like stone. Farley, I thought, Gonzales’s partner. I was trying to move my feet on the floor, but he was taking all my weight. It seemed like I was floating.
Then we were outside. My feet were on the ground. Farley led me across the street and sat me on the curb. The shock of the explosion was fading.
Jen was there.
And Julia.
I wasn’t dead.
“The blocks on the vest were fake,” Gonzales said. We were standing in the shade of the buildings on the south side of the street, looking across Broadway at the gallery. From our vantage point, there was nothing to indicate what had gone on inside.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“He just had a tiny charge against his chest. Even had a body-armor plate in front of it to direct the explosion.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I don’t think he wanted to take anybody else with him. He knew what he was doing. The charge was just enough to blow a big hole in his chest. You would have to have been right on top of him for it to kill you, too.”
That’s why he stopped me where he did, made me take a step back. I was glad I’d listened to his warning this time.
Earlier, at the station, as soon as Terry had ended the call,
I’d rushed back into the observation room and told Jen that Julia and her workshop students were caught up in a hostage situation with a possible suicide bomber at the gallery. I told her to call SWAT and to keep everyone out of sight until she heard from me.
After, I found her sitting on the curb with Julia just a few yards inside the yellow crime-scene tape that was blocking the street. A crowd had gathered on the other side. Down the block I could see the satellite antenna of a TV news van climbing up into the sky.
Sitting down next to them, I said, “How’s it going over here?”
Neither of them answered.
We sat in silence a few moments, then Jen said softly to me, “I need to get statements from the others inside.” She looked at Julia. “Are you okay?”
“I will be,” Julia said.
Jen stood and touched the back of my head as if I were a child at her hip. I looked up at her and she returned my weak smile before walking back toward the gallery.
Julia leaned against me and put her head on my shoulder. She had been crying and there was still a tremor in her hands. “I can’t stop shaking,” she said.
“I know. It’s the adrenaline dump. It will pass in a while.” I leaned my head on hers and breathed in the scent of her hair. It smelled like apples.
At some point, Patrick had shown up to take over control of the crime scene. I didn’t envy his situation. This case kept growing on him. These cases, I thought, correcting myself. It had been two separate investigations all along. The bomb in my car had nothing to do with William Denkins’s murder after all. I found Patrick coming out of the gallery.
“Hey,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay. How’s it look in there?”
“It’s a mess. But Gonzales tells me it’s not as bad as it could have been.”
“I know.” I looked down at the ground and felt the weight of what might have been, if Terry had been who I thought he was when I saw him in the suicide-bomber vest.
“How’s Julia?”
“Pretty shaken up. Jen got her statement. Okay if I take her home?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s probably a good idea.”
