Explosive Dreams

by Hadena James

“Great movie,” Xavier said. “Am I doing the pushing or the falling?”

  “The falling,” the sentence had an implied “duh” at the end of it.

  “Do you know what I’m thinking about?” Xavier asked.

  “Nope,” I answered.

  “If the bullet had gone just a fraction to the left or the right, I’d be dead. If it had gone up or down, I’d be dead. I’m not dead. So why am I not dead and our fair queen lost her face?”

  “You have survivor’s guilt from an unrelated incident?” The puzzlement was evident in my voice.

  “No,” Xavier shook his head. “It isn’t survivor’s guilt. It’s medical logic. The same caliber bullet was used, but the results were different. Our sniper packed his own load and he used more gunpowder. Also, he had to doctor the gun and the jacket of the bullet. He’s proficient with guns. He isn’t just your average hunter gone mad.”

  “Does that help catch our bomber?”

  “Probably not, unless it was a test run for our bomber. Maybe he intends to take him out in spectacular fashion.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know about the bomber targeting this fair.”

  “Maybe not,” Xavier agreed. “However, if he hasn’t figured it out, he isn’t as smart as we think. That works in our favor. We should make sure the fair queen doesn’t show up, just in case.”

  “How do you stop a fair queen from showing up at the fair?” I asked him.

  “Tell her she’ll get her face blown off,” Xavier answered.

  “Using that logic, the fairs should be packing up and heading somewhere else for the season. Someone is blowing them up, but they continue to go on and they continue to draw thousands of people. That seems illogical.”

  “It is illogical. Fairs make people forget their problems, like your fan the other night. She was having the time of her life and she got to meet you. Any thoughts of mad bombers blowing the place off the map were the furthest thing from her mind and obviously, the minds of her guardians. They didn’t seem all that off-put to be at the fair. The mother showed signs of hesitation because she thought we might be working, but the hesitation went away with your lame story. It wasn’t a good story, it wasn’t even a believable story. She accepted it because she wanted to believe it.”

  “I like craft fairs,” I told him.

  “Yes, but not in the middle of the evening at a fair twenty minutes away from a crime scene.”

  “You have me there,” I agreed. “So, ignoring our sniper for a few minutes, because honestly, he is definitely not the biggest fish, let’s talk bombers.”

  “We’ve been talking bombers. We discovered you might have the knowledge, but not the practical know-how to create one. We’ve also discovered that bombings aren’t your thing. Not up close and personal enough for you and there’s some underlying sense of righteousness with bombings.”

  “Righteousness.” The word left a bad taste in my mouth. It was a great excuse for doing evil things. Hitler had felt righteous and he had inspired followers to believe in that righteousness. “So, why is he different than a terrorist?”

  “Because terrorists want to instill fear. It is all about the terror, not the act. This guy, it’s about the act. He’s killing something intangible.”

  “The people are just collateral damage,” I added.

  “Yes,” Xavier said.

  “He’s killing symbols of happiness and possibly childhood. Or an even deeper emotion, joy.”

  “So, stop thinking about him like a bomber and think of him as a serial killer. Just because people aren’t his primary goal, doesn’t mean he isn’t a serial killer in mass murderer skin.”

  “Ok, let me wrap my head around something,” I said to Xavier. “You have become a shrink in the last hour, been terribly unhelpful in your chemistry knowledge and didn’t even offer me a bite of your sandwich, but I’m the one with the mental block.”

  “Something like that,” Xavier said. “Did you want a sandwich?”

  “No, I didn’t want a sandwich,” I told him. That wasn’t true, I did want a sandwich and a Jimmy John’s sandwich would have been great. However, I had been so wrapped up inside my own mind that I had missed the order being placed and was now beginning to suffer pangs of hunger as a result.

  “Pity,” Xavier pulled a bag out from under the table and set it in front of him. “I don’t have room for two sandwiches.”

  “You are a jerk.” I took the bag and unwrapped the sandwich. It was perfect. Exactly what I would have ordered, no one did roast beef quite like Jimmy John’s.

  “Maybe once you have food, you’ll stop thinking like a terrorist.”

  “How do terrorists think?” I asked, taking the first bite.

  “I don’t know, I’m not a terrorist, but you aren’t doing very well thinking like our mass murderer, so I can only assume you are working on the other end of the spectrum.”

  “You might be right, I might be thinking too much Unabomber and not enough killer,” I answered. “You know, serial killers choose the manner in which they kill because it fulfills a need. Maybe our bomber is as well. Maybe he’s a bomber because it fulfills some need, like a guy who needs to rape and beat his victims to death.”

  “Now, you are thinking like Aislinn Cain and not some flighty normal woman who can’t see past the tip of her nose.”

  “And you are still a jerk,” I answered. “When did you become the shrink anyway? Where’s Lucas?”

  “Enjoying a long, hot bath. He does that from time to time.” I wasn’t going to picture Lucas in a bathtub, so I focused very hard on my sandwich. “I know, it kills my appetite as well.” Xavier let out his madman giggle and I ate my sandwich while thinking about blood and gore. It was the less gruesome image.

  Chapter Nineteen

  My thought process had changed. There were only two differences between a serial killer and our mass murderer. The first was the sheer scale. Serials killed, often prolifically, but rarely more than two or three at a time and our mass murderer was killing double and triple digits all at once. The other, and this was the one that had been tripping me up, was that serial killers profiled victims. They had a type, like getting a favorite sandwich every time you passed a sandwich shop that carried it. Our mass murderer didn’t have a victim in mind. He had an idea, misery and carnivals were the perfect place.

  Carnivals weren’t just happy places, they offered a wide range of victims and by extension, a wide range of misery. It wasn’t just women, it was men and women. The victims didn’t belong to an age group, he was hitting them all. Children, teens, adults, the elderly, they were all targets and the diverse group ensured that a huge amount of misery got doled out.

  This knowledge didn’t get me any closer to coming up with a suspect or even a suspected profile of a suspect. We were sure it was a guy. Lucas thought he was probably really unhappy. I found that second statement to be both unnecessary and understating the issue.

  What it did get me was a better understanding of exactly what to look for at the carnival. I was looking for a guy with some sort of large bag. Most men didn’t carry large bags. Usually the right of a large man purse was reserved for new fathers or fathers with infants. They were becoming more vogue, but they definitely weren’t mainstream in the US or the Mid-West, especially the Mid-West.

  A feeling of Deja-vu came over me. I was back at the fair. I was back in the control room with Lucas, trying to find a guy with a large bag. I had no idea what the lynchpin was. And the rest of the team was taking their lives into their hands by traveling around the fairgrounds, looking for suspects while trying to blend in.

  This essentially sucked. I was used to being the point man, the first through the door and hands on with the take down. Chances of me getting that were slim. I was learning to live with that side of me.

  “Near the Ferris wheel, tall male, wearing a green shirt, carrying a large backpack,” Lucas said into his com. I looked at the screen in front of him. The guy did have a backpack. He also had an i
nfant strapped to his chest and a teenage boy and girl getting on said ride. I frowned at Lucas. He frowned back, “family men blow shit up.”

  “With their kids?”

  “Maybe it’s a family activity.”

  “Aren’t bombers usually solitary creatures?”

  “There is always a first.” Lucas stopped talking and held up his hand as Gabriel appeared on the monitor. The two men appeared to be chatting casually. Gabriel flashed his badge very discretely and asked to look in the backpack. The man obliged.

  “Diapers, mostly,” Gabriel said to us.

  “Check,” I answered, turning my microphone back off and going back to my own set of monitors.

  There were an awful lot of people at the fair. It was a Friday, but for some reason, I thought a bomber should scare people away from the fair. I knew this was wrong, it had been explained to me, but logically, it didn’t make sense to me. A guy caught my attention. He had a duffel bag. I radioed the information to the team. Xavier came into view. The guy opened his bag, camera equipment. We were officially zero for forty or so.

  Michael wheeled into the room. He held funnel cake on his lap. I gratefully took one, ignoring the fact that it was really bad for me. I wasn’t hungry, but the smell of powdered sugar and fried dough were overwhelming. Gabriel deserved to be flogged for introducing me to such a creation.

  “I’m here to take your spot, Ace,” Michael said.

  “I get to go out there? Really?” I asked, my mood lifting.

  “Yes,” Gabriel said in my ear. Since my com wasn’t on, I guessed he’d heard me over Michael’s.

  “Most excellent and thanks for the funnel cake,” I said, leaving the room.

  “Ace, try not to draw attention to yourself,” Gabriel said.

  “I’m eating funnel cake. How can I draw attention to myself while eating funnel cake?”

  “A pack of serial killing demon hunters could be drawn to your dark aura and decide to try and stake you,” Michael answered.

  While this was not a likely scenario, it wasn’t completely impossible either. So I took another bite of the funnel cake and walked outside. It was just me. No Xavier, no Lucas and no Gabriel watching over me. It felt a little odd to be on my own. I wasn’t usually let out without supervision.

  The noise instantly swelled over me. Different types of music competed for my attention. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of snippets of conversation floated on the warm breeze that blew. The constant dull hum of massive amounts of electricity being consumed by the rides buzzed like bees against my ear drums. An uneven staccato of rides reaching their apexes and falling back down beat against my brain. Above it all, the screams of thrilled riders pierced the overly lit night.

  The crowds flowed. People moving to and from amusements was constant, like worker ants following the same path over and over again. The grass here would be permanently damaged. Even weeds would struggle to grow in the trampled earth.

  I found a pole to lean against and eat my funnel cake. My badge was tucked at my back, underneath a short sleeve button up that wasn’t buttoned. My guns were a little harder to hide and I had to be careful not to move wrong and give a passing fairgoer a glimpse of the firepower I carried.

  “Go play a game or something,” Gabriel said in my ear after I had finished my funnel cake.

  “Or move to the back of the pack and light up a cigarette, try to make it look like you are just moving away from everyone to have a smoke,” Xavier chimed in.

  “Or wander around,” Michael said. “You have the mobility that I didn’t, also as an attractive woman, men won’t be as offended if you run into them. Find ones that look suspicious and bump them.”

  “What the hell?” I asked.

  “Sorry?” Some guy said. He was standing only a few feet from me.

  “Nothing,” I answered. My mind raced through my catalogue of knowledge. He didn’t appear to be a threat, but he was definitely looking at me. What did he want?

  “Ok,” he said, but didn’t move away. My mind reassessed him. He still didn’t seem to be a threat. T-shirt with some singer on the front, jeans with tennis shoes, no strange bulges, nowhere to hide restraints or a large weapon, certainly not a bomb or a sniper’s rifle.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  “I was just noticing that you have powdered sugar all over your shirt,” he leaned forward and wiped at me with a napkin.

  “Don’t kill him!” Lucas suddenly shouted in my ear. I tried not to respond to Lucas. I also tried not to grab the guy and flip him over and away from me. Instead, I compromised and took a step back.

  “Are you here with someone?” He asked.

  “Yes,” I answered. It wasn’t just the truth, it was the smart answer. You didn’t tell predators you were alone.

  “Oh,” he looked at me for a few seconds. “Your boyfriend?”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Good,” he smiled. “Do you want to grab a soda or something?”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Well, you just polished off that funnel cake like it was the last one in the world, I thought you might be thirsty. Also, I’m here with some friends, but I didn’t want to ride what they were riding, so I thought I’d accompany you. You look like you’d be much better company.”

  “Better company?” I frowned at him. My brain kicked in. He was hitting on me. Laughter filled the communicator in my ear. I had just stuck my foot in it and they had known he was hitting on me and hadn’t bothered to inform me.

  “Show him your badge, he’ll go away,” Gabriel told me.

  “I don’t think you want to get to know me,” I told the guy without flashing my badge at him. “I’m not a very entertaining person.”

  “But you are very easy on the eyes,” the guy smiled wider.

  “Only the face,” I pointed to my arms. “Those aren’t as pretty.”

  He went ashen. For a moment, I thought he’d pass out. He didn’t, instead, he used it to his advantage.

  “I’m sure the rest of you is just as pretty as your face and I’m interested in how you got those,” he recovered. I rolled my eyes, reached behind me, and pulled out my badge.

  “Occupational hazard,” I told him.

  “You’re a cop,” he said. “So am I.” He pulled out his own badge. There was more laughter over the com line. Just my frucking luck.

  “Great,” I sighed. “I’m US Marshal Aislinn Cain of the Serial Crimes Tracking Unit.”

  “Oh, you’re a Marshal,” this seemed to give him a moment of hesitation. “I’d still like to buy you a soda.”

  I rolled my eyes again. The laughter continued. I couldn’t tell the guy I was working. Telling him I chased serial killers hadn’t scared him off. I was running out of ideas.

  “Be yourself,” Michael said. “I give him ten minutes, before you bore him to death.”

  My more unfortunate comrade in arms might be on to something. There were few things I was passionate about; work, history, work, and history. I could bore even the most dedicated listeners. I had once bored a therapist into falling asleep in the middle of a session. I could bore a date to death, easily.

  “So, have you heard about the Plague outbreak in California?” I started leading the way to the concession stand closest to us.

  Explosive

  Planning for this fair had been complicated. He’d faithfully entered the information in the computer program and it had come back with multiple suggestions, none of them what he wanted. In the end, he’d had to make three bombs. Two were small, distraction type bombs, meant to herd the crowds towards the more impressive explosion.

  The rest of the time he’d spent researching the SCTU team. Their lives were fascinating, not just their work lives either. They all had checkered pasts, some more questionable than others.

  Nick had discovered Xavier Reece suffered from brain damage from a shooting gone wrong. While in medical school, a classmate had climbed up another building and taken aim speci
fically at Reece. The bullet had shattered on impact with the glass window. A small shard of it and a chunk of glass had lodged into the side of Reece’s head. Unsatisfied, the classmate had then made his way to his target with automatic gunfire. Upon entering the classroom, he’d put several bullets into Reece’s chest. When he bent down to make the sure the man was dead, Reece stabbed him in the ear with an ink pen. Witnesses reported that Reece had pushed until the ink pen broke and the guy fell. Reece survived with brain and heart damage. The other guy had died on the scene.

  Lucas McMichaels had been formally charged as a serial killer and discharged from the Navy SEALS program. However, while in custody, the killer had struck again, essentially clearing McMichaels. Somehow, McMichaels got revenge and one night, he called the police to say he’d been attacked. When they arrived, McMichaels had been injured, but not seriously and he’d been standing over a dead body. The dead body turned out to be the serial killer. The incident happened in a notorious spot for trolling and the killer had struck there before. The police suspected McMichaels of seeking the killer out, but couldn’t prove it.

  Michael Giovanni had hacked the wrong the computer. His Trojan had hooked onto a live video feed broadcasting a snuff film in the making. He’d then hacked the FBI and uploaded the video and IP address. However, the next day, it wasn’t the FBI that kicked in his door, it was the killer from the snuff film. Giovanni had been prepared. He emptied an entire clip from a Glock into the man’s chest. The gun was bought illegally and Giovanni was at first charged with several felonies. However, the SCTU had hushed it all up and made him a team member.

  Gabriel Henders had been attacked by a FBI agent who was also a serial killer. This had landed him a desk job for a while, during which time his ex-wife had shot him because she claimed she thought he was an intruder. No charges had been filed, but Henders had never been to the house again. He had children, but Nick couldn’t find out if Henders ever saw them or not. After the divorce, he’d ended up in the field again. He’d killed a guy who attempted to carjack him one night and then he ended up as a transfer to the SCTU.