by Scott Frost
Lying in the dark of my bedroom I tried to clear my head, but one thing out of all the day’s events hung in my mind and pushed away sleep. Why had Lacy said “direct action”? As a cop I was trained to find the one thing in the room that doesn’t fit. As a mother, my training was clearly best forgotten. But when I looked at what she had said, it satisfied neither the cop nor the mother in me. It didn’t fit. The daughter I knew, or thought I knew, had never used those words before. “Direct action.” Where did they come from? Or more precisely, who did they lead to?
THE MORNING radio shows were still talking about Lacy as I drove in to the plaza. Listening to the rage in some of the voices, you would think my daughter had committed an act of treason or defaced the Lincoln Memorial. Such was the level of civic pride that she had wounded. “Never in the one hundred years of the Tournament of Roses has . . .” etc., etc. If it had been directed at anyone other than my daughter, I would have laughed at it. But underneath the absurdity of it all was an ugliness that couldn’t be brushed aside when your family was the target. I turned the talk radio off and tried to clear my mind and focus on the day ahead.
The storm of the day before had moved east, spinning into the Mojave like a pinwheel. Wild sage scented the air. The blue of the morning sky had the clarity of a New England fall morning. It almost didn’t feel like Southern California, until I looked to the west and saw the gray line of the Pacific with Catalina floating like a cloud where the sky met the water.
Harrison was waiting in my office when I walked in. If he had slept at all, his appearance gave no hint of it. His jacket and pants were wrinkled, and his tie looked like it had been in the same knot for ten years.
“You look like you slept in your clothes,” I said.
He looked down at his suit and winced. “We’re a little informal on the bomb squad. I don’t use these much.”
“Funerals and weddings.”
“Something like that . . . One wedding, one funeral.”
The words clearly held a weight I wasn’t expecting and didn’t want to confront before I had had a second cup of coffee. And possibly not even then, so I moved on quickly.
“You finished at Sweeny’s?”
He nodded and motioned toward my desk. “It’s all there except for the lab work. Should have that later today, maybe tomorrow if they have trouble with any of the samples.”
I picked it up; it was six single-spaced pages, more words than most cops I knew wrote in ten years.
“Any surprises?”
“One,” he said.
I waited. Harrison seemed to have trouble getting hold of the thought.
“And?” I finally asked.
“I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“I thought it would be a pedestrian bit of material used. Everyday stuff.”
“It wasn’t?”
“Not entirely. There were two explosives. An everyday, simple kind of powder, probably from fireworks. Inside that was military-grade plastique—very difficult to obtain in this country.”
I immediately thought of Breem shipping flowers from south of the border.
“Could it have been gotten in Mexico?”
“Easier than here, and untraceable.”
Harrison smiled like a kid who was excited about a school science project.
“How do you know it was military grade if the lab work isn’t finished?”
“Every explosive leaves behind its own particular signature. If you know what to look for, you can tell a lot about the material used. The kind of energy released from the blast would have required more of the simple powder than was used, so I knew there was something else there.”
“ ‘E equals MC squared’ sort of thing.”
He nodded, though my attempt at rudimentary science pained him like a pair of tight shoes.
“Something like that.”
“Why try to hide what he’s using if there is no way to trace it?”
“Because it’s more enjoyable for him.”
“Enjoyable?” I said, unable to conceal my disgust.
“Bombers, if you rule out the suicide kind, are game players.”
I sat back in my chair and shook my head. “That’s a pretty twisted bit of psychology.”
“As a rule, bombers are a sick group of people. The stuff of profilers’ dreams.”
A detective named North knocked and walked in. He was one of the older detectives on the squad, a divorced father who fought a long-running battle with cholesterol and Bud Light. He had thinning, reddish hair and cheeks that were flushed from alcohol.
“Got the warrants for Breem and Finley. You want us to execute them?”
“Every piece of paper in the house, cars, including the trash.” I amended that. “Especially the trash.”
“Breem’s making some noise about the business being sealed.”
I looked at him as if to say, “Do I really need to answer this?”
“Right,” North said. He glanced at Harrison as he walked out. “Nice suit.”
The phone rang on my direct line and I picked it up.
“Delillo.”
“Mom,” Lacy said. Her voice sounded an octave higher than normal.
“Lace, is everything all right?”
“They suspended me.”
“Who suspended you?”
“The assholes at school. Parks, the principal.”
She was in school three days Christmas week as part of an effort to shorten the school year during the air-conditioning season.
“They want to meet you and me at one in his office.”
My other line rang.
“Hold on for a second, Lace.”
I hit the other line. It was a patrol sergeant named Tolland.
“Lieutenant, we got a body down in the arroyo I think you should look at. May be a homicide.”
There were thirty-six thousand people in Pasadena. A second body in as many days constituted a major crime wave.
“Where?”
“Parking lot of the casting pond.”
“Okay.”
I hit Lacy’s line.
“Lacy.”
“Those bastards.”
“Where are you now?”
“Starbucks.”
I took a breath; my head felt like another explosion had just gone off next to my ear.
“I’ll call you at home later and we’ll work this out.”
“You would think I had stolen a baby, not spoiled a beauty pageant. What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they know what we’re doing to the planet?”
“Apparently not.”
“That’s all you have to say about it?”
I placed my index finger on my temple and started rubbing in a small circular pattern, trying to stave off a headache. Have it all, be a working mom, what could be better? You’re a modern woman. Jesus. My mind drifted for a second to explosives wrapped around each other.
“For the moment,” I said.
“Great,” Lacy said and hung up.
I put the phone down and stared at the door to my office. Harrison shifted in his chair. I looked at him, almost surprised to find him in the room. He looked like he wanted to ask a question but didn’t know where to begin.
“I have to make another call,” I said.
“I’ll wait outside.”
He got up and started for the door.
“How are you sure the explosives didn’t come from within the country?” I asked.
“I checked. They keep very good track of this stuff.”
“They?”
“I have contacts in the army.”
“When did you call?”
“Last night. I don’t sleep.”
“Ever?”
“Feels like it sometimes.”
It occurred to me that he was talking about something I hadn’t fully put my hands around.
“Am I missing something here? Why is this stuff so special?”
“Oh,” he said, as if he jus
t realized he had forgotten an ingredient in a recipe. “It produces no detectable scent.”
I thought about that for a second. “The explosives?”
“Yeah.”
“Dogs can’t smell it?” I asked.
“Nothing can, and it leaves virtually no trace after the explosion. That’s why it’s dangerous, and that’s why they keep such good track of it.”
“Then how would it get into Mexico?”
“We didn’t develop it; the Israelis did. They sold it to the Mexican military.”
The full picture of this material, or at least a partial image, was emerging like a photograph in a tray of developer. And what I saw frightened me. This was not a material used to demolish old casinos in Vegas for TV cameras, or to blow up mountainsides to extract coal.
“It was designed to assassinate people, wasn’t it? Like someone walking through a door?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Or with a car bomb,” he added coolly.
Putting Sweeny in the same picture frame as this stuff didn’t make sense.
“Why the hell would you use this to kill a two-bit forger?”
Harrison’s eyes engaged the problem like a physics professor at UCLA would an unsolvable equation. “That’s what’s interesting.”
“How?” I asked.
“He tried to mask it with the other powder to hide the fact that he used it. There can only be one logical reason for trying to conceal its presence.”
The image in the darkroom tray became clear. It was the kind of picture only a cop would arrive at. I felt a queasiness in my stomach.
“He’s going to use it again,” I said.
“It’s the logical assumption.”
The words left a hole in the room that was quickly filled with an uncomfortable silence. It felt much the same as when Lacy’s father told me he had inoperable cancer. A future you don’t want to know about has just been laid out in front of you and there’s no turning away from that knowledge. Lacy and I would watch him die, and there was nothing we could do about it.
“You want me to contact the ATF?” Harrison asked.
The last thing I wanted was federal agents storming in and taking over the investigation. They’re like a conservative pope. There’s only one way to do things in their eyes.
“Carefully,” I said.
“Sure.”
He started for the door.
“If I understand, your only proof that he used this is by what wasn’t there?”
“Proving something with a negative is accepted methodology.”
“Not in Homicide.”
A faint trace of a smile flashed across his face.
“I’ll let you make your call,” Harrison said, and walked out.
I stared at the phone, playing out in my mind the grim reality that had just landed in my lap. Then I dialed my daughter’s school. An unhappy secretary with way too much work on her hands to be answering the phone picked up.
“Marshall High School.”
“This is Lieutenant Delillo of the Pasadena police. I’m Lacy Delillo’s mother. I’d like to talk to Principal Parks.”
I’d always found that when dealing with any level of bureaucracy no matter how small, identifying myself as a cop right off always moved things along to the next level much faster. I was on hold listening to the school song for no more than two bars of “Marshall Pride.”
“Ms. Delillo. This is Principal Parks.”
He was one of those administrators who I suspected didn’t actually like kids, so jumped ship out of the classroom at the first chance he got. Those who can’t teach, teach gym, and those who can’t teach gym become principals. He was a small-minded man whose interests lay in budget numbers instead of kids’ minds. If anything, I think he saw students as the enemy.
“It’s Lieutenant Delillo, Mr. Parks,” I said to clearly remind him that I was the one with the gun, not him. “I understand you sent my daughter home.”
“Yes, we did. I’m hoping we can talk about this this afternoon.”
“Why is my daughter suspended?”
“I was hoping we could talk about this in my office.”
“We will, but in the meantime, I would like some information,” I said.
“Of course. Given her recent activities, which I might add have been a great disappointment to the entire faculty and student body . . .” He let that hang in the air as if trying to draw a response from me.
“I’m proud of her,” I said, a little surprised at myself.
“Well . . . She’s become quite a distraction. But that isn’t why we sent her home.”
Lacy was right; he was an asshole, a passive-aggressive martinet who enjoyed wielding power over kids and parents alike. I knew cops like him who were physically dangerous to anyone unlucky enough to fall under their authority. As it was, Parks’s power was limited to the squashing of a child’s spirit. At that moment I wasn’t sure which was the more destructive.
“Why did you send her home?” I asked impatiently.
“I no longer felt I could guarantee her safety,” he said blithely, like he was talking about the cheerleaders’ new uniforms.
I could feel my jaw tighten and my face warm from the hot flush of anger. Those faceless voices on the radio calling Lacy things a mother should never hear began to echo in my head.
“Her safety?”
“Yes.”
“Has my daughter been threatened?”
“I believe so.”
“You believe or you know?”
“She was threatened.”
“From inside the school or out?”
“We’re not sure. That’s why we thought it—”
“You thought?!” I wanted to reach through the phone and grab him by his neck. “My daughter is threatened and you let her leave the security of the school without talking to me first!”
“Our policy is for the safety of the entire student body—”
“To hell with your policy.”
“Now, just a minute,” he said angrily.
I could hear the trembling in his voice. I imagine it had been a long time since anyone had talked to him the way I just had.
“Did you notify the school police?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
“Before or after you let my daughter walk out of the building?”
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. I imagine he was already working out how to cover his ass.
“Before or after?” I demanded.
“After.”
I took a long, deep breath to try to calm down. Parks opened his mouth again and put an end to the attempt.
“This is a school, Ms. Delillo, we have rul—”
I had had enough of listening to him.
“And I have rules, Mr. Parks, one of which is the willful endangerment of a juvenile. And that’s a felony. If anything happens to my daughter I’m going to come down to that school, put you in handcuffs, and march you past the entire student body.”
I hung up and quickly dialed the school police offices downstairs. A woman sergeant named James answered. Her high, sweet voice gave me the impression that she did a lot of undercover work as a high school student.
“This is Lieutenant Delillo, Homicide.”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“My daughter is a student at Marshall, and there have been threats against her. Apparently it’s been reported to you. I’d appreciate what you could find out about it.”
“I’ll check into it and get back to you.”
I hung up and then called Lacy’s cell phone, but got an out-of-service-range recording. I then quickly called home and left a message for her to stay inside and to call me as soon as she got there.
I put the phone down and sat at my desk looking at the photograph of Lacy standing in the sequoias. I’d been threatened dozens of times as a uniformed officer and as a detective; most were nothing more than hot air.
But this, a threat to my daughte
r, even if it proved to be a crank, shook every nerve in my body. I felt as if I had stuck my finger in an electrical socket. Nothing was going to take her away from me. At that moment I understood that I was capable of more violence than I had ever thought imaginable.
The phone rang and I snapped it up.
“Delillo.”
“Officer James, Lieutenant.”
“Go ahead.”
“The school got half a dozen phone calls.”
“What were they?”
“Cranks most likely.”
“Specifically, what were they?”
“I don’t think you want to hear—”
“I can’t evaluate the severity of the threat unless I hear them. You understand?” I said.
“All right. Four of them called her a bitch and suggested she be thrown out of school and that they didn’t pay taxes to educate kids like that. We figure they don’t mean much. It’s the last two that concerned the school.”
“Go on.”
“The next one said, ‘Throw that fucking cunt out of school or I will take her out.’ ”
“The last one?”
“The last one said, ‘Lacy Delillo will pay for what she did. I’m going to make that little bitch pay for what she did.’ It’s possible the last two were by the same person.”
My breath caught short. I tried to swallow but couldn’t manage enough spit to do even that. They had called Lacy by name and said my baby would pay.
“I understand that she left the school,” Officer James said.
“They asked her to leave.”
“We’ll have a talk with that principal.”
“I already did,” I said.
“Do you know where your daughter is right now, Lieutenant?”
“She called me from a Starbucks.”
“Do you know which one she frequents?”
I was numb, as if the room had been plunged into ice water.
“No,” I answered.
“We’ll check them out. Does she have a car?”
I gave Officer James Lacy’s make and plate number, then looked at the picture of my daughter on my desk. I reached out and took it in my hand. “Do you need a photograph of her?”
“We have the photograph from the newspaper.” She hesitated. “I think everyone in Pasadena knows what she looks like.”
