Run the Risk

by Scott Frost

  “I should—”

  I nodded.

  He reached down and carefully removed his 9mm like a person picking up an artichoke in the grocery store.

  “Take the other side,” I said in a whisper, motioning to the other side of the door.

  He took his position and nodded that he was ready. I started to reach for the door handle and then thought of Dave disappearing in a cloud of dust. My hand stopped short as I looked over to Harrison and then stepped back from the door.

  “Assuming the worst, how do we do this without getting blown up?” I asked.

  Harrison thought for a second. “If we had optics we could look under the door.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was after five: rush hour.

  “How long to get it here?”

  “At least an hour in traffic this time of day.”

  “What about LAPD?”

  “Not much shorter. Bomb squad operates out of the Academy.”

  I looked at my watch. With every second she was slipping farther away.

  “My daughter doesn’t have an hour.”

  Harrison thought about the problem for a moment, looking at the walls next to the door.

  “If it’s a shaped charge like the other one, the walls will offer enough shielding. Don’t touch the handle. We kick it open and then hug the wall.”

  “What if my daughter’s inside?”

  I could see in his eyes that he didn’t want to answer. I’d just put him in the position of being responsible for Lacy’s life if he said it was all right to go through the door.

  “What was it the caller wanted to talk about? The end of the world?” I asked.

  “Something like that.”

  “This is my call, then, whatever happens.”

  “Do you think she’s inside?” he asked.

  I looked at him and then stared at the door. Half of the number on it had fallen off. Dirty handprints lined the edges like fancy stenciling.

  “No,” I said. There was no reason for her to be. It would have been much too simple. For whatever reason Lacy was taken, it wasn’t to make things less complicated.

  “I agree,” Harrison said.

  We moved back to the door and took positions to kick it in. Echoing up the stairwell came the shouts of an argument in Spanish. The man’s voice sounded drunk, the woman’s carried the edge of fear. Outside a car alarm briefly wailed and then fell silent. I nodded to Harrison and counted off . . . “One, two . . .” With three we kicked.

  The door gave way with a splintering of wood and flew open, banging hard against the wall. We hugged the wall for an instant, waiting for the deafening concussion and the whoosh of air to take our breath away.

  Nothing.

  I swung around and stole a glance into the room with my Glock raised. The fading light barely illuminated the simple, spare room. In one corner a sink and counter served as the kitchen. Opposite that a door led to what must be the bathroom. In the center of the room, in front of the two windows a man sat absolutely still in a chair. I ducked back behind the wall and looked at Harrison. I didn’t have to say a word. He could see on my face that something was wrong. The muffled sound of a voice drifted out the door. Harrison raised his gun and looked in the apartment. I could see the surprise register on his face. And then I watched his eyes as they focused in the low light at what sat in the middle of the room. He then retook his position behind the wall.

  “Is that the guy you saw delivering the papers?”

  I wasn’t sure. “Could be. I need a closer look at him.”

  “That might not be a good idea,” Harrison said.

  “Why?”

  “I think he’s wired.”

  He took a breath then stole another glance around the door opening.

  “We have a problem,” Harrison said.

  “A bomb?”

  “More than that. I think the opening of the door started a timer.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a timer on his chest. It’s counting down.”

  He looked at me for a moment, though his eyes were already inside the room working the device.

  “I think it’s a safe bet he wasn’t the one who made that phone call to talk to me,” I said. “Which means whoever did wanted us in this room with that bomb. His message is beginning to make sense.”

  Harrison nodded. “You don’t have to be inside.”

  Before I could say anything he quickly got up and went through the door. I went in behind him and swung my weapon left and right, clearing the room, then pushed open the door to the bathroom. It was clear. Harrison went directly to the figure who sat in a chair, explosives wired around his chest.

  There were two mattresses on the floor, a cheap television, a prayer mat, and some cardboard boxes with clothes. Against one wall was a cheap chest of drawers and a mirror. The floor was littered with copies of The Star News.

  I stepped next to Harrison and looked at the frightened face of the man in the chair. He had duct tape around his mouth; otherwise there were no restraints. He could have gotten up and walked away, except that a glass motion detector the size of a double-A battery sat on his lap. It reminded me of a carpenter’s level. Two wires led from that to the small plastic circuit box that served as the detonator. There were six sticks of dynamite taped around his chest. A small digital kitchen timer was taped to the center of the sticks. He was well aware that if he had tried to run he would have been blown all over the walls of the room. His dark eyes were wild with fear, pleading for help, his T-shirt soaked with perspiration.

  The counter on the timer passed one minute and continued counting down.

  “Is your name Philippe?” I asked.

  He seemed to nod with his eyes.

  “Do you recognize me?”

  Again he indicated yes.

  Harrison took a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and calmly opened the scissors. He looked Philippe in the eyes. “I know you know this, but don’t move. If you move we both die.”

  Philippe nodded ever so slightly, his forehead wet with sweat.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Turn on the light.”

  I walked over to the switch by the door.

  “Make sure the paint on the screw covering the plate hasn’t been touched.”

  My heart jumped. Until that moment I hadn’t fully realized how entirely different someone like Harrison saw the world. Anything could be a weapon. A toaster could kill you, a lightbulb could blow you to pieces, a car could take out an entire block. Nothing was safe. It was all potentially lethal, every knickknack, every inanimate object.

  I looked carefully over the cover plate of the switch. The paint was thick in the grooves of the screws.

  “The paint’s fine.”

  “Turn it on.”

  I hit the switch and a single bare bulb illuminated the room.

  Harrison leaned in close to the explosives and began following the wires with his fingers without touching them.

  “What else?” I said.

  “I think you should leave.”

  I could see panic sweep across Philippe’s eyes, pleading not to be abandoned.

  “We’re all going to walk out of here together, no one’s leaving,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure I believed it, but it had the right effect on Philippe. He nodded, though his eyes still had the wild look of a panicked horse.

  The timer hit forty-five seconds and continued its countdown.

  Harrison sat back on his heels, studying the problem, his fingers moving ever so slightly as he traced the imaginary path of detonation.

  Thirty-eight seconds.

  A heavy truck passed outside, grinding its gears, setting off the wail of a car alarm. Harrison abruptly looked toward the window as the shaking from the truck’s passing moved up the walls and spread out across the floor. The motion detector on Philippe’s lap began to sway back and forth ever so slightly. The air seemed to disappear from the room. Philippe’s alre
ady panicked eyes doubled in size. A faint squeal slipped out from under the tape around his mouth.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Harrison said. His hand quickly moved toward the motion detector and stopped just millimeters from it. The tremor in the floor subsided as the truck moved down the street. The motion detector swayed back and forth once more and then settled into place.

  The air began to return to the room.

  Thirty seconds ticked off.

  Harrison reached up and gently took the yellow wires from the motion detector in his fingers, easing the blades of the scissors over them, and snipped them in one quick motion.

  “Jesus,” I said, relieved.

  The timer clicked off twenty seconds.

  “We’re not finished,” Harrison said.

  The wailing of the car alarm outside sounded like the crazed, nighttime laughter of a coyote.

  Fifteen seconds.

  Harrison gently eased his fingers behind the timer and examined the wiring.

  “That’s interesting,” he said to himself.

  Ten seconds.

  He took in his fingers the two wires leading to the detonator. One was black, one red. The car alarm outside fell silent. I could hear my heart beating. He placed the black wire in the blades of the scissors, hesitated for a second, shaking his head, and then snipped it in half.

  The red LED numbers of the timer clicked on three seconds and stopped. Harrison looked over to me and smiled, ever so slightly, like a kid who has just aced a test in chemistry. If his blood pressure had risen so much as a point, he gave no indication of it.

  “I don’t think that was interesting,” I said, getting reacquainted with air in my lungs.

  Harrison looked Philippe in the eyes. “You’re fine.”

  He quickly cut the tape holding the dynamite to Philippe’s chest and slipped it off him like a doctor removing a bandage. Philippe began tearing at the tape around his mouth as if he were suffocating, unraveling it like a turban. The last strip of tape ripped off his cheek with a painful snap. He took no notice, jumped out of the chair and backed away from the dynamite on the floor to the farthest corner of the room. He stood there, frozen with shock for a moment, then raised his hands to cover his mouth and began to sob.

  He looked to be in his early thirties, thin, his eyes sunken like those of a child who has not had enough to eat; his hands had long slender fingers. Without the tape I recognized him as the man I had seen in the Hyundai delivering papers.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he said between sobs in a subtle French accent.

  Harrison was still on his knees examining the device. I walked over and knelt next to him. I could see a question forming in his eyes. “What?”

  He cocked his head as if finding a comfortable place for the thought. “Given the sophistication of the other device, if he wanted us dead, he wouldn’t have made it like this.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I could have cut any wire in this device and it would have disarmed it.”

  He looked at me with a mixture of either fear or admiration in his eyes, I’m not sure which.

  “And that means something?” I asked.

  He nodded gravely. “We’re being played with. A phone call to bring us here, then a bomb that doesn’t go off. It doesn’t make sense. Why bring us here and not kill us.”

  “I don’t know.”

  I turned and looked around the room. The details that I hadn’t had time to absorb before began to show themselves. Both mattresses had been slept on, and there were more clothes in the boxes than a single man in a place like this would have worn. Half a dozen pornographic magazines lay next to one of the mattresses. Miss August adorned the wall above the pillows. I walked over to Philippe, who was hugging the corner like a frightened animal.

  “Can you identify the man who did this?”

  A look of fear flashed in his eyes. He looked toward the door, the window, any way out of the room would seem to do.

  “No, no,” he said, vigorously shaking his head and badly overselling the lie.

  “Who is the second mattress for?”

  His dark almond eyes that had been nervously moving around the room stopped and focused on me.

  “He slept here, didn’t he?” I said. “You know him.”

  The truth settled into his face like a flush and he looked down at the floor.

  “I wanted to be an American,” he said in a barely audible whisper.

  “Did he take my daughter?” I said.

  He raised his head and looked at me.

  “Did he take my daughter?”

  His eyes slowly registered shock as the words began to make sense to him. His mouth opened slightly as if to gasp. He didn’t have to answer. He knew nothing.

  His eyes filled with tears. If he had been made of glass, he would have shattered onto the floor.

  “I’ve been in this chair all night, all day . . . all day.”

  DURING THE DRIVE to Pasadena, Philippe sat in the back, chain-smoking Camels and talking nonstop as if the words had been unleashed from inside him when we took the tape off his mouth. He had been in the country for two years on a student visa attending a trade school to become a disc jockey. And while waiting for top-forty radio to knock on his door, he delivered papers, washed dishes, and played soccer on Saturday afternoons. He was handsome, though not in a distinctive way, or in a way that stood out in a town like Hollywood.

  He said everything that was of importance to him had been taken by the man who placed the bomb in his lap. He had lost all his papers, work permit, passport, letters from home, and his car—the white Hyundai that may or may not have been connected to my daughter’s disappearance. But one look in his terrified eyes told me that what he had really lost couldn’t be accounted for in a property inventory.

  Within moments of our return to Pasadena, LAPD had taken control of Philippe’s apartment. The FBI would soon take it from them. The cat was officially out of the bag now. I would only have custody of Philippe for a short time. The full weight of law enforcement and intelligence was descending on Pasadena like an occupying force. Terror was loose.

  Philippe finished another cigarette and snuffed it out in the nearly full ashtray in the interrogation room. I handed him the pack and he took another one out. He tried to light it, but his hand shook so much he couldn’t light the match, so I did it for him. He inhaled deeply and held the smoke in his lungs for a moment and closed his eyes. He had been sitting in that room with the explosives strapped to his chest, watching the motion detector on his lap shake with the passing of every truck, for over ten hours.

  “We’re bringing you some food,” I said.

  He smiled at some private thought. “My mother wanted me to study to be a doctor. But I love rock music.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  He took another long drag on the Camel. “If I do, I die.”

  “No, you won’t, you’ll be protected.”

  He smiled at me and shook his head as if everything around him were part of an absurd circus act. “Is that what you tell people who have been through what I have?”

  “I’ve never met anyone who’s been through what you have.”

  He leaned his head back and took a breath. When he began to speak, it was in a whisper, as if his tormentor could hear every word.

  “I met him in a bar, said his name was Gabriel. We got to talking like you do. He said he had been living in Europe for several years and had just come back.”

  “He was an American?”

  “Yes. He said he was an actor.”

  “You invited him to stay with you.”

  He nodded. “I’m not gay . . . just lonely. He seemed like . . . I was wrong.”

  “Describe him.”

  “He was tall, over six feet, dark hair, strong. He had these eyes, light-colored, they made you feel like he was looking through you, like you weren’t even there.”

  “When did he come back from Europe?”

  �
�Five days ago.”

  “Do you know from which country, or where he came through customs?”

  “No.”

  He began to raise the cigarette to his mouth again, but his hand began to tremble and he lowered it back onto the tabletop.

  “You must find him.”

  “Did he make any phone calls?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you know who he saw or where he went?”

  “Until yesterday he only slept there once, the first night. He just kept his things there. Said as soon as he found what he was looking for he would move on.”

  “What happened yesterday?”

  “He asked to come with me to deliver papers.”

  He took a long, nervous drag on the cigarette, then lowered his head and blew the smoke out toward his feet.

  “That’s when it began. He took out a gun and . . .” He shook his head, a tear slid along the edge of his eye then fell to the floor.

  “What happened?”

  “He put the gun to my head and pulled the trigger.”

  His eyes began to betray a feeling of shame. And then he spoke in a whisper.

  “He laughed at me, said it was empty. Then he put a bullet in the empty chamber, spun it, and put it back to my head . . . and pulled the trigger again, and again.”

  Philippe winced with the memory as if he could still hear the hammer falling on the chamber. He dropped his face into his hands.

  “I felt like an animal begging for its life. I would have done anything he told me to.”

  He looked up from the floor and deeply exhaled with exhaustion.

  “When you were delivering the papers, why did you pull your car in front of me and then stop at my driveway?”

  “He told me to wait until we saw your car, and then I was to pull out so you could see my face, I don’t know why. I just did what he told me to do.”

  “He knew where I lived?”

  “I think so.”