3

•   •   •

Kelso tasted the coffee he had just poured, making a face as if he’d sipped Drano.

“You really think the bastard triggered the device from the scene?”

Starkey showed him a fax she had received from a sales rep working for the radio control’s manufacturer. It listed the receiver’s performance specs and operating requirements.

“These little receivers operate on such low voltage that they’re only tested out to sixty yards. The guy I spoke with gives us a ballpark maximum distance between transmitter and receiver of about a hundred yards. That’s a line-of-sight distance, Barry. That puts our guy in open view.”

“Okay. So what’s your idea?”

“Every TV station in town had a helicopter overhead, broadcasting the scene. They had cameras on the ground, too. Maybe one of those tapes caught this mutt at the scene.”

Kelso nodded, pleased.

“Okay, I like that. That’s good thinking, Starkey. I’ll talk to Media Relations. I don’t see why there’d be a problem with that.”

“One other thing. I had to split up Marzik and Hooker. Marzik is interviewing the residents, and Hooker is talking to the police and fire personnel who were at the scene. It would help if I could get more people to help with the field interviews.”

He made the sour face again.

“Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

Kelso started away, but turned back.

“You’re still okay with this, right? You can handle it?”

Starkey felt herself flush.

“Asking for more bodies isn’t a sign of weakness, Barry. We’re making progress.”

Kelso stared at her for a moment, then nodded.

“Yes. You are. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”

That surprised Starkey and pleased her.

“Did you talk with Sergeant Daggett yet?”

“No, sir.”

“You should talk to him. Get him to thinking about the people he might’ve seen in that parking lot. When we get these tapes, you’re going to want him to look at them.”

When Kelso closed his door, Starkey went back to her cubicle with her stomach in knots. Daggett would be confused and angry. He would be shaken because of what happened; second-guessing every decision that he’d made, every action, and every movement. Starkey knew he would be feeling these things because she had felt them, too, and didn’t want to revisit them.

Starkey sat in her cubicle for twenty minutes without moving, thinking about the flask in her purse and staring at Buck Daggett’s address in her Rolodex. Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore and stalked down to her car.

Daggett lived in a cramped Mediterranean-style home in the San Gabriel Valley, identical with its beige stucco and tile roof to a hundred others in the low-cost housing development just east of Monterey Park. Starkey had been there once, for a Bomb Squad cookout three months before Sugar died. It wasn’t much of a house. A sergeant-supervisor’s pay would cover something nicer, but Starkey knew that Daggett had been divorced three times. The alimony and child support probably ate him alive.

Five minutes after she left the freeway, Starkey pulled into Daggett’s drive and went to the door. A black ribbon had been tied to the knocker.

Daggett’s fourth and current wife answered. She was twenty years younger than Buck and attractive, though today she seemed vague and distracted. Starkey showed her badge.

“Carol Starkey, Mrs. Daggett. I used to work with Buck on the squad. You and I have met, haven’t we? I’m sorry, but I don’t remember your name.”

“Natalie.”

“Natalie. Sure. Could I see Buck, please?”

“I had to stay home from work, you know? Buck’s so upset.”

“That’s right, Natalie. It’s terrible, isn’t it? Now, is Buck home?”

Natalie Daggett led Starkey through the house to their backyard where Buck was adding oil to his Lawn-Boy. As soon as Starkey stepped out into the yard, Natalie vanished back into her house.

“Hey, Buck.”

Daggett glanced up like he was surprised to see her, then scrambled to his feet. Just looking at him caused an ache in Starkey’s chest.

He shrugged at the Lawn-Boy and seemed embarrassed.

“I’m trying to keep busy. I’d hug you, but I’m all sweaty.”

“Busy is good, Buck. That’s okay.”

“You want a soda or something? Didn’t Natalie offer you anything?”

He came over, wiping his hands on a greasy orange cloth that soiled his hands as much as cleaned them. It was hot in the tiny backyard. Sweat dripped from his hair.

“I don’t have much time. We’re running short.”

He nodded, disappointed, then opened a couple of lawn chairs that had been leaning against the house.

“I heard you caught the case. You doing okay over there on CCS?”

“I’d rather be back on the squad.”

Daggett nodded without looking at her. She suddenly thought that if she was still on the squad that it might’ve been her down in Silver Lake instead of Riggio. Maybe he was thinking that, too.

“Buck, I’ve got to ask you some questions about what happened.”

“I know that. Sure. Hey, I don’t think I ever told you, but the guys in the squad are really proud you made the move to become a detective. That’s real police work.”

“Thanks, Buck. I appreciate that.”

“What are you, a D-3 now?”

“A D-2. I don’t have enough time in grade for the promotion.”

Buck shrugged.

“You’ll get there. Here you are with the lead, and only a D-2.”

Starkey worried he might be wondering if she was up to the job. She liked Buck, and didn’t want him to doubt her. She got enough doubt from Kelso.

“Anyone call you about the bomb? You hear about that?”

“No. Hear about what?”

He was searching her face, and it took all of her strength not to look away. He knew it was going to be bad. She could see the fear of it blossom in his eyes.

“What about the bomb, Carol?”

“It was detonated by remote control.”

He stared at her without expression for a time, then shook his head, something like desperation edging into his voice.

“That can’t be. Charlie made some good snaps with the Real Time. We didn’t see a radio device. We didn’t see any kind of detonator. If we’d seen anything like that, I would’ve yanked Charlie out of there. He would’ve come running.”

“You couldn’t have seen it, Buck. The power pack and initiator were inside one of the pipes. The explosive was in the other. Something called Modex Hybrid.”

He blinked hard to hold back the tears, but they came anyway. Starkey felt her own eyes fill and put a hand on his arm.

“I’m okay.”

She let go of his arm, thinking the two of them were a fine pair.

Buck cleared his throat, took a breath and let it out.

“Modex. That’s military, right? I know that name.”

“They use it in warheads. Almost ten thousand feet faster than TNT. But we’re thinking maybe this batch was homemade.”

“Jesus. You’re sure about the remote? You’re sure it was radio-controlled?”

“We found the receiver. The person who set it off was somewhere in the area. He could’ve set it off anytime he wanted, but he waited until Charlie was right over the bomb. We think he was watching.”

He rubbed at his face and shook his head as if all of this was too much to bear.

She told him about the videotapes.

“Listen, Buck, I’m getting together the videos that the TV stations took. When we have everything together, I’d like you to come in and take a look. Maybe you’ll see someone in the crowd.”

“I don’t know, Carol. My head was on the bomb. I was worried about Charlie’s body temp and about getting good snaps. We thought we had some gangbanger over there, you know? A pachuco showing off for the homeboys. It was just a couple of goddamned pipes, for Christ’s sake.”

“It’ll be another day or two before we get all the tapes. I want you to think about it, okay? Try to recall anyone or anything that stood out.”

“Sure. I got nothing else to do. Dick made me take three days.”

“It’s good for you, Buck. Hey, you can take care of the weeds here in your yard. The place looks like shit.”

Daggett grudged a wan smile, and the two of them fell into silence.

After a time, he said, “You know what they’re making me do?”

“What?”

“I gotta go to the bank. Shit, I don’t want to talk to those people.”

Starkey didn’t know what to say.

“They call it ‘trauma counseling.’ We got all these new rules now. You’re in a shooting, you gotta go in. You get in a car wreck, you gotta go in. Now I guess I’ve got to tell some headshrinker what it feels like seeing my partner get blown to shit.”

Starkey was still trying to think of something to say when she felt her pager vibrate. It was Marzik’s number, followed by 911.

Starkey wanted to return the call, but she didn’t want to leave Buck Daggett so quickly, or like this.

“Don’t worry about the bank. It’s not like you’re being ordered in.”

“I just don’t want to talk to those people. What’s there to say about something like this? What did you say?”

“Nothing, Buck. There’s nothing to say. Just tell’m that. There’s nothing to say. Listen, I’ve got to return this call. It’s Marzik.”

“Sure. I understand.”

Daggett walked her out through the house and to the front door. His wife was nowhere around.

“Natalie’s upset, too. I’m sorry she didn’t offer you anything.”

“Don’t worry about it, Buck. I didn’t want anything anyway.”

“We were pretty tight, the three of us. She liked Charlie a lot.”

“I’ll call you about the videos. Think about it, okay?”

She was stepping through the door when Buck stopped her.

“Detective?”

She looked back at him, smiling at his use of her title.

“Thanks for not asking. You know what I mean? Everyone asks you how you are, and there’s nothing to say to that, either.”

“I know, Buck. It used to drive me crazy, everyone asking that.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess we’re a pretty small club, me and you.”

Starkey nodded at him, and then Buck Daggett closed the door.

Starkey was paged a second time as she walked out to her car. This time it was Hooker. She called Marzik first because of the 911, using her cell phone as she sat in Daggett’s drive.

Marzik got it on the first ring, as if she’d been waiting.

“Beth Marzik.”

“It’s Starkey. What’s up?”

Marzik’s voice was excited.

“I got something here, Starkey. I’m down by that flower shop, the one across from the phone? 911 gets the call from the phone at one-fourteen, right? Well, the owner’s kid is out front, getting ready to deliver some flowers, and he sees a guy on the phone.”

Starkey’s pulse quickened.

“Tell me he saw a car, Beth. Say we’ve got a license plate.”

“Carol, listen to this. It’s even better. He said it was an Anglo guy.” “The caller was Latino.”

“Listen to me, Starkey. This kid is solid. He’s sitting in his truck, listening to the fuckin’ Gipsy Kings while they load the flowers. He’s there from a little after one to exactly one-twenty. I know he was there during the call because they logged his departure time. He says it was a white guy.”

Starkey tried not to let herself get excited, but it was hard.

Marzik said, “Why would a white guy pretend to be Latino unless it was the guy who set the bomb, Carol? If it was some white guy pretending to be Latino, then he was trying to hide, for Christ’s sake. We could have an eye-wit to the fuckin’ asshole who set the bomb.”

Starkey saw the possibilities, too, but she knew that investigations often took turns that seemed to be sure things only to have them fall apart.

“Let’s take it a step at a time, Beth. I think this is a good thing, and we’re going to go with it, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Your wit only thinks the guy he saw was Anglo. Maybe the guy was Anglo, but maybe he only looked Anglo to the kid. We’ll just have to see.”

“Okay. That’s right. I know you’re right, but the kid comes across solid. You need to come talk to him.”

“Is he there now, Beth?”

“Well, for a while. He’s got more deliveries to make and it’s getting late.”

“Okay. Keep him there. I’m coming down.”

“I can’t just keep him here. If they get an order, he’s got to make the delivery.”

“Ask him, Beth. Say pretty please.”

“What do you want me to do, suck his dick?”

“Yeah. Try that.”

Starkey broke the connection, then punched in Santos’s number. When he answered, his voice was so soft that she could barely understand him.

“What are you whispering for?”

“Carol, is that you?”

“I can barely hear you. Speak up.”

“I’m at the office. An agent from the ATF is here. He flew in from Washington this morning.”

Starkey felt a burst of tension in her stomach and reached into her purse for a Tagamet.

“You’re sure it’s Washington? He didn’t just drive over from the L.A. field office?”

She had submitted the preliminary bomb component information through the NLETS only yesterday. If this guy came from Washington, he must have hopped the first jet.

“He’s from Washington, Carol. He went in there with Kelso, and now Kelso wants to see you. He’s been asking for our reports. I think they’re going to take over our case. Look, I’ve gotta go. I’ve been stalling, but Kelso wants me to give him what we have.”

“Waitaminute, Jorge, did the guy say that? Did he say he wanted the case?”

“I’ve got to go, Carol. Kelso just stuck his head out. He’s looking at me.”

“Stall longer, Jorge. I’m coming in. Marzik turned up something good for us.”

“From the looks of the guy in with Kelso, it’s going to be something good for him.”

Starkey ate a Tagamet, then drove back to Spring Street with her dash bubble flashing.

Starkey made it back to her office in twenty-five minutes. Santos caught her eye from the coffee machine and nodded toward Kelso’s door. It was closed.

“Did you give him the reports?”

Her look made him cringe.

“What could I do, tell Kelso no?”

Starkey set her jaw and stalked to Kelso’s door. She knocked hard three times, then opened the door without waiting.

Kelso gestured wearily toward her as he spoke to the man seated across from his desk.

“This is Detective Starkey. She comes in whenever she wants. Starkey, this is Special Agent Jack Pell from—”

“The ATF. I know. Is he taking over this case?”

Pell was leaning forward with elbows on knees as if he were about to leap forward. Starkey guessed him to be in his mid-thirties, but if he was older, it wouldn’t have surprised her. He had pale skin and intense gray eyes. She tried to read the eyes, but couldn’t; they seemed guarded.

Pell turned to Kelso without acknowledging her.

“I need a few more minutes with you, Lieutenant. Have her wait outside until we’re ready.”

Her. Like she wasn’t standing there.

“Out, Starkey. We’ll call you.”

“This is my case, Lieutenant. It’s our case. One of our people died.”

“Wait outside, Detective. We’ll call you when we want you.”

Starkey waited outside his door, fuming. Santos started over, saw her scowl, and veered away. She was cursing Kelso for giving away the CCS investigation when her pager buzzed on her hip.

“Oh, shit. Marzik.”

Starkey phoned Marzik from her cubicle.

“Carol, I’m standing here with this kid and he’s got deliveries to make. Where in hell are you?”

Starkey kept her voice low, so the other detectives couldn’t hear.

“Back at the office. The ATF is coming in.”

“You’re shitting me? What’s happening?”

“All I know is that an agent is in there with Kelso now. Look, I’ll talk with the kid when I’m done here. Tell him to make his damned deliveries.”

“It’s almost five, Carol. He’s got deliveries, then he’s going home. We can catch him tomorrow.”

Starkey checked her watch and thought it through. She wanted to talk to the kid now because she knew that time was a witness’s enemy; people forgot details, people grew confused, people had second thoughts about cooperating with the police. Starkey finally decided that she was getting ahead of herself and pressing too hard. She wouldn’t help herself with this kid by making him wait around for another couple of hours.

“Okay, Beth. Set it up. Is he working tomorrow morning?”

Marzik told her to hang on. The kid must have been standing there with her.

“He’s in at eight. His father owns the store.”

“Okay. We’ll get him tomorrow morning.”

“Us or the ATF?”

“I’m about to find out.”

Kelso stuck his head out, looking for her. Starkey put down the phone, wishing she’d used the time to eat more Tagamet. Sometimes she thought she should buy stock in that company.

When she reached Kelso, he whispered, “Just relax, Carol. He’s here to help us.”

“My ass he is.”

Kelso closed the door behind them. Pell was still poised forward in the chair, so Starkey gave him her best scowl. Those damned gray eyes were the coldest eyes she’d ever seen, and she had to fight the urge to look away.

Kelso returned to his desk.

“Agent Pell flew in from D.C. this morning. The information you fed into the system raised some eyebrows back there.”

Pell nodded.

“I don’t have an interest in taking over your investigation, Detective. This is your town, not mine, but I do think I can help you. I flew out because we flagged some similarities between your bomb and some others we’ve seen.”

“Like what?”

“The Modex is his explosive of choice: fast, sexy, and elite. He also likes to use this particular type of radio detonator, hiding it in one of the pipes so you can’t see it with the X-ray.”

“Who are we talking about?”

“If your guy is our guy, he uses the name Mr. Red. We don’t know his true name.”

Starkey glanced at Kelso, but his expression told her nothing. She figured he would be relieved to hand over the case to the feds, so he wouldn’t have to worry about clearing it.

“What are we talking about here? Mr. Red? Is this guy some kind of serial bomber? Is he a terrorist? What?”

“No, Detective, this mutt isn’t a terrorist. As far as we know, he doesn’t care about politics or abortion or any of that. Over the past two years, we’ve had seven bombings that show Modex Hybrid and a radio-triggering device similar to the one used here. Because of the nature of the targets and the people involved, we believe that four of them were done for criminal profit. He blows up something or someone probably because he’s being paid to do it. This is how he makes his money, Starkey, blowing up things. He’s a hit man with a bomb. But he also has a hobby.”

“I’m dying to know.”

Kelso snapped, surprising the hell out of her.

“Shut up, goddamnit, and listen.”

Starkey turned back to Pell, and the gray eyes were as depthless as stillwater pools. She found herself wondering why they might be so tired.

“He hunts bomb technicians, Starkey. He baits them, then he murders them. He’s killed three so far, if we count your man, all with identical devices.”

Starkey watched the gray eyes. They did not blink.

“That’s insane.”

“The profilers say it’s a dominance game; I think he sees it as a competition. He makes bombs, bomb techs like you de-arm them, so he tries to beat you.”

Starkey felt a chill; Pell clearly read it.

“I know what happened to you. I looked you up before I flew out.”

Starkey felt invaded, and the invasion angered her. She wondered what he knew about her injuries and suddenly felt embarrassed that this man might know those things. She made her voice cool.

“Who and what I am is none of your business except for this: I am the lead investigator on this case.”

Pell shrugged.

“You signed the NLETS request. I like to know who I’m dealing with.”

Thinking about it now, Starkey had a recollection of reading an ATF flyer on an unknown suspect who might have been identified as Mr. Red. It was the kind of flyer that passed through their office on a routine basis, but bore little relevance, as the subject was operating in other parts of the country.

“I would have remembered this, Pell, some nut murdering bomb technicians. No one here has heard of this asshole.”

Kelso shifted.

“They’ve kept that part of his activities on a need-to-know basis.”

“We don’t want copycats, Starkey. We’ve kept all the details of his M.O. and bomb designs classified except the components that we list through NLETS.”

“So you’re saying that your guy is our guy on the strength of a components list?”

“I’m not saying anything yet, but the Modex and the radio receiver are persuasive. The other design signatures are distinctive. And you have this letter you’ve found.”

Starkey was confused.

“What letter? What are you talking about?”

Kelso said, “The number we found etched into the frag. The 5. Agent Pell thinks it might be the letter S.”

“Why do you think it’s a letter?”

Pell hesitated, leaving Starkey to wonder what he was thinking.

“We’ve found etchings in Mr. Red’s work before. What I’ll need to do is read your reports and compare your reconstruction with what we know. Then I’ll make a determination whether or not your bomber is Mr. Red.”

Starkey could see her case slipping away.

“Pardon me if I make up my own mind. But if you get to see mine, then I want to see yours. I want to compare whatever you have with what we find here.”

Kelso showed his palms.

“Now, Starkey, we don’t need to be adversaries here.”

She wanted to kick him. That was just the kind of mealy-mouthed thing Kelso would say.

Pell gathered together a short stack of papers and gestured with them.

“That’s not a problem, Detective. Lieutenant Kelso was kind enough to share your case reports; I’ll be happy to give you copies of mine. They’re at my hotel now, but I’ll get them to you.”

Pell rolled the reports that Kelso had given him into a tube, then stood.

“I skimmed through these. They look pretty good, but I want to read them more carefully now.”

Pell turned to Kelso and gestured with the reports.

“Could you set me up with a place to read these, Lieutenant? I’d like to cover as much ground this evening as I can before Detective Starkey and I get down to business.”

Starkey blinked hard twice, then also faced Kelso.

“What does that mean? I’ve got my hands full with this investigation.”

Kelso came around his desk to open the door.

“Just relax, Carol. We’re all on the same side here.”

As Pell walked past with the reports, he stopped beside Starkey, well into her personal space. She would have bet a thousand dollars that he did it on purpose.

“I won’t bite, Detective. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

Kelso called Santos to take care of Pell, then came back into his office and closed the door. He wasn’t happy, but Starkey didn’t give a damn. Her hands were shaking so badly that she put them in her pockets so that he wouldn’t see.

“You couldn’t have been any less helpful.”

“I’m not here to be helpful. I’m here to find whoever killed Riggio, and now I’ve got to worry about the ATF second-guessing what I do and stealing my case.”

“Try to remember that it’s a team effort, Detective. It can’t hurt to let him look. If he can’t tie our bomb to his man, he’ll go back to Washington and be out of our hair. If our bomber and his bomber are one and the same, we might be damned lucky to have his help. I’ve already spoken to Assistant Chief Morgan about this. He wants us to extend our full cooperation.”

Starkey thought that was just like Kelso, call the brass and cover his ass.

“Marzik found a wit who might’ve seen our guy make the 911 call. He says that the person making the call was an Anglo guy.”

That stopped Kelso, who fidgeted with his pencil as he considered it.

“I thought the caller was Hispanic.”

“So did I.”

Starkey didn’t add anything more. She figured that even Kelso was smart enough to see the implication.

“Well, I guess you’d better see to it. Call me at home to tell me what develops.”

“I was going to go see about it, Lieutenant, but I had to come meet Mr. Pell instead. Now it has to keep until tomorrow. The witness had plans.”

Kelso looked disappointed.

“It couldn’t be helped, then. See about it tomorrow and keep me informed. You’re going to close this case, Starkey. I have every faith in that. So does the A-chief.”

Starkey didn’t answer. She wanted to get out of there, but Kelso looked nervous.

“You’re doing okay with this, aren’t you, Carol? You’re okay?”

Kelso came around his desk again, getting close to her, as if he was trying to smell her breath.

“I’m fine.”

“Good. Go home and get a good night’s sleep. Rest is important to keep your mind sharp.”

Starkey let herself out, hoping that she wouldn’t see Pell when she left. It was after six when she pulled out into the downtown traffic, but she didn’t head home. She turned her car west toward a bar called Barrigan’s in the Wilshire Division.

Less than twelve hours ago she had emptied her flask and promised herself that she would ease up on the drinking, but to hell with that. She ate two Tagamet and cursed her rotten luck that the ATF was involved.

Special Agent Jack Pell

Pell sat in a small white room not much bigger than a coffin to read the reports. He had been provided with the initial findings from the Bomb Squad, SID, and the autopsy of the deceased officer.

After reading them, he felt that LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division and Bomb Squad had done an excellent job of forensics and analysis, though he was disappointed that only a single letter—the S—had been recovered. Pell was certain there would be more, but had a high degree of confidence that the criminalist over there, Chen, would not have overlooked anything. Pell wasn’t so certain about the Medical Examiner’s office. An important step had not been noted in the autopsy protocol.

He brought the reports into the hall and found Santos waiting.

“Do you know if the medical examiner took a full X-ray of Riggio’s body?”

“I don’t know. If it’s not in the protocol, they probably didn’t do it.”

“It’s not, but it should be.”

Pell paged open the autopsy protocol and found the attending medical examiner’s name. Lee Richards.

“Is Starkey still here?”

“She’s gone.”

“I’d better see Lieutenant Kelso.”

Twenty minutes later, after Kelso had made two phone calls to locate Richards, Santos drove Pell around behind the rear of the County-USC Medical Center to the Medical Examiner’s building.

When Santos started to get out with him, Pell said, “Take five and grab a smoke.”

“Don’t smoke.”

“You’re not coming in there with me.”

Pell could tell that Santos was bothered by that, but Pell didn’t care.

“You think I wanna watch an M.E. dig around in a friend of mine? I’ll grab a cup of coffee and wait in the lobby.”

Pell couldn’t object to that, so they crunched across the gravel toward the door.

Inside, Santos identified them to the security guard, then went for his coffee. Richards appeared a few minutes later, Pell following him into a cold tile X-ray room where they waited while two technicians wheeled in Riggio’s body. The body was zipped into an opaque plastic bag. Pell and Richards stood silently as the technicians took the body from the bag and positioned it on the X-ray table. The great Y incision down the chest and abdomen that Richards had made during the autopsy was stitched closed, as were the wounds where the frags had done their worst damage.

Richards eyed the body as if he was assessing his work and liking it.

“The entry wounds were fairly obvious, as you can see. We took area X-rays wherever the entries appeared to be of a significant nature, and that’s where we removed the fragments.”

Pell said, “That’s the problem. If you only look where you see an entry wound, you’ll miss something. I’ve seen cases where shrapnel bounced off a pelvis and followed the femur down to a knee.”

Richards looked dubious.

“I guess it’s possible.”

“I know it’s possible. Where are his hands?”

Richards frowned.

“Hm?”

“Were his hands recovered?”

“Oh, yes. I examined them. I know I examined them.”

Richards peered at the bony stubs of the wrists, then squinted at the technicians.

“Where are the goddamned hands?”

The technicians fished around in the bag and came out with the hands. Scorched from the heat flash and macerated by the pressure wave. Richards looked relieved.

“See? We’ve got the hands. It’s all here.”

Like he was proud of himself that all the body parts were accounted for.

Richards said, “What we’ll do is look over the body with the scope first. We see anything, we’ll mark it, okay? That’ll be faster than screwing around with the X-ray.”

“Fine.”

“I don’t like the X-ray. Even with all the shielding, I worry about the cancer.”

“Fine.”

Pell was given a pair of yellow goggles to wear. He felt nothing as he watched them wheel Riggio’s body behind a chromatic fluoroscope. The fluoroscope looked like an opaque flat-screen television, but when Richards turned it on, it was suddenly transparent. As the body disappeared behind the screen, its flesh was no longer flesh but transparent lime Jell-O, the bones impenetrable green shadows. Richards adjusted the screen.

“Pretty cool, huh? This won’t scramble your ’nads the way an X-ray will. No cancer.”

At Richards’ direction, the techs pushed the body slowly past the screen, revealing three sharply defined shadows below the knee, two in the left leg, one in the right, all smaller than a BB.

Richards said, “Sonofabitch, here you go. Right here.”

Pell had expected to find even more, but the armored suit had done its work well. Only those fragments with a significant mass had carried enough inertia to punch through the Kevlar.

Richards peered at him.

“You want these?”

“I want it all, Doc.”

Richards marked the spots on the body with a felt-tipped pen.

By the time they finished scanning the body, they had found eighteen metal fragments, only two of which had any real size: one, an inch-long piece of twisted metal that had lodged in Riggio’s hip joint; the other, a half-inch rectangular fragment that Richards had overlooked when he’d removed a cluster of fragments from the soft tissue of Riggio’s right shoulder.

As Richards removed them, the taller technician rinsed them of clotted blood and placed them in a glass tray. Pell inspected each bit of metal, but he found no etches or markings.

Finally, Richards turned off the light screen, and lifted his goggles.

“That’s it.”

Pell didn’t say anything until the last of the fragments had been rinsed. It was the largest piece, and he wanted there to be something so badly that his heart was hammering, but when he examined it, he saw that there was nothing.

“Does any of this help, you think?”

Pell didn’t answer.

“Agent?”

“I appreciate your staying, Doc. Thanks.”

Richards peeled off his gloves to glance at his watch. It was a Mickey Mouse watch.

“We’ll send these over to SID in the morning. We have to deliver them under seal to maintain the chain of evidence.”

“I know. That’ll be fine, thanks.”

It wasn’t fine and Pell didn’t like it. A cold rage of frustration threatened to spill out of him.

Pell was already thinking that he was too late, that Mr. Red might have come and gone and be on to another city or maybe had never been here at all, when the taller technician mentioned the hands.

“Doc, you gonna scope the hands, or should I bag this stuff and get out of here?”

Richards grunted like they might as well, then brought over the hands and placed them under the scope. Two bright green shadows were wedged among the metacarpal bones in the left hand.

“Shit. Looks like we missed a couple.”

Richards removed them with the forceps, passing them to the tech, who rinsed them and put them with the others.

Pell inspected them as he had done the others, turning over both pieces without hope when he felt an adrenaline jolt of rage surge through his body.

The larger piece had five tiny letters etched into its surface, part of a sixth, and what he saw there stunned him. It wasn’t what he expected. It wasn’t anything that he had expected. His heart was beating so hard that it seemed to echo off the walls.

Behind him, Richards said, “Find anything?”

“No. Just more of the same stuff, Doc.”

Pell palmed the shard with the letters and returned the remaining piece to the tray with the other recovered fragments. The lab technician did not notice that he had returned one piece and not two.

Richards must’ve read something in his eyes.

“Are you all right, Agent Pell? You need a drink of water or something?”

Pell put away those things he felt and carefully blanked his face.

“I’m fine, Doc. Thanks for your time.”

Special Agent Jack Pell walked back into the outer hall, where the security guard stared at him with goldfish eyes.

“You looking for Santos?”

“Yeah.”

“He took his coffee out to the car.”

Pell turned toward the door and was halfway down the hall when crimson starbursts appeared in the air before him, followed by a sharp wave of nausea. The air around the starbursts darkened and was suddenly alive with wormy shapes that writhed and twisted.

Pell said, “Shit, not now. Not now.”

Behind him, the guard said, “What?”

Pell remembered a bathroom. A men’s room off the hall. He blinked hard against the darkening stars and shoved his way through the door. A cold sweat sprouted over his back and chest.

The dizziness hit him as he reached the sink, and then his stomach clenched and he barfed into the sink. The room felt as cold as a meat locker.

Closing his eyes didn’t stop him from seeing the shapes. They floated in the air on a field of black, rising and twisting in slow motion as if filled with helium. He turned on the cold water and vomited again, spitting out the foul taste as he splashed water into his eyes. His stomach heaved a third time, and the nausea passed.

He heard voices in the hall and thought one of them might be Santos.

Pell clawed a towel from the rack, wet it with cold water, and staggered into the stall. When he straightened, his head spun.

He slumped onto the toilet and pressed the towel hard to his eyes, waiting.

He had done this before. He had done it many times and was scared because the time between bouts was shrinking. He knew what that meant, and it scared him more than anything in his life had ever scared him.

He sat on the floor, breathing through the wet towel until the floating monsters that haunted him vanished. When they were gone, he took out the piece of metal he had stolen and read the letters there, squinting to make his eyes work.

Pell hadn’t told Kelso and Starkey everything about Mr. Red. He hadn’t told them that Mr. Red didn’t just kill random bomb techs. He chose his targets, usually senior techs with headline cases under their belts. He didn’t kill just anyone; he killed only the very best.

When Pell learned of the S, he thought it would be from CHARLES.

It wasn’t.

Pell read the fragment again.

TARKEY

Red Rage

CRIME BOSS DIES IN FIERY BLAST

INNOCENTS DIE ALSO

By Lauren Beth

Exclusive to the

Miami Herald

John Michael Fowles was disappointed that the article was on page three, but decided not to show it. He was also pissed off that there was no mention of Mr. Red, nor of the fine work he had done in destroying the building. He folded the newspaper and handed it back to Angelo Rossi, the man who had put him in touch with Victor Karpov.

Rossi looked surprised when John returned the paper.

“There’s more on the next page.”

“It’s just an article, Mr. Rossi. I’d rather be readin’ the papers you got in that bag, if you know what I mean.”

“Well, sure.”

Rossi nervously handed over the bag with the money Karpov owed John. Karpov himself had refused to come meet John here at the library. He claimed illness, like a kid cutting class, but John knew the real reason: He was scared.

As before, John didn’t bother to count it, or even open the bag. He put the money into his backpack, and lowered the pack to the floor. When John had told Rossi to meet him here in the periodicals section of the West Palm Beach Public Library, he had had to explain what “periodicals” were.

John gave Rossi the cracker’s hayseed grin as he leaned back against the reading table.

“Take it easy, Mr. Rossi. We’re okay. You don’t have an overdue book, do ya?”

Rossi glanced over his shoulder as if the book police were hot on his trail, clearly nervous and out of place. John wondered if the fat bastard had even been in a library except when he’d been sent there on high school detention.

“This is foolish, Red, meeting in a library like this. What kinda mook talks about shit like this in a library?”

“A mook like me, I guess. I like the order you find in a library, Angelo. It’s the last place left where people behave with manners, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Whatever. Why’d you do your hair like that?”

“So people will remember it.”

Rossi’s eyes narrowed. John pictured rusty gears turning in Rossi’s head, and had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing, though he knew Rossi to be a smart man.

“Don’t you worry about it, partner. Mr. Red has his reasons.”

“Oh, I get it. Mr. Red. The red hair.”

“There you go.”

Today, John’s hair was cut way short and dyed a vivid red the colorist had called Promise of Passion. Contact lenses gave him green eyes. His sideburns were long and pointed, and he’d fit cotton wads into his lower cheeks to make his jaw appear more square. He was also wearing lifts that made him three inches taller.

If Rossi knew the real reason John had made himself up this way, the man would shit a Buick.

“Listen, my friends up in Jersey got another job I wanna talk to you about.”

“Down here or up there?”

“We got a fuckass Cuban pirate knocking over our ganja boats down off Key West.”

John shook his head before Rossi finished.

“No can do, Mr. Rossi. I’d like to oblige, but things are gonna be heating up for me around here now, so I’ve gotta split.”

“Just listen a minute, okay, Red? What I’m talking about here won’t take long at all. We just wanna kill a nigger, is all.”

“So go shoot him. You done it before.”

Rossi seemed agitated, and John wondered about that. He hadn’t expected Rossi to pitch him another gig, and he was growing concerned with all the time he was wasting. He wanted Rossi to leave so that he could get on with his business. The real reason he had come to the library.

“Well, it’s more than just walking up to some nigger and shooting him. I could get one’a these kids around here to do that. We wanna get him, his family, the whole damned nest of’m, you know. Kinda send a message, the way you’re good at doing.”

“Can’t help you, Mr. Rossi. You had a job in another state, we could talk about it. But not here. I got some personal business I wanna take care of.”

Rossi nervously glanced around again, then scooted his chair closer. He wasn’t taking the hint to leave, which made John figure that he’d probably already told the Jersey people that Mr. Red would go along.

“Shit, the cops got nothing on you, and no way to connect you to that bastard Vega. You saw the paper. They don’t know shit yet.”

“Don’t believe everything you read, Angelo. Now I got other stuff I need to do, so if you’ll excuse me, get the fuck outta here.”

In fact, John knew far more than Rossi or the press about what the blast investigators had gathered. At some time around eleven P.M. the night before, the Broward County Sheriff’s laboratory had found his little calling card. They had entered their preliminary lab results and materials findings into the FBI’s Bomb Data Center computer system. The BDC’s computer had matched these findings with other known explosive devices that had been used around the country, and an alert had been kicked back to the sheriff and the local ATF office, as well as to the national FBI and ATF offices in Washington. John did not know, but he surmised, that while he and Angelo Rossi sat here in the coolness of the air-conditioned library, agents from the local ATF field office were scrambling to act on this information. Which was exactly what he wanted them to do.

“Look, Red, please. I’m telling you you can make a sweet buck here. How’s twice what Karpov paid you sound?”

“Sorry, sir. Just can’t.”

“You got us over a barrel.”

“Nah. I think you’re the one over a barrel, right? You shot off your mouth to those wops up north, and now you can’t deliver.”

Rossi glanced around again.

“Do me this as a favor, okay? I can give you everything you need to know about this nigger right now. Shit, I’ll drive you there myself, you want.”

“Nope. No niggers on the menu today. Now get the fuck outta here, okay?”

Rossi’s nostrils flared and his hand slipped beneath his jacket. Ninety degrees and a hundred percent humidity, and this dumb guinea was wearing a sport coat like he just came out of a double bill of GoodFellas.

John rolled his eyes.

“Oh, please, Mr. Rossi. Let’s not be small. What the fuck you think you’re gonna do with that here in the library? Here in ‘periodicals’? Jesus Christ, you’re so dumb you think ‘periodicals’ is something a whore gets.”

Rossi’s jaw worked as if he was chewing gum.

John grinned wider, then let the smile fall away and leaned toward Angelo Rossi. He knew Rossi feared him. He knew Rossi was about to fear him more.

“Here’s a tip, Angelo: Pretend that you dropped something on the floor and bend down to pick it up. When you’re down there, you look up under the bottom of this table.”

Rossi’s eyes flickered.

“What you got down there?”

“You look, Angelo. You won’t get bit.”

John took the newspaper from the table and let it slip to the floor.

“You go on and look now, okay? You just look.”

Rossi didn’t bend down for the paper. Slowly, never taking his eyes from John, he slipped from the chair and squatted to the floor. When he rose again, Rossi’s face was white.

“You crazy fuck.”

“That might be, Angelo. Now you go on and kill your own damned nigger. Me and you will work together again another time.”

Rossi showed his palms and backed away, bumping into two teenage girls who were trying to figure out how to use a reference computer.

When Rossi was gone, John considered the people at the surrounding tables. Mostly old people, reading newspapers and magazines. A group of preschool kids here on some kind of kindergarten field trip. A soft-looking man behind the research desk, reading a Dean Koontz novel. All of them just going along with their lives, oblivious.

John swung around to face the library’s Internet research computer and tapped in the address for the FBI’s web site: www.fbi.gov.

When the home page came up, he clicked on the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives icon and watched the page load.

Ten small pictures appeared, each with a link to its own page. John had checked the site before Rossi arrived, hoping to find his picture there. It wasn’t then, and still wasn’t.

A perfect example, John felt, of government inefficiency.

Disappointed, John went back to the home page, and clicked on the Unknown Suspects icon. Nine pictures appeared, three of which were artists’ sketches. One of the sketches showed a studious young man with a balding pate, rim of brown hair, brown eyes, and dorky glasses. John had starved himself for two weeks before letting himself be seen that time, and the witnesses had certainly noticed: The sketch showed him to be gaunt and undernourished. He was also shown wearing a white button-down shirt and thin dark tie. It was a sketch that looked nothing like his true self, just as today he looked nothing like his true self.

He clicked on the sketch, which brought him to a page showing a brief (though inaccurate) description of himself, along with a catalog of the crimes he was suspected of committing. These charges included multiple counts of criminal bombing and murder. John was pleased to note that the feds considered him extremely dangerous, and that he used “sophisticated explosive devices for criminal gain.” It wasn’t as cool as being in the Top Ten, but it was better than getting piss on your shoe.

John felt that the FBI’s refusal to include him on the Ten Most Wanted List was both cheesy and disrespectful. And lazy. The Top Ten was loaded with raghead terrorists, right-wing political kooks, and drug addicts who had murdered police officers. John had killed far more people than most of them. He believed himself to be the most dangerous man walking free in open daylight, and expected to be treated as such.

John guessed he would just have to up the stakes.

Beneath the table was a small device he had built for this library, specifically to be used as a message. It was simple, elegant, and, like every device he built, bore his signature. The local authorities would know within hours that Mr. Red had come to call.

“Excuse me. Are you finished using that?”

An older woman with a body like a squash stood behind him. She was holding a spiral notebook.

“You want to use the computer?”

“Yes. If you’re finished with it.”

John flashed the big grin, then scooped up his backpack and held the chair for her. Just before he stood, he reached beneath the table and turned on the timer.

“Yes, ma’am, I am. You sit right here. This chair’s so comfy it’ll make your butt smile.”

The older woman laughed.

John left her there and walked out into the sun.