4

•   •   •

Starkey woke the next morning on the couch, her body clenched into a fist. Her neck was stiff, and her mouth tasted as if it were lined with sheep’s wool seat covers. It was four-twenty in the morning. She had gotten two hours sleep.

Starkey felt disquieted by the dreams. A different quality had been added. Pell. In her dreams, he chased her. She had run as hard as she could, but her movements were sluggish and slow, while his were not. Starkey didn’t like that. In the dream, his fingers were bony and sharp, like claws. She didn’t like that, either. Starkey’s dreams had been a constant since her injury, but she found herself feeling resentful of this addition. It was bad enough that the sonofabitch was invading her investigation; she didn’t need him in her nightmares.

Starkey lit a cigarette, then gimped into the kitchen, where she found a small amount of orange juice that didn’t smell sour. She tried to remember the last time that she’d been to the market, but couldn’t. The only things she bought in quantity were gin and cigarettes.

Starkey downed the juice, then a glass of water, then got herself together for the day. Breakfast was two aspirin and a Tagamet.

Marzik had left word on her voice mail that they could meet the wit, a kid named Lester Ybarra, at the flower shop when it opened at nine. By five-thirty, Starkey was at Spring Street, climbing the stairs to her office. Spring Street was quiet. Neither CCS, Fugitive Section, nor IAG maintained a night shift. Their commanders and sergeant-supervisors were on pagers. They, in turn, would contact the officers and detectives in their commands on an as-needed basis. Fugitive Section, by the nature of their work as manhunters, often started their days as early as three A.M. in order to bag their mutts in bed. But today the stairs were empty, and her steps echoed in the silent altar of the stairwell.

Starkey liked that.

She had once told Dana that she enjoyed being awake before everyone else because it gave her an edge, but that had been a lie. Starkey enjoyed the solitude because it was easier. No one intruded. No one stared behind her back, thinking that she was the one, the tech who’d been blown apart and stitched back together like Frankenstein’s monster, the one who had lost her partner, the one who had escaped, the one who had died. Dana had called her on it, offering Starkey the truth by asking if Carol ever felt the weight of their stares or imagined that she could hear their thoughts. Starkey, of course, denied all of it, but she thought about it later and admitted that Dana was right. Solitude was a spell that freed her.

Starkey opened the CCS office, then put on the Mr. Coffee. As the coffee dripped, she went back to her desk. Like all the CCS detectives, she kept reference manuals and sourcebooks for explosives manufacturers, but, unlike the others, Starkey also had her texts and manuals from the FBI’s Redstone Arsenal Bomb School, and the technical catalogs that she had collected during her days as a bomb technician.

Starkey brought a cup of coffee back to her desk, lit a fresh cigarette, then searched through her books.

Modex Hybrid was a trinary explosive used as a bursting charge in air-to-air missles. Hot, fast, and dangerous. Trinary meant that it was a mixture of three primary explosives, combined together to form a compound more powerful and stable than any of the three alone. Starkey took out her case notebook and copied the components: RDX, TNT, ammonium picrate, powdered aluminum, wax, and calcium chloride. RDX, TNT, and ammonium picrate were high explosives. The powdered aluminum was used to enhance the power of the explosion. The wax and calcium chloride were used as stabilizers.

Chen had found contaminants in the Modex, and, after consulting with the manufacturer, had concluded that the Modex used in Riggio’s bomb wasn’t part of a government production. It was homemade, and therefore untraceable.

Starkey considered that, then searched through her books for information on the primary components.

TNT and ammonium picrate were available to the civilian population. You could get it damned near anywhere. RDX was different. Like the Modex, it was manufactured for the military only under government contract, but, unlike the Modex, it was too complicated to produce without industrial refining equipment. You couldn’t cook up a batch in your microwave. This was the kind of break Starkey was hoping to find in her manuals. Someone could make Modex if they had the components, but they couldn’t make the components. They would have to acquire the RDX, which meant that the RDX could be traced back to its source.

Starkey decided that this was a good angle to work.

She brought her notes to the NLETS computer, poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, then punched up a request form asking for matches with RDX. By the time she finished typing the form and entering the request, a few of the other detectives had begun to drift in for the start of the shift. The silence was gone. The spell was broken.

Starkey gathered her things and left.

Marzik was loading Amway products into her trunk when Starkey parked behind her outside the flower shop. Marzik carried the damned stuff everywhere and would make her pitch at the most inappropriate times, even when interviewing witnesses and, twice, when questioning potential suspects.

Starkey felt her stomach tighten. She had decided not to call Marzik on ratting her out to Kelso, but she now felt a wave of irritation.

They met on the sidewalk, Marzik saying, “Is the ATF going to take over the case?”

“He says no, but we’ll see. Beth, tell me you weren’t in there with the Amway.”

Marzik slammed the trunk and looked annoyed.

“Why shouldn’t I? They didn’t mind. I made a good sale.”

“Do me a favor and leave it in the trunk. I don’t want to see that again on this case.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. I got two children to feed.”

Starkey was going to say more when a short, thin Latino teenager stepped out of the flower shop and looked at Marzik. “Detective? My dad says I got to get going soon. We got morning deliveries.”

Marzik introduced her to Lester Ybarra as the lead investigator on the case.

Starkey offered her hand. Lester’s felt clammy from being inside the flower shop. He smelled of chemicals and baby’s breath.

“Hi, Lester. I really appreciate your helping us out like this.”

Lester glanced at Marzik, flashing a shy smile.

“’s no pro’lem.”

Marzik said, “Lester saw someone using the phone across the street between one and one-fifteen the day the bomb went off, right, Lester?”

Lester nodded, and Marzik nodded with him.

“Can you describe that person to Detective Starkey?”

Lester glanced at Starkey, then snuck a quick peek back at Marzik. His eyes went to Marzik so much that Starkey figured he had probably developed a crush on her, which made Starkey wonder if he had fabricated parts of his story to impress her.

Starkey said, “Before we get to that, Lester, how about helping me set the scene, okay? So I can picture it?”

“’s no pro’lem.”

“Your van was where? About here where my car is?”

“Yeah.”

Starkey was parked directly outside the florist’s front door in a red No Parking zone about fifteen feet from the corner.

“You always load the van out here in the street, bringing the flowers through the front door?”

“We got three vans. The other two was using the alley, so I had to be out here. I was supposed to leave by twelve-thirty, but we got this big order right when I was set to go. A funeral set, you know? Twelve sprays. We make a lotta money from funerals. My dad said I hadda wait, so I brought the van around front here.”

“You were sitting in the van, waiting, or you were loading flowers?”

“When I saw the guy, I was sitting there behind the wheel. Nothing to do, you know? My sisters hadda make the sprays. So I was just sitting there in case the cops come and I hadda move.”

Marzik said, “He was in the red zone.”

Starkey nodded. Standing there listening, she had noticed that very few cars turned off Sunset onto the little side street. Lester would have an easy, unobstructed view of the pay phone hanging on the laundry across the street. She watched an older couple emerge from the laundry with a pink box and made a note to herself to mention it to Marzik.

“Okay, Lester, would you describe him for me? I know you described him for Detective Marzik, but now for me.”

Starkey and Marzik locked eyes. They were getting down to it now. Whether the caller was Anglo or Latino.

Lester launched into his description, describing an Anglo man of medium height and build, wearing a faded blue baseball cap, sunglasses (probably Wayfarers), dark blue trousers, and a lighter blue work shirt. Lester’s impression was that the man was wearing some kind of a uniform, such as a gas station attendant or bus driver. Starkey took notes, not reacting to Lester’s statement that the caller was an Anglo. Lester had not heard the man’s voice. He thought the guy had to be in his forties, but admitted to being a lousy judge of age. As Lester spoke, Starkey felt the pager at her hip vibrate, and checked the number. Hooker.

When Lester finished, Starkey folded her pad on a finger.

“If you saw this guy again, you think you’d recognize him?”

Lester shrugged.

“I don’t think so. Maybe. I didn’t really look at him, you know? Just for a couple seconds.”

“Did you see which way the man came from when he went to the phone?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“How about when he left? You see where he went?”

“I wasn’t paying attention, you know? He was just some guy.”

“He get out of or into a car?”

Lester shrugged.

Starkey put away the pad.

“Okay, Lester, I’ve got just one problem with this. We have reason to believe that the person making the call was Latino. You sure this guy was Anglo?”

“I’m pretty sure. His hair was light, you know? Not gray, but light.”

Starkey and Marzik traded another look, neither as enthusiastic as they had been yesterday. “Pretty sure” was an equivocation.

“Light brown?”

“Yeah. A light brown. Kinda sandy.”

Marzik frowned. “You could tell that with the cap?”

Lester touched his own ears.

“The part I could see down here, you know?”

That made sense to Starkey. She brought out the pad again and made another note. As she wrote, she had another thought.

“Okay. One more thing. Do you recall any identifying characteristics? A scar, maybe? A tattoo on his arm?”

“He was wearing long sleeves.”

“He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt?”

“Yeah. That’s why I couldn’t see his arms. I remember it was greasy and old, like he’d been working on a car or something.”

Starkey glanced at Marzik, and found her staring. Marzik was clearly unhappy with Lester’s uncertainty. When Starkey glanced back at Lester, he was watching Marzik.

“One last thing. You were out here, about, what? Fifteen minutes?”

“You keep sayin’ that, one last thing. My old man’s gonna kick my ass. I gotta go make these deliveries.”

“I mean it this time, Lester. Just this last question. Anyone else make a call from that phone while you were out here?”

Starkey already knew that no other calls had been made from that phone. She wanted to see if he would lie about it to impress Marzik or to make himself more important.

“I didn’t see anyone else. No.”

Starkey put away her pad.

“Okay, Lester, thanks. I want you to come in with Detective Marzik and work with a sketch artist, see if we can’t build a picture of this guy, okay?”

“That sounds pretty cool to me. My dad ain’t gonna like it, though. He gonna raise hell.”

“You go take care of your deliveries, and we’ll square it with your father, maybe get you down there later this morning. Detective Marzik will buy you lunch.”

Lester nodded his head like a collie.

“Okay. Sure.”

Lester vanished into the flower shop, but Marzik and Starkey stayed on the sidewalk.

“Why’d you have to tell him that, for Christ’s sake? I don’t want to spend all day with him.”

“Somebody has to be with him. You’ve set up the rapport.”

“It’s not going to do any good. You hear that, ‘pretty sure’? The guy’s wearing a cap, sunglasses, and a long-sleeved shirt on a day it’s ninety-five fuckin’ degrees. If it’s our guy, he’s wearing a goddamned disguise. If he’s not, he’s just some asshole.”

Starkey felt the urge for more antacid.

“Why do you always have to be so negative?”

“I’m not being negative. I’m just stating what’s obvious.”

“Okay, then try this for obvious: If he’s our guy, and if he’s wearing the same clothes when he set off the bomb, and if he’s on the news tape, the goddamned hat and sunglasses and long-sleeved shirt should make him easier to spot.”

“Whatever. I’ll go talk to the kid’s father. He’s a bastard.”

Marzik stalked into the shop without another word. Starkey shook out a cigarette, lit it, and went to her car. She was so angry that she was trembling. First Pell, now this. She was trying to get past it because she had a job to do, and she knew the anger was getting in her way. She tried to remember some of the techniques that Dana had told her for setting aside her anger, but couldn’t remember any of them. Three years in therapy, and she couldn’t remember a goddamned thing.

Just as Marzik reappeared, Starkey was considering the people coming and going from the laundry, and how many of them passed the pay phone. She took a breath, calming herself.

“Beth, you talked to the people at the laundry, right?”

Marzik answered without looking at her. Sulking.

“I told you I did.”

“Did you run the time and description by them? I’m thinking that one of their customers might’ve seen our guy.”

Marzik pulled her pad from her purse, opened it to a list of names, then held it out with the same sulky indifference.

“I asked them for any customers they recalled between noon and two. I’m not stupid, Carol.”

Starkey stared at Marzik, then dropped her cigarette and crushed it.

“Okay. I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but I think you and I need to clear the air.”

“About what? Your busting my balls about the Amway or because the kid isn’t as solid as I thought he was?”

“You told Kelso that you thought I was drinking on the job.”

Marzik went a bright crimson, confirming Starkey’s suspicion.

“No, I didn’t. Did Kelso say that?”

“Beth, this is hard enough. If you’re going to lie to me, do me the kindness of not saying anything and just listen.”

“I don’t like being accused.”

“If you don’t want to work with me, let’s go to Kelso and tell him we can’t work together. I’ll tell him it’s mutual, and neither of us will lose points.”

Marzik crossed her arms, then uncrossed them and squared herself in Starkey’s face.

“If you want to talk about this straight-up, then let’s get straight-up. Everyone on the squad knows you have a drinking problem. Jesus Christ, we can smell it. If you don’t reek of gin, you’re blowing Altoids to cover it.”

Starkey felt herself redden and fought the urge to step away.

“Everybody feels sorry for you because of what happened. They set you up over here in CCS and took care to bring you along, but you know what? That shit doesn’t cut any ice with me. No one set me up, and no one is looking out for me, and I got two kids to raise.”

“No one’s looking out for me.”

Starkey felt as if she was suddenly on the spot, and defensive.

“My ass there isn’t. Everybody knows that Dick Leyton used his clout at Parker to make Kelso take you, and he’s still watching out for you. I’ve got these two kids to raise, and I gotta have this job. That job isn’t babysitting you, and it sure as hell doesn’t include taking a career fall to cover your bad habits.”

“I’m not asking you to cover for me.”

“Good, because I won’t. I also won’t ask off this case because this is the kind of case that leads to a promotion. If this thing about the guy being Anglo turns out to be real, I want the credit. I’ve been a D-2 for too damned long. I need the bump to D-3. I need the money. If you can’t handle it, then you ask off, because I need the money.”

Starkey felt her pager vibrate again, and, again, it was Hooker. She went into her car for her cell phone, thankful for the excuse, and berating herself for bringing up the business about the drinking. She knew that Marzik would deny ratting to Kelso, and as long as Marzik denied it, it was a no-winner. Now Marzik was openly hostile.

“Hook, it’s me.”

“You and Marzik get anything from the flower kid?”

“Marzik’s going to bring him in to work with an artist. Can you get that set up?”

“Right away. Listen, we got the news tapes you wanted. From three of the stations, anyway. You want me to set up the room for us to watch?”

“It’s the tape they shot from the helicopters over the parking lot?”

“Yeah. There are a lot of tapes here. You want me to set the room?”

Starkey flashed on the images trapped on the tape. She would see the bomb explode. She would see Charlie Riggio die.

“Set up the room, Jorge. I want the kid to look at them, too, but only after he’s done with the artist, okay? I don’t want him seeing the videos first, then describing someone he’s seen just because he thinks they look suspicious.”

“I’ll get it set up.”

“One more thing. What happened with Pell last night?”

“He didn’t like something in the coroner’s report. Kelso had me take him over there.”

Starkey felt her stomach knot.

“What didn’t he like?”

“The M.E. hadn’t done a full body X-ray, so Pell made him do it.”

“Jesus, Kelso’s letting him work the case like he’s local?”

“I can’t talk, Carol. You know?”

“Did he find anything?”

“They found some more frag, but he said it didn’t amount to very much.”

Starkey felt herself breathe easier. Maybe Pell would lose interest and go back to Washington.

“Okay, arrange for the artist and lock down the room for the tapes. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

She ended the call, then went back to Marzik. She had decided that she needed to smooth over things.

“Beth? We’ve got the videotape. Jorge’s going to set up the artist for you. After that, how about you bring Lester back to watch the tapes? Maybe he’ll pick out the hat man.”

“Whatever.”

“Look, I didn’t mean to step on your toes about the laundry people. That was good thinking, getting the customer names.”

“Thank you too much.”

If that’s the way she wanted it, Starkey thought, fine.

She got into her car and left Marzik waiting in the heat for Lester Ybarra.

Starkey intended to drive back to Spring Street, but as she passed the site where Riggio died, she slowed and turned into the parking lot.

Hearing that the videotapes had arrived had gotten her thinking. The remote-control manufacturer had told her that the maximum possible range for the transmitter was one hundred yards. Per Bomb Squad policy, the area had been cleared out to one hundred yards, which meant that whoever had the transmitter would have to be right at the edge of the boundary. Starkey thought that maybe the news tape would show the crowd where someone had been close enough to pull the trigger.

The parking lot had been released as a crime scene, and all of the shops except for the bookstore were once more open for business. Two young Latinos were painting the damaged wall, the Dumpster had been replaced, and the blast crater was now a black patch against gray tarmac. Life was moving on.

Starkey parked on the street, then walked over to the patch. She stared across Sunset Boulevard, trying to figure how far one hundred yards was, then looked south up the little side street past the apartment buildings, trying to gauge the distance. The sun beat down on her dark gray pants suit, making the fabric hot and uncomfortable. She took off her jacket and folded it across her arm. The painters stared at the pistol on her hip, so she unclipped it and held it in the fold of her jacket.

Starkey crossed Sunset at the light, then continued north past the Guatemalan market, counting paces until she reached one hundred and thirty. She figured this to be about a hundred yards. She was standing six parking meters north of Sunset Boulevard, about a car length north of a telephone pole. She noted the telephone pole in her casebook, figuring it would be easy to spot on the news video, then went back to the patch and counted the same number of paces south. She found herself beside a tall, spindly palm tree. With so many palms in the area, it would be hard to spot the right one. The apartment building across the street had a blue tile roof, so she noted that in her book. Starkey returned to ground zero twice more, counting paces east and west to fix obvious landmarks. When she was done, she lit a cigarette, then sat in her car, smoking.

She thought that somewhere within these boundaries the killer had watched, and waited, and murdered a man.

She wondered if he was the man that Lester Ybarra had described, if it was Pell’s Mr. Red, or if it was someone else.

Hooker was sorting through the tapes in a cardboard box when Starkey reached CCS.

First thing he said was, “The ATF guy called.”

“Pell called?”

“Yeah. I put it on your desk.”

“Screw’m. Did you get Marzik set up with the sketch artist?”

“They didn’t have a computer free until later. She wanted me to ask if they can’t come here and start on the tapes while they wait.”

“No, I told her why not. I want the kid to describe who he saw before we show him any faces. Marzik knows better than that.”

“I told her you’d say that. She wasn’t happy about it.”

“Marzik complains about everything.”

Starkey saw a short stack of pink message slips as she dropped her purse into her file drawer. Chester Riggs, who was working out of Organized Crime, and Warren Perez, a D-3 in Rampart Bunco, were both returning her calls. Riggs and Perez were profiling the minimall shopkeepers to look for motives behind the bomb. Neither of them expected to find a link, and neither did Starkey. She didn’t bother to read the message from Pell.

Starkey returned to Santos and fingered through the cassettes. They were in two sizes, big three-quarter-inch master tapes and half-inch VHS dubs that could be played on home machines.

Santos saw her frowning.

“These are only from three of the stations, Carol. We got more coming in. Man, it’s hours. The running times are written on the outside, along with whether it’s a close-up or the wide-angle.”

Starkey turned the tapes so that she could see what he was talking about. The shortest tape showed a recorded time of seventy-four minutes. The longest, one hundred twenty-six minutes. Each tape was also marked CLOSE or WIDE.

“What does that mean, close or wide?”

“Some of the helicopters carry two cameras mounted on a swivel that pokes out the bottom of the nose, just like a couple of guns. Both cameras focus on the same thing, but one of the cameras is zoomed in close, and the other is pulled back for a wider field of view. They record both cameras up in the chopper and also back at the studio.”

“I thought they show this stuff live.”

“They do, but they record it at the same time. We’ve got both the wide shots and the close shots, so that means there’s twice as much to watch.”

Starkey was already thinking that the close shots wouldn’t give her what she wanted. She pulled out the wide-angle VHS cassettes and brought them to her desk. She considered calling Buck Daggett, but decided that she should review the tapes first.

Behind her, Santos said, “I’ve got us set up in the TV room upstairs. We can go up as soon as I’m done.”

Spring Street had one room that contained a television and VCR. CCS and Fugitive Section rarely needed or used it; much of the time it was used by IAG investigators watching spy tapes of other cops, and most of the time the VCR was vandalized because of that. Chewing gum, tobacco, and other substances were found jammed into the tape heads, even though the room was kept locked. Once, the hindquarters of a rat were found wedged in the machine. Cops were creative vandals.

“You sure the machine up there is working?”

“Yeah. I checked less than an hour ago.”

Starkey considered the tapes. Three different views of Charlie Riggio being killed. Anytime there was a bomb call-out, the newspeople got word fast and swarmed the area with cameras. Camera crews and newspeople had been at the trailer park the day she and Sugar had rolled out. She suddenly recalled joking with Sugar about putting on a good show for the six o’clock. She had forgotten that moment until now.

Starkey took a cigarette from her purse and lit up.

“Carol! Do you want Kelso to send you home?”

She glanced over at Hooker, not understanding.

“The cigarette.”

Starkey crushed it with her foot as she fanned the air. She felt herself flush.

“Didn’t even realize I was doing it.”

Hooker was watching her with an expression she read as concern.

Starkey felt a stab of fear that he might be wondering if she was drunk, so she went over to his desk and squatted beside him so that he could smell her breath. She wanted him to know that she wasn’t blowing gin.

“I’m worried about this ATF guy, is all. Did he say anything last night when he finished with the medical examiner?”

“Nothing. I asked him if he found what he was looking for, but all he said was that they found some more frag.”

“He didn’t say anything else?”

“Nothing. He spent today over in Glendale, looking at the reconstruction.”

Starkey went back to her desk, making a mental note to phone the medical examiner to see what they’d found and also to call John Chen. Whatever evidence was recovered would be sent to Chen for examination and documentation, though it might take several days to work its way through the system.

Hooker finished logging the tapes and put the box under his desk. Official LAPD filing. He waved one of the three-quarter-inch tapes.

“I’m done. We’d better get started unless you want to wait for Marzik.”

Starkey’s hands grew damp. She leaned back, her swivel chair squeaking.

“Jorge, look, I’d better return these calls. You start without me, okay?”

Hooker had spent a lot of time getting the tapes together. Now he was disappointed.

“I thought you wanted to see this. We’ve only got the room for a couple of hours.”

“I’ll watch them at home, Jorge. I’ve got these calls.”

Her phone rang then. Starkey snatched it up like a life preserver.

“CCS. Starkey.”

“Don’t you return your calls?”

It was Pell.

“I’ve been busy. We’ve got a wit who might have seen the man who placed the 911 call.”

“Let’s meet somewhere. We need to discuss how we’re going to handle the case.”

“There is no ‘we,’ Pell. If my guy isn’t your Mr. Red, then it doesn’t matter to me. I still want to see what you have on the first seven bombings.”

“I have the reports. I have something else, too, Starkey. Let’s get together and talk about it. This is important.”

She wanted to brush him off, but she knew that she would have to talk with him and decided to get it done. Starkey told him how to get to Barrigan’s, then hung up.

Santos had been watching her. He came over with a handful of cassettes.

“Are the feds taking the case?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“I guess it’s just a matter of time.”

She looked at him. Santos shrugged and gestured with the tapes.

“I’m gonna go up. You sure you don’t want to come?”

“I’ve got to meet Pell.”

Starkey watched Santos walk away, embarrassed that she had not been able to look at them with him. She had been to the bomb site, she had seen Riggio’s body, she had smelled the heat and the blast in the hot air. After that, her fear of seeing the tapes seemed inexplicable, though she understood it. Starkey wouldn’t be seeing only Riggio on the tape; she would see herself, and Sugar. She had imagined the events of her own death a thousand times, but she had never seen tape of the actual event or even thought that the moments had been recorded until now: Joking with Sugar, the news crews watching with electronic eyes, tape reels spinning for the six o’clock news. Memories of those things had vanished with the explosion until now.

Starkey fingered the three cassettes, wondering if that tape of her own death still existed.

After a time, she told herself to stop thinking about it, gathered her things, and left to meet Pell.

Barrigan’s was a narrow Irish bar in Wilshire Division that had catered to police detectives since 1954, when suits from the Homicide Bureau had held court with tales of blackjacking New York mobsters as they deplaned at LAX. The walls were covered with four-leaf clovers, each bearing the name and date of an officer who’d killed a man in the line of duty. Until only a handful of years ago, female police detectives were discouraged as customers, conventional wisdom being that the presence of female officers would discourage the emotionally dysfunctional secretaries and nurses who flocked to the bar eager to dispense sexual favors to any man with a badge. Though there was some truth to this, the female detectives replied, “Tough shit.” The gender barrier was finally broken the night a Robbery-Homicide detective named Samantha Dolan shot it out toe-to-toe with two rape suspects, killing both. As is the custom after such incidents, a party was held for her at Barrigan’s that same night. Dolan invited every female detective of her acquaintance, and the women decided they liked the place and would return. They informed the owner that they would be accorded proper service, else they’d have the good sisters over in the Department of Health close his ass down for health violations. That ended that. Starkey had never met Dolan, though she knew the story. Samantha Dolan had later been killed when she’d stepped through a doorway that had been booby-trapped with a double-barreled shotgun.

When Starkey entered Barrigan’s late that afternoon, the bar was already lined with detectives. Starkey found a bench between a couple of Sex Crimes D-2s, struck up a fresh cigarette, and ordered a double Sapphire.

She was taking her first sip when Pell appeared beside her and put a heavy manila envelope on the bar.

“You always drink like that on the job?”

“It’s none of your goddamned business what I do. But for the record, Special Agent, I’m off duty. I’m here as a favor to you.”

The D-2 next to her glanced over, eyeing Pell. He tinkled the ice in the remains of his double scotch, offering Pell the opportunity to comment on his drink, too.

Starkey offered to buy Pell a drink, but Pell refused. He slid onto the bench next to her, uncomfortably close. Barrigan’s didn’t have stools; the bar was lined with little benches hooked to a brass rail that ran along the bottom of the bar, each wide enough for two people. Starkey hated the damn things because you couldn’t move them, but that’s the way it had been since 1954, and that’s the way it was going to stay.

“Move away, Pell. You’re too close.”

He edged away.

“Enough? I could sit at another table if you like.”

“You’re fine where you are. I just don’t like people too close.”

Starkey immediately regretted saying it, feeling it revealed more of herself than she cared to share.

Pell tapped the manila envelope.

“These are the reports. I’ve got something else here, too.”

He unfolded a sheet of paper and put it on the bar. Starkey saw that it was a newspaper article that he had printed off the net.

“This happened a few days ago. Read it.”

BOMB HOAX CLEARS LIBRARY

By Lauren Beth

Miami Herald

Starkey stopped reading.

“What is this?”

“We recovered an intact device in Miami. It’s a clone of the bomb that killed Riggio.”

Starkey didn’t like the news about this Miami device. If the bombs were clones like Pell said, that would give him what he needed to jump the case. She knew what would happen then: The ATF would form a task force, which would spur the FBI to come sniffing around. The Sheriffs would want to get their piece of the action, so they would be included, and before the day was done, Starkey and her CCS team would be relegated to gopher chores like overnighting the evidence to the ATF lab up in San Francisco.

She pushed the article away.

“Okay. A hoax. If your boy Mr. Red is in Miami, why aren’t you on a plane headed east?”

“Because he’s here.”

“It looks to me like he’s in Miami.”

Pell glanced at the D-2.

“Could we move to a table?”

Starkey led him to a remote corner table, taking the outside seat so that she could see the room. She figured that it would annoy him, having his back to the crowd.

“Okay, no one can hear you, Pell. We’re free to be spies.”

Pell’s jaw flexed with irritation, which pleased her. She struck a fresh cigarette, blowing smoke past his shoulder.

“The Miami police didn’t give the full story to the papers. It wasn’t a hoax, Starkey, it was a message. An actual note. Words on paper. He’s never done that before, and he’s never done anything like this. That means we have a chance here.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Would the deaths of these people put me in the Top Ten?’ ”

Starkey didn’t know what in hell that meant.

“What does that mean?”

“He wants to be on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“It’s a symbol, Starkey. He’s some underachieving nobody who resents being an asshole. He’s not on the list because we don’t know who the hell he is; no one makes that list unless we have an ID. We don’t, so he’s getting frustrated. He’s taking chances he didn’t take earlier. That means he’s destabilizing.”

Starkey’s jaw felt like an iron clamp, but she understood why Pell was on it. When a perp changed his pattern, it was always good for the case. Any change gave you a different view of the man. If you could get enough views, pretty soon you had a clear picture.

“You said he’s here. How do you know that? Did his message say that he was coming to Los Angeles?”

Pell didn’t answer. He stared at her as if he was searching for something in her eyes, leaving her feeling naked and uncomfortable.

“What?”

“I didn’t tell you and Kelso everything. When Mr. Red goes hunting, he does not hunt randomly. He picks his targets, usually senior people or a tech who’s been in the news; he goes after the big dog. He wants to say he beats the best a Bomb Squad has to offer. It’s the ego thing.”

“That what he told you in his little note?”

“We know because he etches the target’s name on the bomb casing. The first two techs he killed, we found their names in the frag during the reconstruction. Alan Brennert in Baltimore; Michael Cassutt in Philadelphia; both sergeant-supervisors who’d been involved in big cases.”

Starkey didn’t say anything. She drew a large 5 in the water rings on the table, then changed it to an S. She guessed it came from “Charles.” Charlie Riggio wasn’t exactly the big dog of the LAPD Bomb Squad, but she wasn’t going to say that.

“Why are you telling me this here in a bar and not in Kelso’s office?”

Now Pell glanced away. He seemed nervous about something.

“We try to keep that information on a need-to-know basis.”

“Well, I’m honored, Pell. I sure as hell have a need to know, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes.”

“Makes me wonder what else you might be holding back.”

Pell glanced back sharply.

“As the lead, you could make statements to the press to help advance his destabilization. These aren’t just little machines that he’s building. These bombs are who he is, and he’s meticulous about them. They are very precise, very exact. We know he takes pride in them. In his head, it could become a one-on-one game that keeps him in Los Angeles and gives us a better shot to nail him.”

“Me versus him.”

“Something like that. What do you say?”

Starkey didn’t have to think about it.

“I’m in.”

Pell sighed deeply, his shoulders sagging as he relaxed, as if he had been afraid that she wouldn’t go along. She smiled to herself, thinking how little he knew.

“All right, Starkey. All right. We believe that he builds the bombs locally. He’ll go into an area, acquire the things that he needs, and build the bomb there, so he doesn’t have to transport anything, risking capture on the airlines. I put a list of the Modex components in with the reports. I want you to run a local check for people with access to RDX.”

Even though Starkey was already running the search, it irritated her that he was giving instructions.

“Listen, Pell, if you want to run a search, do it yourself. You’re not giving the orders here.”

“It’s important, Starkey.”

“Then you do it!”

Pell glared at her, then seemed to reconsider. He showed his palms and relaxed.

“I guess you could look at it this way, Detective: If I do it, I’m taking over your case; if you do it, I’m only advising you. Which do you want it to be?”

Starkey looked smug.

“It’s already happening, Pell. I punched it in today.”

He nodded without expression and went on. She found herself irritated that he didn’t acknowledge that she was ahead of him.

“Do we have a photograph of this guy? There must’ve been a security camera.”

“There aren’t any security cameras in the downtown branch, but I’ll have a sketch by tomorrow. The wits described a white male in his twenties with bright red hair. We also have two other sketches from previous incidents. I can already tell you that all three look different. He changes his appearance when he lets himself be seen.”

Starkey shrugged noncommittally. Lester had described an older man, nothing even close to young, but she decided not to mention Lester until they had the sketch.

“Whatever. I want a copy of all three of your sketches when you have them, and I want something else, too. I want to see the bomb.”

“As soon as I get the report, you’ll get the report.”

“You didn’t hear me. I want the bomb. I want it in my hands. I’m a bomb technician, Pell. I want to break it down myself, not just accept someone else’s report. I want to compare it to the Silver Lake bomb and learn something. I know we can do this because I’ve traded comparative evidence with other cities before.”

Pell seemed to consider her again, then nodded.

“Okay, Starkey, I think that’s a good idea. But I think you should arrange it.”

Starkey frowned, wondering if Pell was going to be deadwood.

“Your people have the damned thing. It would be easier for you to get it.”

“The more I do, the more pressure I’ll get from Washington to take over the case before the FBI comes in.”

“Who’s talking about the FBI? We’re not dealing with a terrorist here. This is domestic.”

“A terrorist is whoever the FBI says is a terrorist. You’re worried about me coming in, I’m worried about the FBI. We all have something to worry about.”

“Jesus Christ, Pell.”

He showed his palms again, and she nodded.

“Okay. I’ll do it myself.”

Pell stood, then gave her a card.

“This is the motel where I’m staying. My pager number is on the back.”

Starkey put it away without looking at it.

“Anything comes up, I’ll give you a call.”

Pell was staring at her.

“What?”

“Mr. Red is dangerous, Starkey. A guy like this in town, you don’t want to be too drunk to react.”

Starkey rattled the ice in her glass, then took a sip.

“I’ve already been dead once, Pell. Believe me, there are worse things.”

Pell considered her another moment, Starkey thinking he wanted to say something, but then he left. She watched him until he stepped out of the bar into a wedge of blinding light and was gone. Pell had no fucking idea.

Starkey returned to her bench at the bar and ordered a refill. She was convinced that Pell knew more than he was saying.

The Sex Crimes dick leaned close.

“Fed?”

“Yeah.”

“They’re all pricks.”

“We’ll see.”

Starkey spent most of the afternoon thinking about the tapes that waited in her car. Those tapes and what was on them were real. After a while, it was the weight of the tapes that pulled her from the bar. It was almost eight when she left Barrigan’s and drove home.

Starkey’s head hurt from the gin. She was hungry, but there was nothing to eat in her house and she didn’t want to go out again. She put the tapes in her living room by the VCR, but decided to shower first, then read the reports.

She let the water beat into her neck and skull until it ran cold, then dressed in a black T-shirt and panties. She found a box of raisins, ate them standing at the kitchen sink. When she was finished, she poured a glass of milk, struck a fresh cigarette, and sat at the kitchen table to read.

The manila envelope contained seven ATF explosives profiles written at the ATF’s National Laboratory Center in Rockville, Maryland. Each report contained an analysis of a device that was attributed to an unidentified suspect known only as Mr. Red, but each was heavily edited. Pages were missing, and several paragraphs in each report had been deleted.

She grew angry at the deletions, but she found herself interested in the details that were present and read with clear focus. She took notes.

Every one of the devices had been built of twin pipe canisters capped and sealed with plumber’s tape, one pipe containing the radio receiver (all receivers identified as being from the WayKool line of remote-control toy cars) and 9-volt battery, one the Modex Hybrid explosive. None of the reports mentioned the etched names that Pell had described. She thought that the deleted material probably referenced that.

When she finished with the reports, she went into her living room and stared at the tapes. She knew that she had been avoiding them, evidence that could potentially offer a breakthrough in her case. But even now, her stomach knotted at the thought of seeing them.

“Oh, goddamnit. This is stupid.”

She went into the kitchen, poured herself a stiff gin, then loaded the first tape into the machine. She could have watched the tapes with Buck Daggett or Lester Ybarra, or with Marzik and Hooker, but she knew she had to see them alone. At least, this first time. She had to see them alone because she would be seeing things that none of the rest of them would see.

The image was a wide shot of the parking lot. The Bomb Squad Suburban was in place, the parking lot and the nearby streets cordoned off. The frame did not move, telling Starkey that the helicopter had been in a stationary hover. Riggio, already in the suit, was at the rear of the Suburban, talking with Daggett. Seeing them like that chilled her. Seeing Daggett pat Riggio’s helmet, seeing Riggio turn and lumber toward the bomb was like watching Sugar.

“How you doin’, cher? You gettin’a good air flow?”

“Got a windstorm in here. You?”

“Wrapped, strapped, and ready to rock. Let’s put on a good show for the cameras.”

They checked over each other’s armor suit and cables. Sugar looked okay to her. She patted his helmet, and he patted hers. That always made her smile.

They started toward the trailer.

Starkey stopped the tape.

She took a breath, realizing only then that she had stopped breathing. She decided that her drink needed more lime, brought it into the kitchen, cut another slice, all the while knowing that she was simply avoiding the video.

She went back into the living room and restarted the tape.

Riggio and the Suburban were in the center of the screen. The bomb was a tiny cardboard square at the base of the Dumpster. The shot was framed too tightly on the parking lot to reveal any of the landmarks she had paced off that morning. The only figures visible were Riggio, Daggett, and a uniformed officer standing at the edge of the building in the bottom of the frame, peeking around the corner.

When Riggio started toward the bomb, the frame shifted, sliding above the minimall to reveal a small group of people standing between two apartment houses. Starkey focused on them, but they were too small and shadowed to tell if any wore long-sleeved shirts and baseball caps.

Starkey was cursing the tiny image when suddenly the frame shifted down, centering on Riggio and losing the people. The camera operator in the helicopter must have adjusted the shot, losing everything except the side of the mall, the bomb, and Riggio.

Riggio reached the bomb with the Real Time.

Starkey knew what was coming and tried to steel herself.

She had more of the drink, feeling her heart pound.

She glanced away and crushed out her cigarette.

When she looked at the screen again, Riggio was circling the box.

They were in the azaleas, wrestling the heavy branches aside so that Sugar could position the Real Time. Sugar looked for all the world like some kind of Star Trek space invader with a ray gun. She had to twist her body to see him.

Her eyes blurred as the white flash engulfed her …

Starkey strained to see into the shadows and angles at the outer edge of the frame, between cars, on roofs, in garbage cans. She wondered if the bomber was somehow underground, peering out of a sewer drain or from the vent of a crawl space beneath a building. Riggio circled the bomb, examining it with the Real Time. She put herself in the killer’s head and tried to see Riggio from the ground level. She imagined the radio control in her hand. What was he waiting for? Starkey felt anxious and wondered if the killer was growing frightened at the thought of murdering another human being, or excited. Starkey saw the switch as a TV remote, held in the killer’s pocket. She saw his eyes on Riggio, unblinking. Riggio finished his circle, hesitated, then leaned over the box. In that moment, the killer pressed the switch and …

… the light hurled Charlie Riggio away like an imaginary man.

Starkey stopped the tape and closed her eyes, her fist clenched tight as if it was she who had clutched the switch and sent Charlie Riggio to hell.

She felt herself breathe. She felt her chest expand, her body fill with air. She gripped her glass with both hands and drank. She wiped at her eyes.

After a while, she pressed the “play” button and forced herself to watch the rest of the tape.

The pressure wave flashed across the tarmac, a ripple of dust and debris sucked up after it. The Dumpster rocked backwards into the wall. Smoke rose from the crater, drifting lazily in a swirl as Buck Daggett rushed forward to his partner and pulled off the helmet. An Emergency Services van screeched into the lot beside them, two paramedics rushing in to take over. Buck stood watching them.

Starkey was able to pick out the boundaries she had marked and several times found knots of people at the edge of the hundred-yard perimeter who were hidden behind cars or buildings. She froze the image each time, looking for long-sleeved males in blue baseball caps, but the resolution was too poor to be of much use.

She watched the other two tapes, drinking all the while. She examined the murky images as if willing them to clear, thinking all the while that any of those shadowed faces might belong to the man or woman who had built and detonated the bomb.

Later that night, she rewound the tapes, turned off her television, and fell into a deep sleep there on her couch.

She is kicked away from the trailer by a burst of white light.

The paramedics insert their long needle.

She reaches for Sugar’s hand as his helmet is pulled free.

His head lolls toward her.

It is Pell.