22
• • •
Starkey did not drive back to Spring Street. The summer sun was still high in the west, but the air was clear, and the heat felt good. She drove with the windows down.
Starkey stopped at an A.M./P.M. minimart, bought a jumbo iced tea, then took a turn through Rampart Division. She watched the citizens and enjoyed the play of traffic. Every time she saw a black and white, she tipped her head at them. The pager at her waist vibrated once, but she turned it off without checking the number. Pell, she figured. Or Kelso. Either way, it didn’t matter. She was done with the bombs. She could walk away and live without working the bombs or being a bomb investigator and get along just fine. She was heartened by what Kelso had said. She thought that she might like working Homicide, but most detectives wanted Homicide. It was a tough billet to get, and she hadn’t done all that well at CCS. When word got out that she had withheld information from her own detectives, she’d be lucky to find a spot in Property Crimes.
Starkey thought about these things until she realized that she was doing it so she wouldn’t think about Pell, and then she couldn’t get him out of her head. The tea was suddenly bitter, and the knowledge of how Red had played her was a jagged pill that cut at her throat. She threw away the tea, popped two Tagamet, then turned for home, feeling empty, but not so empty that she wanted to fill that lost place with gin.
That was something, and, she guessed, maybe she had Pell to thank for it, though she was in no mood to do so.
By the time Starkey reached her house, she was hoping that she would find Pell waiting in the drive, but she didn’t. Just as well, she thought, but in that same moment her chest filled with an ache of loss that she hadn’t known since Sugar had died. Realizing that did not improve her spirits, but she forced the thought of it and what it meant away. She was better now. She had grown. She would spend the rest of her day trying to save her job, or deciding how best to leave it and the memory of Jack Pell behind.
Starkey shut her engine and let herself into her home. The message light was blinking by the front phone, but she did not see it, nor would it have mattered if she had.
The first and only thing she saw, the thing that caught her eye as if it had reached out with claws, was the device on her coffee table. An unexpected visual jolt of plastic and wires, alien and mechanical, stark and obvious as it rested on a stack of Glamour and American Crime Scene; everything about it screaming BOMB in a way that flushed acid through Starkey’s soul in the same moment her world exploded in a white fury.
“Can you hear me?”
His voice was surprisingly mellow. She could barely understand him over the shrill ringing in her ears.
“I can see your eyes moving, Carol Starkey.”
She heard footsteps, heavy heels on hard floor, then smelled the overripe odor of what she thought was gasoline. The footsteps moved away.
“You smell that? That’s charcoal starter fluid I found in your pantry. If you don’t wake up, I’m going to set your leg on fire.”
She felt the wet on her leg, the nice Donna Karan pants and the Bruno Magli shoes.
The sharp throb behind her right ear was a swelling spike that made her eyes water. She could feel her heart beating there, strong and horrible. When she opened her eyes, she saw double.
“Are you okay, Carol Starkey? Can you see me?”
She looked toward his voice.
He smiled when their eyes met. A black metal rod about eighteen inches long sprouted from his right hand. He’d found her Asp in the closet. He spread his hands, gesturing wide and presenting himself.
“I’m Mr. Red.”
She was seated on the hearth, arms spread wide, handcuffed to the metal frame surrounding her fireplace. Her legs were straight out before her, making her feel like a child. Her hands were numb.
“Congratulations, John. You finally made the list.”
He laughed. He had beautiful even teeth, and didn’t look anything like she’d imagined or anything like the grainy photos that she’d seen. He looked younger than his twenty-eight years, but in no way the shabby misfit that most bombers were. He was a good-looking man; he had all his fingers.
“Well, now that I’m there, it ain’t so much, you know? I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
She thought to keep him talking. As long as he was talking, her odds of survival increased. The device was on longer on the coffee table. Now, the device was sitting on the floor inches beyond her feet.
She tried not to look at it.
“Look at it, Carol Starkey.”
Reading her mind.
He came over and sat cross-legged on the floor, patting the device like a friend.
“The last of Daggett’s Modex Hybrid. It’s not the mix I prefer, but it’ll get the job done.” He stroked the device, proud of it. “And this one really is for you. Got your name on it and everything.”
She looked at it just to watch his hand; the fingers were long and slender and precise. In another life, they could have belonged to a surgeon or watchmaker. She looked at the bomb: Dark shapes within a plastic container, wires sprouting up through the lid to a black plastic box with a switch on its side. This bomb was different. This bomb was not radio-controlled.
She said, “Timer.”
“Yeah. I gotta be somewhere else when this one goes off. Celebrating my ascension to the Ten. Isn’t this cool, Carol Starkey? They wouldn’t put me on the list until they knew my name, and you’re the one who identified me. You made my dream come true.”
“Lucky me.”
Without another word, he reached to the black box, pressed the side, and a green LED timer appeared, counting down from fifteen minutes. He grinned.
“Kinda hokey, I know, but I couldn’t resist. I wanted you to watch the damned thing.”
“You’re insane, Fowles.”
“Of course, but couldn’t you be more original than that?”
He patted her leg, then went to her couch and came back with a wide roll of duct tape.
“Look, don’t do anything chicken and close your eyes, okay? I mean, why waste the moment? This is my gift to you, Carol Starkey. You’re going to see the actual instant of your destruction. Just watch the seconds trickle down until that final second when you cease. Don’t sweat being wounded or anything like that. You’ll reach death as we know it in less than a thousandth of a second. Oblivion.”
“Fuck you.”
He tore off a strip of tape, but stopped on his knees and smiled.
“In a way, that’s what I’m doing to you.”
“I want the truth about something.”
“The truth is a commodity.”
“Answer me, you bastard. Did all of this happen … did Buck die because I brought you here?”
He settled back on his heels to consider her, then smiled.
“Do you want the truth?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to answer one of mine.”
“I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
“All right. Then here’s the truth. Spend your guilt on other matters, Detective Starkey. I learned about the Silver Lake bomb on the NLETS system before you and Pell ever started playing your little game. Daggett brought me here, not you.”
Starkey felt a huge wedge of tension ease.
“Now you answer mine.”
“What?”
“How did it feel?”
“How did what feel? Being used?”
He leaned closer, like a child peering into an aquarium.
“No, no, no. The trailer park. You were right on top of it. Even though it was just black powder and dynamite, it had to hit you with an overpressure of almost sixty thousand pounds.”
His eyes were alive with it. She knew then that this was what he wanted, to be the person in that moment, to feel the force of it. Not just control it, but feel it, to take it into himself and be consumed by it.
“Fowles. It felt like … nothing. I lost consciousness. I didn’t feel anything until later.”
He stared at her as if he was still waiting for her answer, and she felt her anger rage. It had been the same with everyone since the day it had happened; friends, strangers, cops, now even this maniac. Starkey had had enough of it.
“What, Fowles? Do you think a window opens so that you see God? It’s a fucking explosion, you moron. It happens so fast you don’t have time even to know it’s happening. It’s about as mystical as you hitting me when I walked through that door.”
Fowles stared without blinking. She wondered if he was in a fugue state.
“Fowles?”
He frowned, irritated.
“That’s because you had nothing but a low-end piece of bullshit, Starkey. Homemade crap thrown together by some ignoramus. Now you’re dealing with Mr. Red. Two kilos of Modex boiling out at twenty-eight K. The pressure wave is going to sweep up your legs in one ten-thousandth of a second, smashing the blood up into your torso just like a steamroller driving right up to your hips. The hydrostatic shock is going to blow out every capillary in your brain in about a thousandth of a second. Instant brain death at just about the same time as your lower legs separate. You’ll be dead, though, so you won’t feel it.”
“You should stay and enjoy the show. You could sit on my lap.”
Fowles grinned.
“I like you, Starkey. Too bad I didn’t know you when you worked the bombs. I would’ve gotten it right the first time.”
He grabbed her hair with his left hand, forced her head back, and pressed the tape over her mouth. She tried to twist away, but he pressed the tape down hard, then added a second piece. She opened her mouth as far as she could, letting the skin pull. She felt the tape loosen, but it didn’t pull free.
The timer was down to thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds. Fowles checked his watch.
“Perfect.”
She tried to tell him to fuck himself, but it came out a mumble.
John Michael Fowles squatted beside her and gently touched her head.
“Save a place in hell for me, Carol Starkey.”
He stood then and went to the door, but she did not see him. She watched the timer, the green LED numbers spinning down toward eternity.
Pell
Coombs and Armus were gentlemen about it. They could have brought him in like just another mutt, but they played it straight. They wanted his gun and his badge, which he had left in his motel, and they wanted to talk to him. He asked if he could meet them at the field office, and they said fine. It helped that Dick Leyton told them that Pell had been instrumental in getting them this close to Mr. Red.
Pell drove back to his motel, got the ID and the big Smith 10, then checked out. He sat in his car for a long time, listening to his heart beat and feeling sweat run down his chest. He did not think about John Michael Fowles, or about Armus and Coombs; he thought about Starkey.
Pell cranked his car and went after her, having no idea what he would say or do, only knowing that he could not let her go this easily. Coombs and Armus could wait.
Pell parked on the street in front of her house, relieved when he saw her car in the drive. Funny, he thought, that his heart beat now with the same kind of intensity as when he was facing a mutt in a life-or-death situation.
When Starkey didn’t answer, his first thought was that she’d seen him approach, and was ignoring him.
He knocked, and called through the door.
“Carol, please. I want to talk.”
He tried to see through the little panes of glass that ran vertically beside her door, but they were crusted with dust. He rubbed at them, looked harder. He thought that she was sitting at the fireplace, but then he saw the tape, and her wrists and the handcuffs. Then he saw the device at her feet.
Pell slammed the door with his foot, and then he was in, going through the door when something heavy hit him from behind and the world blurred. He stumbled forward, seeing flashing bursts of light. Starkey’s eyes were wild. Something exploded brilliantly in his head. A man was behind him, hitting him. The man was screaming.
“You fuck! You fuck!”
Pell clawed out his Smith as he was hit again. He could feel consicousness slipping away, but the Smith came out and the safety went off and he fired up into the shadow above him even as the light bled into darkness.
When Pell came to the door, Starkey tried to call through the tape, whipping her head from side to side. She kicked at the floor with her heels, trying to warn him with the noise. She raked her face on her shoulders, tearing at the tape, and jerked at the handcuffs, letting them cut into her wrists.
Fowles jumped behind the door with the Asp just as Pell crashed through. Pell saw only her, and even as Starkey tried to warn Pell with her eyes, Fowles nailed him with the Asp. Fowles hit him again and again, the hard weight of the Asp crashing down like a cinder block.
Pell went down, woozy and blank. Starkey saw him reach out his gun, that monster ugly autoloader, and then he was shooting, shooting up into Fowles, who flipped back and sideways, then crawled toward her couch.
Starkey raked her face against her shoulders, feeling the tape work free, even as she watched the timer. It was winding down so fast the numbers blurred.
Fowles tried to rise, but couldn’t.
Pell moaned.
Starkey worked at the tape, stretching her jaw and raking her face until finally one end of the tape came free and she found her voice.
Starkey screamed, “Pell! Pell, get up!”
6:48.47.46.
“Pell. Get up and get the keys! Wake up, Pell, goddamnit!”
Pell pushed himself onto his back. He stared straight up at the ceiling, blinking his eyes again and again as if he were seeing the most amazing thing.
“Damnit, Pell, we’ve got six minutes, this thing is gonna explode! Come over here.”
Pell pushed onto his side and blinked some more, then rubbed at his face.
“I can’t see you. I can’t see anymore. There’s nothing left but light and shadows.”
Starkey’s blood drained. She knew what had happened. The fight had finished the work on his eyes, caused the damaged retinas to separate and fold away, severing their final fragile connection to the optic nerves.
She felt herself hyperventilating and forced herself to hold her breath, to stop breathing just long enough to get herself under control.
“You can’t see, Jack? How about up close? Can you see your hand?”
He held his hand in front of his face.
“I see a shadow. That’s all I see. Who hit me? Was it him?”
“You shot him. He’s on the couch.”
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know if he’s dead or not, Jack, but forget him! This bomb is on a timer. The goddamned timer is running down, you understand?”
“How much time do we have?”
“Six minutes, ten seconds.”
Not enough time for the police to respond. She knew it was the first thing he would think.
“I can’t see, Carol. I’m sorry.”
“Goddamnit, Jack, I’m handcuffed to this fucking fireplace. You get me loose and I can de-arm that bomb!”
“I CAN’T SEE!”
She could see the sweat leaking from his short hair down his face. He rolled onto his side and pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. Facing away from her. Across the room, Fowles tried to rise once more, failed, and whatever life was left seemed to drain from him.
“Jack.”
Pell turned.
She forced her breathing to even out. When you work the bomb, you stay calm. Panic kills.
“Jack, quick now, okay? Turn toward my voice.”
“This is pathetic.”
But he did it.
6:07.06.05.
“Straight ahead of you is twelve o’clock. Fowles is at eight o’clock, right? Just across the room. Maybe fourteen feet. He’s on a couch behind the coffee table, and I think he’s dead. The keys might be in his pockets.”
She could see the hope flicker on his face.
“MOVE, damnit!”
He crawled, two knees and a hand, the other feeling ahead for the table.
“That’s it, Jack. Almost at the table and he’s right behind it.”
When Pell reached the table, he shoved it aside. He found the couch before Fowles’s leg, then walked his hands up the legs to the pockets. Fowles’s shirt was wet, and the blood had soaked down along his thighs. Pell’s hands grew red as he worked.
4:59.58.57.
“Find it, Jack! GET THE DAMNED KEYS!”
“They’re not here! They’re not in his pockets!”
“THEY’RE NOT HERE!”
She watched him dig in both pants pockets and the back pockets, then run his fingers around Fowles’s waist just as he’d frisk a suspect.
“The socks! Check his socks and shoes!”
She searched the room with her eyes, thinking maybe Fowles had tossed the keys. You didn’t need keys to lock handcuffs; only to remove them. He had never intended to remove them. She didn’t see them, and it would only be wasting time for him to feel his way around the room searching for something so small.
“I CAN’T FIND THEM!”
Fowles moaned once, and shifted.
“He’s still alive!”
3:53.52.51.
Her eyes went back to the flashing timer and watched the seconds trickle away.
“Is he armed? Does he have a gun?”
“No, no gun.”
“Then forget him! Five o’clock now. Come around to five o’clock.”
Pell continued ripping at Fowles’s clothes.
“JACK GODDAMNIT DO IT! FIVE O’CLOCK!”
Pell turned toward her voice.
3:30.29.28.
“The door’s at five o’clock. Get out of here.”
“No.”
“Romantic, Jack. Very romantic.”
“I’M NOT LEAVING YOU!”
He crawled toward her, covering the ground without concern for obstacles, veering far to the right —
“Here.”
Changing course to find her foot, barely missing the device, then walking his hands up her legs.
“Talk to me, Carol. You’re handcuffed to what?”
“An iron fire grate. The frame is set into the bricks.”
His hands slid across her body, jumped to her arms and found her right hand, felt over the cuffs and her wrist to the iron frame. He gripped the frame with both hands and pulled, his face going red. He swung around and wedged his feet against the wall and pulled even harder until the veins bulged huge and swollen in his face.
“It’s solid, Jack. The bolts are set deep.”
He grabbed across her and tried the other bar. She found herself, strangely, growing calm. She wondered what Dana would say about that. Acceptance? Resignation.
Pell’s voice was frantic.
“A lever. Maybe I can pry it out. There’s gotta be something I can use.”
“The Asp.”
The Asp had rolled against the far wall. They lost almost a minute as she directed him to it, then back. He wedged it behind the rail and pulled.
The Asp bent at its joint, useless, and fell free.
“It broke.”
Pell threw it aside.
“Something stronger, then! A fireplace poker! A log!”
“I DON’T HAVE ANY OF THAT, PELL!! THERE’S NOTHING IN MY GODDAMNED HOUSE!!! I’M A ROTTEN HOMEMAKER!! NOW GET OUT OF HERE!”
He stopped then, and looked toward her face with eyes so gentle and open that she felt sure he could see.
“Where’s the door, Carol?”
She didn’t hesitate, and loved him for going, loved him for sparing her the final three minutes of guilt that she had caused his death, too.
“Behind you, seven o’clock.”
He touched her face, and let his fingers linger.
“I did you wrong, Carol. I’m sorry about that.”
“Forget it, Jack. I absolve you. Hell, I friggin’ love you. Now please go.”
He followed her leg down to the device, cradled it under his arm, and began navigating toward the door.
Starkey realized what he was doing and screamed in a rage.
“GODDAMNIT, NO!!! PELL, DON’T YOU DO THAT!!! DON’T YOU KILL YOURSELF FOR ME!!”
He crawled for the door, carrying the device under his left arm, moving well right of the door as he’d lost his bearings.
“You’re doing me a favor, Starkey. I get to go out a hero. I get to die for the woman I love. That’s the most a guy like me can ever hope to do.”
He bumped into the nester tables, lost his balance, and dropped the bomb. She could see the lights in the timer blurring.
As he fumbled to pick it up, Starkey knew that he was going to do it. He was going to carry the damned thing outside and blow himself to hell and leave her in here to carry the weight of it just as she’d done with Sugar, and then, only then, her eyes filled and the only possible way to save them both came to her.
“Pell, listen.”
He had the bomb again and was feeling for the door.
“Pell, LISTEN! We can de-arm the bomb. I know how to de-arm the fuckin’ bomb!”
He paused, and looked at her.
“How much time?”
“I can’t see it. Turn it to the right and put it on its side.”
2:44.13.12.
“Bring it over here, Jack. Let me look close at it, and I’ll tell you what to do.”
“That’s bullshit, Starkey. You just want to die.”
“I want to live, Pell! Goddamn you, I want to live and I want you to live, too, and you’re wasting time! We can do this!”
“I CAN’T SEE!”
“I CAN TALK YOU THROUGH IT! Pell, I’m serious. We’ve still got a little time, but we’re losing it. Bring it over here.”
“Shit!”
Pell followed her directions until he was next to her, breathing hard and sweating so much that his shirt was wet.
“Put it on the floor. Next to me. A little farther away.”
He did as she said.
“Now rotate it. C’mon. I want to see the time.”
1:56.55.54.
“How long?”
“We’re doing great.”
She once more forced herself to hold her breath. It reminded her of the first time she had walked a bomb, and then she remembered that it had been Buck Daggett who’d been her supervisor that day, and who had told her the trick of holding her breath as they had buttoned her into the suit.
“Okay. Now turn it over. Lemme look at the bottom.”
“I got no clippers. I got no pliers. I think I have a knife.”
“Shut up and let me think.”
You make choices. The choices can haunt you forever, or they can set you free.
“Tell me what you see, Carol. Describe it.”
“We’ve got a black Radio Shack timer fastened on top of a transluscent Tupperware food storage container. Looks like he melted holes in the lid to drop the leg wires. Typical Mr. Red … the works are hidden.”
“Battery pack?”
“Gotta be inside with everything else. The top isn’t taped. It’s just snapped on.”
She watched his fingers feel lightly over the timer, then around the edges of the lid. She knew that he would be thinking exactly what she was thinking: that Red could’ve built a contact connection into the lid that would automatically trigger the explosive if the lid were removed.
You make choices. The choices can haunt you forever, or they can set you free.
“Open it, Jack. From the corners. Just pop up the corners. Slow.”
She could feel the sweat creep down from her hair.
Pell was blinking at the Tupperware, trying to see it, but then he wet his lips and nodded. He was thinking it, too. Thinking that this could be it, but that, if it were, neither of them would know it. A ten-thousandth of a second was too fast to know much of anything.
1:51.50.49.
Pell opened the lid.
“Loose all four corners, but don’t lift the lid away from the container. I want you to lift it just enough to test the tension on the wires.”
She watched him do as she instructed, sweat now running into her own eyes so that she had to twist her face into her shoulders to wipe it away. She was blinking almost as much as Pell.
“I can feel the wires pull against whatever’s inside.”
“That’s the explosive and the initiator. Is there play in the wire?”
He lifted the top a few inches away from the container.
“Yeah.”
“Lift the top until you feel the wire pull.”
He did.
1:26.25.24.
“Okay. Now tilt the container toward me. I want to see inside.”
When Pell tilted the Tupperware, she saw the contents slide, which was good. That meant it wasn’t fastened to the container and could be removed.
A squat, quart-sized metal cylinder that looked like a paint can sat inside with the end plug of an electric detonator sticking up through the top. Red and white leg wires ran from the end plug to a shunt, from which another set of wires sprouted up through the lid to the timer, and off to the left to a couple of AA batteries that were taped to the side of the can. A purple wire ran directly from the batteries to the timer, bypassing the shunt, but connecting through a small red box that sprouted yet another wire that led back to the detonator. She didn’t like that part. Everything else was simple and direct and she’d seen it a hundred times before … but not the red box, not the white wire leading back to the detonator. She found herself staring at these things. She found herself scared.
“Tell me what to do, Carol.”
“Just hang on, Pell. I’m thinking. Lift it out, okay? It looks like everything is taped together in there, so you don’t have to worry about it falling apart. Just cup it with your hands, support it from the bottom, and lift it out. Put it on the floor.”
He did as she instructed, handling it as gently as a lace egg.
“Can you see it okay?”
“Fine.”
1:01.00.
0:59.
“How’re we doing with the time?”
“All the time in the world, Pell.”
“Are we going to be able to do this?”
“No sweat.”
“You don’t lie worth shit, Starkey.”
With the bomb sitting openly on the floor, she could see the connections and wiring more clearly, but she still did not know the purpose of the tiny red box. She thought it might be a surge monitor, and that scared her. A surge monitor would sense if the batteries had been disconnected or the wiring cut and bypass the shunt and the timer. It would be a built-in defense trigger to prevent de-arming the bomb. If they cut the wires or pulled the timer, the shunt would automatically fire the detonator.
Her heart rate increased. She had to twist her head again to wipe away the sweat.
“Is there a problem, Carol?”
She could hear the strain in his voice.
“No way, Pell. I live for this stuff.”
Pell laughed.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Wish He was here, pal.”
Pell laughed again, but then the laugh faded.
“What do I do, Carol? Don’t lose it on me, babe.”
She guessed that he could hear the strain in her, too.
“Okay, Pell, here’s what we’re looking at. I think there’s a surge monitor cut into the circuit. You know what that is?”
“Yeah. Auto-destruct.”
“We try to disconnect anything, it’ll sense a change in something called the impedance and detonate the bomb. The timer won’t matter.”
“So what do we do?”
“Take a big chance, buddy. Put your fingers on the timer, then find the wires that lead down through the lid. I want you to be on the bottom side of the lid, okay, so you’re closest to the device.”
He did it.
“Okay.”
“There are five wires coming through the lid. Take one. Any one.”
He took the red wire.
“Okay, that’s not the one we want, so separate it from the others, and take another.”
Purely by chance, he took the purple.
“That’s it, babe. That’s the one. Now follow it and you’ll come to a little box.”
She watched the gentle way his fingers moved along the wire, and thought that he would have been equally gentle as his fingers moved along her scars.
“I’m there. Two wires lead out the other side.”
“Right, but don’t worry about it. Before we can de-arm the timer, we’ve got to de-arm this thing, and I don’t know how to do that. I’m telling you the truth now, Jack. I don’t know what we’re dealing with, so all I can do is guess.”
He nodded without saying anything.
“Real easy now, because I don’t want you to accidentally pull loose a wire, I want you to separate the surge monitor from the rest of the device. Just kinda pull the wires to the side so that the box is off by itself and put it on the floor.”
“What do you want me to do with it?”
“You’re going to stomp on it.”
He didn’t bat an eye or tell her she was crazy.
“Okay.”
As he did that, she said, “It could detonate, Jack. I’m sorry, but it could just fucking let go.”
“It’s going to go anyway.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve both been through it before, Carol.”
“Sure, Pell. No sweat to people like us.”
When he had the monitor on the floor away from the other wires, he kept one hand on the surge monitor, then crabbed around into a squat to position his heel over the monitor.
“Am I lined up over the damned thing?”
“Do it, Pell.”
One ten-thousandth of a second.
Pell brought his heel down hard.
Starkey felt her breath hiss out as if her chest had been wrapped in iron bands.
Nothing happened.
When Pell lifted his foot, the plastic square was in pieces. And they were still alive.
“I crushed it, right, Starkey? Did I get it?”
She stared at the broken pieces. A set of small silver keys were in the debris. The handcuff keys. That bastard had put the keys in the bomb.
“Starkey?”
She glanced at the timer.
O:36.35.34.
Something inside her screamed for him to scoop up the keys, unhook her, and let them both run. But she knew he couldn’t. He could never find the keys and fumble to the cuffs and unlock her in time. There wasn’t nearly enough time.
“What do I do? Talk to me, Carol. Tell me what to do!”
She didn’t want him thinking about the keys. She didn’t want him distracted.
“Find the batteries.”
His fingers traced over the device until they found the little 9-volt taped to the side of the paint can.
“Got it.”
“Feel the wires coming off the top? They’re attached by a little snap at the top of the battery.”
“Got it. Now what?”
If she was working this bomb in a call-out, she would be in the armor and would’ve set up the de-armer and blown the bomb apart from the safety of the Suburban from sixty yards away. They wouldn’t be handling the bomb because you never knew what might set them off, or how stable they were, or what the builder might have rigged. Safety was in distance. Safety was in playing it safe, and taking no chances and thinking everything through before you did it.
“Take it off.”
Pell didn’t move.
“Just take it off?”
0:18.17.16.
“Yes, take it off. Just unsnap the damned thing. That’s all we can do. We have to break the circuit, and we don’t have any other way to do it, so we’re going to cut the battery out of the loop and pray there won’t be a backcharge that fires the detonator. Maybe this sonofabitch didn’t build in a second surge monitor that we can’t even see. Maybe it won’t go off.”
He didn’t say anything for a while.
0:10.09.08.
“I guess this is it, then, right?”
“Pull it off in one clean move. Don’t let the contacts brush together again after you separate them.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t let it be halfway, Pell. One clean move. Cut the connection like your life depends on it.”
“How much time?”
“Six seconds.”
He tilted his head toward her, his eyes looking too much to the right.
He smiled.
“Thanks, Starkey.”
“You, too, Pell. Now pull off the damned cap.”
He pulled.
0:05.04.03.
The timer continued reeling down.
“Is it safe, Starkey?”
The timer continued spinning, and Starkey felt her eyes well. She thought, Oh, goddamnit, but she said nothing.
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
0:02.01.
She closed her eyes and tensed for something she would never feel.
“Starkey? Are we okay, Starkey?”
She opened her eyes. The timer showed 00:00.
Pell said, “I think we’re still alive.”
John Michael Fowles did not want to die. His head grew light, even as his chest seemed to swell. He heard Starkey’s voice, and Pell’s. He realized that they were working to de-arm the bomb, and, in that moment, wanted to laugh, but he was bleeding to death. He could feel the blood filling his lungs. He passed out again, then once more heard their voices. He lifted his head just enough to see them. He saw the bomb. They had done it. They had de-armed it. John Michael Fowles laughed then, blowing red bubbles from his mouth and nose. They thought they had saved themselves. They didn’t know that they were wrong.
Fowles summoned all of his strength to rise.
“Pell, my hands hurt.”
Pell was holding her. He had crawled to her when the moment had passed, put his arms around her, and held her close. Now, he pushed up onto his knees.
“Tell me how to get to the phone. I’ll call 911.”
“Get the keys first, and unhook me. There were keys in the surge monitor. I think they probably go to the handcuffs.”
Pell sat back on his heels.
“There were keys, and you didn’t tell me?”
“We didn’t have time, Jack.”
Pell sighed deeply, as if all of the tension was only then flooding out of him. He followed her directions to the keys, then back to her. When her hands were free, Starkey rubbed her wrists. Her hands burned as the circulation returned.
Beyond Jack, from the couch, Fowles made a sound like a wet gurgle, then rolled off the couch onto the floor.
Pell lurched around.
“What was that?”
Starkey felt no sense of alarm. Fowles was as limp as a wet sheet.
“It’s Fowles. He fell off the couch.”
Starkey called to him.
“Fowles? Can you hear me?”
Fowles reached a hand toward her dining room. His legs slowly worked as if he was trying to crawl away, but he couldn’t bring his knees beneath himself.
“I’ll call 911 and get an ambulance. He’s still alive.”
Starkey rose, then helped Pell to his feet. Across the room, Fowles inched past the end of the coffee table, leaving a red trail.
Starkey said, “Just lay there, Fowles. I’m getting help.”
She left Pell by the front door, then went back to Fowles just as he edged to the far end of the couch.
Starkey came abreast of him as he reached behind the end of the couch, his back to her.
“Fowles?”
Fowles slowly teetered onto his back, once more facing her. What Starkey saw then made all of her training as a bomb technician come screaming back at her: Secondary! Always clear for a secondary!
She should have cleared the area for a secondary, just as Buck Daggett had always preached.
Fowles was clutching a second device to his chest. He looked up at Starkey with a blood-stained smile.
“The truth hurts.”
Starkey pushed away from him, shoving hard against a floor that tried to anchor her, trapped in a nightmare moment with legs that refused to move, her heart echoing thunder in her ears as she rushed in a painful, panicked, horrible lunge for Pell and the door as—
John Michael Fowles gazed up through the red lens of his own blood at a crimson world, then pressed the silver button that set him free.
After
Starkey stood in the open front door of the house they were renting, smoking as she watched the house across the street. The people who lived there, whose name she didn’t know, had a black Chihuahua. It was fat and, Starkey thought, ugly. It would sit in their front yard, barking at anyone or anything that passed, and stand in the middle of the street, barking at cars. The cars would blow their horns, but the damned Chihuahua wouldn’t move, forcing the cars to creep around it in a wide berth. Starkey had thought that was funny until two days ago when the Chihuahua came over and shit on her driveway. She’d tried to chase it back across the street, but the dog had just stood there, barking. Now she hated the mean little sonofabitch.
“Where are you?”
“Smoking.”
“You’re going to get cancer.”
She smiled.
“You say the most romantic things.”
Starkey couldn’t wait to move back to her own house, though the repairs would take another month, what with the foundation work, the new floor, two new shear walls, and all the doors and windows being replaced. Not one window or door was square after the blast because of the overpressure. It could have been worse. Starkey had reached Pell in the doorway when the device detonated. The pressure wave had washed over her like a supersonic tidal wave, kicking her into Pell and both of them through the door. That’s what saved them. Kicked out the door, off the porch, and into the yard. They had both been cut by glass and wood splinters, and neither of them could hear for a week, but it could have been worse.
Starkey finished the cigarette, then flicked the butt into the yard. She tried not to smoke in the house because it irritated his eyes. She had been twenty-three days without a drink. When she was done with that, maybe she would try to kick the smokes. Change wasn’t just possible, it was necessary.
They weren’t going to prosecute a blind man. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms had made a lot of noise about it at first, but Starkey and Pell had gotten Mr. Red, and that counted for a lot. They even let Jack keep the medical; no one would take health benefits from a guy who’d lost his eyes on the job.
Starkey was still waiting to hear about herself. She had a good Fraternal Order of Police lawyer and Morgan’s support, so she would do all right. She had the month off, and then the hearing. Morgan had told her that he would take care of it, and she trusted him. Barry Kelso called from time to time, asking after her. She found that she liked hearing from him. Beth Marzik never called.
Pell said, “Come here. I want you to see this.”
He always said things like that, as if by her seeing something, he could enjoy it. She found that she liked that, too. She liked it very much.
Jack had placed candles around the bedroom. He had them in little stubby candleholders and on saucers and plates, twinkling on the dresser and the chest and the two nightstands. She watched as he set the last one, tracing the wick with his fingers, lighting it with one of her Bic lighters, dripping the wax that he aimed so carefully with his fingers onto a plate, setting the butt of the candle into it. He never asked for help with anything. She would offer, time to time, but she never pushed it. He even cooked. He scared the shit out of her when he cooked.
“What do you think?”
“They’re beautiful, Jack.”
“They’re for you.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t move.”
“I’m here.”
He followed her voice, edging around the bed to her. He would have missed her by a couple of feet, so she touched his arm.
Pell had been living with her since he left the hospital. His eyes were gone. That was it. Neither of them knew if his staying here would be permanent, but you never know.
Starkey pulled him close and kissed him.
“Get in the bed, Jack.”
He smiled as he eased himself into the bed. She went around, pulling the shades. It was still light out, but with the shades down, the candles cast them in a copper glow. Sometimes, after they had made love, she would make shadow creatures in the candlelight and describe them to him.
Starkey took off her clothes, dropping them to the floor, and moved into his arms. She allowed his hands to move over her body. His fingers brushed her old scars, and the new scars. He touched her in places where she liked being touched. She had been frightened, their first time together, even in the dark. He saw with his hands.
“You’re beautiful, Carol.”
“So you say.”
“Let me prove it.”
She gasped at his touch, and at the things he did for her. Starkey had come a long way; there was farther still to go. Getting there would be a better thing with Pell in her life.