The Detonator Page 15

  “Thought we didn’t have to show up for that,” he says, like he’s disappointed over having to get up for work in the morning.

  “Considering tonight’s events, I can’t think of anywhere else Albany’s only bomb disposal unit should be.”

  Miller and I climb back into his cruiser, pull away from the Lark Street blast site. He stops for a crew of blue-windbreaker-wearing Department of Homeland Security officials who are now stationed at the end of the road behind a series of yellow barricades. One of the agents pulls the barricades open for us. We drive on out, back into the city.

  “They think this could be a terrorist act?”

  “You mean like radical Islamists making a lone wolf statement?” he says. “I sort of ruled that out right away with the typed Master Blasters index cards that accompanied each bomb. Hardly a call to jihad, you know?”

  I nod. “A judge duct-taped to a mailbox containing a bomb…a priest duct-taped to the altar that supports a tabernacle filled with the Body of Christ and a pipe bomb….the boss of the local Planned Parenthood duct-taped to her desk chair, a pipe bomb taped to her mid-section…her fucking uterus. What we have here is a bomber who thinks and acts in metaphorical terms.”

  “You happen to know where the suspected metaphorical bomber resides?” Miller poses.

  Turning to him quick. “Why would I know that? I didn’t even know she still existed until a couple of days ago when she found me on the beach in Cape Cod.”

  “Well,” he says, “GPS gave me an address for a townhouse over in New Scotland Woods. It’s on the way to your house, to be honest.”

  “If you know where she lives, why ask me anything at all? Maybe you should order SWAT to sweep the place right now.”

  He looks at me, smiles unhappily. “Just seeing how you’d respond. It’s the old cop in me. And to answer your question, this isn’t Hollywood. It’s Albany, New York. You don’t just cut to the scene where SWAT knocks the door down with one of those metal battering rams while the bad guy or gal sleeps in her bed, even if it does make for good drama. We need that warrant and in order to get it and make it stick, we need solid evidence tying Miss Metaphorical e-cig bomber to tonight’s downtown bombings.”

  “You don’t trust me, do you, Nick?”

  “Hey,” he exhales, “I thought we were friends.”

  “That’s what I thought…pal.”

  “I need to make sure no stone goes unturned. A woman died tonight in a blast that almost surely would have taken out a lot more people had it occurred during the day. I need answers. We need answers. We need evidence.”

  “Not for nothing,” I say, “but a place to start is one of those vape stores like Vapor Geek. Alison probably bought dozens of those little smoking devices. Maybe we got her face captured on CCTV.”

  “Already thought of that, already got somebody on it. But that can take time. Or, who the hell knows, maybe she ordered them off of Amazon.”

  It dawns on me that a woman as sharp as Alison wouldn’t be stupid enough to buy an unusually large number of e-cig devices at a traditional store. She purchased them online, no doubt about it, and it’s exactly how I put it to Miller.

  I add, “We’re going to have to find a way to snatch up her computer, Nick.”

  “Good luck with that,” he says. “We need the warrant.”

  We head out of the city and into the West Albany suburbs. One- and two-story clapboard bungalows for as far as the eye can see. Which isn’t very far in the deep night.

  “Who was she?” I say after a time.

  “Who was who?” Miller answers.

  “The woman who died.”

  “Woman named Pat Mahoney. Fifty-eight, married. Two kids, both out of college. She’s been running the Lark Street Planned Parenthood office for nearly thirty years. Major league advocate for safe sex and contraception. Very much against some of these women…young women most of them…who use the Planned Parenthood system as a means of contraception. I’m told she was planning on retiring this year.” He shakes his head, sighs. “Damn shame you ask me.”

  I pull out my phone, type in the name Pat Mahoney. Already, the online version of the Times Union newspaper has run a story about her on the website, along with a photo. She’s got short red hair, a smooth face, bright green, optimistic eyes even for someone who’s been at the same job for so long. In the picture she’s wearing a white turtleneck sweater, and her face bears a smile that seems neither forced nor coerced by the photographer. In other words, the smile is genuine.

  Now the forensics experts will have no choice but to identify her by salvaging whatever teeth they might find from the rubble.

  I pocket the phone, stare out the window, as Miller hops on the short highway extension that will take us to the village of New Scotland, which is located due west of the Albany city limits.

  “You get Patty Darling pregnant that night inside the hotel room?” Miller says after a time.

  His words are soft-spoken, but they hit me like a brick.

  “Listen, Miller,” I say, “I’m telling you the truth when I say, if she did get pregnant, and she did….how do I say this…get rid of the baby, then I had no clue. No clue in the world.”

  God forgive me. I know how much of an absolute jerk I must sound like right now. I’m also wondering if Patty ever actually met with the now deceased Pat Mahoney. If she in fact did, the first time must have occurred not long after our little tryst in the motel. Patty would have visited the clinic only after much soul searching. She wouldn’t have taken a procedure like abortion lightly. Patty was the sensitive type. Even after a few days she would have felt the baby growing inside her body, its tiny heart beating. You don’t just destroy something like that on a whim. For Patty, making a baby with me might have been the most wonderful thing in the world, until I ruined it for her.

  “You never spoke afterwards?” Miller asks.

  Shaking my head, not in response to him necessarily. But because I can’t believe how much I hate myself right now.

  Patty’s face stares back at me from the side-view mirror. Coward. The Master Blaster is a coward. Come on, admit it…

  “Not once,” I say. “Not even at Brian’s funeral.”

  “But she called you, didn’t she, Singer?”

  “Yes.”

  “She called you again, and again, and again. And you never once answered her or called her back. That right?”

  “Patty, shut…” I catch myself.

  “What?” Miller says.

  “Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”

  My entire blood supply feels like it’s spilling out my feet.

  He goes on, “Even when she was at her most desperate, maybe leaving you messages that were tear-filled, frantic. Even when she said she might kill herself if you didn’t call back, you chose to ignore her. How’s the picture I’m painting here?”

  “What’s your point?” I say, voice raised, tone angry.

  “My point is that we all make mistakes, Ike. You made one that didn’t have to be so painful or hurtful, had you called her back. Just once.”

  “Lesson learned.”

  “Is it? All it takes is one night…one single night…to ruin a woman’s life, Ike. Take it from me. I watched my wife die on an operating table from an aneurysm that could have been repaired had the surgeon not been drunk when he cut into her head.”

  “That what this is all about? You lost your wife one night and now you’re taking it out on me because I spent one night with a woman and never called her back?”

  “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe not. But think about this: I’m guessing she never once called or approached your wife about the situation. Even if and when she got pregnant.” He shoots me a look. One eye on the road, one on me. “You know what that means?”

  Me, staring down into my lap, wishing the roof would somehow open up an
d I could just fly away. “What’s it mean?”

  “Means she cared enough about you not to ruin things for you, Singer. Even if she couldn’t have you, she took the high road and refused to hurt you. Hurt your family.”

  Glancing into the side-view, I once more see Patty’s face, a tear falling from her eye, combining with the blood that drips from the crack in her skin and skull.

  I exhale, my stomach feeling like it’s been sucker punched.

  “Let me ask you something else,” he adds. “Then I’ll shut up.”

  Me, shifting my gaze from the side-view, out the window onto the far edge of the Albany suburbs. The edge of darkness.

  “That time in the motel back in 1999…was it the only time you slept with her?”

  Turning back to him, glaring at him. For so long, and so coldly, I know he can feel it. Read it. Taste it. Hear it.

  “That’s what I thought,” he says, after a weighted beat. “Maybe it was only once, but once was enough. I know now why you’re so desperate to keep it from Ellen.”

  “Anything else, Miller?”

  “What I know for certain is that all actions have consequences whether we want to believe it or not. No one gets off scot-free in this life. No one is exempt from the push and pull of the cosmos. No one. Not even God.”

  “Thought you said you were gonna shut up.”

  Looking one final time into the side-view mirror, I watch Patty’s face slowly disappear like a tear in the rain.

  We make the turn onto New Scotland Avenue, the night growing darker as Albany County’s urban infrastructure transitions to the rural countryside. After a couple of miles, we turn onto Woodside Drive and enter into one of those townhouse developments that were so popular back in the 1980s and ’90s as a less expensive housing alternative for the young urban professionals graduating from law and business school.

  The buildings contain two separate living units apiece and if not for the black numbers tacked to the plain, egg yolk–colored aluminum siding, they would all be identical. The road dips for a while, then levels off. As we approach number 32, Miller douses the cruiser headlights, pulls over onto the soft shoulder, kills the engine.

  “This is where we get out,” he says, lifting up the center console, pulling out a small plastic box.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He tells me to follow him, like fire follows a lit fuse. Like either one of us has a choice in the matter.

  Chapter 35

  We walk quietly in the darkness, the lights in the townhouses all extinguished while the residents sleep, oblivious to an explosion that rattled the downtown and took the life and body of an innocent woman. Slowing, we approach unit 32, which is on the left-hand side of a two-unit complex.

  There’s a car parked out front. A four-door silver BMW.

  “That her car?” Miller asks.

  “Looks like it,” I whisper. “I never did get a chance to memorize the plate.”

  “Could be she’s home or trying to make it look like she’s home.” Foraging into his jacket pocket, he pulls out a pair of light blue latex gloves, slips them on. Then, opening the small box he retrieved from the cruiser console, he pulls out a small aerosol can and what looks like a paintbrush.

  “I’m guessing we’re not just gonna knock on the front door.”

  “Not without a warrant. However, we can check the car for any residue it might contain.”

  “Residue. What kind of residue?”

  “You gotta ask, pal? Are you or are you not the APD’s only official bomb sniffer?”

  “That would be the dog.”

  “Okay, in human terms.”

  “So I’m guessing we’re checking for explosive residue. But she works with explosives all the time. There’s probably residue all over the place.”

  He stops as we come to the top of the shared driveway. “I realize that. But in this case, if there’s residue that matches the residue from the bombs planted downtown tonight, we at least have reasonable suspicion, and reasonable suspicion backed up by solid evidence will be exactly what one of my pocket judges will be requiring when he finally gives us his blessing on a bench warrant. Any further questions then?”

  I shake my head. “But aren’t we trespassing? Judge gonna allow you to submit evidence lifted off her property more or less illegally?”

  “You let me worry about the details,” he answers. “You stay here and watch and learn.”

  He walks so softly and carefully up the driveway, it’s like he’s tiptoeing in ballerina slippers. Taking a knee outside the BMW’s driver’s side door, he sprays some of the aerosol on the door opener and swipes the brush over it. When he’s done, he wipes the brush onto a pad, which is stored at the bottom of the small box. He performs the same process on all three of the remaining door openers on the car. Then, standing up straight, he goes to the front door and brushes the doorknob. About-facing, he quickly but stealthily makes his way back down the driveway.

  “You get what you need?” I ask. “That paintbrush really pick up residue that small?”

  “A modern collection kit…you know, from like the twenty-first century…would include a mini electron scanning microscope. But I’m strictly old-school.”

  “Let me guess. APD budget.”

  “Double cliché for you, Ike. You work with what you got, and you do what you have to do.”

  “Especially when it comes to murder, the worst cliché of them all.”

  “Let’s go,” he says, “before she wakes up and calls the cops.”

  “I thought you were the cops.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  Chapter 36

  Of course, they’ll wonder how such a small, fragile young woman like Alison Darling was able to plant those three bombs, and more astonishingly, subdue three grown people.

  It wasn’t hard getting the people to cooperate, once a gun armed with super-thermite rounds was pointed in their faces (not that they had any idea of the thermite rounds; but then they weren’t exactly in a position to debate their existence either). Easy-peasy, in fact.

  The judge, he’s old and lives alone.

  The priest, he’s old, lives alone inside a giant rectory, and can barely walk, much less lift a finger to stop her.

  And as for Planned Parenthood Pat, she was caught just before turning out the shop lights for the night. What better way to earn the birth control professional’s trust than to engage in some friendly chitchat about contraceptive responsibility and freedom of choice? In the end, however, Pat couldn’t resist the gun when the barrel stared her down and those thermite rounds were poised to take away her life and her soul. Most women hate guns. Pat was no exception.

  But these three bomb situations went down precisely as planned. At least, she knew full well that it would be nearly impossible for even a master blaster like Ike Singer to defuse that last bomb. Not with such an incredibly short detonation time. And so what if that woman died in the blast? What was her full Christian name? Pat Mahoney? Didn’t she kill little babies and then sell their organs for profit? Is that what happened to her little brother back in ’99? Isn’t that what happened to her own child just a few years later?

  A woman like that deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth. A woman like that is a co-conspirator in a murder. A long string of murders.

  Now, Alison stands on the edge of Singer property, watching mother and son from outside the living room window, their faces glued to the big high-def flat-screen television and the fine job the man of the house is doing saving humanity. She knows that in a matter of minutes, the time will come when he will pay for the sins he committed not only against God, but worse, against her mother, her father, herself, and two unborn children. All because Ike Singer wouldn’t admit the truth to himself. That the married woman he slept with one ni
ght in a sleazy motel room loved him with all her heart. That he broke her heart when the next morning, he left the hotel room without ever speaking to her again….Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am…Don’t let the door slap you in the ass on the way out.

  “Knock knock,” she whispers to herself, as she takes hold of the detonation controller, her thumbs tickling the two triggers. “Who’s there? Opportunity. Opportunity who? The opportunity to blast away Ike Singer’s life forever only knocks once.”

  Chapter 37

  Pulling out of Woodside Drive, Miller hooks a right back onto New Scotland Avenue.

  “You’re going the wrong way,” I say.

  “Listen, it’s going on midnight. You have got to be tired after all the shit that went down tonight. Take a look at your hands.”

  I peer down at my hands in my lap. My fingers are trembling.

  Jesus, when did that begin?

  “If you were a real cop, Ike,” he goes on, “I’d make you take the rest of the week off and visit the shrink. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “I’m fine. My first time under battle conditions, so to speak. True battle conditions.”

  We drive for a while as the country that surrounds us thickens. The sky is clear tonight, with a full moon. The light from the moon makes the tops of the Helderberg Mountains visible eleven miles to the west. You can almost pinpoint the cliff top of Thatcher Mountain, its three-mile-long cliff face a gift from an ancient glacier that carved its way northward as temperatures heated up at the end of the last ice age.

  Another peek at my hands.

  Still trembling.

  I see the darkness but I also see my future. My family’s future. If Alison was able to pull off what she did tonight, and do so alone, she is far more formidable an enemy than I could have ever imagined. It’s not the sheer physical and emotional strength it must have taken to abduct those three adult human beings, duct-tape them to their respective IEDs. It’s not even the knowledge of lethal explosives she displayed and the ease with which she fabricated her improvised e-cig device time bombs. It’s her fearlessness. If the only thing to fear is fear itself, then you bet your ass, I’m afraid. Afraid for me and my family.