The Detonator Read online

  When she parts her legs, I enter her, and I listen to deep passionate moans, and her sweet voice whispering, “Don’t stop…Don’t stop, Ike.” My mind spins but it also plays tricks on me. In my head I see Patty’s face. I see the blood running from her nostrils, down her lips, and I see the crack in her skull. I hear the sound of her voice just like we were back inside the motel room, the neon lights flashing on and off the ceiling. Ike, I love you…I love you so much…I always have…and now that you’re here with me, it’s like a dream.

  I begin to lose it. Physically lose it.

  Ellen whispers, “You okay?”

  I try to shake the image and voice of Patty from my head, but it’s like she’s standing inside our bedroom watching us. Standing in the corner by the door in her panties and T-shirt examining our every move. Like she’s following us, stalking us.

  It takes everything I have left. All my strength. I keep my eyes open so that all I see is Ellen, her beautiful face, her deep brown eyes, her tan skin. I see her in the white exterior spotlight that manages to spill in through the windows. I don’t dare look in the corner, don’t dare give in to Patty’s presence, and despite her, I feel myself growing rock hard again. As hard as I can possibly get. Ellen’s voice grows louder, her movements faster, more forceful, and soon we both come to that place where we can’t possibly love one another more than we do at this moment in time.

  When it’s over, we both roll onto our backs and inhale the fresh night air.

  “Patty,” I whisper, as if I’m not in control of the words leaving my lips.

  “Singer,” Ellen says, her eyes suddenly wide. “Did you hear yourself?”

  “Hear what?”

  “You just called me Patty.”

  I feel the weight of this night now resting on my chest like pile of hardening concrete.

  “Why would I do that?” I say. But I know precisely the reason why.

  “What’s wrong?” Ellen says after a time. She gently sets her hand on mine.

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Liar,” she giggles. “I know when you’re having trouble concentrating. Like something else is on your mind. Something was definitely bothering you last night when we took a shower together.”

  “Lots on my mind. Then and now.”

  She rolls over, faces me, while I stare up at a blank ceiling.

  “Is it the three bombs? The poor woman who died? It couldn’t have been bothering you last night, because it hadn’t all happened yet.”

  Should I tell her now? Maybe my obsession with Patty’s memory won’t go away until I come clean. Or maybe I should continue to hold off.

  “Could be I was somehow anticipating the bombs, El. Like a psychic.”

  “Okay, Mr. Psychic,” she says, squeezing my hand. “It’s not another woman, is it?” Her tone is faux angry and concerned because she firmly believes I’d never cheat on her. Trust was always a part of our bond. Our unbreakable trust.

  If only she knew the truth. It might kill me…kill our marriage. But at least I would be forever free of it. Even God might forgive me.

  “Of course it’s not another woman,” I utter. I lie because like all liars, I’m weak, and I don’t want to risk losing what I have by stating the truth. “I think I just need to get some rest. Tomorrow is going to be a big day. I need to be at the Wellington at eight AM.”

  She removes her hand. “So you are going to the Wellington shoot after all.”

  “APD wants me there in light of tonight’s explosive festivities.”

  “Does Nick Miller think there could be a connection between the three downtown bombings and the hotel implosion?”

  “You mean like someone who’s working the demo job perhaps being responsible?”

  “That’s precisely what I mean, Singer.”

  “You never know. Awfully coincidental that the three charges were set tonight before the morning’s big bang, when we haven’t had a bombing in Albany in what I’m guessing is forever.”

  “Maybe they should cancel it.”

  “Take it from me, that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. They need to carry on with the implosion, that is, the demo outfit doesn’t want to face hefty daily fines by the property owners.”

  “Alison,” she says, after a beat. “You think she might know who could be the culprit? The murderer? Maybe you should call her, Ike.”

  My body tenses up at the sound of the name. “Let’s just get some sleep, babe.”

  I turn over, kiss her tender lips once more.

  “Good night,” she says. “I love you, Ike. Always have.”

  “Good night, baby,” I say. “Love you more. Always have.”

  My head hasn’t yet settled into the pillow when the detonation rattles the property.

  Chapter 40

  The exterior lights go out. A fireball rises up from the depths. Lights up the darkness, fills the night sky like a miniature sun.

  Ellen screams.

  I sit up straight, my backbone a heavy-duty coiled spring.

  Henry is down in the den. Kid has got to be scared to death. Why isn’t he screaming? No way he could sleep through that blast. That flash of brilliant firelight and white hot heat.

  “Mom! Dad! Mom!”

  I throw on my clothes, my entire body trembling. Pulling open the drawer, I retrieve the semiautomatic, shove the barrel into my pant waist. I also retrieve the mini-Maglite which I keep by the side of the bed, thumb the latex-covered trigger.

  “Where the hell did you get a fucking gun?” Ellen cries, jumping out of bed.

  “Never mind that.” Grabbing my cell phone. “Let’s just get downstairs. Go see to Henry.”

  She tosses on a pair of brown Ugg boots, exits the bedroom, heads out into the hall. I hear her bounding down the wood staircase before I even get around the bed. I’m thumbing the phone application to dial 911 when the text message comes through from Dr. Alison Darling.

  Stopping dead in my tracks, I click on the text.

  Knock Knock

  I text, You bitch. I will get you for this.

  Knock Knock…Play right. Do it. Or old man Henry dies before his time is up…DO IT

  Fuck! You!

  An MSS comes through. I open it.

  It’s a photo of Henry lying on his back on the couch. A mini pipe bomb fashioned from an e-cig device is attached to his chest via two separate strips of duct tape. The blue light radiating from the pipe shines against the boy’s petrified face.

  “Singer!” Ellen shrieks. “Get down here now!”

  Chapter 41

  Handing the Maglite to Ellen, I instruct her to aim the bright white LED light onto the thermite pipe bomb. The timer is set to detonate in two minutes. How long it’s been taped to his body I have no idea. How she managed to sneak in here without us hearing her I have no idea. How Henry managed not to make a sound I have no idea. The only thing I do know is this: if I don’t stop this bomb from detonating, my son…all of us…will die in two minutes.

  Less than two minutes.

  My phone chimes again.

  Knock Knock

  My eyes go from the phone to Henry to a weeping Ellen back to the phone again.

  Who’s there?

  Glancing at the Timex watch. One minute thirty.

  “Ellen, get it together,” I say in as calm and steady a tone as I can possibly muster. “Go into the kitchen, grab me a pair of scissors. Now.”

  One minute fifteen.

  Imagonna

  Fuck me, this isn’t happening.

  “Am I going to die, Dad? Are we going to die?”

  “Hang in there, son. I’ll get you out of this…Ellen!”

  Imagonna who?

  “Why are you texting, Dad?”

  Imagonna huff and puff and blow your stupid house up
!

  One minute five seconds.

  Ellen comes running back in, a pair of scissors gripped in her hand.

  “How in Christ’s name do you turn an e-cigarette device into a fucking bomb?!” she cries.

  I steal the scissors from her. Yank them right out of her hand. Opening the blades I clip the first wire. Don’t even think about it. Just cut.

  Ellen places one hand gently beneath Henry’s chin, while stroking what’s left of his hair with the other. He’s crying, but doing his best to hold it in.

  I open the scissors once more, position them to cut the second wire. But before I clamp them shut, I look up into Ellen’s eyes.

  “Anything can happen, El,” I say. “When I cut this second wire, anything can and will happen.”

  She nods. She understands me perfectly.

  “I’m ready,” she says. “What choice do we have?”

  “I’m ready,” Henry says. “Maybe this way I can beat the damn reaper.”

  But they’re not ready for me to cut, so much as they are ready to leave this earth. Ready to see God. I suppose I am too, so long as we all go together.

  Closing my eyes, I snip the second wire.

  Chapter 42

  The clock stops.

  I breathe. We all breathe. A sigh of relief which turns out to be short-lived when my phone chimes again.

  Another text from Alison.

  “Who the hell is that?” Ellen asks, tone verging on panic.

  “Hang on, babe. Please.”

  Maybe I stopped the timer on the IED, but my son is still wearing it on his chest. Nothing will be right until I safely remove it from his body, dispose of it out in the backyard.

  Knock Knock

  Oh for fuck’s sake…

  Who’s there? I text.

  Stupid.

  Stupid who?

  Stupid thinks the bomb is defused. This one goes boom by remote control.

  Meaning what?

  It means try and remove it and it’s BOOM BOOM Out Go the Lights!

  Remote control. It means that currently Alison is positioned within a one-mile radius of the house. She’s got to be observing us, perhaps with a night vision device, or maybe she’s standing right outside the window looking in. Or, what the hell, for all I know she installed a series of cable-wire cameras in the wall while we were on vacation.

  “Who on earth is that, Ike?”

  Looking up at my wife. “It’s Alison.”

  “Alison.” Shaking her head, confused, scared. “But why?”

  Typing a new text, What do you want from us?

  Alison responds, Gee let me think. I know…I’d like wifey to play me a song on the piano. The Long and Winding Road. The Beatles. Remember how much mom loved the Beatles?

  That one night flashes into my brain. Lying in bed in a hotel room lit only with the exterior lamp light that bled in through the narrow vertical openings in the drapes. Patty had brought along a small CD player on which she constantly played the Beatles. Especially “The Long and Winding Road.” A song that stabs my guts every time I hear it.

  Time to get the show on the road, lover boy.

  Lover boy…Just like Patty would say.

  Peering into Ellen’s wide, frightened eyes.

  “I need you to play a song for me on the piano,” I say.

  Chapter 43

  “Now?!” she screams. “You want me to play the piano now? Have you noticed that a bomb is strapped to our son’s chest? That our barn just blew up? That’s it’s burning the fuck down? That somebody obviously wants us dead?” She’s shaking her head, her face pale and sickly. “Ike, for the love of God, tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “I can’t,” I say, shifting my eyes to Henry, lying stone stiff on the couch, his wrinkled old face now just as pale as his mother’s. “Not now anyway. Please just do as I tell you. Go to the piano and play.”

  She nods, a single tear falling down her cheek.

  While she slowly walks out of the den, into the center corridor, and into the living room, I take my first good look out the picture window, onto what’s left of the still burning barn. That’s when I see a shadowy figure dashing past the flame. A dark silhouette racing before the bright orange dry-wood-fed flames.

  Alison. She’s out there. She’s in control. I can’t remove that bomb from Henry’s chest without her detonating it. Without my detonating it. I can’t help but wonder if the fire department knows of the barn explosion, the flames that have followed. If anyone heard the blasts. We’re far enough out in the open country that the fire would have to be reported. Even with the blast having shot across the valley, the area is still sparsely populated. Anyone who might have heard it, or placed any importance on it, would be fast asleep. They would attribute it to a bad dream. Or maybe not. Maybe someone did hear it. Maybe someone noticed the fire and called the fire department and the police.

  But then, Alison would have figured that out. She would have planned on the police and the emergency services discovering the explosion and resulting fire right away. She would have planned for that eventuality. But how? Is she somehow in communication with both departments? Will she insist that nothing’s wrong out here in the sleepy countryside? But then, why would they believe her for even an instant?

  That’s when it dawns on me with all the cold reality of sharp steel. She’s wired the place to blow. Not just the house, but the perimeter. It’s a guess on my part, but an educated guess. A guess I can rationalize because my entire adult life has been all about explosives and their living, breathing power. It’s how I would do it. I’d wire the entire perimeter up. I’d make sure that whoever breached it was destroyed. Violently.

  Music coming from down the hall.

  The cell phone chimes.

  You will now retire to the music room

  I look down at Henry. “We have to get up, son.”

  He starts to cry again. He’s afraid. Of course he’s afraid. Me too. I have no choice but to bend at the knees, help him up off the couch.

  “Easy, buddy,” I say. “Take it easy. No rush.”

  That’s when he does something that takes me by surprise. He starts to laugh.

  “Will you look at how strange this picture is, Dad?” he says, laughing through his tears. “You’re helping an old man of nineteen years old who’s got a fat-batt bomb strapped to his chest into Mom’s music room so he can listen to her put on a Beatles concert in the middle of the night, while our barn burns down. And you can’t stop texting.”

  I too laugh.

  “You got a point there, kid,” I say, as he gets to his feet, his right arm wrapped around my shoulder. “It is pretty surreal to say the least.”

  He stops.

  “Dad,” he says, under his breath. “Alison…What the hell happened between you two? I always remembered Alison as a nice girl. Bad knock-knock jokes, but still pretty cool.”

  “It’s complicated, Hank.”

  We walk, his almost feather weight bearing on my shoulders.

  “I’m an old man now,” he says. “Older than you even. I’d understand.”

  “I promise I’ll explain it later. Right now, let’s get through this night.”

  We enter into the living room, where Ellen is already playing the piano.

  “The Long and Winding Road,” as requested.

  My phone chimes again.

  Alison. Another text.

  Take a video of the wifey playing piano. Do it now. No arguments. The whole song from beginning to end.

  Heart in my throat, I set the phone up to record a video.

  “Ellen,” I say. “Start from the beginning.”

  She looks at me, not with fear in her eyes so much as distrust.

  “Please,” I say, setting Henry on the piano stool beside her. “Just do i
t. Let’s get out of this alive.”

  I start filming and she starts playing. Something’s happening when she presses one of the black keys near the center of the keyboard. It gives off a sour note, and the key sticks. It’s the key Ellen has been complaining about all along.

  C-minor.

  I keep filming.

  Ellen keeps playing, until she hits the key once more and this time it doesn’t rise back up. The music stops. She’s starts pounding with frustration on the key. With extended index finger, she comes down on it, like she’s trying to put her hand through the piano, tears falling from her eyes, her weeping audible and pained.

  And that’s when it dawns on me. The key is no longer just a key. The key has become a detonator. A rack-bar detonator.

  Shoving the phone in my pocket, I grab both Henry and Ellen by their arms. I yank them back onto the floor as the piano erupts.

  Chapter 44

  The blast was small and contained. Designed to shoot out vertically from the piano’s interior workings, rather than peripherally. But I could be wrong about that. This wasn’t C-4. It was something else. Something more volatile. More unstable. Not nitro, but nano-thermite. Super nano-thermite. Just like the bomb that killed Pat from Planned Parenthood. Just like the other two bombs which I defused. Just like the bomb strapped to my son’s chest. Enough to destroy the interior of the piano, shattering its insides. Enough to frighten and knock the daylights out of us. If I had to guess, no more than a drop or two. About the same amount used to blow out the Suburban tire.

  Ellen is lying on her back, her face covered in dust, eyes wide and angry.

  “Who is doing this?!” she screams. “Are we going to die now?”

  “No.” Rolling over, taking her in my arms, squeezing her. “You did good.”

  There’s a ringing in my right ear. It’s so loud it feels like it’s piercing my brain. I bring my fingers to my ear, feel for the Miracle Ear. It’s popped out of its place in the canal. I shove it back into the correct position, and the ringing stops.

  Ellen sits up.

  “What the hell is happening?” she begs. “And why are you texting Alison?” Then, her eyes wide, her face tight and pale. “Where the hell is Henry?”