A Danger to Himself and Others: Bomb Squad NYC Incident 1 (7 page)

Littel stumbled along the sidewalk for one block and turned left onto St. Mark’s Avenue. His row house had two stories and a basement. Behind a low wrought-iron fence, the empty poured concrete front yard measured six by eight. A red aluminum canopy covered part of the stoop closest to the door, and someone—Littel himself?—had painted the roof cornice red to match. Most important, a row of trash bins hid but did not block the door to the basement, accessible under the stoop. Littel himself used the main front door, and Manis watched him disappear inside.

Manis knew that Littel lived alone, his ex-wife having moved out several years ago. He knew that he slept on the top floor and that he never used the burglar alarm and that a series of night-lights cast a faint blue-green hue over every room in the house. He had been there before when the house was empty, but he needed to visit now when Manis was at home, in order to see the arm in person, touch it, measure it, download the software, get the replica just right. And to do so with the greatest margin of safety he had to make sure that Littel had come home alone. Any visitors—and most especially a light-sleeping date—would create complications that Manis didn’t need.

Now he walked around the block, waiting for Littel to settle in. Though puddles remained in the street, the dampness of the evening had lifted, and a crescent moon hung over Brooklyn to the east.

At half past midnight, Manis returned to the row house. With no one about, he stepped over the low wrought-iron fence and went immediately to the basement door. Mechanically inclined, he faced no challenge with the simple lock, using a tool he’d specially crafted to jimmy it. He removed his shoes inside the basement door and proceeded toward the upstairs bedroom, pausing to listen patiently after every few steps.

Manis found Littel passed out in bed, his head at an angle that suggested drunken sleep. He was snoring loudly with his good arm extended across the queen-size bed. The prosthesis was not in the bedroom, so Manis walked gingerly to the bathroom down the hall, where he found the arm lying atop a clean towel on a shelf.

This was perfect—just perfect. He wouldn’t even need to risk using a flash.

Manis closed the bathroom door and took a tape measure from his coat pocket. He extended it eighteen inches and laid it parallel to the arm on the table, then snapped a series of pictures, making sure to get all sides and every angle.

By one o’clock he had gone and Littel still lay sleeping, none the wiser.

TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK,

 TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK

3.

DAY TWO—Light

ATOP THE PUTTY-COLORED FILING
cabinets in Lieutenant Capobianco’s office stood a collection of framed pictures: his wife, his parents, his daughter at various ages, as well as pictures from his time on the force, the earliest one showing him on the street as a beat cop and the latest at a ceremony in the Chief of Detectives’ office when he took the reins of the Bomb Squad. There were piles of paper and manila files everywhere, but the tops of these cabinets seemed to be the boss’s one sacred space.

Diaz found it odd, getting called into this office by Kahn instead of Cap. He waited for the sergeant to close the door before taking one of two battered guest chairs. Kahn must’ve felt funny, too, as he didn’t go near the back of the desk. Instead, he pulled the other guest chair sideways and faced Diaz from there.

“The lieutenant asked me to speak with you.” Kahn took a deep breath. “About your behavior yesterday in front of the cathedral. I told you I was going to have to put it in the report.”

“And the lieutenant read it?”

Kahn shook his head. “He’s sick as a dog. I don’t think he’s reading many reports just now. For the Times Square thing, yes, but not for false alarms.”

“So how’s he know what went down?”

“I had to tell him.”

Diaz crossed his legs. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“You knew I’d have to.”

“No way. You said you’d have to put it in the report. I got that part.”

“Well, you can’t act out of turn like that and expect a superior officer not to say something. What if you did it again and weren’t so lucky, got yourself blown up? Hell, got someone else blown up?”

Diaz nodded. “I get it. You’re covering your ass. Don’t expect me to be pleased about it.”

“It’s got nothing to do with pleasing you, Manny. It’s got to do with your behavior. You can’t go around doing shit like that. I explained it to you yesterday.”

“You explained it yesterday. So why are we here in Cap’s office with the door closed?”

“Because you’re being issued a reprimand.”

Diaz rocked his free foot in silence.

“A letter will be put in your file.”

“Great. Who’s applying the reprimand—you been deputized?”

“Not exactly. The lieutenant will do it when he gets back, but he wanted you to be aware ASAP so it doesn’t happen again.”

“To protect yourselves.”

“To protect the public!” Kahn tented his fingers. “Look, Diaz, you know what they say about every new bomb tech in the first twenty-four months: a danger to himself and others. It’s our own version of a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous.”

“I ain’t some rube, Kahn. I got more than a little bit of knowledge. I’ve disarmed more IEDs than…” Diaz caught himself, swallowed.

Kahn dropped his hands to his thighs. “Than I have. That what you were going to say?”

“Than anybody here, probably.” Diaz gathered himself. “I don’t mean it as disrespect. I know this is a different theater than a war zone. Just saying I’m not all green, Sergeant.”

“Then stop acting green!” Kahn had raised his voice. He shook his head and lowered his tone. “I’m still rooting for you, Manny. I’m on your side. I know it doesn’t always look that way.”

Diaz nodded, chewed the inside of his lower lip, thinking this was a time to keep his mouth shut for once.

Kahn, seeing he had nothing to add, stood up and put a hand on the doorknob. “We done here? We square?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s go, then. We got a crime to solve.”

AES OPERATED OUT OF A
couple of rooms on the fourth floor of the PSA 4 building on the corner of Avenue C and East Eighth Street. It was a surprisingly modern structure—much more modern than the Third Precinct building that the Bomb Squad shared. Where the Third had a cramped and dark entrance, PSA 4 headquarters featured an atrium with natural light, and the halls were more antiseptic than at the Third, lacking the character that a patina of decades-old dirt could impart to a place. In addition to all that, the people who worked there were different. The Housing cops—who worked
in
the NYPD but were not
of
it—gave the building downstairs an altogether different vibe.

Diaz himself had entered the building only a few times, always to visit one of the AES detectives. He never failed to feel like a trespasser in there. But Brian O’Shea certainly didn’t feel that way. He had his office in the building, of course, but there was more to it than that. O’Shea was the kind of person who seemed at home in whatever space he occupied. He was the kind of guy who walked out of a rumble in an alley with a bloody lip but a smile on his face. The kind of guy who didn’t bother asking to pet your dog and in minutes had it doing tricks that you’d never taught it. He was the kind of guy who always had his feet up and always wore a placid expression.

“Like some joe?” he said, working the plastic stirrer around in the Styrofoam cup on his desk.

Diaz and Kahn shook their heads in unison.

“Can’t blame you. Why doesn’t the powdered milk ever fully melt—floats on top like toxic residue.” He sipped it anyway, smiled. “Burbette ain’t coming. Says he’s got other stuff to do, but I think he just wants to give us some room.”

“Generally his style,” Kahn said. “At least until they start giving out medals or until you screw it up. Then the FBI rides to the rescue.”

“On whose horse?” O’Shea laughed. While Diaz and Kahn settled in, he lowered his feet to the floor, opened a file on his desk, and plucked a pen from the suit jacket that hung over his chair.

He was tall and lanky with red hair cut close, light skin and blond eyebrows that almost disappeared over his blue eyes. Diaz thought a clerical collar would become him, and O’Shea had in fact attended Jesuit seminary in his youth. But in the end he’d opted for the family business, following his father, his grandfather, his uncles, and his older brother and sister onto the police force. No pressure, just couldn’t help himself. Old school.

“I’ve looked at the pictures,” he said, “and read the preliminary coroner’s report. What’d you guys scrape up yesterday?”

“Pieces of what appeared to be both of the suspect’s prosthetic legs. The crimp and two partial leg wires, and possible remnants of what looks like a pretty small device. Not much hardware in the vicinity of the seat.”

“They dug a bunch of ball bearings out of the guy’s abdomen, though. Really cut him to ribbons inside.”

“Maybe the bomb maker didn’t want him to survive and testify.”

“Overkill, though.”

“Or he strapped it on wrong.”

“That’s possible.” O’Shea looked into the middle space. “Not a vest. It must’ve been low in his pants, to judge by the pattern. It slips down further, he tries to adjust it, maybe it flips sideways when he does so and the direction of charge misses its mark.”

“Could’ve slipped down right in front of the recruiting center,” Kahn added. “Explains why maybe he set it off prematurely. Accidental detonation when he grabbed for it.”

“Wait a second,” Diaz interrupted. Kahn had told him to keep a low profile for this meeting, being the junior detective. But Diaz couldn’t help but wonder at this train of thought. “There was some evidence of heat on some of the artificial leg parts that we found. We also found cell phone parts.”

“You mean in addition to the intact phone in evidence?” O’Shea said.

Diaz nodded. “This other cell phone took it on the chin—pulverized.”

“Maybe the guy carried two, and bigger pieces just flew farther than the perimeter you marked off.”

Kahn shrugged. “Could happen.”

“Bullshit,” Diaz said. “The cell phone was part of the bomb.”

“How do you know? We didn’t find a SIM card.”

“SIM card maybe got reduced to dust with the rest of it. Only happens if it’s in close proximity to the main charge.”

“Burbette couldn’t get an explosive identification reading at the scene,” Kahn said. “Rain washed away the residue, it seems.”

“Raining that hard?” O’Shea asked.

“It was what your people would call a soft day,” said Kahn with a grin. “Gets wetter than it lets on.”

“Kinda like most Irish girls.” O’Shea laughed.

“Forgot to mention,” Kahn said, “we had better luck with the swab. Turned up C4 in the lab, not powder.”

“C4?”

Kahn hadn’t yet shared this with Diaz, but the junior detective nodded like he knew anyway. “Explains some witness reports of black smoke, though some others had it white.”

“And still such a small charge…” Kahn wondered. “Maybe it was homemade stuff.”

“Yeah, right,” O’Shea said. “Your guys didn’t find a lab at his house—clean as a whistle, in fact.”

“Maybe he had a secret place.”

“That shit’s near impossible to make in the kitchen and you know it.”

“Just thinking aloud.”

“Maybe—damn.” O’Shea bit his lip. “Not good if it’s C4.”

“Was there a taggant?” Diaz asked

“FBI crime lab’s running that one down.”

“So what do you figure so far?”

O’Shea sat back. “Incompetence possibly exacerbated by panic. Not a major terrorist-type operation. Maybe a gripe.”

“Against the army?” Kahn asked.

“Sure. Could be. Or an individual in the recruiting center.”

“You interview anyone there yet?”

“Only preliminarily. I’ll go back today.”

“And?”

“No one knew him there.”

“When did he get out?”

O’Shea consulted his file. “Four years ago. Spent nearly two years rehabbing in Texas. Honorable discharge.”

“So...a grudge for the lost legs. But the guy’s working, holding down a job, getting around. Why do this now?”

“I’ll hit the sister and the employer today. Maybe they have some insight into what set him off.”

“You think there are others?”

“I doubt it. No evidence of coordinated attacks. No claim of responsibility. Incompetent bomb maker.”

Diaz hated where this was going. They couldn’t be right about Horn. Angry about losing the legs, how the army treated the guy...maybe he could accept that. But his gut told him this didn’t add up. “Not that incompetent,” he muttered. “The thing went off, didn’t it?”

“Yeah. In his nuts. I don’t want to sell it short, but it feels like a lone act to me. I’m guessing depressed, maybe a touch of PTSD. Cry of pain. Albert Horn wanted to go out with a bang.”

“He got his wish,” Kahn said.

“Aw, that’s just stupid,” Diaz finally blurted.

O’Shea looked a little startled.

Diaz struggled to tone himself down. “Did the guy leave a note?”

“Not that we know of.”

“So what makes it suicide?”

Kahn sat up, red-faced. “Were you out on the street with me last night, Diaz?”

Diaz ignored the sarcasm. “I’m not buying it. What type of unit did this guy serve in?”

O’Shea consulted his folder. “Cavalry regiment.”

“Not engineers? Nothing like that?”

O’Shea shook his head.

“So he had no access to C4, probably wasn’t even close enough to steal any ever.”

“He might’ve acquired some on the black market.”

“The guy’s working for—what?—a bible publisher? And he’s on the black market for plastic explosives in his spare time?”

“Could be the bible thing was his cover.”

“But you said yourself he ain’t no terrorist.”

“I said he might not be one.”

“So, let me get this straight.” Diaz knitted his brow. “Probable suicide bomber, acting alone, manufactures a bomb with an apparent directional charge. Even though he wants to make a statement, he doesn’t make one, and he limits the damage to himself. Plus, even though he can build a bomb with a directional charge, he’s incompetent.”