After Dark (12 page)

Abbie hesitated. "Two weeks ago, a man tried to break into my house in Portland. I scared him away, but I got a good look at him while he was on my back porch. He was dressed like the man who broke into the cabin tonight. I'm certain it was the same person. I could never identify him in a lineup. He was wearing something over his face both times, but something about him reminded me of Charlie Deems."

Stamm looked startled.

"Who is Charlie Deems?" the sheriff asked.

"A man I convicted on a murder charge more than a year ago.

He was sentenced to death, but the Supreme Court reversed his sentence recently and he's out of prison."

"Right. I knew the name sounded familiar. But why do you think it was Deems?"

"The size, his build. I could never swear it was Deems. It was just a feeling."

"Did you report the attempted break-in in Portland?" the sheriff asked.

"No. I didn't see any purpose in reporting it. I couldn't identify the man and nothing was taken. He wore gloves, so there wouldn't be any prints. And at the time I thought he reminded me of someone, but I didn't make the connection with Deems then."

The sheriff nodded and said, "Okay. Why don't you finish telling us what happened tonight, so you can go home."

"After the flash, the man froze for a second, then took off in the direction of the light. I heard him crashing through the underbrush away from me. After a while, ! couldn't hear him anymore. I decided to stay still for a long time. I wanted to be sure he wasn't waiting for me to move. I didn't have a watch, so I don't know how long I stayed put, but it seemed forever. When I thought I was safe I made my way to the Wallace cabin and Mrs. Wallace called you."

"When the man ran off, did you hear anything else?"

"No, but there had to be someone else out there. The flash, those sounds."

"Okay. I guess you'd like to shower and change. Why don't I take Mr.

Stamm downstairs. We'll be in the living room when you're ready to go."

"Tell me some more about Charlie Deems," Sheriff Dillard said when they were downstairs.

"If Deems is after Abbie, she's in serious trouble," Stamm said. "He's a stone killer. As cold as they come. He tortured a rival drug dealer to death, then he killed a little girl and her father to keep the father from testifying. I sat in on Deems's interrogation.

He never blinked. Smiled the whole time. Super polite. He treated the whole thing as if it was a joke. I watched his face when the jury came in with the death sentence. I'll bet his heart rate didn't go up a beat."

"Would he try to kill Mrs. Griffen?"

"If he wanted to, he would. Charlie Deems is basically a man without restraints. I just don't know why he'd go to the trouble, now that he's out. Then again, rational thought is not one of Deems's biggest assets."

Sheriff Dillard looked distracted and troubled.

"I'll tell you what concerns me, Mr. Stamm. Nothing was stolen. That could mean that the intruder was a thief who panicked. But I don't think so. If he was a thief, why follow Mrs. Griffen into the woods?

Why hunt for her? No, I think the intruder was here to do your deputy harm."

Chapter TEN

The Griffens' yellow three-story colonial stood at the end of a winding gravel drive on five acres of wooded land. A sawhorse blocked entry to the driveway. Despite the late hour, curious neighbors milled around in front of the barrier straining for a glimpse of the house and debating the cause of the explosion that had shattered the silence of their exclusive Portland residential neighborhood.

Nick Paladino drove through the crowd slowly, pausing in front of the sawhorse. A uniformed officer ducked his head down and looked through the driver's window. Paladino had the face of a gym-scarred boxer. The officer studied him suspiciously until the homicide detective flashed his badge, then he quickly moved the barrier aside.

Jack Stamm stared morosely out of the passenger window as the unmarked police car rolled slowly up the drive. The news of the explosion had stunned Stamm, who spent the ride to the crime scene blaming himself for not doing "something" in the week following the attack on Abigail Griffen.

Paladino parked near a Fire Rescue Unit. The men from Fire Rescue were watching the bomb squad work. There was nothing else for them to do.

There was no fire, just the shattered remains of a new Mercedes-Benz.

There was definitely no one to rescue.

The driver of the Mercedes was unquestionably dead.

Paul Torino, the Team Leader of the Explosive Disposal Unit, intercepted the district attorney and the detective before they crossed the barriers the squad had erected around the blast site.

Torino was balding, five-eleven, thick through the neck and shoulders and bowlegged. He was wearing the unit's black combat fatigues under a Tyvex paper throwaway chemical suit, which protected against blood-borne pathogens.

"Put these on and I'll give you the grand tour," Torino said, handing Stamm and Paladino Tyvex suits. Stamm slipped into his easily, but Paladino struggled to pull the paper suit over his beer gut.

"When did the bomb explode?" Stamm asked.

"The 911 came in at 10:35 P. M.," Torino answered as he led them through the police barrier. Portable lighting had been set up to illuminate the front yard and someone had turned on all the lights in the house. The bomb squad members were searching the crime scene for parts of the bomb so they could discover how it had been made. One officer had been designated evidence custodian. Another sketched the area to show where each piece of evidence was found.

Stamm noticed a man photographing a jagged hole in the garage door. The ruined Mercedes was just outside the garage, facing the door. Stamm guessed that the car had been parked in the driveway and was backing out when the bomb exploded. He circled the Mercedes before looking inside.

An acrid smell that had not been dispersed by the evening breeze hung in the air. The safety glass in the windshield was shattered but intact, but the side and rear windows had been blown out by the blast. There were shards of glass and chunks of bent and twisted metal scattered across the driveway and the front lawn. The roof on the driver's side was puffed out from the inside as if a giant fist had struck upward with tremendous force. Torino pointed out two one-inch holes in the roof and explained that they'd been made by pipe fragments. Then he motioned the two men toward the driver's window.

"When we get the chance to examine the underside," Torino said, "we're gonna find a large hole in the floorboard under the driver's seat.

That's where the bomb was attached. Notice the seat belt." It had been sheared in two. "The victim was blown up into the roof, breaking the restraint. Then the body settled back in the bucket seat."

Stamm took a deep breath and looked inside. Viewing a murder victim was never easy. It was infinitely harder if the victim was someone you knew. What helped here was the impression that the victim, slumped to the right, eyes closed, seemed merely asleep. The upper torso and head were intact, as was the body from the knees down, but there were massive injuries to the body between the knees and the torso. The pieces of flesh Stamm discerned were confined to the roof and the inside of the windshield on the driver's side and there was not as much blood as Stamm expected because death was the result of internal injuries. Stamm gathered himself and focused on the face once more, remembering it in life. He felt light-headed and turned away.

"Paul," someone shouted from the garage. "Look at this."

The garage door was up now. Inside, a member of the bomb squad squatted in front of a white refrigerator that stood against the back wall.

Torino bent over him and Paladino and Stamm looked in from the side.

Embedded in the refrigerator door was a rounded piece of metal.

"Did it come through the hole in the garage door?" Torino asked the man who had summoned them into the garage.

"Yeah. We measured the trajectory. I'm glad I wasn't looking in here for a beer. I'd have me two assholes."

"Have Peterson photograph this," Torino said. "Don't pry it out until he gets here."

Stamm bent closer and noticed two short pieces of copper wire and something he could not identify embedded in the piece of metal.

"That's one of the end caps from the bomb," Torino explained, "and that's the remains of a lightbulb that was used as the bomb's initiator.

When the bomb exploded, the end caps flew off like bullets in the direction they were pointing. This one penetrated the garage door and wedged itself in the refrigerator door."

The squad member returned with the sketch artist and the evidence custodian.

"It's getting crowded in here," Torino said. He led Stamm and Paladino outside.

"Paul," Stamm asked the captain, "you worked the Hollins bombing, didn't you?"

"The Deems case?"

Stamm nodded.

"I'm not surprised you asked," Torino said, "because I started getting a dose of d(jh vu as soon as I saw that end cap. I just didn't want to say anything until the investigation was complete.

I'll know for sure when we get all the pieces of the bomb, but I'd bet a year's salary that this bomb is identical to the bomb that killed Hollins and his little girl."

Shortly before midnight, Jack Stamm followed Harvest Lane through Meadowbrook, a development consisting of twenty small but attractive homes scattered over three winding streets on the outskirts of Portland, a twenty-minute drive from the site of the explosion. Stamm parked in the driveway of a modern, one-story gray house with an attached garage.

By the time a marked police car was parked at the curb, Stamm was ringing the bell and pounding on the front door. The small house was only a few years old. The development was so new that the trees provided no shade. The house was loaded with glass to catch the sun in the daytime. Stamm peered into the dark interior of the living room through the front window, then he turned to the uniformed officers whom he had ordered to follow him.

"Check the rear. See if there's any sign that someone's broken in."

The officers separated and circled the house. Stamm was worried. Why was the house deserted? Just then headlights appeared at the end of the street. A car started to turn into the driveway, then braked. The driver's door opened and Abbie got out. She was dressed in jeans, a dark long-sleeved cotton shirt and a navy-blue windbreaker. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail.

Abbie looked at the marked patrol car just as the police officers came around the side of the house. Abbie looked from the officers to Stamm.

"What's wrong, Jack?" Abbie asked anxiously.

"Where were you?" Stamm said, avoiding her question.

"On a wild-goose chase. What's going on?"

Stamm hesitated. Abbie gripped his arm.

"Tell me," she said.

Stamm put his hands firmly on Abbie's shoulders. "I've got bad news,"

Stamm said. An array of emotions flashed across Abbie's face. "It's Robert. He's dead."

"How?" was all she managed.

"He was murdered."

"Oh my God."

"It was a car bomb, Abbie. Just like the one Charlie Deems used to kill Larry Hollins and his little girl."

Abbie's legs gave way and Stamm helped her to the front stoop, where he eased her down.

"I want you to listen carefully," Stamm told Abbie. "There's no evidence Deems did this, but the bombs are very similar. So I'm not taking chances. These officers are going to stay with you tonight and I'm going to arrange twenty-four-hour police protection."

"But why Robert?" Abbie asked in apparent disbelief. "He's responsible for taking Deems off of death row."

"Deems is a sadist. Maybe he wants to kill you, but only after he's made you suffer by killing someone close to you."

Abbie looked dazed. "First the attempted break-in, then the attack on the coast. Now Robert is dead. I don't believe this is happening."

"You're going to be all right, Abbie. We'll protect you and we'll find the person who killed Robert. But you have to be careful. You have to take this very seriously."

Abbie nodded slowly. "You're right. I can't believe I went off by myself tonight."

"What were you doing out so late?"

"I got a call about a case. This man wanted me to meet him, but he didn't show up."

"What time was this?"

"Around nine."

Abbie paused, suddenly realizing why Stamm was asking about the call.

"You don't think the call and the bombing are connected, do you?" Abbie asked, but Stamm was not listening. He turned to one of the officers.

"Move your car away from the house, fast. Then get on the radio to Paul Torino. He's still at Justice Griffen's house. Tell him I need the bomb squad over here, right away."

Stamm pulled Abbie to her feet and started dragging her toward his car."

"What are you doing?" Abbie asked, still too dazed to realize what was frightening the district attorney.

"I'm getting you away from the house until the bomb squad's checked it thoroughly. If you've been out since nine, the person who set the bomb in your husband's car would have had plenty of time to rig something here."

Chapter ELEVEN

The small windowless room in the basement garage of the Portland Police Bureau looked more like a storeroom than the office of the bomb squad.

Its walls were unpainted concrete and the floor was littered with cardboard cartons filled with scraps of metal, copper wire and pieces of pipe. A gray gunmetal desk next to the door was the only hint that the room was used for something other than storing junk, but the desk was covered with an unorganized collection of miscellaneous clutter and could have been mistaken for abandoned furniture.

Paul Torino opened the door and let Nick Paladino into his workroom.

Paladino had taken the elevator from the Homicide Bureau to the basement after Torino called. "What's up, Paul?"

"I want to show you something."

Torino sat at the desk and gestured Paladino into a chair beside him.

Then Torino cleared the top of the desk by shoving everything into a big pile on one of the edges. There was a torn cardboard carton next to one of the desk legs. Torino pulled several items out of it and placed them on the desk in a line. Then he drew a side view of a piece of pipe on a yellow writing tablet.