Death of a Blue Movie Star (16 page)

“God, what did you do?”

“We brought it up here and were just going to detonate it but the word came from downtown they wanted to check the components for fingerprints. So we put it in a hyperbaric chamber, equalized the pressure inside and outside, opened it up and rendered it safe. It had two pounds of Semtex in it. With steel shot all around.
Like shrapnel. Purely antipersonnel. Mean, son-of-a-bitch bomb.”

“You got the robot into the chamber?”

“Well, no. Actually I dismantled it.”

“You?”

He shrugged and nodded to the pit, where the two men had finished their wrapping exercise and were retreating to a bunker of concrete and sandbags.

“They’re practicing setting off military charges. That’s an M118 demolition block. About two pounds of C-4. For blowing bridges and buildings, trees. They’ve wrapped it with detonating cord and’ll set it off by remote control.”

Over the loudspeaker came a voice: “Pit number one, fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!”

“What do they mean?” Rune asked.

“That’s what they used to yell in coal mines when they lit the fuse on the dynamite. Demolition people use it now to mean there’s about to be an explosion.”

Suddenly a huge orange flash filled the sky. Smoke appeared. And an instant later a clap of thunder slapped their ears.

“Boaters hate us,” Healy explained. “City gets a lot of claims for broken windows.”

Rune was laughing.

Healy looked at her. “What?”

She said, “It’s just weird. You brought me all the way out here to give me a lesson on IEDs.”

“Not really,” he said, considering.

“Then why did you invite me?”

Healy looked away for a moment, cleared his throat. His face was ruddy to start with but it seemed he was blushing. He opened his attaché case and took out a couple of cans of diet Coke, two deli sandwiches, a bag of Fritos. “I guess it’s a date.”

CHAPTER TEN

He may have looked like a cowboy but he wasn’t the silent type.

Detective Sam Healy was thirty-eight. Nearly half of his fellow
BOMB SQUAD
detectives had gotten into demolition in the military but he’d gone a different route. First a portable—a foot patrolman—then working an RMP.

“Remote motor patrol. It means police car.”

“Initials, I remember.”

Healy smiled. “You’re talking to an MOS.”

“Moss?”

“Member of Service.”

After a few years of that Healy’d gone into Emergency Services: New York’s SWAT team. Then he’d signed up for the Bomb Squad. He’d taken the month-long course at the FBI’s Hazardous Devices School in Huntsville, Alabama, and then was assigned to the Squad. Healy had majored in electrical engineering in college and was studying criminal justice at John Jay.

He talked with excitement about his workshop at home, inventions he’d made as a kid, his twenty-year, uninterrupted subscription to
Scientific American
. Once he had come up with a formula for a chemical solution to neutralize a particular high explosive and had almost gotten a patent. But a big military supplier beat him to it.

He’d never fired his gun, except on the range, and had only made four arrests. He carried a Brooklyn gun shop’s business card, on the back of which was printed the
Miranda
recitation; he knew he’d never remember the words in a real arrest. He’d been called on the carpet several times for failing to wear his service revolver.

When the conversation turned personal he became quieter, though Rune sensed he wanted to talk. His wife had left him eight months before and she had informal custody of their son. “I want to fight it but I can’t bring myself to. I don’t want to put Adam through that. Anyway, what judge is going to award
me
custody of a ten-year-old kid? I deal with explosive devices all day.”

“Is that why she left you?”

Healy pointed across the field. Rune heard the staticky warning again. Another huge flash, followed by a tower of smoke fifty feet high. Rune felt a concussion wave slap her face like a sudden summer wind. The cops watching lifted their fingers to their mouths and whistled. Rune jumped to her feet and applauded.

“Nitramon cratering charge,” Healy said, studying the smoke.

“Fantastic!”

Healy was nodding, looking at her. She caught him and he looked away.

“The job, you mean?” he asked.

Rune had forgotten her question. Then she recalled. “The reason your wife left?”

“I don’t know. I think the reason was I didn’t ever get home. Mentally, I mean. I live in Queens. I’ve got a house
with a lab in the basement. One night I’d been doing some work downstairs and I was kind of lost in it and my wife came down and said dinner was ready. I wasn’t paying any attention and I told her about the experiment and I said, ‘You know, this feels just like home.’ And she said, ‘This
is
your home.’”

Rune said, “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Takes two.”

He nodded.

“Still in love with her, huh?”

“No way,” he said quickly.

“Uh-huh.”

“No, really.”

The sound of wind filled the range. He became silent, almost impenetrable.

Which would have been one of his wife’s gripes. The difficulty of reaching him.

After a moment Healy said, “All of a sudden, out of the blue, she says she can’t stand me. I’m just one big irritation. I don’t understand her. I’m never there for her. I was floored. I really asked for it, in a way—I pushed her, I kept telling her how much I loved her, how sorry I was, how I’d do anything…. She said that was just torturing her. I went a little nuts.”

“Lovers can do that to you,” Rune said.

Healy continued. “For instance—when she left, Cheryl took the TV. So the next day all I can think about is getting a replacement. I went out and bought
Consumer Reports
and read all about the different kinds of sets. I mean, I had to buy the best TV there was. It became an obsession. Finally, I went to SaveMart and spent—God, I can’t believe it—eleven hundred on this set….”

“Whoa, that must be one hyper TV.”

“Sure, but the thing is: I never watch television. I don’t
like
TV. I’d do things like that. I was pretty depressed. Then one day we got a call on this pipe bomb. See, they’re
real dangerous because they’re usually filled with gunpowder, which is awfully unstable. Thing weighed about thirty pounds. Turns out it’s planted in front of a big bank downtown. In a stairwell. We can’t get the robot in there so I get a bomb suit on and take a look at it. I could just carry it out to where the robot can pick it up, then put it in the containment vehicle. But I’m thinking, I don’t care if I’m dead or not. So I decide to do a render-safe myself.

“I started twisting the end off the pipe. And what happened was some of the powder got in the threads of the cap and the friction set off the charge.”

“God, Sam …”

“Turned out it was black powder—not smokeless. That’s the weakest explosive you can find. And most of it was wet and didn’t go off. Didn’t do anything more than knock me on my ass and blister my palms. But I said to myself, ‘Healy, time to stop being an asshole.’ That helped me get over her pretty well. And that’s where I am now.”

“Over her.”

“Right.”

After a moment Rune said, “Marriage is a very weird thing. I’m not sure it’s healthy. My mother’s always after me to get married. She has a list of people for me. Nice boys. Her friends’ sons. She’s nondenominational. Jewish, WASP … doesn’t matter to her. Okay, they
are
sort of ranked by professions and, yeah, a doctor’s first—but she doesn’t really care as long as I end up rich and pregnant. Oh, and happy. She does want me to be happy. A rich, happy mother. I tell you, I have a great imagination but that’s one thing I can’t picture, me married.”

Healy said, “Cheryl was real young when we got married. Twenty-two. I was twenty-six. We thought it was time to settle down. People change, I guess.”

Silence. And Rune sensed he felt they’d gone too far into the personal. He shrugged in a dismissing way, then noticed a uniformed cop he recognized and asked what
had happened to a live hand grenade someone had found in the Bronx.

“S’in the captain’s office. On his chair.”

“His chair?” Healy asked.

“Well, we took the TNT out first.”

He turned back to Rune and to fill the silence she asked, “You ever happen to talk to that witness?”

Healy drank most of his soda but left half his sandwich. “What witness?”

“The guy who was hurt in the first bombing? The first angel?”

The wind came up and whipped smoke from a burning pit toward them.

“Yeah.”

“Ah,” Rune said. “Was he helpful?”

Healy hooked his thumbs into his thick belt, which really made him look a lot like a cowboy.

“Aren’t you going to tell me what he said?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Doesn’t concern you.”

“You just filed it away, what he said. And that’s it?”

“No, that’s not it.” Healy debated for a moment. Finally he said, “The witness wasn’t helpful.”

“So there’re no leads.”

“There’re leads.”

“But nobody’s following up on them,” she said cynically. “Because of the word, right? From downtown.”

“I’m following up,” Healy said.

“What?” she asked quickly. “Tell me!” And she guessed he was wondering whether the date had been a good idea.

“I checked the fingerprints from the phone where the killer called her the night of the bombing.”

“And—”

“Nothing. I’m also tracking the explosives. The wrapper I mentioned. I think we can trace the inventory.”

“So, you going to get fired for doing all this? Because of the word from headquarters?”

“Way I figure it, the ops coordinator or precinct commander’s got my phone number. They want me to stop, they can always give me a call.”

Her hand closed on his shoulder. She felt a sizzle. Part of it was gratitude that he was going out on a limb to find out who’d killed Shelly. Part of it was something else.

But she concentrated on the detective part at the moment. “Look, Sam, how ’bout I help you?”

“Help me what?”

“Find the killer.”

“No.”

“Come on, we can be a team!”

“Rune.”

“I can do stuff you can’t. I mean, you have to do things legally, right?”

“Rune, this isn’t a game.”

“I’m not treating it like a game. You want to catch a perp.” She emphasized the word to let him know she’d been around crime and criminals. Then added, “And I want to make a film.” Her lips were taut. “That’s not a game.”

He saw that fire in her eyes. He didn’t say anything else.

After a moment she asked, “Just tell me one thing.”

“What?”

“Promise you’ll answer.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“Maybe,” Healy said.

“What about the fingerprints?”

“I told you. They were negative.”

“Not on the phone,” Rune said. “On the letters? The ones from the Sword of Jesus, about the angels?”

He debated. Then said, “Whoever wrote them used gloves.”

“Where was the paper from?”

“I said I’d answer one question.”

“You said maybe you would. Which means you haven’t ruled out answering two.”

“I make the rules. I answered you. Now promise me you’ll just make your movie and stay out of the investigation.”

She brushed her bangs out of her eyes, then stuck her hand out. “Okay. But only if you give me exclusive press coverage.”

“Deal.” His large, tough hand enfolded hers. He didn’t let go. For a moment the only sound was of the wind. She knew he wanted to kiss her and she was ready to kiss him back—in a certain noncommittal way. But the moment passed and he released her hand. They gazed at each other for a moment. Then he turned toward the pit.

“Come on,” he said, “I’ll let you throw a hand grenade, you want.”

“Yeah?” she asked excitedly.

“Well, a practice one.”

Rune said, “That’s okay. I’ll work my way up.”