Demolition Angel (3 page)

“Did Daggett or the medics pull him over here?”

Anytime there was an explosion, bomb techs were trained to expect a secondary device. She figured that Daggett would have pulled Riggio away from the Dumpster for that reason.

“You’d have to ask Daggett. I think this is where he fell.”

“Jesus. We gotta be, what, thirty yards from the detonation point?”

“Buck said it was a helluva blast.”

She guesstimated the distance again, then toed the body armor to examine the blast pattern. The suit looked as if twenty shotguns had been fired into it point-blank. She’d seen similar suit damage when “dirty” bombs had gone off with a lot of fire and shrapnel, but this bomb had pushed the shrap through twelve layers of armor and had thrown a man thirty yards. The energy released must have been enormous.

Chen took a plastic bag from his evidence kit, pulling the plastic tight to show her a piece of blackened metal about the size of a postage stamp.

“This is kind of interesting, too. It’s a piece of the pipe frag I found stuck in his suit.”

Starkey looked close. A squiggly line had been etched into the metal.

“What is that, an
S
?”

Chen shrugged.

“Or some kind of symbol. Remember that bomb they found in San Diego last year, the one with dicks drawn all over it?”

Starkey ignored him. Chen liked to talk. If he got going about a bomb with dicks on it, she would never get her work done.

“John, do me a favor and swab some of the samples tonight, okay?”

Chen went sulky.

“It’s going to be really late when I finish here, Carol. I’ve got to work the Dumpster, and then there’s going to be whatever you guys find in the sweep. It’s going to take me two or three hours just to log everything.”

They would search for pieces of the device everywhere within a hundred-yard radius, combing nearby rooftops, the
faces of the apartment buildings and houses across the street, cars, the Dumpster, and the wall behind the Dumpster. They would search for anything and everything that might help them reconstruct the bomb or give them a clue to its origins.

“Don’t whine, John. It’s not cool.”

“I’m just saying.”

“How long does it take to cook through the gas chrom?”

The sulk became sullen and put upon.

“Six hours.”

Residue from the explosive would be present on any fragments of the bomb they found, as well as in the blast crater and on Riggio’s suit. Chen would identify the substance by cooking it through a gas chromatograph, a process which took six hours. Starkey knew how long it would take when she asked, but asked anyway to make Chen feel guilty about it taking so long.

“Couldn’t you swab a couple of samples first, just to start a chrom, then log everything after? An explosive with this kind of energy potential could really narrow down the field of guys I’m looking at, John. You could give me a head start here.”

Chen hated to do anything that wasn’t methodical and by the book, but he couldn’t deny her point. He checked his watch, counting out the time.

“Let me see what time we finish here, okay? I’ll try, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

“I gave up on guarantees a long time ago.”

Buck Daggett’s Suburban sat forty-eight paces from Riggio’s body. Starkey counted as she walked.

Kelso and Leyton saw her coming and moved away from the others to meet her. Kelso’s face was grim; Leyton’s tense and professional. Leyton had been off shift when he’d gotten the call and had rushed over in jeans and a polo shirt.

Leyton smiled softly when their eyes met, and Starkey thought there was a sad quality to it. Leyton, the twelve-year
commander of the Bomb Squad, had selected Carol Starkey for the squad, just as he’d selected Charlie Riggio and every other tech below the rank of sergeant-supervisor. He had sent her to the FBI’s Bomb School in Alabama and had been her boss for three years. When she had been in the hospital, he had come every day after his shift to visit her, fifty-four consecutive days, and when she had fought to stay on the job, he had lobbied on her behalf. There wasn’t anyone on the job she respected as much, or cared for as much.

Starkey said, “Dick, I want to walk the scene as soon as possible. Could we use as many of your people as you can get out?”

“Everyone not on duty is coming out. You’ve got us all.”

She turned to Kelso.

“Lieutenant, I’d like to talk to these Rampart guys to see if we can’t conscript some of their uniforms to help.”

Kelso was frowning at her.

“I’ve already arranged it with their supervisor. You shouldn’t be smoking here, Starkey.”

“Sorry. I’d better go talk to him, then, and get things organized.”

She made no move to put out her cigarette, and Kelso ignored the obvious rebellion.

“Before you do, you’ll be working with Marzik and Santos on this.”

Starkey felt another Tagamet craving.

“Does it have to be Marzik?”

“Yes, Starkey, it has to be Marzik. They’re inbound now. And something else. Lieutenant Leyton says we might have a break here before we get started: 911 got a call on this.”

She glanced at Leyton.

“Do we have a wit?”

“An Adam car took the call, but Buck told me they were responding to Emergency Services. If that’s the case, then we should have a tape and an address.”

That was a major break.

“Okay. I’ll get on it. Thanks.”

Kelso glanced toward the press again, frowning when he saw an LAPD media officer approaching them.

“I think we’d better go make a statement, Dick.”

“Be right there.”

Kelso scurried over to intercept the media officer while Leyton stayed with Starkey. They waited until the other man was gone, then Leyton considered her.

“How you doing, Carol?”

“I’m fine, Lieutenant. Kicking ass and taking names, like always. I’d still like to come back to the squad.”

Leyton found it within himself to nod. They had weathered that pounding three years ago, and both of them knew that the LAPD Personnel Unit would never allow it.

“You were always a tough girl. But you were lucky, too.”

“Sure. I shit luck in the morning.”

“You shouldn’t curse like that, Carol. It’s not attractive.”

“You’re right, Boss. I’ll straighten out as soon as I kick the smokes.”

She smiled at him, and Leyton smiled back, because they both knew that she would do neither.

Starkey watched him walk away to join the press conference, then noticed Marzik and Santos talking to a uniformed sergeant amid a group of people outside one of the apartment buildings across the street. Marzik was looking over at her, but Starkey walked around to the front of the Suburban and examined it. The Suburban had faced the blast at about sixty-five yards away. The telex cables and security line that Riggio had pulled out with him still trailed from the rear of the Suburban to Riggio’s armored suit, tangled now from the explosion.

The Suburban appeared undamaged, but on closer inspection she saw that the front right headlight was cracked. She squatted to look more closely. A piece of black metal shaped like the letter
E
was wedged in the glass. Starkey did not touch it. She
stared until she recognized that it was part of a metal buckle from the straps that had held Riggio’s armor suit. She sighed deep and long, then stood and looked back at his body.

The coroner’s people were placing him into a body bag. John Chen had outlined the body’s location on the tarmac with white chalk and now stood back, watching with an expression of profound disinterest.

Starkey wiped her palms on her hips and forced herself to take deep breaths, stretching her ribs and her lungs. Doing this hurt because of the scars. Marzik, still across the street, was waving. Santos looked over, maybe wondering why Starkey was just standing there.

Starkey waved back, the wave saying that she would join them in a moment.

The mall was a small strip of discount clothing shops, a used-book store, a dentist who advertised “family prices” in Spanish, and a Cuban restaurant, all of which had been evacuated before Riggio approached the bomb.

Starkey forced herself toward the restaurant, moving on legs that were suddenly weak, as if she’d found herself on a tightrope and the only way off was that singular door. Marzik was forgotten. Charlie Riggio was forgotten. Starkey felt nothing but her own hammering heart; and knew that if she lost control of it now, and of herself, she would certainly fall to her death.

When Starkey stepped into the restaurant, she began to shake with a rage beyond all hope of control. She had to grip the counter to keep her feet. If Leyton or Kelso walked in now, her career would be finished. Kelso would order her in to the bank for sure, she would be forced to retire with the medical, and all that would be left of Carol Starkey’s life would be fear, and emptiness.

Starkey clawed open her purse for the silver flask, feeling the gin cut into her throat in the same moment she cursed her own weakness, and felt ashamed. She breathed deep, refusing
to sit because she knew she would not be able to rise. She took a second long pull on the flask, and slowly the shaking subsided.

Starkey fought down the memories and the fear, telling herself she was only doing what she needed to do and that everything would be all right. She was too tough for it. She would beat it. She would win.

After a while, she had herself together.

Starkey put away the flask, sprayed her mouth with Binaca, then went back out to the crime scene.

She was always a tough girl.

Starkey found the two Adam car officers, who gave her the log time of their original dispatch call. She used her cell phone to call the day manager at Emergency Services, identified herself, provided an approximate time, and requested a tape of the call as well as an address of origin. What most people didn’t know was that all calls to 911 were automatically taped and recorded with the originating phone number and that phone number’s address. It had to be this way because people in an emergency situation, especially when threatened or dying, couldn’t be expected to provide their location. So the system took that into account and provided the address for them.

Starkey left her office number, and asked the manager to provide the information as quickly as she had it.

When Starkey was finished with Emergency Services, she walked across to the apartment buildings where Marzik and Santos were questioning the few residents who had been let back into the area. They saw her coming, and walked out to meet her by the street.

Jorge Santos was a short man with a quizzical expression who always looked as if he was trying to remember something that he’d forgotten. His name was pronounced “whore-hey,” which had earned him the dubious nickname of Hooker.
Beth Marzik was divorced, with two kids who stayed with her mother when she was on the job. She sold Amway products for the extra money, but she pushed it so hard that half the detectives at Spring Street would duck when they saw her approaching.

Starkey said, “Good news. Leyton says the call-out was responding to a 911.”

Marzik smirked.

“This good citizen happen to leave a name?”

“I already put in a call to Emergency Services. They’ll run the tapes and have something for us as soon as they can.”

Marzik nudged Santos.

“Bet you a dollar to a blow job there’s no name.”

Santos darkened. He was a religious man, married with four children, and hated it when she talked like that.

Starkey interrupted her.

“I’ve gotta get the uniforms set up for the sweep. Dick says the Rampart detectives offered to help with the door-to-door.”

Marzik frowned as if she didn’t like that idea.

“Well, we’re not going to get to most of these people tonight. What I’m hearing is that a lot of the people who were evacuated went to relatives or friends after the damned thing blew.”

“You’re getting a list of residents from the managers, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

Marzik looked suspicious. Her attitude made Starkey tired.

“Get the managers to pull the rental apps, too. They should be on file. Most of the rental applications I used to fill out wanted the name of a relative or somebody to vouch for you. That’s probably where those people went.”

“Shit, that’ll take forever. I
used
to have a date tonight.”

Santos’s face grew longer than ever.

“I’ll do it, Carol.”

Starkey glanced toward the Dumpster, where Chen was now picking at something on the ground. She gestured back toward the apartment buildings behind them.

“Look, Beth, I’m not saying do everybody on the goddamned block. Just ask if they saw something. Ask if they’re the one who called 911. If they say they didn’t see anything, tell’m to think about it and we’ll get back to them in the next few days.”

Marzik still wasn’t happy, but Starkey didn’t give a damn.

She went back across the street to the Dumpster, leaving Marzik and Santos with the apartments. Chen was examining the wall behind the Dumpster for bomb fragments. Out in the parking lot, two of the Bomb Squad technicians were adjusting radial metal detectors that they would use when they walked the lawns out front of the surrounding apartment buildings. Two more off-duty bomb techs had arrived, and pretty soon everyone would be standing around with their thumbs up their asses, waiting for her to tell them what to do.

Starkey ignored all of them and went to the crater. It was about three feet across and one foot deep, the black tarmac scorched white by the heat. Starkey wanted to place her hand on the surface, but didn’t because the explosive residue might be toxic.

She considered the chalk outline where Riggio’s body had fallen, then paced it off. Almost forty paces. The energy to kick him this far must have been incredible.

Starkey impulsively stepped into Riggio’s outline, standing exactly where his body had fallen, and gazed back at the crater.

She imagined a slow-motion flash that stretched through three years. She saw her own death as if it had been filmed and later shown to her on instant replay. Her shrink, Dana, had called these “manufactured memories.” She had taken the facts as they had later been presented to her, imagined the
rest, then saw the events as if she remembered them. Dana believed that this was her mind’s way of trying to deal with what had happened, her mind’s way of removing her from the actual event by letting her step outside the moment, her mind’s way of giving the evil a face so that it could be dealt with.