A Danger to Himself and Others: Bomb Squad NYC Incident 1 (8 page)

O’Shea’s face looked as placid as ever, but his eyes hardened. “Cool down, Diaz. We’re just working on theories here. The charge may’ve been meant for someone else—I give you that. Maybe he planned to dance on someone’s desk in that recruiting office before pressing the button.”

“No one found—”

O’Shea talked over Diaz. “But I still say Horn easily could’ve set the thing off by accident. Happened on a regular basis in the early days of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The RUC called them ‘own goals’”

“Thanks for the history lesson,” Diaz snapped.

O’Shea ignored him. “You guys find any kind of switch with which he might’ve initiated the charge?”

“No,” Kahn said, confirming what Diaz had been about to say. “We would’ve told you.”

“The cell phone,” Diaz said, “and maybe it was remote detonation.”

“Maybe,” O’Shea said. “Either way, I think we’ve accomplished everything we can sitting in this room. I’ll loop you guys in when I got more. I presume you’ll do the same.”

They sat there for a minute, frowning at one another, not a great feeling in the room. Then O’Shea grinned at Diaz and cocked his head. “With respect, you could lighten up a little, pal. This looks like a high-profile situation right now. I already got two calls from my boss. It won’t be your ass on the line if I get this wrong.”

Diaz took a breath. “No disrespect intended by me, either, Brian. But instead of your ass or Kahn’s here, if this isn’t suicide I hope there ain’t someone else who’s got his ass on the line.”

“Like who?”

“Someone out there. Someone we don’t yet know about.”

O’Shea closed his file folder. “We always hope for the best, soldier.”

“YOU DIDN’T TELL ME IT
was C4,” Diaz said from behind the wheel of the squad car.

Kahn didn’t look at him. “I found out right before we left for the meeting. Wanted to see how you guys reacted to that news side by side.”

“Side by side. Me and the guy who’s
hoping
it turns out all right,” Diaz mocked. He knew that wasn’t the real reason Kahn had held back. It was punishment for the cathedral thing. “He hopes it turns out all right,” he repeated for emphasis. “And I’m the one who’s a danger to others. Since when is hope an investigative strategy?”

Kahn looked unhappy. “Brian’s a good guy. You seemed pleased that he was on the case when I told you yesterday.”

“That was before you and him started railroading this suspect.”

“He’s not railroading anybody. We’re just testing out theories.”

“It’s not him. How about that theory? He’s a victim.”

“Why do you think so?”

“The cell phone—”

“Yeah, you mentioned that, like, six times. Did anyone find an SCR tied to the cell phone? No. So why’s that any more convincing than the obvious? We know for a fact that the guy had a bomb on him and that the bomb went off. The most plausible explanation so far is that he blew himself up.”

“You ever serve in the army, Sandy?”

“Here we go again.” Kahn rolled his eyes. “As a matter of fact, no. I served in the marines.”

“That so?”

“Does the pope wear a funny hat?”

“You see combat?”

“No. So I guess I’m a pussy.”

Diaz nodded silently.

“No disrespect to your prior accomplishments, Manny, but having seen combat doesn’t give you the right to run wild or jump rank or put your damned pet theories ahead of someone else’s.”

“I didn’t say it should.”

“And furthermore, your attitude sucked in there. Did I not ask you to keep it cool and let the man do his job? Now O’Shea’s gonna have a hard-on against you, which means he won’t be so happy seeing me coming either. How will that help the investigation? How much trouble do you need to stir up in one week?”

Diaz sat brooding.

“We’re not even twelve hours into this investigation and you’ve prejudiced yourself by defending this guy Horn in an unwarranted fashion. Why? Because you both served in combat? Maybe you don’t belong anywhere near this case, Diaz.”

“You got it backwards.”

When Diaz hesitated at the changing light, a dump truck rumbled by, drowning out all thoughts and belching a cloud of choking black exhaust for good measure.

Kahn absently watched the truck go past, stared a moment at Diaz, and then turned his attention out the window. “This one time when I was in homicide, I had a case where we got called to a crime scene in Brooklyn. Bensonhurst. You probably know that’s a solidly Italian neighborhood, but the guy who got stabbed to death in his sleep was a Jewish guy. I saw pictures of him on the piano and he reminded me of my dad, who was then still alive. There was no wife. The son—seventeen years old—reminded me of myself at that age. He had a Camaro on the street that didn’t have a mark on it...kept it so immaculate. My partner says the kid cleaned it for traces after murdering the father—quarter million in life insurance on the line, plus the house. I’m like,
No way.
I
know
this kind of kid. He cherishes that damn car is all, saved every penny he had to buy it, begged his father to help him out, took great pride in that machine, always under the hood, adding pieces of after-market equipment every chance he got. That’s what I’d done with my Mustang. I knew exactly what it meant to be that kid.”

“I still have my legs,” Diaz said.

“Okay. Let me finish.” Kahn licked his lips and frowned. “Everything pointed to the kid. Motive, means, opportunity. There was a knife missing from the kitchen block. My partner wanted to home in while the kid was soft, nail him before he could re-gather his wits. Me—I felt sorry for the little bastard. Not because he deserved my sympathy but because I could relate to the pain he must be going through.”

“Sure, but—”

“And another thing. Here’s this Jewish family living in this Italian neighborhood. The kid kills the father for the money?
The money?
No. I couldn’t handle that. Because when you’re the only Jewish family on the block you stand in for the whole Jewish race. I didn’t say this even to myself at the time, but it was back there in a corner of my mind. I was rooting for the kid not to have done it.”

“But he did.”

Kahn smiled sardonically. “All that cleaning stuff he had for the car—carpet shampoo and whatnot—he used it to make the house spotless before calling for help. Kid did a helluva job, too, would’ve made his grandmother proud. Not a trace of evidence in the house and to this day I don’t know where the knife went. But we found the bloody sponges and chamois a mile away, in a dumpster near a park where the kid used to hang out. My partner broke the case, not me.”

“So based upon that story, I’m protecting Horn as a fellow vet and I’m wrong?”

“Don’t be an asshole, Diaz. O’Shea’s job—and ours—is hard enough without taking sniper fire from your nearest colleague.”

Diaz reflected. He understood the story well enough, but as for sniper fire he felt more like the victim of that than the perpetrator. Hadn’t he received news of a reprimand via Kahn just this morning? Evidence conveniently not shared with him? And now here was Kahn again riding him for speaking out of turn, emphasizing the pecking order as much as their search for truth.

He planned to keep the story in the back of his mind—always worth learning something and maybe it gave a glimpse into where some of the land mines were planted around Kahn. His own instincts…sure, maybe he related to a vet, didn’t want him to be a bad guy. But that didn’t mean he’d ignore the man’s guilt if someone could prove it.

For the rest, all Diaz could think was how he couldn’t catch a break from the sergeant, and yet he had to ride around with him almost every day.

WHEN THE PHONE RANG AT
his desk and Kahn heard it was Burbette of FBI, he considered whether to bring Diaz into the conversation. Diaz had just returned from a false alarm and was somewhere in the building, according to the in-out board. He might be in the john or in the garage or in the break room. He wasn’t in the main squad room at the moment, and Kahn decided not to bother.

Check that. Kahn decided he didn’t need the added stress of having Diaz on the call, especially when Burbette suggested that they conference in O’Shea, so the Fed wouldn’t have to say everything twice. O’Shea was riding in a car on the way to an interview.

“Everyone hear me okay?” Burbette asked.

“Yeah,” Kahn said.

“Roger,” said O’Shea.

“As you guys know,” Burbette said, “the ETK at the scene didn’t show anything definitive, but the swab that NYPD took from the crater tested positive for RDX. I just got the results from the taggant trace and it’s interesting, to say the least. It’s military.”

“Confirms our hunch,” O’Shea said.

“What hunch is that?”

“Well, just with the guy being a vet that it’s a possible self-inflict.”

Burbette paused. “Not exactly an earth-shattering deduction, considering the results on the sidewalk.”

“Course not. All the same, it’s something.”

Kahn wondered why he was the only guy not riding O’Shea hard these days. Maybe because he was the only one not having his stones busted by someone from above, Cap being out of commission, too sick even to phone in regularly. With the luxury of space, Kahn thought maybe to give O’Shea a bit of a rescue. “Brian, didn’t you determine that Horn was infantry?”

“Roger. Cavalry, actually. Same thing for our purposes, I guess.”

“Can you confirm that, Don?”

“Yes, I can. Eighth Regiment. No obvious reason this guy would’ve had access to plastic, but you never know. I’m gonna try to run that down. Also I’ll see whether the taggant can be traced more narrowly to a particular base or a particular service. That’ll take awhile. In fact, it could take forever. But I’m on it. What else you got?”

“Bomb parts and body parts,” Kahn said. “Minimal shrapnel and some fragments of a cell phone. Also, of course, scraps of the suspect’s artificial legs.”

“Enough for CSU to reconstruct them?”

“I doubt it. Not completely, anyway.”

“Horn was employed.” O’Shea jumped in. “Worked just a few blocks away. His boss says his normal commute from work wouldn’t take him past the recruitment center. Usually walks a different way to the subway. Plus, it wasn’t quitting time. Apparently, he was on his way to the theater, courtesy of his employer. Boss says he was distraught and needed a break. CSU found a pair of
Spider-Man
tickets in his shirt pocket, confirming. He was just a block away from there when the bomb went off.”

“Phone records?”

“Not yet. But I got his cell phone out of evidence and the lab made it work. Turned out the battery contacts were just jogged loose. I checked the recents. He seems to be a light user. Last one he called was his sister, not long before he blew himself up.”

“You interview her yet?”

“Just a few words over the phone. She’s pretty broken up. I have an appointment in a couple of hours.”

“I sent an EDC team out there yesterday,” Kahn said. “The canine alerted in a few spots in the suspect’s apartment, but the sweeper didn’t find anything. He must’ve had the bomb in there, but he didn’t build it there.”

“So where’d he build it?”

“Good question.”

“Maybe someone else built it.”

“Well,
someone else
somewhere else—or
him
somewhere else. It may be a crazy world, but I’ve yet to see a bomb that constructed itself.”

AN HOUR OR TWO LATER
, O’Shea called Kahn while he and Diaz sat over pizza on Hudson Street. Kahn had a plain slice and Diaz was tucking into a slice with ricotta, vegetables and sausage.

“How do you eat something like that?” Kahn said.

“I put it in my mouth and chew.”

“I mean, it’s so heavy. Doesn’t it make you feel bloated?”

“What am I, a woman at her time of the month?”

“Ah, youth. You going for the tiramisu for dessert?”

“You tell me how to do procedure, you tell me how to drive, you tell me what to say...now you’re gonna tell me what to eat?”

Kahn laughed until his phone rang. When he heard it was O’Shea, he put it on speaker.

“So we tracked down the serial number from that prosthetic,” O’Shea said. “It was manufactured by Prosthetic and Sensory Aids Services—part of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Appears to be legit.”

“Is it possible someone snuck a bomb in there during the manufacturing process?”

“These things are made one hundred percent in the States, I think. I’ll have to get with Burbette, see if FBI can send some agents to poke around the factory—or however that works.”

“They should take an EDC team.”

“Burbette will know that.”

“So we think the bomb was in the leg?”

“That one or the other one. Where else? No evidence he was carrying anything.”

“They found the theater tickets, right?” Diaz asked. Kahn had given him a fill on the conversation he’d missed.

“Yeah, they found ‘em,” O’Shea confirmed. “In his shirt pocket. Why?”

“Just wondering whether his boss’s story holds up.”

“It does. I was there again today. Any theories on how much C4 this would’ve required?”

Kahn looked at Diaz, who frowned in thought for a second, then said, “Not much. Half a pound more or less would’ve done the trick.”

“So it’s plausible that he had the device hidden in one of the legs?”

“Yes it is.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. At least, maybe, the guy didn’t lack for imagination.”

DIAZ WALKED TO THE STATION
at Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue to catch the Number 1 Train. There was a newsstand there and he noted that tabloid headlines had already moved on from the Times Square bomber to the trumped-up adventures of reality-show celebrities. He bought a Snickers bar and slipped it like contraband into the side pocket of his coat.

The station platform smelled vaguely of urine, always a mystery to Diaz how someone could find the appropriate moment to do that in a place that he’d never seen empty at any hour. Maybe it wasn’t a human source. Maybe it was from the accumulated droppings of a million rats.