To reduce suspicion, the “Arabs” had not used ammonium nitrate, the oxidizing agent of choice in most truck bombs. Instead, they'd purchased potassium nitrate for use in glass-making — glass making being their stated business and occupation. Basically, the bomb makers knew exactly what they were doing. Potassium nitrate is every bit as potent as ammonium nitrate, especially when combined with diesel oil, rubber, and sand in what the FBI's forensics team determined to have been “ideal proportions.” Meanwhile, over at the Four Winds, the gas had burned so fiercely that no items of forensic interest had been recovered from that scene.
The body count at the scene had risen since I was there. Far too many of the critically injured had failed to respond to treatment. I noted that the numbers of people missing as a result of the bombing had shrunk to twelve.
I put in a call to Arlen on his cell. “Hey,” I said when he picked up.
“Vin. How's it going down there.” He was instantly suspicious. “You are still down in Florida, aren't you?”
“Of course.”
He relaxed a little. “So how's the tan coming along?”
“Coming along great. Haven't left the hotel pool since I got here.”
“Really? I looked at the weather channel this morning and I saw it'd been raining.”
“Raining sunshine, buddy.”
“Well, whatever, you're lucky you're down there and not in D.C. Round here, sleep is a dirty word at the moment.”
“It's pretty frantic here, too, you know. You have to remember to flip over on the hour to avoid sunburn.”
“Yeah, yeah. Something I can do for you, Vin?”
“As a matter of fact, no.”
“That's a nice change.”
“Just rang to say hello and ask if the tests on Boyle's wallet have come through, and whether he's still on the missing list.”
“I class that as something — and you're not in the loop on that one anymore, Vin,” Arlen said, after a pause.
“C'mon, Arlen.”
“I'm not in it, either.”
“I know, but you're like the girl in reception. You know everything going on.”
“You really know how to stroke my ego, Vin.”
“I read Freddie Spears resigned shortly after I spoke to her.”
“Really? What did you say to her?”
“To make her resign? I told her I believed Boyle got Tanaka drunk and then threw him to that shark. She liked Tanaka and, from what I could tell, didn't think much of Boyle. Anything on that DVD, by the way?”
“Vin, c'mon. You promised to let this one go, to concentrate on the case you're working down there …”
“I know, and I haven't broken that promise. I just got an automated e-mail from the Chronicle about Spears's resignation. Got me thinking, is all.”
Arlen let this sink in before answering. “I know you're not going to believe me, but I don't know anything. I've heard nothing further about either the DVD or the wallet recovered there, or the case in general. And I'm not asking questions, either.”
He was right; I didn't believe him. “Can you just find out one small thing for me?”
“No.”
“I just want to know whether Boyle's body has been positively identified.”
“No.”
“It hasn't been IDed?”
I heard Arlen sigh. “So how is it going down there?” he asked again.
“You know what Florida's like?”
“Actually, I've never been there.”
“Lots of women in bikinis,” I said.
“Lucky you.”
“Who're mostly pushing seventy.”
“Thanks for that image,” he said. “So, you going to answer my question?”
“You going to answer mine?”
“Vin, Jesus…”
“OK, OK,” I said. “So far, from what I can see, it looks like a homicide.”
“Seems there's a lot of that going around at the moment. I gotta go, Vin. Got a world to save here. Keep fighting the good fight, buddy.”
“Talk later,” I said.
“Yeah, later…”
I heard dial tone. He was right about one thing. The Boyle/Tanaka case was no longer mine, and I was completely out of the loop, but I had my own theory about Boyle and I had my doubts about Chalmers being able to successfully muddle his way to the truth.
I made a supreme effort to do as Arlen requested and put that case out of my head. I opened the refrigerator door and noticed a small triangle of paper poking out from under the appliance. I bent and picked it up. It was a photograph. I flipped it over and saw a picture of Ruben Wright smiling back at me. It had been taken at night. He had a beer in one hand and barbecue tongs in the other, which was draped around the shoulders of a redhead, a real looker. A Chicago Bulls cap was on his head. The guy was happy. This was the Wrong Way I remembered, only why was there a photo of the guy under the fridge in this place, and who was the redhead with eyes as green as an Irish meadow? I bent again and checked under the fridge in case there was a whole family album hiding there, but I couldn't get my eye down close enough to floor level to see. I found a broom, pushed the fridge so it tilted back against the rear wall, and raked under the machine with it. The harvest amounted to the lid from a jar of pickled cocktail onions, a bottle top, six giant balls of greasy dust, three dead cockroaches, and a pale blue pill.
I looked at the dusty collection on the floor, glanced at the picture, and tried to figure this out. There was only one possible answer. The area under the fridge is the home's equivalent of the belly button. I made another call.
“Agent Lyne.”
“Lloyd, Vin Cooper.”
“Hey. How you doin'?”
“Great. This place you've put me in. It was Ruben Wright's wasn't it?”
Silence.
“Hello?” I said.
“Well, um, yeah, briefly.”
“So that's why it had become so available all of a sudden? The tenant died?”
“Um … yeah, I guess.”
“You guess? Why didn't you mention it?”
“I thought you might get a little … I don't know… maybe get a little squeamish.”
“Where's the rest of his stuff?” I asked.
“We boxed it.”
“Was he married?”
“No.”
“Then where's it going?”
“Hang on…”
He put the phone down and I heard him wrestle with a filing cabinet drawer. After a few moments, he came back on the line. “He didn't have much in the way of family. He had an uncle. Lives over in Gainesville. Left the guy a few things — pictures of his folks, not much else. Pretty much willed everything to one Amy McDonough.”
The name didn't mean anything to me. As Lyne had already pointed out that I knew as much as he did, I didn't ask him what her relationship was to Wright. I'd ask her. “You got an address? Contact details?”
“Address only. Lives in Pensacola.”
Now that I thought about it, I vaguely recalled something about Ruben's old man running off when he was a kid. His mom died when we were in the CCTs together — cancer, if I remembered correctly. There'd been a little money left to him, along with a farm somewhere, which Ruben had sold. The service had become his mom, dad, sisters, and brothers, precisely because he didn't have any, except for that uncle, whom he never mentioned, at least not to me. “You said his effects were being sent.”
“Yeah.”
“So they're still here on the base?”
“Yep. You want to see them?”
“If you're taking requests,” I said.
“I'll arrange it.”
“So, put me ahead of the game here. You got an inventory handy?”
“Says here … a little furniture — sofa, table and chairs, gym equipment, home entertainment system…” He rattled off a number of items. “Hey, the guy had some nice stuff!”