"You want to be a teacher?" Danny asked.
"Not anymore," she said.
6
DJ RIGGS STOOD UNDERNEATH the doorway overhang of Rhythm & Soul Music on 125th in Harlem. The streets were clear, except for the few fools trying to make a dash for who-the-hell-knew-where, most of them eventually being pelted to the nearest doorway by the rain.
DJ smiled. The rain from hell was a gift. They would expect him to make a dash for the subway station. DJ was too smart for that.
DJ was twenty-seven, a two-time loser, last time for dealing. Two undercovers had broken into his crib less than fifteen minutes ago. DJ had made it out the window and down to the street and looked back knowing that a third and final stretch upstate was only a hundred yards behind. The undercovers might have been faster than he was and in better shape, but DJ was highly motivated.
He ran until the rain and his failing breath told him running was no longer an option. Rhythm & Soul had been there, not yet opened. Might not even be open later on a day like this.
DJ didn't pray for the rain to continue. If there was a God out there, DJ was definitely not on his good side. He wasn't bad enough for help from the devil either, at least he didn't think so. Ride out the rain. Stay off the street, out of sight. They would give up.
DJ heard a cry and wasn't sure what it was at first. Then he connected the cry with what he saw shuffling along the curb. A toddler, dark skinned, in diapers, crying, arms stretching out for someone who wasn't there. DJ couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl.
He looked around, didn't see anyone. Where had this kid come from? Must have wandered off from his mother in the chaos of rain. The toddler was now about twenty feet in front of him.
Someone would come, DJ was sure. The kid was just getting wet, he wasn't hurt or anything. It was DJ who could be hurt if he tried to help. What good would he do? What could he do without getting caught?
Just wait. The baby toddled along. Then the horror hit DJ. He realized that the toddler had stepped off the curb and been knocked down by the rushing water in the gutter. The child was now being dragged along by the current toward an open drain whose mouth was definitely wide enough to welcome the child.
It was DJ's turn to cry out. He didn't even think, just ran from the doorway, watching the baby inch toward the drain, toward the sewer, toward the rats, the filth, no-doubt-about-it death.
DJ ran, almost crying, until he reached the child, right in front of the open gushing drain. He held tight to the baby's arms in spite of his slipping grip. He pulled the baby to him onto the sidewalk, felt its heart beating against his chest. When he opened his eyes he could see the two undercover cops splashing their way toward him in the middle of the street.
Leonard Giles, head of the tech lab, drove his wheelchair to the computer and keyed up the photographs Hawkes had taken of Custus. He had already run tests on the bits of wood and remnants of metal and plastic Stella had sent him.
"I think it was a bomb," Stella had said when she called. "More than one bomb."
"Someone wanted to blow up a bar?" Giles said.
"Looks that way," Stella said.
"Al Qaeda gone mad? Seeking unlikely targets to terrorize the nation?"
It wasn't funny and Stella didn't laugh. After a long silence Stella said, "Hawkes may be trapped in a sinkhole with the bomber."
"I'll take care of it," Giles had said soberly.
Now he sat in front of the large computer screen. He typed in instructions and a geometric form appeared, a circle of Os and Cs with six H3Cs around them.
TATP, triacetone triperoxide, the explosive used in the London subway bombings, found in the shoe of Richard Reid, favored by Hamas, was highly unstable. The bomb maker, Giles knew, was almost as likely to blow himself up making it as he was to finish and deliver it. At least two bomb makers in Ireland had been victims of their own TATP bombs and more than forty bomb makers in Gaza and the West Bank had lost their lives to the unstable explosive.
TATP can be made of common household items such as drain cleaner, hydrogen peroxide and acetone.
Giles downloaded and saved the information, then inserted a CD. The information on the CD had been sent as an attachment from London and had been received less than half an hour ago. On the screen appeared a photograph of a man, his shirt off, his hair tousled, his left eye blackened. His chest was a jungle of hair parted by rivulets of scars, some white, some red, some ridged. The man's left hand was missing. Under the photograph of the man was information on the kind of explosive that had caused the scars. Next to the screen showing the CD were photographs Hawkes had taken of Custus. On the screen, the bare-chested Custus now appeared next to the redheaded man with one arm.
Giles moved slowly through the photographs on the CD that had been sent from London. He had no trouble finding a match for the scars, actually several matches. Giles concluded that the man in the pit with Hawkes was a survivor of at least four different kinds of bomb, including nitroglycerin and TATP.
"Definitely," Lindsay said.
She and Danny were standing in the laboratory with the blood-soaked heads Lindsay had been testing. One head was currently in almost the same position in which they had found Alvin Havel.
Lindsay, dissatisfied with commercial artificial blood, had developed her own formula that she constantly changed as she searched for the perfect texture and color.
Danny examined the blood splatters, looked at the crime scene photographs she had handed him and said, "Right."
"Blow to the neck came when he was standing, head up," she said. "Blow to the eye came when his head was on the desk."
"When he was dead," said Danny.
"Dead at least ten minutes. Sid agrees. No blood splatter from the eye wound. He was already dead."
"And your explanation?"
"One of those kids killed Havel, then waited around before stabbing him in the eye and leaving."
"Why?" he asked.
"We've got one really angry kid here."
"Not necessarily," said Danny.
Lindsay looked at him and waited. He took his mini-tape recorder out of his pocket.
"Wayne O'Shea, the kids call him Brody," said Danny.
"He's the one who found the body."
Danny clicked on the recorder. It whirred to the number Danny had remembered, stopped and began.
Danny: And no one was in the room or outside it when you went in?
O'Shea: No one.
Danny: What did you-?
O'Shea: I saw Alvin. I saw…I'll never forget what I saw.
Danny: And you were in your classroom the entire period?
O'Shea: Yes. I went in to ask Alvin about lunch and we'd heard this noise through the wall. So…
Danny: Do you know if he was having any trouble with any of the students or other teachers or parents?
O'Shea: Everyone liked Alvin. He was smart, a good teacher, maybe a great teacher. He won the Wallen Award, the Dorwenski Award, the Student Favorite Award, all the awards. The students admired him.
Danny: And you?
O'Shea: He was my best friend here. I'll miss him. I'll be haunted by what someone did to him.
Danny: What was the last time you saw him before you found him dead?
O'Shea: He was coming out of the closet.
Danny: He was gay?
O'Shea: No, a real closet, at the back of his laboratory behind the white board. The board slides. He used it as his storeroom.
Danny pushed a button. The tape recorder stopped.
"You looked in the closet," Lindsay said.
"I looked in the closet."
Danny was smiling.