“Sorry, you have to explain that.”
“Primary fragmentation? That’s pieces of the bomb that are intended to hurt. You read about it all the time when stuff goes off in the Middle East. If it’s a pipe bomb, they’ll stuff the pipe with rocks or glass or nails. The explosion drives those things outward, scatters them. They’re like mini-missiles. They’ll rip through just about anything-walls, flesh, bone.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah. Know what our genius used here?” Billings didn’t wait for an answer. He walked over to the nearest wall and pointed to a small object embedded in it. When Justin squinted, not sure what he was looking at, Billings pulled the fragment out of the plaster and held it in the palm of his hand.”
“A jack?” Justin asked. “A kid’s toy?”
“Pretty fuckin’ deadly kid’s toy when it’s packed into three pounds of explosives. It’s the perfect thing. Doesn’t matter which direction it’s facing, there’s a little spike on every surface. They’re small enough, you can squeeze a shitload of them into the container, and the more there are, the more damage can be done. These things were flying at people at about two thousand feet per second.”
“Jesus, Chuck. Who the hell would think of that? Jacks. .”
“Really pretty brilliant. In a sick kind of way. And if this isn’t a one-time thing, he’s gonna use ’em again, I guarantee you. It’s what I started to tell you before. Bombers can’t resist their little signatures on their work. Everybody’s got a different one. When you know what they are, it’s pretty much as defining as fingerprints. And this is one of the most distinctive signatures I’ve ever seen.”
“You ever seen it before?”
“Never even heard of anyone using jacks.”
“Would you?”
“Jay, I told you I was obsessed with this kind of thing, right? You know what the hell I do with my free time?”
“Do I want to know?”
“I’m on the weirdest fucking Internet bomb sites, shit you can’t even imagine. I’m on crackpot blogs about explosives. Some psycho blows up a cat somewhere in Kansas, I’m looking into it, checking out the signature. It’s why they called me in here.”
“All right. So you’ve got a signature: jacks. And they did a lot of damage. What’s next?”
“Well, that’s just the primary fragmentation. You’ve still got a secondary. Like all the window glass that was in this place. The glassware, silverware, all that stuff. That stuff was slicing the shit out of everything and everybody. The secondary fragmentation was devastating. What you have to remember is that it’s not like in a movie. A bomb isn’t static. There’s a huge amount of bleeding. The lights are out, it’s smoky, the noise is literally deafening, it’s almost impossible to hear anything. Here, it was particularly bad because it was a restaurant. So it didn’t just start a fire, there were live electrical lines that went down, there were gas and water leaks. When the fire hit the gas, that was worse than the initial explosion. It must have been a fucking nightmare. The only thing I can tell you that might help your friend. . according to the seating charts, which we got off the computer, her husband was about eight feet from the blast. He wouldn’t have felt a thing. Some comfort, huh?”
“I don’t know what to say to all this, Chuck.”
“You want to indulge me a minute, Jay? Lemme guess the questions you’ve been storing up.”
“Go for it.”
“Okay,” Billings said. “First has got to be about the bomber.”
“I’ve got a few about him,” Justin admitted.
“First is: Did we get a description? Yes, we did. A pretty decent one, from people who are pretty sure they saw him on the street before he arrived, and from a few survivors in the restaurant. We know at least a few of the blocks he covered to get here. I might have partial fingerprints, too, from recovered bomb fragments.”
“So-”
“So what’s being done to track him down? Nothing.”
“Chuck. .”
“I got your next question, too, Jay, ’cause I know you’re a good cop. If it was a suicide bombing, why the hell was he moving away from the blast when it went off? Another few feet, he would have been out of range of the hundred percent kill ratio.”
“You’re two for two.”
“How about the cell phone? You probably want to know about that, too.”
“Yeah,” Justin said. “Like-”
“Can a phone be used to trigger a bomb? Yes. It’s a delightful new technology. The tones can be programmed to set the thing off.”
“Okay, so-”
“So was it the trigger? I think it was. I’m pretty damn sure it was.”
“But-”
“But, then, does that mean it wasn’t a suicide bombing? And if the phone was the detonator, what are we doing to find the guy who made the call?”
“You got the questions down cold, Chuck. Now, you got any answers?”
“No.”
Justin couldn’t decide which was getting the best of him at the moment, his confusion or his anger. “Why the hell not?”
“Jay. . remember I told you I couldn’t figure out the Feds on this one? Well, let me try out another question on you: Why wouldn’t they want answers to all of the questions we just asked?”
“Because they don’t want to know the answers,” Justin said. But even as he said it, he didn’t believe his own words.
“Or?”
“Or”-and now Justin spoke very slowly, as if he wanted to hear exactly what he was saying, trying the words out to see if they could possibly make sense-“they already know the answers. And they don’t want anyone else to find out what they are.”
Billings stayed silent for a few moments. Then he said quietly, “There are four or five guys working the bomb angle. I was partnered with a very good guy, a Feebie, Dorell Cole. We were making some headway, he knows a lot about signatures, too. As soon as we thought we might be getting somewhere, Dorell got yanked off. A new guy came in to oversee the whole thing, and believe me, this guy was a total asshole. He’s the head of the New York bureau.”
“Fuck me. Was it Rollins? Agent Len Rollins?”
“No. This guy’s name is Schrader. Hubbell Schrader. Who’s this Rollins character?”
“Someone I had a run-in with, about a year ago. He was the New York bureau chief then.”
“A run-in, Jay?” Billings’s left eyebrow rose, the first relaxed gesture Justin had seen since they met.
Justin shrugged. “I told him if I ever saw him again I’d kill him.”
“That sounds like one of your run-ins.”
“What did this guy Schrader do?”
“Basically, just cut me off at the knees. Clearly doesn’t want any input from anyone outside the Bureau. But he also dismissed everything that Cole had discovered or hypothesized. As near as I can tell, Schrader made his report, which was fast and inaccurate. Then President Anderson and Vice President Dandridge came swooping in, got their photo ops, declared the whole thing a suicide bombing, and went off wherever presidents and future presidents go when they’re not acting tough or raising money.”
“But you don’t think it is a suicide bombing, do you?”
“I can’t prove it. . but no, I don’t.”
Justin sighed. “It’s not on this level, Chuck, but I’m having my own problems with the Feds. And it opens up a few questions, too.”
“Hey, as long as we’re sharing. .”
So Justin told him about the local plane crash. Billings said he had read about it in the East End newspaper but assumed it was an accident. As Justin gave him some of the details, Billings whistled in amazement.
“The weirdest thing is, I thought the Feds would be all over this thing. Just because of the proximity to Harper’s. I mean, it’s a long shot that there’s a connection, even if the plane was tampered with, but still. .”
“You’d think they’d want to see for themselves.”
“Yeah.” Justin shook his head. “But nothing. No contact. They got their info from the FAA, and that info is. . let’s say skewed. . at best.”