In his scribblings under the “Signature” section, it was clear that Chuck’s biggest desire was to know the exact tone transmitted by the cell phone that set the bomb off. But that was unknowable information. It was also crystal clear that Billings believed that the poor bastard who’d carried the device into Harper’s Restaurant was not the person who’d set the thing off. Chuck seemed convinced that the incoming call was what had set off the detonation. Which was exactly the opposite of what the president of the United States and all his appointed spokespeople were saying after the first attack. The official word was suicide bombing. One man, one fanatic, random havoc.
After that came a section on Semtex, which was what Chuck believed the explosive to have been. He had various pages on the different terrorist and criminal organizations known to favor the material-sometimes with names of specific members and their level of expertise. He detailed various signatures in this section, too, but none of them matched up to the bits of information he had about the bomb that went off in Harper’s. Chuck knew manufacturers of Semtex as well as known couriers. He even had various maps-some standard and slipped into the book, some hand-drawn-to show the various ways Semtex was brought into the country. He had put a red asterisk at the top of a subheading labeled “Colombia,” and by the asterisk had scribbled the letters “JW-Piper,” with several exclamation marks after it. This was connected to a map with a thick red line drawn along it, tracing a route from Colombia to Florida, then to Long Island. It took Justin a few moments to decide there was a pretty good chance that “JW” stood for “Justin Westwood,” and that Billings was making a connection between the explosive used to destroy Harper’s and the plane that had crashed in the middle of East End Harbor. Justin knew enough about the way that Billings’s mind worked-or at least the way it was working in this investigation-to begin to make his own connections.
If the guy with the briefcase-the president had revealed his name, Bath-something Shabaan, something like that-wasn’t the one who set off the bomb, if he was only the messenger boy, then it was likely he hadn’t been expecting to be blown to smithereens. That was backed up by the witnesses who said he was on his way toward the front of the restaurant when the cell phone rang and the bomb went off. Shabaan had expected to survive. But the men who detonated the bomb wanted him dead. One less connection to the real source.
If the Piper that crashed in East End Harbor had carried the explosives up from South America, it was also tied to the bombing. Ray Lockhardt had speculated that the plane was carrying drugs. It could just as easily have been carrying Semtex. If that were true, it also made sense that the pilot was murdered. Yet another connection eliminated.
But a connection to what?
A connection to whom?
Justin put the notes down. He was breathing heavily and realized there was a reasonable chance his imagination was running away with him. He was getting spooked. Or just as paranoid as Wanda had accused Chuck Billings of being.
There were too many ifs. Too many broken links in the chain. It was safe to assume that the two bombings were connected, even the government spokespeople were acknowledging that. They had revealed the possible existence of a terrorist cell connected to both events, but they weren’t revealing any direct link between the attack at Harper’s and the one in the city. Without a direct link, it would be almost impossible to find the person or persons responsible for both attacks. Not the two suicide bombers, the person controlling the bombers. It was that link that Chuck thought the Feds were doing their best to hide. It was that link that Justin decided he needed to find.
He wished he could talk to Chuck right now. He didn’t know enough about signatures. Hell, he didn’t know enough about anything. All he had, all he could really tell from the notes, was that he needed to find out if jacks were used as the primary fragmentation for the second explosive. If there were, he’d have the link he needed. He wasn’t sure what the hell good it would do him, but at least he’d have something concrete. But it was highly unlikely he could get far enough inside the investigation to pursue that any further. And the only person he knew who had been inside the investigation-and questioned it-had been killed.
Justin shook his head. What the hell was going on inside his brain?
Signatures? Jacks? Connections? International terrorism?
No, he decided. This was nuts. He was way overthinking this one. The world had turned into a crazy place where things rarely made sense. Where patterns weren’t always logical and where motives no longer came from jealousy or rage but from God or the latest messiah with a message of hate or a desire to find a spaceship to take his followers into outer space. Nope. There was no point in following Chuck Billings’s thought processes. He was looking for something he’d never find. Something that wasn’t there.
One good way to put a stop to that problem, he decided.
Justin went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and pulled out a cold beer. A bottle of Pete’s Wicked Ale. He leaned against the door of the refrigerator and downed the brew in three large gulps. It made him feel more settled, so he reached for a second bottle, took one long swig from that, and carried it back into the living room. He stared at Billings’s notebook for a moment, listened to the drone from the television commentators. He did his best to resist. It was pointless to keep reading. He’d already decided that. He thought about turning the TV off, putting some good hard rock and roll on his CD player-maybe some Stones, Sticky Fingers, or some Kinks-but his mind wouldn’t stop racing, it just didn’t feel right, and if he’d learned anything at all it was that things had to feel right, so he went back to Billings’s book, flipped it open again, skipped ahead to a page that was covered with circles and numbers. He realized it was a hand-drawn view of the table arrangements at Harper’s.
Chuck had drawn circles to represent each table and its placement in the restaurant dining room. Each table-including the built-in booths along three of the walls-was numbered, from one to thirty-two. On the next page, Chuck had managed to line up the names of the diners that were covered by the reservation list and match them to the tables they’d been seated at when the explosion occurred. According to Chuck’s markings, the bomb had exploded either at table number twenty-three or table twenty-six, both toward the middle of the room. Justin checked the names on the next page. Jimmy Leggett had been eating at table thirty-one, just a few feet from the explosion. At table twenty-three were two names Justin had never heard of. At table twenty-six was a name he had heard of: Bradford Collins. The CEO of EGenco. Vice President Dandridge’s friend. Attorney General Stuller’s friend.