Stahl stood by the truck and called his assistant, Andy, at the station. “Andy, this is Dick Stahl. Get in touch with the building manager of the women’s health center at Kaplan and Steers and find out what you can about the security cameras outside the building and inside. Find out how we get the footage. What I need to know immediately is whether, after the people were evacuated from the building, the bomber went inside. Thanks.”
He hung up and called Bart Almanzo at Homicide Special. He told Almanzo what was happening and said, “I think this is our guy again, but don’t send anybody here until we’ve checked the whole building. If I’m right, this isn’t going to be safe for a while. But we know this bomber was here in person. If there’s any surveillance footage that will help identify him or his car or any witness, it might make the difference. Our people have already requested whatever this building has to help us clear the place. But any building in the neighborhood might have caught something.”
“Thanks,” said Almanzo. “We’ll get people collecting it. Good luck.”
Stahl hung up and watched the robot. The robot was equipped with a two-thousand-foot cable, but they were using the remote control for the moment. Either this would work or it wouldn’t, but it would be quick.
The robot was directly over the bomb now, and Stahl and the technicians studied the video image closely, scrutinizing the bomb for anything that might be a trap’s trigger: a wire or filament, a sensor of some sort, a pressure device or spring that would hold the switch at the OFF position until it was lifted, a remote control receiver.
“Anybody see anything?” said Curtis.
“No,” said Bolland.
“Nope,” said McCrary.
Stahl said, “Agreed.”
The robot reached down, closed its grasping claw over the pipe, and lifted.
There was a bright flash as the bomb tore itself apart and fired hundreds of projectiles in all directions, blowing the glass front into the building and sending a shock wave toward Stahl. A half second later the sharp bang slapped his ears and collided with his body, a flat, hard force that felt to him like something solid pounding his chest and stomach.
At the same time, he saw the robot thrown outward from the building into the parking lot. It flew about fifty feet — not lifted but swatted — spinning and hitting on its side. Then it slid across the pavement to a stop. Some part of his mind noted that the arm was missing.
Immediately Stahl’s eyes sought the sight of Curtis, McCrary, and Bolland. When he spotted them, Curtis was lying prone on the pavement of the parking lot and the others were kneeling over him. Stahl gasped and took a running step toward them, then saw they had not been hit. They got Curtis up, then stood. McCrary brushed invisible dust off his uniform pants from his knees to his waist and then the front of his shirt while Curtis picked up the control unit. After a few seconds he turned it off. Bolland began walking toward the front of the building to see if there was any part of the bomb left to be collected for evidence.
Stahl walked up to Curtis, smiled, and patted his back gently. “Don’t worry about the robot. That’s what it’s for. This guy’s objective was to take us all out and maybe incinerate a few civilians as a bonus. He got nobody.”
Curtis managed a faint smile as Stahl passed him on the way to McCrary.
Stahl said, “We still have to clear the building before we let anybody in.”
“I know,” said McCrary. “This time that’s got to be my job. I’ll get suited up.”
“Have you got a suit I can borrow?”
“Sure, but I thought we were going to send only one tech downrange from now on.”
“This time looks like an exception. I think this might be the same guy who did the house in Encino and the car at the gas station. What you see is something simple — today, an ordinary pipe bomb. But in the other two what we got was a second charge that was bigger. I want to see if there’s something else in the building.”
McCrary shrugged. He went to the truck and took out a suit with his name stenciled on it and found another labeled with the number 2. He handed it to Stahl.
While they put on the bomb suits, Stahl called Andy at the station. “It’s Stahl. What do we know?”
“We’ve got some video from the building across the street from you. You were right. A man went into the clinic building during the evacuation. He was wearing some kind of uniform, maybe a janitor’s uniform — dark blue shirt and pants, no badge. About five ten or six feet tall, average weight and build, baseball cap. Nobody stopped him or even looked closely at him. He was going in as they were going out.”
“Of course,” said Stahl. “Was he carrying anything?”
“Yes. It looks like a gym bag. That size, anyway. Dark, probably black.”
“Any luck getting the interior video from the clinic?”
“Not yet. The security guy who has access to the system took charge of evacuating people, so now a unit is working with him and with the equipment manufacturer to set up a remote feed from the Van Nuys station.”
“All right. Keep trying.”
Stahl cut the connection and left his phone with Curtis. “If there’s a call, answer it. If it’s about the indoor surveillance cameras, call me on the helmet radio frequency.”
As Stahl and McCrary walked toward the building, Stahl told McCrary what he’d learned. When Stahl and McCrary reached the entrance they examined the damage. There were impact holes in the concrete like a pattern of little craters where ball bearings had hit. Stahl said, “Antipersonnel. I guess he was hoping for a few extra bodies. But he mainly wanted everybody out, so he could go in alone.”
McCrary said, “What kind of trap do you think he put inside?”
“Something new,” Stahl said. “Something we haven’t seen him do before. We’ll have to go through each room and clear it. He knows there won’t be more than one or two bomb techs inside the building at first. Maybe he wants to injure us so more cops have to go in before he drops the roof on our heads. We’ll have to take our time and look at everything.”
When Stahl stepped in over the fallen glass, he appreciated the architectural design of the women’s health building. The concrete and steel stanchions in a row in front of the glass entrance had apparently been intended to keep a vehicle from crashing through. The freestanding wall behind the glass front of the building had provided more protection from the blast.
The wall had been covered in a layer of plasterboard and painted like plaster, but behind that layer was structural concrete. The bomb’s ball bearings and pipe fragments had swept the glass inward. They chewed up the plasterboard, but did nothing to the wall behind it. The reception area inside looked untouched and intact.
“One more thing just occurred to me,” said Stahl. “Nobody has said they’ve seen video of this guy leaving the building. We’ve been assuming he left as quickly as he could, because bomb makers do that. But he could still be in here. The building has four floors to hide in.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” McCrary said.
The two men searched the lobby for any of the signs of a booby trap — fine trip wires, a gym bag like the one seen on the video, devices plugged into electrical outlets that didn’t seem to belong. Stahl knew their job was especially risky today because dozens of people had evacuated the building in a hurry, and might have left things like briefcases or equipment bags anywhere.
When they made sure the lobby was safe, they began to move from room to room on the ground floor. The first offices they came to were administrative. There were signs that people had been interrupted — pens dropped on half-completed forms, computer screens that had gone dark or displayed screen savers since their users left.