Watkins studied the chandelier above the dining room table. It was a bowl shape with three layers above it dripping with dangling crystal drops that kept the bulb invisible. An antipersonnel bomb with ball bearings or screws inside the glass bowl would disperse at the right level to kill anyone in the room — about six feet.
Watkins took his time. He emptied his mind and stared, trying to notice anything that felt wrong, anything that would inspire a bomber to do something clever. Watkins moved from window to window, following the same procedure. He tried to see what was plugged into each electrical outlet, searching for commercial timers designed to turn lights on and off and make the house seem occupied. Those were about the most reliable timers a bomb could have, and they could deliver 110 volts to a firing circuit.
Watkins looked for shapes he’d seen bombers use before — pipes, of course, pressure cookers, backpacks, satchels, small suitcases. He scanned for pieces of military ordnance that might have been left inside boxes made for them. Artillery boxes were usually simple, made of half-inch by three-inch wooden laths nailed together and painted olive drab with their contents stenciled on them in black. He searched for the shape, not the color, in case somebody had painted one to look harmless, like a toy box.
Watkins knew if an expert had set this house to blow, there would be at least two charges — the big one to destroy the building, and a smaller, subtler one just for someone like him.
When he had stared into the interior through each of the windows, he found himself back at the front steps. He spoke into the helmet radio. “There’s nothing visible from any of the windows. I’m at the front door again.”
He stood on the steps beside the door, reached over, and turned the knob. The spring pressure felt normal, and he heard no clicks. He sighted along the jamb as he opened the door a crack. There were no signs of anything held in place by the door or the hinges about to fall or spring away or sever a contact. There were no wires.
He moved his knife along the bottom of the door to locate the magnet embedded in the door to keep the alarm switch under the threshold from tripping. He found it, then took out his own magnet and placed it against the door in exactly the right spot, so when he pushed the door inward the new magnet would replace the one in the door.
He reached inside and lifted the doormat to check for a pressure pad, and then put the doormat into the doorway to prop the door open. He turned and inspected the alarm keypad on the wall. “I’m in,” he said. “The alarm is off.” A minute later he said, “I don’t see any sign of a device yet. I’m going to look for it.”
Watkins stepped deeper into the living room, inching ahead in his heavy, hot bomb suit. He had to turn the whole upper part of his body to see anything on either side, because the suit’s helmet didn’t have a neck. He used his bright flashlight to focus on one object at a time. He didn’t want to flip any light switches just yet.
He moved the beam of his light around the room to pick up the shine of monofilament fishing line or any thin wires that weren’t meant to be there. Next he turned his light off and searched for thin beams of light from an electric eye in the air.
A glass candy jar filled with multicolored jelly beans drew him to it. The jar was exactly the sort of object a bomb maker would use — harmless looking, transparent, and appealing. He came closer and used his flashlight to search for any hint of an object or a wire hidden among the jelly beans. Maybe it was too obvious for this guy. A professional bomber would know that someone like Watkins would see it as a likely place for the trigger.
The place a bomber wanted the charge was not the first place you’d look. When you looked at the first place, you were still sharp and watchful. The bomber wanted you to work your way to the less likely places. When you got to the least likely place, there it would be. By then you’d be tired and bored, maybe careless enough to open drawers without first checking for contacts, or to step without looking down ahead of your feet.
Watkins refused to rush or get lazy. His mind roamed this nightmare of a house, searching for the other mind, the one that had come here to infuse the building with malice. Watkins had seen bombs go off, and he had seen the aftermath, people simultaneously burned to death and torn apart, charred viscera and brain tissue spilled and limbs wrenched from bodies, blood spattered on pavements and dirt roads. He was aware that in a minute he might experience that destruction. He might already have set off an electronic timer when he opened the front door, and a time-delay relay was about to send the electrical current to the initiator. Maybe now. Or now. Or now.
He went down on his stomach and swept the flashlight beam along the boards of the hardwood floor, trying to spot a single board that was higher or lower than the others. A misfit board could have been lifted and something placed under it.
The floor was perfectly level. Watkins looked up at the ceiling and along the crown molding. He reminded himself that if there was a bomber, he had never seen this person’s work before, and didn’t know his specialties, his quirks, his favorites. He kept looking.
Bombs were not just weapons. They were something more, expressions of the bomber’s thoughts about you, his predictions of your behavior — what you would see, even what you would think and feel. He’d staged a presentation designed to fool you. He didn’t even know your name, but you were the one he was really after. Bombs were acts of murder, but they were also jokes on you, riddles the bomber hoped were too tough for you, chances for you to pick wrong when it was almost impossible to pick right.
Watkins turned his attention to the furniture. First he moved his flashlight along the bottom edges of the furniture and then behind it, and then he moved to the couch. The easiest place to put a charge was in one of the seat cushions. The cushions usually had a zipper in the back or underneath so the cover could be cleaned or the stuffing replaced. One couch cushion could hold a pretty big bomb. Three of them could blow pieces of the house all over the neighborhood.
He touched the front of each cushion with his fingers, palpating it to sense whether there was anything hard, or if the stuffing was too full, or there were any empty spaces. He cautiously pushed the spaces between two cushions apart to detect any wires. He worked his way to lifting them up to be sure they weren’t too heavy.
Next he moved to the big armchairs and repeated the process. After each piece was cleared, he slid it over beside the couch. When he had moved everything to one side, Watkins surveyed the newly bare part of the room to be sure he had missed nothing. He looked at baseboards and molding, sockets, light fixtures, and lamps. He announced, “The living room is clear.” Then he picked up his tool bag and went to the kitchen door.
He took out his mirror and extended its telescoping handle. He slipped it into the thin crack between the swinging door and the jamb, moved it up and down, and rotated it. There was nothing connected to the door. There was nothing on the floor. He adjusted his mirror to reflect the kitchen counters. There were a toaster, a blender, a row of spices, a couple of bottles. One was olive oil.
He saw a small black rectangular box on the kitchen counter. What was that, a phone? A radio? Either could be bad for him. There seemed to be a very thin white cord leading from the countertop to a plug on the wall behind the juicer. He withdrew the mirror, put it away, and picked up the monocular from his tool bag. He leaned into the kitchen, aimed the monocular at the device, and read the brand name. Canon. A camera? No lens, but it looked like camera equipment. As he stared at it, a tiny red indicator on the end came on.