“Do you think I ought to go?”
The surprised way he looked at her betrayed the fact that it had never entered his mind. “If you want to see it, I’m sure he’ll be glad to take us both. I’m not sure there’s much point in either of us going if Elliot’s at the scene, but he asked.”
“Then I’ll skip it and see Elliot another time.”
“Have you got your phone?”
She turned around so he could see the outline of the phone in the back pocket of her jeans. He leaned close and kissed her. She didn’t turn her body toward him to allow an embrace, but he didn’t notice. He went into the bedroom and came back with a metal box the size of a book with a combination lock built into it. He punched the numbers and it popped open to reveal a Glock 17, two spare magazines, and a box of fifty nine-millimeter rounds.
“I want to give you this before I go. I know your gun and badge didn’t travel to the hospital with you, and you probably won’t get them back until you’re on active duty again. This is what you’re used to, right?”
“You know it is,” she said. “Get out of here now.”
Almanzo had already pulled up outside. Diane watched the security monitor as Stahl trotted out to the street and got into the plain car.
She sat down at the kitchen table and picked up the Glock. She looked it over, released the magazine, and checked the chamber, then loaded the magazine with the first seventeen rounds and set it down again. It had been typical of Dick Stahl to give her this. He realized that she was going to be unarmed and alone, and that the bomb maker knew she wasn’t dead yet.
She knew that if she had told him the things she was feeling right now—the disappointment at being left here, no longer considered a police officer because she had been hurt—he would have been shocked. He would patiently explain why hers was the wrong reaction, explain that she was irrational to imagine an officer who was on medical leave would be included, and explain that a man who cared about her the way he did would never do anything to hurt her feelings intentionally. Several men had told her that in the past, and they’d all found ways to hurt her feelings.
Almanzo drove the police car along the quiet street toward Century Park East. “How’s Sergeant Hines doing?”
“Glad to be out of the hospital,” said Stahl. “She isn’t fully recovered, but she’s eager to get back to work.”
“Do you think she wants to go back to the Bomb Squad?”
“I wish she wouldn’t,” Stahl said. “But she probably will if she gets back her manual dexterity and nerve control. Getting good at EOD takes a long time and a lot of field experience. It’s hard to let go once you’ve done the work. She made it clear she’d be willing to take a look at the Hedlund scene if we wanted.”
“You and Elliot both said it was weird that Hedlund was the victim. Why do you think the bomber picked her?”
“I don’t know. If I were to guess, I’d say our boy has been busy. He hasn’t done anything since the hospital. That must have taken a big charge and a lot of work, risk, and planning. He might be feeling he’s under pressure to keep the tempo up and keep the city off balance while he makes more bombs and prepares for something bigger. He picked a well-known person who has been reporting on him, and on us. So it counts in his mind as a win. That makes it a defeat for us.”
“You think that way even after she made a big point of getting you fired?”
“I wish she hadn’t done that. But if I hadn’t done what I did, she wouldn’t have.”
Almanzo drove in silence for a minute. “Did you and Sergeant Hines stay home all last night?”
“Yeah.” Stahl studied him. “We did.”
“Please don’t look at me like that, Dick,” Almanzo said. “It was a murder. Any question that can be asked has to be.”
“You’re right, of course. We got Diane sprung from the hospital around seven in the evening, and then my assistant, Andy, drove us home in Diane’s car. A cop named Morrissey picked Andy up from my place and drove him home. I had a lady from Bloomingdale’s waiting for us to show Diane some clothes I bought her because there was nothing left of the clothes in her apartment. I still have her business card. Her name is May Hedges. By the time that was over we were both tired. We had a drink and went to sleep. If there’s any doubt we never left, the twenty-four-hour security guys at my building keep a log and retain the recordings from the surveillance system.”
“Okay,” said Almanzo. “Sounds tight to me.”
“I can guess where you were last night,” said Stahl.
“That’s right. I was home asleep until one fifteen, when my guys got called in to look at a murder scene and I learned who the victim was.”
He pulled up to the Channel Ten studio on Melrose. As he turned up the short drive beside the guard gate, they could both see that the parking lot was full of reporters, photographers, and freelancers held back by a pair of police officers inside the yellow tape. Some of them began to move as soon as Almanzo’s car appeared, instinctively aware that a car like that probably held ranking cops. They hurried to get close while the car was held back by the lift gate. When the bar lifted they were already holding cameras within five feet of the car on both sides, getting shots of the two men inside.
When Almanzo stopped outside the tape, they began to yell. “Captain Stahl! Didn’t you resign?”
“Can you tell us what happened?”
“Are you a suspect?”
Almanzo nodded to Stahl and stepped forward to head off the small crowd. “My name is Captain Bart Almanzo, commander of Homicide Special. Captain Stahl has come at my request to assist me in this examination of the scene. This is an ongoing homicide investigation, so neither of us will be answering any questions at this time.”
The group could not have failed to notice that Stahl was walking off while Almanzo was keeping them occupied. Almanzo stopped when Stahl was far inside the yellow tape. Then he ducked under the tape and trotted to catch up.
Elliot was beside the burned wreck. He had the hood up and he was taking photographs of the engine compartment. He looked up. “Captain!” He stepped closer to him to take off a glove and shake his hand.
Stahl said, “I hear you think this is our guy again.”
“I’m pretty sure it is. It doesn’t make sense to me as a strategy, but there it is. We found fragments of a homemade mercury rocker switch on a stand like the one he used at the gas station. So I started to look for his other trademarks, and I found that two backup charges had gone off too. There was one using the circuit for the brake lights, and another backup with a set of lithium batteries using the solenoids that locked the doors as the switch. It was a toss-up which circuit would go first.”
Stahl turned to Almanzo. “That’s him, all right.” He said to Elliot, “Where did the car go up?”
He pointed at a spot behind a reserved parking space. “Over there.”
“It figures. Backups to the backups, and far more explosive than he needed.”
When Almanzo went to talk with his two detectives, Stahl said to Elliot, “I’m sorry I had to resign, but I won’t abandon you guys. I’m trying to come back to work as a consultant, which is probably what I should have been in the first place. If you need me before then for any reason, call me. The same for the other teams.”
“Thanks, Captain.”
“Not captain anymore, and that’s one part that won’t be coming back. It’s just Stahl now.”
35