CHAPTER
32
This time Nick led the way while Yarden hung back, always a couple of steps behind. He showed his ID to the guard at the bottom of the second escalator. National Guard, sniper unit. By this time no one made it upstairs without scrutiny and security clearance.
As Nick climbed the stairs?all the escalators had been stopped?he felt his breathing change. He wasn't sure he was prepared to see what was at the top of the third floor. His father used to tell him there wasn't anything worse than seeing a body ripped apart in a car accident, flesh peeled back, burned or mangled. As county sheriff, Nick had a couple of opportunities to judge for himself. But Nick had seen worse?the small blue bodies of two little boys, carved and left by a serial killer in the prairie grass along the Platte River. Could anything top that? He hoped not.
He knew how this worked only because two weeks ago as part of his training for the new job position he had attended a seminar on terrorist attacks and what to look for at any one of the facilities where they provided security. It had been intended to be a guide on how to convince their clients to upgrade their systems. Two weeks ago Nick thought the seminar preached scare tactics. The "what if" scenarios seemed a bit over the top. Now he realized how wrong he had been.
Thanks to that seminar the information was all still fresh to him. So he knew the protocol. In his mind, he tried to prepare himself for what he was about to experience. Rescue mission always came first: treat the injured, put out fires, make the building safe. Those who were wounded and injured were now on the first floor, across the street at the hotel triage area or on their way to a hospital.
Next came the recovery while preserving evidence. At this point, those who were left wouldn't be going anywhere in a hurry. For several hours they would become a part of the crime scene, helping answer questions that they should never have been expected to be asked. Maggie had once told him that even after death, victims were an investigator's best hope for telling them who the killer was.
Almost at the top of the escalator and Nick felt like he was holding his breath. His heart pounded against his rib cage. The entire air smelled scorched up here. Someone had finally turned off the Christmas music. The eerie silence that replaced it was almost worse.
The scene before Nick struck him as surreal. A black crater had been cordoned off. A half dozen crime techs in Tyvek suits silently walked a grid, measuring, mapping, scooping, sifting and photographing all of it, grid by grid. He knew they would eventually do this with each site.
"Dig out the crater," was what they called it. All of the debris within an area fifty percent bigger than the crater itself would need to be examined. The techs were using sterilized equipment to sweep up and sieve. Seemed odd to Nick at first that they'd need sterilized stuff to handle what had already been burned, but what you brought to a crime scene could be just as detrimental as what you took away.
Later those same techs would be on hands and knees doing a fingertip search of the same areas. They'd make sure even the tiniest fragments of evidence didn't go unnoticed. But it wasn't just about collecting debris. They were measuring and examining dents and dished metals, looking for embedded scraps, swabbing for undestroyed explosives, testing for solid residue.
The task appeared insurmountable. And they would have to repeat it two more times at two more blast sites.
"Mr. Morrelli?"
Nick almost forgot why he was here. For a minute he felt invisible, looking in from the outside, tiptoeing on the edges of his dream or someone's nightmare. He turned so suddenly he bumped Yarden, almost knocking him over.
"Sorry."
"No problem." Jerry Yarden looked like he might be sick at any minute, his face ashen, eyes wide.
"Nick Morrelli."
The man approached, watching his step as he made his way over. He wasn't part of the collection team and wore a navy blue suit instead of the Tyvek overalls. Still, he had on paper shoe covers?what looked like a size fifteen. Goggles dangled from his neck alongside paper face mask. Purple latex gloves stuck out of his jacket pocket.
"You don't recognize me." The man seemed disappointed.
Nick took a better look. He didn't expect to find anyone he knew up here.
"David. David Ceimo. What the hell are you doing here?"
"Good to see you again, Nick." He put out a hand.
"Almost didn't recognize you without your helmet in my gut."
That garnered a wide-mouth grin. Had he smiled first off, Nick would have immediately known the man even without a Mizzou gold and black mouth guard. The safety had sacked Nick twice in one game, a string of quarterback blitzes contributing to the Huskers' embarrassing and rare loss at home to the Univerisity of Missouri. Not a fond memory even now as Ceimo's hand devoured Nick's.
The two men had gone on to make the NCAA All-American team, but if Nick remembered correctly, Ceimo had made it all the way to the big house. Minnesota Vikings, first-round draft. Unfortunately he also remembered the tall, lean Ceimo had been injured his second year, final game of conference play, a huge hit that left him on the turf. To look at him now it hadn't affected him a bit, and though he had trimmed down a bit he still looked like he could tackle anyone who got in his way.
"I'm here for Governor Williams," Ceimo told him. "Chief of staff."
"Congratulations." Nick kept the, "you've got to be kidding," to himself. Why should he be surprised? Ceimo was probably wondering the same thing about him. A one-season quarterback now representing the largest security company in the country? "Have you met Jerry Yarden?"
"No, I don't think so," Ceimo said, extending his hand to Yarden.
"David and I played football against each other."
"That right?" Yarden stood between the men, craning his neck, looking from one to the other. "Seems you know a lot of people here."
Nick ignored the comment and told Ceimo, "Jerry's the head of security here."
"Actually assistant to the director."
Both Nick and Ceimo cocked their heads at almost the same insinuating angle.
"The director's still in New Jersey. There for Thanksgiving," Yarden rattled off in defense.
"Yeah, state fire inspector is stuck in Chicago," Ceimo told Nick and Yarden, crossing his arms and obviously finished with the small talk. Nick didn't mind. "There for the holiday, too. O'Hare's backed up. This snow's canceling flights left and right."
"Governor stuck somewhere, too?" Nick asked. It was an innocent question but Ceimo's glare didn't take it as innocent.
"We've got a problem," he said instead of accounting for the governor's absence. "The governor wanted me to keep you guys informed, as a favor to your boss. Wanted you to have a heads-up. Be one of the first to know in case there's something more we should be looking for."
Yarden was nodding, bobble-head style.
"It's looking like these guys didn't do this on their own."
Nick was just about to tell Ceimo they already knew about the potential fourth bomber in the parking lot.
"They may not have even known they'd volunteered to be shrapnel."
"What do you mean?" Yarden asked.
"You've located the detonators," Nick said. That would be the first step.
"Need the fire inspector to verify, but my bomb expert seems convinced."
Nick couldn't help noticing Ceimo said, "my" bomb expert and wondered why the hell he was telling them any of this? They were simply security. On the totem pole of jurisdiction they came pretty close to the bottom of the stack.
"What exactly is your bomb expert convinced about?" Nick asked, only because it looked like Ceimo was waiting to be asked. He seemed to be enjoying doling out the information slowly.
"Understand only a handful of us know about this, okay?"
"We got that loud and clear." Nick was tired. They all were. Patience wearing thin.
"Bombs were detonated from off-site."
"Off-site?" Yarden didn't understand.
Nick thought he might have heard wrong.
"The bombers didn't detonate their own packs?"
Ceimo nodded. "Someone else did it from outside the immediate perimeter."
"Somebody else? How could they do that?" Yarden still seemed confused.
But Nick wasn't. He knew exactly what Ceimo was suggesting. They'd spent hours viewing miles of tape and the whole time, all three of them?Maggie, Nick and Yarden?kept saying the same thing, "These kids don't look like homicide bombers."
There was a good reason they didn't look the part. They weren't bombers. Poor bastards, probably didn't even know what was in store for them.