“What’s her phone number?”
Fireworks popped, popped, popped from the direction of the casinos, and I kept pushing the young investigator for the reasons why they were there. But then came a deep, hollow boom that froze and frightened me. The young investigator also heard it, but it didn’t mean the same thing to him. He saw my reaction though and went quiet. I asked again for Sarah Warner’s number, and to get free of me he gave it up.
I called Sarah Warner from my car, but not until after trying to reach Jane Stone and starting back to the Alagara. My call to Jane rolled over to voice mail. I called Sarah Warner next. I was going to call Venuti but wanted to be back on-site at the Alagara before talking to him. Caller ID wouldn’t give Warner my name, but I had guessed right. She assumed I was law enforcement and answered on the second ring.
“Sarah Warner here.”
“This is Special Agent Paul Grale.”
“I’m waiting in your field office. We’ll talk here.”
“I have a question first. Do you have any evidence tying Beatty to a bomb plot?”
“I’m not doing this over the phone.”
“It’s a yes or no question.”
“I’ll see you here.”
“You and I are going to have a problem.”
“Guess what, we already have one.”
She hung up, which annoyed and angered me, but didn’t matter anymore after Venuti called.
“Secondary explosion,” Venuti said. “A bomb in a pickup, at least seven dead, and we can’t find . . .”
His voice failed him.
“I heard the blast. I’m on my way back,” I said. “I’m almost there.”
“It’s locked down. You’d be standing around. Come in. Let’s get this cleared up with the Department of Defense investigators and get you back out.”
I didn’t answer.
“Grale.”
“I’m here.”
“Come in.”
I put the flashers on top and raced to the field office. En route I took a call from Jo Segovia—Dr. Segovia, Jo to me. I hadn’t heard her voice in six months, though we’d been together for a year before that.
“I’m calling as a doctor, Paul, and I’m outside the bounds here. You should be getting this directly from her doctor. How much do you know about Julia’s wounds?”
“I was there. I found her. Her ear looked bad, but her back was the worry. What do you know? How is she? A first responder said her legs and back took shrapnel. One piece was close to the spine.”
“Dangerously close. She’s on her way into emergency surgery. I’ve seen the X-rays. Most of the other shrapnel is embedded in muscle in her hamstrings and will come out. After those wounds are cleaned up, they should be fine. The fragment near a vertebra may cause bruising or swelling at the spinal column. That can lead to paralysis.”
“That can’t happen. Too much has happened to her already.”
“She’s with a top surgeon, and I’ll watch after her, Paul. I’m here. I’m calling to let you know and to say I’m devastated and sorry.”
“Please call me as soon as she’s out of surgery, Jo.”
“I’ll do more than call you.”
5
The agents standing near a TV in a conference room shifted so I could see the screen better. A Las Vegas TV affiliate of CNN with a helicopter up to catch casino fireworks had veered toward the column of black smoke soon after the blast. The TV crew filmed the initial response and caught the secondary bomb explosion before the FAA excluded unauthorized aircraft from the area. Their helicopter was low and close when the pickup exploded with a brilliant flash of white light. It was horrific to watch and was played over and over. In the upper right corner of the TV, a timer ran down the seconds to detonation.
I watched it yet again and saw the LVPD mobile command unit topple over, its radio pole bending and twisting across the median. In the fraction of a second it took for the blast cloud to swallow them, you could see other small figures. Seven law enforcement officers were known dead. They reported an FBI special agent missing but didn’t have Jane Stone’s name yet.
In an interview room the two Department of Defense investigators waited, a man and a woman, both on their phones when I walked in. They ended their calls and stood to shake hands. Sarah Warner was square shouldered and sober. Her partner Jon Griswold was older and deferential to her. He was mild mannered, balding, and loosening around the middle. As he cleaned his glasses, his myopic stare locked on me and only accentuated how wrong it was to be here rather than at the Alagara. It was wrong, but what did they know that put a smug look in the old boy’s eyes?