“What would you do if you were me?”
“I can’t answer that this morning. You’ll have to go in there and solve it on your own. You know what’s true, and that’s all they’re really after.”
“You’re right, and I’m sorry, Grale. You don’t need to think about it at all, but thank you for meeting me.”
Beatty fired up his bike and left. Half a dozen agents would trail him to the field office, and four or five more would burn a day questioning him. There was nothing I could do about that, and it didn’t really matter that I sat awhile longer before heading to the Alagara.
12
I walked around outside first. No vehicles were left in the lot, which was wrapped with crime tape. Las Vegas Metro patrol units sat on the street. I crunched through tiny fragments of broken glass and debris. From memory of the CNN video, I found the spot where I thought Jane Stone was when the pickup bomb detonated. Then I moved to where the For Sale vehicles had been parked. The paving was gone and the desert soil underneath churned. A four-foot-deep crater was under where the pickup had sat. I saw flowers on the sidewalk, a lone desert rose and two or three bouquets of roses and yellow chrysanthemums. It meant something to me that people had already reached out.
When I turned back, I realized the hole the smoke poured out of last night was where a skylight had been. The balled-up black aluminum frame of the skylight was somehow still attached to the roof. A Metro officer standing guard opened a padlock for me on a temporary one-inch-thick plywood door and let me in. First smells were char, blood, and dust. A darkening trail of blood mixed with grit marked the path of first responders and everyone who’d followed. I stared at the blood trail with no sense of investigative detachment, only sorrow and anger. I felt incapable of focus.
Overhead, sunlight filtered through a blue tarp draped across the roof hole. Blood spatter stained the white-painted walls and the ceiling seventeen feet above. Just before leaving to meet Beatty, I’d read that the bomb was likely in a new wine refrigerator swapped out with an existing one that had failed several weeks ago. The swap-out occurred during several hours of minor construction work yesterday afternoon. That much was already known. Fragments of a detonator were found last night. I stood over the scarified patch of concrete at the bar where the bomb had detonated and visualized the unmarked van arriving, the man installing the new refrigerator, rolling it in here on a dolly, his movements and look telegraphing normal, the refrigerator wrapped in plastic.
After steady thefts of liquor and a bartender who made a habit of undercharging friends, Omar Smith told agents last night he’d made the decision to install video cameras that operated 24/7. The cameras filmed the wine refrigerator swap-out, but the face of the man who did the changing was largely hidden. Nonetheless, this morning, segments of that video were running through every facial-recognition program available.
Toward the back, temporary lights had been strung in the corridor leading to the restrooms, the food-prep area, kitchen, and Omar Smith’s office. I stood for several minutes in each room before returning to the ruined bar. A long, thick thread of ropy dried blood tracked along a wall. I looked at it and remembered the first Fourth of July parties.
They were outside and uncomplicated. The kids usually had a pool or a park to play in, and there was no Facebook chatter leading up to it, just a few calls and a “see you there.” Then a stop at the store for hot dogs and beer and whatever else was needed. Maybe it wasn’t as connected and efficient, but it had been simpler.
I stood near the destroyed bar and patch of scoured concrete that was ground zero. The shattered pieces of the bar were hauled to the airplane hangar where we were storing all debris, but I could picture the former bar. Like Beatty, I’d eaten tacos here several times. The face had been plywood. The owner once told me he’d stained and lacquered it himself. He was proud of his work and had put his heart into making his restaurant-bar work. I heard he had lost everything, including his house.