Come Twilight (27 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

WALL OF DEATH

“Julia,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said.

I didn’t believe her. With the sun shining in through the large windows behind me, my eyes began to adjust to the light, and I was able to see more clearly. But I still couldn’t get a good look at the bomber. There was a distance of at least twenty-five feet between us. On the floor inside the door lay an oversized coat. He must have worn it to conceal the bomb.

“Come back here,” he said.

“Nope. You let her go, then I come back there. That’s the only way this works.”

“I’m not leaving,” Julia said.

He leaned forward and said something to her that I couldn’t hear.

“It’s all right, Julia. Trust me, okay?”

“Danny, don’t—”

“Trust me,” I said.

The bomber said, “She takes one step forward, you take one step forward. Got it?” He nudged her gently and she began to move.

I matched her, step for step. As we approached the center of the room, I thought about grabbing her and breaking for the door. But I dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. There was no way we’d make it.

My eyes were locked on Julia’s as we closed the distance between us. I could see her fear and it made me hate him even more intensely.

I wanted to reach out to her as we passed each other, and I could see she did, too. But how would he react?

As the backs of our hands brushed against each other and I lost sight of her face, I heard her whisper, “I love you.”

My eyes found the bomber and I was hit with a shock of recognition. It was the soldier with the prosthetic leg from Julia’s photo. That’s what Trev was talking about. He was standing in front of her section of the exhibit. Behind him I could see the edge of the photo she’d taken of me on her balcony, turned away from the eye of the camera.

“Hi, Terry,” I said.

“Stop there,” he said. “Don’t come any closer.”

I stopped. But I was near enough to see the device strapped to his chest. There were six blocks of what I assumed to be C-4 or something similar. He held a triggering device in his right hand. I’d stopped moving about eight feet from him and looked over my shoulder just in time to watch Julia slip out the door. The cold burn of adrenaline flowed down through my abdomen.

“What the fuck, man,” I said.

“Why didn’t you just stay away from her? This wouldn’t have happened if you’d just stayed away.” There was genuine pain in his voice, and I could see it was torturing him. He had deep lines in his face and dark circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there when I’d met him before at the opening. “I saw you with her, you know. At Buskerfest. I saw you. What you did to that guy.”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“That lady he was messing with? I would have done the same thing for her if I’d been where you were.”

“I’m sure you would have.”

“But I wouldn’t have lost it. You didn’t even see how Julia was looking at you when you did that. She was scared. Of you. Why couldn’t you have just stayed away like I told you?”

“I thought you were talking about someone else,” I said.

“Really?” he said.

I nodded. “Really.”

The implication that I would have stayed away if I’d known he was talking about Julia seemed to register with him. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true.

He wore a blue T-shirt under the black vest to which the explosives were attached. The tattoo on the inside of his forearm that I’d seen a portion of at the opening was fully exposed. It was the same design that Gonzales had on his biceps.

“You did bomb disposal in Iraq?” I asked.

“How’d you know that?”

“The ink on your arm.” He seemed vaguely impressed that I recognized it. “Is that a dead-man’s trigger in your hand?”

“If I let go of the button, the bomb goes off.”

I nodded. “Why don’t you deactivate it?”

“No.”

“I know you don’t want to kill me.”

“You’re wrong.”

“If you wanted me dead, I’d already be dead. You had two chances and both times you warned me off. You don’t want my blood on your hands.” I watched his eyes, but I couldn’t read them. “You’re a pro, Terry. You know what you’re doing. You don’t want it to end like this.”

“How do you know what I want?”

“I don’t. But I know what Julia wants. It’s not this.”

He looked down at the floor and closed his eyes. I thought about rushing him, but I’d never be able to get my thumb on the trigger in time to prevent the detonation. There were a lot of explosives on his vest, and even though I was no expert, I thought it might be enough to take down this whole corner of the building.

“I was gonna let it go. I was. When you didn’t listen and stay away. I saw how she was with you, thought maybe I was wrong, maybe you could make her happy. She has to be happy.”

I took a step toward him.

“Stop! Don’t come any closer.”

I spread my hands and backed up.

“She was the only one. When I came home. The support group. She understood.”

“I get it,” I said.

“No, you don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t have scared her like that. How could you do that?”

“I screwed up. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I’ll stay away this time.”

He stared at me and I felt like he could see more deeply into me than anyone I’d ever looked in the eye.

“No you won’t,” he said. “And she has to be happy.”

“She does,” I whispered.

“She saved my life,” he said. Tears were collecting in the corners of his eyes.

“I know, Terry. She saved mine, too.”

He grimaced as if someone had pierced his chest with a knife and I knew I’d made a horrible mistake.

Everything shifted into slow motion and it seemed as if it took minutes for him to raise his right hand and lift his thumb off of the trigger button.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

WALKING FAR FROM HOME

I felt the concussive blast and heard the thunderous crack and saw the bright flash. Something cut my face, and my ears rang and circles of brightness floated in my field of vision. I was sitting on the floor, disoriented, my head spinning, trying to count the lights in front of me. Were there four or five? I couldn’t hear anything but the deafening shriek in my ears.

What happened?

Why wasn’t I dead?

I tried to blink away the spots in my eyes. There was a haze of smoke and dust. The taste of it in my mouth made me gag. Terry was on the floor in front of me. His chest was ripped open in a mass of viscera and smoldering black nylon. His prosthetic leg had come off. The wall behind him was painted red.

I wasn’t dead.

Someone was in front of me trying to get my attention. His mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear any words. Gonzales, I realized, it was Gonzales. He was waving his hand in front of my face.

Someone else lifted my arm and wrapped it around his neck and lifted me off the floor like a weightless ragdoll. His shoulders felt like stone.
Farley,
I thought,
Gonzales’s partner.
I was trying to move my feet on the floor, but he was taking all my weight. It seemed like I was floating.

Then we were outside. My feet were on the ground. Farley led me across the street and sat me on the curb. The shock of the explosion was fading.

Jen was there.

And Julia.

I wasn’t dead.

“The blocks on the vest were fake,” Gonzales said. We were standing in the shade of the buildings on the south side of the street, looking across Broadway at the gallery. From our vantage point, there was nothing to indicate what had gone on inside.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“He just had a tiny charge against his chest. Even had a body-armor plate in front of it to direct the explosion.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I don’t think he wanted to take anybody else with him. He knew what he was doing. The charge was just enough to blow a big hole in his chest. You would have to have been right on top of him for it to kill you, too.”

That’s why he stopped me where he did, made me take a step back. I was glad I’d listened to his warning this time.

Earlier, at the station, as soon as Terry had ended the call, I’d rushed back into the observation room and told Jen that Julia and her workshop students were caught up in a hostage situation with a possible suicide bomber at the gallery. I told her to call SWAT and to keep everyone out of sight until she heard from me.

After, I found her sitting on the curb with Julia just a few yards inside the yellow crime-scene tape that was blocking the street. A crowd had gathered on the other side. Down the block I could see the satellite antenna of a TV news van climbing up into the sky.

Sitting down next to them, I said, “How’s it going over here?”

Neither of them answered.

We sat in silence a few moments, then Jen said softly to me, “I need to get statements from the others inside.” She looked at Julia. “Are you okay?”

“I will be,” Julia said.

Jen stood and touched the back of my head as if I were a child at her hip. I looked up at her and she returned my weak smile before walking back toward the gallery.

Julia leaned against me and put her head on my shoulder. She had been crying and there was still a tremor in her hands. “I can’t stop shaking,” she said.

“I know. It’s the adrenaline dump. It will pass in a while.” I leaned my head on hers and breathed in the scent of her hair. It smelled like apples.

At some point, Patrick had shown up to take over control of the crime scene. I didn’t envy his situation. This case kept growing on him.
These cases,
I thought, correcting myself. It had been two separate investigations all along. The bomb in my car had nothing to do with William Denkins’s murder after all. I found Patrick coming out of the gallery.

“Hey,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay. How’s it look in there?”

“It’s a mess. But Gonzales tells me it’s not as bad as it could have been.”

“I know.” I looked down at the ground and felt the weight of what might have been, if Terry had been who I thought he was when I saw him in the suicide-bomber vest.

“How’s Julia?”

“Pretty shaken up. Jen got her statement. Okay if I take her home?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s probably a good idea.”

The last of the day’s sunlight was shining in through Julia’s balcony door as I put some music on and made us dinner. The omelets were too dry and the sourdough toasted too brown, but I managed to pick us a good bottle of wine.

We finished eating and took the rest of the wine into the living room just as Nina Simone’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas” was finishing and Leonard Cohen’s “Night Comes On” was beginning.

“I like this,” she said. “Is it a mix?”

“Just some songs I like,” I said. “I’ll make you a copy.”

We sat on the couch, my arm around her shoulders, and finished the wine while we listened.

“Ashes on Your Eyes” was playing when she turned her face away from me and whispered, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

I didn’t know what she meant and I didn’t want to, so I pulled her closer and pretended I hadn’t heard the words.