Blind dates can be murde.., p.29
Blind Dates Can Be Murder, page 29
In preparation for her upcoming meeting with Chuck, the technicians fixed Jo with a wire and did some sound tests. They gave her a suitcase filled with a combination of real and fake money. She paid close attention to each of their instructions for what to say and what to do. She was going to follow this scenario to the letter in the hopes that the bomber and the bomb would be apprehended without incident.
At 10:30 they said that it was time for her to head home.
“You may feel scared all by yourself,” the director told her, “but just remember that we can hear everything you say and do. You’re not alone in this at all.”
“Thanks,” she told him. “I’ll be counting on you.”
Her final decision was whether or not to bring Chewie with her. While she wanted him for protection, she didn’t want to put him in any danger. In the end, she chose to leave him behind. Better she protect him and face this one alone.
“All right, guys,” she said bravely, “let’s do this.”
They followed her out and got into their vehicle as she climbed into hers. At first, as she drove down the street, they were right behind her. But eventually they peeled off to go to their own separate location within hearing distance but not so close as to be seen.
She drove onward toward her home, wishing the whole thing could simply be over and done with. She didn’t know how she was going to get through the next few hours other than by faith and prayer.
Danny watched as the nurse wrapped the green netting around and around his leg. They were giving him a fiberglass cast, and he’d had his choice of hot pink, lime green, or neon yellow. As they worked, he had to wonder whatever happened to good old-fashioned white plaster.
Of course, once they were finished, he was glad the cast wasn’t plaster. Rather than having to wait two days for it to dry, this one set almost immediately. They fit him for a pair of crutches, scheduled a follow-up appointment, and sent him on his way.
He was so relieved to have his freedom back! The solid cast significantly reduced his pain, and now that he didn’t have to be so careful, he was as free to move about as the crutches would allow. Once he got back to his aunt and uncle’s house, he borrowed one of their cars so that he could drive to the bomb squad’s command center at the chief’s house.
He prayed fervently as he went.
It had been a busy morning for Chuck. First stop was a hardware store for three thick metal pipes with coarse threading and matching end caps, then a grocery store for a giant bag of sugar, then a pet store for lots of potassium permanganate, then a hobby store for some remote control ignitors, then a mailbox store for an empty box and a roll of bubble wrap. By the time he was ready to actually sit down and assemble the bombs, time was running close—and explosives weren’t something he wanted to rush.
He also didn’t have a convenient place to work. He couldn’t go back to the hotel. And the longer he drove around the small town in a stolen car, the more nervous he became. The theft of the car he was driving had to have been reported by now; sooner or later the cops were going to see him.
Finally, he found a secluded parking spot behind an auto parts store. Though cars came and went from the front of the busy business, the way the parking area was set up, he couldn’t really be spotted out back unless someone came walking behind the fence that surrounded the dumpsters. Feeling confident that he had chosen a good place, he got out of the car. Moving around to the trunk, he went to work on the explosives, capping one end of the first pipe, lining the inside with a little of the bubble wrap, and then carefully mixing together the permanganate and the sugar. He had learned a lot about explosives prior to his incarceration, and in prison he’d picked up even more tips. Now he felt like an expert as he assembled the explosive, the detonator wire, and the ignitor. This baby was going to be sweet.
Once he had finished making the first bomb, he carefully placed it inside the empty guitar case, which he lined with more of the bubble wrap.
Then he started on the next one.
“My client agrees to the terms,” Anna said to Chief Cooper as she slid the signed paperwork across the table. “She’s ready to talk.”
Lettie watched as the chief picked up the papers and carried them out of the small interrogation room, returning with three bottles of water and a tape recorder. He gave them each water, keeping a bottle for himself, and then he set the tape recorder in the middle of the table and turned it on.
“I am Chief Harvey J. Cooper,” he said toward the recorder as he sat across from them.
As he gave the date and place and time, Lettie couldn’t help thinking how different this was from what she had expected. There was no bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, no cops with veins bulging on their foreheads as they screamed at her. It was much more sedate than that, and much kinder. So far, she hadn’t regretted her decision to confess.
Really, despite her shaky future and the situation she found herself in now, she felt better on the inside than she had for three years.
What was it they said? Confession is good for the soul?
If that was the case, then her soul was about to feel great.
Chuck walked into Dates&Mates carrying the guitar case. He had all sorts of lies at the ready about what he was doing, but the place was so busy that no one seemed to notice or care. He breezed right past the reception desk and simply walked through the facility, looking for the best place to stow the case and the bomb that was inside.
Just outside of an Internet café area, he spotted a small alcove, inside of which was a rack with three coats and a whole bunch of hangers. If he left the case there, he knew, no one would bother it for a while. It would look as though someone had stashed it along with their coat.
He started to place the case on the floor but changed his mind and carefully slid it onto the shelf over the rack. He didn’t want anyone to accidentally kick it and blow things to smithereens prematurely.
Once that was done, he wandered a bit more, just to look legit in case anyone was watching. Then he left by a side entrance, got in the waiting car, and drove away.
As Jo opened the back door of her house and stepped inside, she vividly recalled the events of the night before. To be prudent now, she grabbed a knife from the butcher block and held it in her fist as she slowly, cautiously roamed from room to room.
Chuck Smith, if it had indeed been him, had torn her home to shreds. She felt heartsick as she took in the broken treasures, the slashed-up mattresses. Her homeowner’s policy covered theft and vandalism, but she knew no amount of money could ever pay her for the loss and violation of this act.
At least he hadn’t hurt her.
“Okay, I’ve checked every room,” Jo said out loud, so that the men on the other end of the bug she wore would hear her. “There’s nobody here but me.”
A moment later, her telephone rang once and then stopped. That was their signal that she was coming in loud and clear. Heaving a sigh of relief, she walked to the living room. All of the upholstered chairs were slashed up, however, so she chose a wooden stool in the kitchen. She pulled it to the counter near the telephone, sat, and waited.
The call came at ten minutes after noon, the Caller ID simply indicating that the number was “Unknown.” It was a man’s voice, the same voice from last night. He wanted her to meet him at the cemetery beside the park in five minutes. Though most people might have found that extremely disconcerting, for Jo it was almost a good omen: That was the cemetery where her grandparents were buried. She knew her way around the place and felt comfortable there.
“Remember,” he said before she hung up. “No cops, no friends. I want you there by yourself.”
“Got it,” she replied. “I’ll see you in five minutes.”
She hung up the phone and spoke out loud the directions he had given her, so that the cops could hear. Her phone rang once in confirmation. After it did, she ran to her car and started it up, one eye on the clock that was ticking away her time.
It was a big risk, Chuck thought as he sat in his car, but it was necessary. He watched as Jo Tulip pulled out of her driveway and sped off. After she turned right at the end of the road, he drove forward and pulled into her driveway.
Getting into her house was easy this time, as he had stolen a spare set of keys last night. He found the one that was for the back door, opened it, and then retrieved the second bomb from his car trunk. He carried it inside and placed it in the living room, against the wall.
Then he returned to his car and drove away.
Jo’s body was quaking by the time she pulled into a row of parking spaces beside the mausoleum. That’s where he had said to wait, so, carrying the suitcase, she got out of her car and sat on a bench up against the marble wall. She knew that the police could hear her but not see her. She wanted to whisper something into her wire, like “He’s not here yet” or “So far, so good,” but she didn’t dare. He might be watching her and see her talking.
Finally, from the shrubbery that separated the cemetery from the park, a man emerged and came sauntering in her direction.
“You walked over here from the park?” she asked as he drew closer, trying to clue in the police who were listening. “I didn’t realize you could get through the bushes that way.”
He shrugged.
“It wasn’t a problem.”
He was tall and skinny, and when he gave her a wry smile as she stood, she almost recoiled from the yellowed and missing teeth. Lettie had described Chuck as “dangerously handsome,” but this guy was awkward and unattractive.
“Got it?” he asked.
She handed him the suitcase. Without even looking inside, he gave her the address book.
“You’ll find what you need to know in there,” he said. “Nice doing business with you.”
He walked away, in the same direction he had come from. Jo watched him go, frozen in her place, thinking that without the stocking over his face, he really looked nothing like what she had expected. He bent down to avoid a low-hanging branch, and she made a slight gasp as she realized what she should have known as soon as he stood right in front of her, not to mention when he spoke. That wasn’t him.
The man from last night hadn’t been that tall!
“It’s not him, it’s not him!” she whispered urgently, but it was too late.
On the other side of the bushes, she could hear yelling, the squeal of what sounded like several sirens, and the screech of brakes.
They were tipping their hand and busting the wrong man. Quickly, she flipped through the address book, desperate for some clue as to where he had planted the bomb. They might have nabbed the wrong guy, but at least they could save the person whose life or home was in danger.
Chuck sped from the park, back toward Jo’s house. As he went, he dialed the number for Jo Tulip’s cell phone, glad to hear her answer after only two rings.
“You think that was clever?” he asked when she answered. “You think I didn’t know you had called the police?”
“Where is it?” she demanded. “Where did you plant the bomb?”
Obviously, she had gone through her little address book and not found any indication of what he had done.
“Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t we find out? Listen carefully.”
He hung up the phone as he turned on to her street. When he reached her house, he went past the driveway and proceeded another hundred feet. Then he held up his hand and pressed the detonator.
Jo Tulip’s house exploded.
Chuck tossed the detonator onto the floor and rammed his foot down on the accelerator, making it around the block and down the road before the neighbors even had the chance to run out to their front yards to see what was going on.
She wanted to play games, did she? Well, he had a game for her. It was called Countdown to the Money.
Jo stood there beside the mausoleum, cell phone in one hand and address book in the other. Somewhere not too far away had been a big boom. It had sounded like a distant cannon shot, and then it was done.
Her heart in her throat, Jo ran across the grass and cut through the bushes, the same way the man had gone. On the other side, half of the bomb squad was there, along with a number of cops and cop cars. The man with the rotten teeth had been arrested, and they were just pushing him into the backseat of a police car.
“I didn’t do anything!” he kept saying. “Some guy paid me to come here and make the exchange!”
Jo spotted the bomb unit director and she ran to him.
“Did you hear that?” Jo demanded. “A bomb! It went off! Over that way!”
She pointed toward a plume of dark smoke rising toward the sky.
“The man called me, just now,” she added. “Said he knew I had brought in the cops, and then he blew up the bomb.”
The director called out to a few of his men and they all jumped into their van and took off to find the source of the smoke. Jo ran back and got her own car. She was afraid that the smoke was coming from Danny’s house, but as she drove closer, she realized that it was her own home, completely engulfed in flames.
Her beautiful house. All of her things. Her refuge. Her home.
In shock, Jo was silent as she pulled to a stop along the side of the street behind the van. Slowly, she climbed out, but as she did, the cell phone rang again.
“You think that was the only bomb I’ve planted today?” the man asked when she answered. “Guess again. Only, the next one isn’t in an empty house. This place has people in it.”
“No. Stop. Please. What do you want?”
“I want the money.”
“I don’t have it. I pretended I did to buy some time. But I’ve never had it. I was only bluffing.”
He was quiet for a long moment.
“I read all of the names in your address book,” he said. “Trust me, I know who you’ve been working with.”
The sound of a siren grew louder, and suddenly a big red fire truck was turning onto her street. Jo stepped onto the grass and watched as the massive vehicle pulled to a stop in front of her house. When the siren ceased and firefighters began climbing out, she spoke again.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Who I’ve been working with?”
“This is getting old,” he replied. “To get the stains out of the money. I’m not stupid.”
“Well, then I guess I am,” she said, “because I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Finally, Jo caught the eye of the bomb squad chief. She waved him over and then held a finger to her lips to keep him from speaking.
“Listen,” she said into the phone. “Why don’t you tell me where you’ve put the next bomb so that no one will get hurt.”
“Bring me the money—the real money this time—and I will.”
“I can’t bring you money that I don’t have,” she said, her mind racing. “But there is something I can bring.”
“Oh, yeah? What?”
“I can bring you your wife.”
28
Danny had had enough. He flew across town in his car, breaking every speed limit to get to Jo. He’d been listening to all of the tactical communications along with Jo’s wire, and the pain and fear in her voice as she got those phone calls was palpable.
He screeched to a stop on her street, shocked to see that the fire had nearly consumed her house, though it looked as though the office had been spared for now. He rolled down the window to speak to a group of women he recognized as neighbors standing and watching nearby.
“Why aren’t they putting it out?”
“They said something about a bomb,” a woman told him. “It’s not safe for the firefighters to get too close.”
Sure enough, it seemed as if they were being forced to keep their distance, spraying the hoses as best they could toward the flames while standing in the road. They had obviously wet down the yard and the neighboring houses; now it seemed that all that remained was for the fire to burn itself out while they contained it. Then perhaps the bomb squad would move in and see what form the explosives had taken.
Danny scanned the crowd, a surge of relief bringing tears to his eyes when he finally spotted Jo. She was standing between several officials, but when she saw Danny getting out of his car and struggling to get on his crutches, she broke away and came toward him, her cell phone in her hand.
He saw her coming, so he gave up on the crutches and balanced himself against the car. She fell against him and he wrapped his arms tightly around her. They simply stood there for a long moment, holding each other close.
“I cannot ever lose you,” he whispered.
“You never will,” she replied.
Then her cell phone rang.
Jo answered the call, pulling away from Danny as she did so.
“Hello?” she said, her voice shaky at best.
“Did you work it out?” Chuck asked.
“I think so,” she replied. “They’re talking with the chief now. Lettie should be released momentarily.”
“I want you to meet up with her at the police station and wait there for my call. I’ll get back to you in exactly ten minutes.”
“Where’s the bomb, Chuck?”
“Somewhere populated,” he replied.
Then he hung up.
Jo stifled a scream of frustration. Did this sick man enjoy playing cat and mouse with her?
What a stupid question. Obviously he did or he wouldn’t keep calling. In the meantime, the cops were working to evacuate everyone on Jo’s list, the firemen were working to put out the fire, and the bomb squad was suiting up for whatever might come next. Apparently, the fellow with the bad teeth was claiming that Chuck had been asking around for the sophisticated plastic explosive Semtex, but word on the street was that all he’d been able to acquire was detonation cord. From where Jo was standing, she didn’t think it mattered all that much what sort of bomb he had used; her house was burning down regardless.
