He began to consider various ways of getting out of California, which he would have to do whether things went badly or they went well. He could buy airline tickets for flights leaving each day from the four major airports — Los Angeles International, Ontario, Long Beach, and Burbank. He supposed the safest way would be to reserve one flight from each airport each day. The flights didn’t have to be long, so he could cut the cost by picking cheap flights — say, a hundred dollars. That would bring it down. If he had a ticket for one cheap flight at one airport every day, it would be $36,500 a year. If he booked all four of them for three months it would be the same price, $36,500. There might be some sort of open-ended ticket he could keep renewing for even less, or something else that was less likely to be noticed by the authorities. He decided to work out a travel plan and implement it. He would also look into the idea of having flights from airports farther away from Los Angeles, in case he needed an airport after an attack, when local ones were likely to be shut down. He would also have to think about hidden cars and other ways to get to an airport.
Maybe his house was his call to a bluff, as it always had been. He was comfortable spending most hours of every day inside this enormous bomb. Think you’re tough? You’re a pure-souled fearless fanatic who smiles as he provokes death? Come stand beside me while I work in this munitions dump.
He kept at it all day and into the evening, making the substances he would need. When he finally gave himself permission to rest, he meticulously cleaned, locked up, and showered, then put on clean clothes before he washed the ones that might have specks of volatile substances on them. When he played back the evening news, he was shocked.
The news anchor said, “A source close to the mayor’s office said today that a preliminary investigation had begun in the murder of Channel Ten’s Gloria Hedlund. The source confirmed that one person of interest is former police captain Richard Stahl, the subject of Miss Hedlund’s final on-air exposé.”
36
The next day the bomb maker watched the television news while he ate his lunch, and he could see that the story had begun to grow and flower since last night. Matt Jeffrey was interviewing a retired prosecutor named Etsky on Channel Twelve. Jeffrey said, “Why are the police investigating Richard Stahl for the murder of Gloria Hedlund?”
“I hadn’t heard it referred to that way. In a murder of a high-profile public figure, the police have many leads, and many possibilities. They plunge into the investigation and try to eliminate as many people as they can right away. The last I heard, Mr. Stahl was a person of interest, not a suspect.”
“Aren’t those just two stages in one process?”
“Sort of,” said Etsky. “Generally, there are many persons of interest, but only one becomes a suspect. Even then, a suspect is innocent until proven guilty. We’re far from a trial, and the police haven’t released any information they’ve found pertaining to him.”
“We do know some things. He’s a man who hadn’t been on the police force for eight years, but who was appointed to take over the Bomb Squad after the mass murder of half the squad. The chief jumped over the heads of fourteen serving Bomb Squad members to make him their boss. Stahl immediately proceeded to defuse at least four very large and complicated bombs, almost single-handedly.”
Etsky said, “Yes, I can see what you’re wondering about. It’s not unheard of that a public official might come in and save the day in an emergency, and then turn out to be the one who caused it. There have been fire officials who set fires, either to expand their reputations or to create a need for their services. And, of course, there have been police officers who committed crimes and pretended to solve them.”
“I’m just thinking, who would know better how to defuse a sophisticated bomb than the man who built it? Just wondering if you’ve heard anything from the police about that.”
“No.”
“And there is the fact that on the very day Richard Stahl was forced to resign by Gloria Hedlund’s reporting, Gloria was killed with a bomb.”
“That could be a coincidence,” Etsky said. “These bombs have been planted all over the city for about two months — long before she reported on Stahl.”
“But loss of a reputation is enough to make a man want revenge. It does provide a motive, doesn’t it?”
“Some people would say that. But a motive is a subjective thing. For some people, thinking someone is staring at them is a motive for murder. For others it takes much, much more.”
“But not everybody has the makings of a bomb on hand. It’s a very small percentage of the population. Because of all of the bombs that have been defused, wouldn’t the squad have access to lots of explosives kept for evidence?”
“Now we’re straying far beyond my field of expertise. I’ve never prosecuted a bombing case, but I’m not sure they keep explosives for evidence after they’ve identified them. They do keep some explosives of their own for detonating suspicious devices.”
“I’m just pointing out that he had the motive. He had the means. And the explosion occurred after one a.m. Mr. Stahl had finished his final day of duty on the police force six hours earlier. Six hours. That’s the opportunity.”
The television screen filled with a shot of the interior of the studio, and the new anchorwoman said, “Thanks to Matt Jeffrey and former prosecutor Etsky for that interview. We’ll be back in a moment with more news.”
The bomb maker switched channels to see what the other local stations were covering at noon. Channel Ten was running interminable coverage of the death of its reporter, Gloria Hedlund. It kept showing the shot taken by the surveillance cameras on the studio roof. He could see the flash and the nearby cars bounce once from the detonation, and then the Ferrari spinning into the air and falling in flames. He was pleased to see that the anchors didn’t show the tow truck, which had left forty minutes earlier. They didn’t seem to have made the connection.
After that they showed a report giving a biography of Gloria Hedlund, with pictures from early beauty contests across the South and a much younger Gloria looking like a blond goddess in front of groups of shorter, darker, and nearly identical contestants. Then there was a succession of shots from television stations in Charlotte and other cities, all the way up to shots from Los Angeles, taken twenty-five years later.
The bomb maker set the schedule control to make sure the local news was recorded beginning at five o’clock, and then turned off the TV. He had work to do this afternoon.
He had learned that in addition to killing the woman reporter, his bomb had succeeded in neutralizing the best bomb expert, the commander of the only opposing force that mattered to him, and making him a suspect. It was time to press his advantage. He had been working on some devices, and now it was time to finish them and put them into the field.
The surprising developments surrounding Dick Stahl had changed everything. The bomb maker had killed Gloria Hedlund only because he wanted to keep up the atmosphere of panic, and for that he needed to kill someone known to the public. He had chosen her only because there was something about her he hadn’t liked. But now Stahl was out for good.
Stahl had been the man he feared most. Stahl had ruined his car bomb at the gas station, rendered his elevator bomb a waste of effort, and correctly read the bomb he’d planted in the school cafeteria. Stahl had nearly rebuilt the Bomb Squad to full strength faster than the bomb maker could destroy them.