“Did they tell you who we are sitting on, and why we are looking for him?”
“They mentioned him, and they mentioned the FBI, but they didn’t mention you. So please go somewhere else, ’cause as of now, this is an active investigation scene.”
“Look, we’ve got sixty-two years between us as cops. This is our guy. We found him.”
“I respect that and all, but you are going to have to move. Sorry.”
Tommy got a lift from the station and was dropped off at the Milk Barn on 25A, half a mile from his house. It was nine in the morning and he’d been up all night. It had certainly been worth it. He hadn’t observed any change in the security at the tank farm facility. This made him very confident about tonight’s mission. After selecting his groceries, milk, two microwavable bacon-and-egg burritos, and a six-pack of Coke, he threw down a fifty-dollar bill, more of the largess from his mailed-in proceeds, and exited, not waiting for change or a receipt.
Tommy was trudging up the hill behind his house when he spotted the cop car a block away. Although groggy, his sixth sense stopped him cold. For a few minutes, while his mind raced with scenarios, he saw no other activity, just a cop sitting in the car. Am I being paranoid? How could anyone have found out about me? He was sixteen hours away from his greatest personal triumph … one that would make the Sperling bombing, with its eight dead and thousands displaced from toxic clouds, look like a footnote in the history of the great struggle. After toying with the idea of just walking home and playing the odds that this was a cop napping on the job, he erred on the side of safety. He eyed a gas can on the side of the old shed he was behind.
“Goddamn it!” was all that Dennis could manage when Davis reached him by phone to report that he was rousted from his perch by a local cop. Dennis immediately called Agent Burrell. This time she picked up her cell.
“Brooke, I told your guy my guys would wait for your team to show up. How come you sent in the locals?”
“Dennis, it wasn’t me. All I can tell you is that it was a procedural snafu. But it’s all academic now.”
“Do I want to hear this?”
Dennis saw the fire equipment and hoses being loaded back onto fire trucks as he pulled up to Regan’s house. A garage, or something, was totally burned to the ground two houses down from Regan’s. Dennis knew exactly what happened. Regan got spooked by the blue-and-white unit and started the fire to distract the local cop. Regan then slipped in and out of the house. Interestingly enough, the Camaro was gone. As Dennis approached the FBI team, he was hoping they had already impounded it.
“No, we didn’t,” an angry Brooke Burrell, said. “It wasn’t here when my team arrived. The tags came back registered to a woman in upstate New York, who’s been dead for twenty-five years.”
“So a fire just happens a hundred feet from a stakeout and somehow the subject has time to jump-start his car and leave without being noticed?”
A fire chief wearing a white hat passed them. He held a scorched gas can gingerly, using a branch stuck through its handle to avoid smearing any latent fingerprints. “My guess is we found the accelerant. It was lying at the point of origin.” He continued over to his red GMC Suburban.
“Can I at least look inside?”
Brooke glared at him. “No … but I can escort you.”
Inside, Dennis immediately noticed something missing. “There was a backpack here on the table last night.”
“I am not going to ask how you know that.”
“For Christ’s sake, Brooke, stop playing ‘by the book’ with me. Your pages got too many holes in ’em. And for your information, Lady Justice, all I did was look through the window with a flashlight.”
“Sorry, Dennis. I don’t want some lawyer throwing out evidence when we catch this guy.”
An FBI agent in a mask and rubber gloves approached them. He eyed Dennis and delayed speaking.
“It’s okay, he’s cleared.”
“This guy was a science nut or something. We found receipts for gyroscopes, magnets, batteries, and the like.”
“Agent Burrell, I think you should call in the bomb squad. Do a trace element check for explosives.” Mallory realized he sounded like he was ordering her and hoped she didn’t take it that way.
“Already called in. We’ve got his computer on the way to the Electronics Crime Lab. And we are getting prints, tire tread, and fiber samples. Washington is getting his military service and medical records from the Department of Defense and we’re pulling pubic hairs off his soap for DNA samples.”
“Pleasant thought, Brooke.”
As they walked outside, Dennis spied an agent bending over with a pair of forceps and placing a small piece of paper into an evidence bag.
“May I see that?”
The agent deferred to Burrell and she nodded.
“Burger King, Vince Lombardi Rest Area, NJT. Dated today. 2:33 AM.”
“Jersey?” Dennis turned around and faced the four plaster casts that were starting to set in the tire ruts where the Camaro had been sitting. “Our boy reached in his pocket for his keys and the last thing he put in fell out. The receipt!” Dennis then noticed a Quickstart battery jumper on the side of the driveway. A note found a few feet away read, “I’ll pick it up tomorrow afternoon. Arnold.”
“Let’s be here when Arnold comes to get it.”
“Already on it.”
“I have to think this through. Brooke, can I come by your office later and see what more you have?”
“Sure. Sorry about the snafu.”
“It didn’t always go perfect for me either.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Back at the GlobalSync office, Dennis used the low-tech comfort of a blackboard and chalk to figure out if there was a pony somewhere in the pile of Thomas Regan’s horseshit. The good news was that his protectee, Miles Taggert, had very little contact with, or reason to ever be in, New Jersey. Still, his team had the GlobalSync building and both of Taggert’s residences locked down.
Since the empirical evidence pointed to the fact that Miles was not a likely target of this nut, Dennis was free to dabble in a little extra-credit thinking. He was, at the end of the day, still a cop, and Thomas Regan was a crime waiting to happen. He could no sooner drop this than walk away from the trail of an eight-point buck on a beautiful day.
His main question was how and why a man would board a train on Long Island, east of New York, and wind up, at 2:33 in the morning, west of the city in New Jersey … at a rest area that can only be reached by car, no less. Why return to Long Island only to disappear? Why risk arson and boldly steal his own car right out from under the cops? He needed something desperately enough to risk capture … what was there last night that wasn’t there this morning? The backpack! He needed the backpack. Now it made sense. Forensics showed positive results for plastic explosive residue on the kitchen table and towels. “Suicide bomber?” he said out loud.
Scribbling the words “New Jersey Turnpike” in the center of the blackboard, he went over to the laminated write-on, wipe-off map he ordered to keep track of the various postmarked locations from which the threat letters were mailed. It now served to lay out the Tri-State area for Dennis and his extracurricular exercise of “Where’s Tommy.” He drew a red circle encompassing the maximum round-trip range at the barely legal speed of sixty-five miles per hour. Between the time he was spotted at Penn last night and his return to torch the garage this morning, had his car been in working order, Thomas could have reached any destination within that circle. He centered the timings around the 2:33 AM time stamp on the rest stop receipt. He made a mental note to get the FBI to pull all traffic summonses written last month in New Jersey for a Camaro or, God forbid it should happen the easy way, one Thomas Regan.