Still breathing hard from the run, Kevin dropped back down and buried his face in the grass.
19
Sunday
Night
THE LIBRARY EXPLOSION on the heels of the bus bomb put Long Beach at the world’s center stage. All the networks played and replayed live footage of the library being blown to smithereens, courtesy of an alert student. Helicopters circled the hole that had been a building and relayed stunning images to millions of glued viewers. The world had seen this before and everyone had the same question on their minds: Terrorism?
But the explosion was the work of a madman known only as the Riddle Killer, the networks all said. Miraculously, no one had been hurt in the blast; in fact, no life had been taken by any of the three incidents. Nevertheless, they all knew it was only a matter of time. He’d killed in Sacramento; he would kill in Long Beach. Unless the authorities stopped him first. Unless his intended victim, Kevin Parson, confessed what the killer demanded he confess. Where was Kevin Parson? He’d last been seen running from the building with a woman, an FBI agent by some accounts. They had them on the student’s video. Stunning footage.
The ATF had entered the fray after the first bomb; now they came in force. The state police, local police, sheriff, a half-dozen other task forces all poured over the library.
Jennifer did her best to keep Kevin beyond the reach of the media’s long tentacles while making sense of the scene. She avoided Milton, for the simple reason that she didn’t trust herself in his presence. He’d come within a few seconds of killing Kevin and countless others by talking to the press. If she’d been frustrated with him before, the sight of him running to and fro made her seethe now.
Still, he was an integral part of the investigation, and she couldn’t avoid him once he finished his rounds with the press.
“You knew this was coming?” he demanded.
“Not now, Milton.”
He took her arm and steered her away from the onlookers, squeezing with enough force to hurt her. “You were here. That means you knew. How long did you know?”
“Let go,” she snapped.
He released her arm and glanced over her shoulder, smiling. “The word negligencemean anything to you, Agent Peters?”
“The word carnagemean anything to you, Detective Milton? I knew because he wanted me to know. You didn’t know about the library because he said that if you were told, he’d blow the building early. In fact, he did blow it early, because you had to announce to the world that we’d found Kevin. You, sir, are lucky we got out when we did or you’d have at leasttwo dead bodies on your hands. Don’t ever touch me again.”
“We could have put a bomb squad in there.”
“Is there something with the air down here that messes with your hearing? What part of ‘he told us he’d blow the building early’ didn’t penetrate that thick skull of yours? You almost killed us!”
“You’re posing a danger to my city, and if you think I’m just going to stand by and let you, you’re naive.”
“And you’re posing a danger to Kevin. Take it up with the bureau chief.”
His eyes narrowed for a brief second, then he smiled again. “We’re not through with this.”
“Sure we are.” She walked away. If not for the fact that half the world was watching, she might have taken the man’s tie and shoved it down his throat. It took her thirty seconds to put the man out of her mind. She had more important things to dwell on than an overzealous fool. So she told herself, but in reality Milton sat in her gut like a sour pill.
Two questions soon preoccupied her mind. First, had anybody seen a stranger enter the library in the past twenty-four hours? And second, had anybody seen Kevinenter the library in the last twenty-four hours? Samantha had raised the question of Kevin’s involvement, and although Jennifer knew the idea was ridiculous, the question raised others. Samantha’s theory that someone on the inside might be somehow tied to Slater bothered her.
The Riddle Killer was remarkably elusive. The last three days were no exception. Sam was in Texas, flushing out something that had her hopes high. No doubt she’d come waltzing in tomorrow with a new theory that would set them back to square one. Actually, the CBI agent was beginning to grow on her, but jurisdiction had a way of straining the best relationships.
As it turned out, no one had seen a stranger around the library. And no one had seen Kevin. The front desk receptionist would have remembered Kevin—he was an avid reader. Short of bypassing the security system, of which there was no evidence, the likelihood of anyone entering the library unseen was small. Carl had been in the closet yesterday morning and there’d been no bomb, which meant Slater had found a way in since then, either at night or under their noses, unrecognized. How?
An hour after the explosion, Jennifer sat across from Kevin in a small Chinese restaurant and tried to distract him with small talk while they ate. But neither of them was good at small talk.
They went back to the warehouse at nine, this time armed with high-powered halogens that lit up the interior like a football field. Kevin walked through the scene with her. But now it was nearing midnight, and he was half-asleep on his feet. Unlike the library, the warehouse was still silent. No police, no ATF, only FBI.
She hadn’t bothered to tell Milton about the incident at the warehouse. She would as soon as she was done with it. She’d explained the situation to Frank, and he’d finally agreed to her reasoning, but he wasn’t happy with it. He was getting an earful from a dozen different sources. The governor wanted this tied up now. Washington was starting to apply pressure too. They were running out of time. If another bomb went off, they might take the case from her.
Jennifer glanced at Kevin, who leaned his head back against the wall in the reception area, eyes closed. She entered a ten-by-ten office storage room where they were compiling evidence for delivery to the lab. Under other circumstances, she would probably be doing this back at her desk, but Milton would be breathing down her neck. Besides, proximity favored the storage room, so Galager had transferred what he needed from the van and set up temporary shop here.
“Any conclusions, Bill?”
Galager leaned over a drawing of the warehouse floor plan, on which he’d painstakingly redrawn the footprints as they appeared.
“Best as I can tell, Slater entered and left through the fire escape. We have a single set of footprints coming and going, which correlates with the testimony. He walks up and down the hall a half-dozen times, waiting for Kevin to show, descends the stairs at least twice, springs his trap, and ends up in this room here.” He tapped the room next to Kevin’s hiding place.
“How did he lock the door? He shut it with the string, but Sam told me it was open when they first arrived.”
“We can only assume that he had the lock rigged somehow. It’s feasible that with a hard knock the lock could engage.”
“Seems thin,” Jennifer said. “So we have him entering and leaving through the fire escape. Kevin enters and leaves through the front door. What about the footprints themselves?”
“When all is said and done, there are only four clear prints, all of which we’ve casted and photographed. Problem is, they’re all from the hallway and the stairs where both Kevin and Slater walked. Same size. Same basic shape. Both hard-soled and similar to what Kevin is wearing—impossible to visually determine which is which. The lab will break it down.”
Jennifer considered his report. Sam hadn’t entered the building, which was good thinking. But she hadn’t seen Slater come or go either.
“What about the recording?” Galager had already transferred the data to a tape, which he had in a small recorder on the table.
“Again, the lab will have to tell us what they can come up with, but it sounds clean to me. This is the first recording from the hotel room.” He punched the play button. Two voices filled the speaker. Slater and Samantha.