Run the Risk (31 page)

“We need to focus on the bomb,” Harrison said.

“Damnit, tell me what it said.”

Chavez's voice came over the radio. “Alex, we think she's gone.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head as he spoke.

“I don't believe that.”

“Alex—”

“No.”

I turned the radio off and caught a glimpse of the fifty-three floats lined up for the beginning of the five-and-a-half-mile parade. Block after block of what looked like animated Hallmark cards the size of semi trucks with every inch covered in flowers as if they had sprouted naturally as a result of the winter rains. It was the perfect symbol that all that was needed to make anything happen in California were dreams and water. And nothing had ever stopped the parade, not for 115 years.

We reached the turn to the arroyo and drove past the squad securing the entrance. Down below, a hundred feet from where the Mexican major had been found floating in the pool, a bomb disposal container sat in the center of the parking lot surrounded by a fifty-foot safe zone in case I . . . in case I went off.

James drove the squad past the waiting officers and into the center of the safety zone, then opened the door.

“You're supposed to wait here.”

I nodded.

“Good luck, Lieutenant. I hope they're wrong about your daughter.”

She walked away quickly as Harrison, carrying a bag, approached, wearing a large Kevlar vest and a helmet with a bulletproof visor. In the distance I could see Chavez and Hicks watching helplessly. I opened my door, placed my feet on the ground, and remained seated until Harrison crossed the fifty feet and knelt down in front of me. His eyes met mine.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded, such as it was.

His eyes moved to the bomb. There was none of the college whiz kid visible in his eyes when he saw what he was facing.

“This is more complicated than the other one,” he said matter-of-factly.

He reached up and slipped his helmet off and set it on the hood of the car.

“I wish you would put that back on.”

“If this goes off, that helmet won't help.”

He reached around his back and unfastened the Kevlar vest and slid that off, too.

“How much time do you think we have?” Harrison asked.

I looked at my watch.

“Thirty minutes.”

He shook his head. “That's not enough.”

“He's expecting me to walk out onto Colorado when the first band rounds the corner at Orange Grove.”

He studied the vest for a moment, then shook his head at some private calculation.

“I need you to take off the windbreaker so I can see the back of it.”

I stood up, and he moved behind me and gently slid the jacket down my arms.

“How does it look from back there?”

“A lot like the front.”

He stepped back around and continued studying the wiring.

“Did he tape anything to you, or can you feel wires touching your skin?”

“I don't think so.”

“Good.”

“How good?”

“He could be running a low-voltage circuit through your body. Break the circuit . . . bang.”

He covered every inch of the device looking for a weakness, a flaw in the conception.

“I need you to tell me something,” I said.

His eyes paused momentarily in their search.

“Okay.”

“Did he say that he killed Lacy in the journal?”

He reluctantly nodded.

“Did he specify
when
in relation to the other events?”

He thought for a moment, working his way through the text. “No.”

“Then she's still alive.”

Harrison looked up from the bomb.

“Okay,” he said, gently questioning.

“He won't kill Lacy until the phone call.”

“I don't follow.”

“When the parade begins and I walk out onto Colorado.”

Harrison nodded. “That was in the journal.”

“The phone in the vest rings, and I'm supposed to hear that she's all right. That's when he would tell me she's about to die. I would hear her cry for . . . He wouldn't miss that opportunity to manipulate and control. He lives for it, needs it as much as we need air to breathe.”

Harrison thought about it for a second and then nodded in agreement.

“Godlike.”

“Not any god I know.”

We looked at each other in silence for a moment, then his eyes returned to the vest.

“I'm figuring there're at least four triggers. The motion
sensor's one. All the wires wrapped around the vest are the second; one of those is attached to a detonator. We try to cut the vest, or slide it over your head . . .”

“And the other two?”

“The other two I'm not sure about. I need to check under your shirt to make sure there're no leads attached. Are you wearing a bra?”

“Is there some misinformation about my figure that's given you the impression I need one?”

Harrison's eyes softened for a moment and he nearly smiled. He reached out and unbuttoned my pants, then carefully pulled my shirttails out as he stepped around behind me.

“Try not to move. This will be tight, but I think there's just enough room.”

He slid his hand under the shirt and gently felt his way up my back to my neck.

“Nothing back here.”

“If you say that about my chest, you're in big trouble.”

He stepped around in front and slipped his hand under my shirt and began walking his fingers up my stomach. Just below my breast, he stopped, and I felt the wire that I hadn't noticed before. My heart jumped and my breath came up short.

“Oh, God . . . Can you—”

“Just breathe normally.”

He looked into my eyes reassuringly. “I have to find the other lead.”

I nodded and closed my eyes as his hand worked its way to just below my other breast, where it stopped on the other wire. He then slipped his hand out from under my shirt.

“Is this one a problem?”

He reached into an equipment bag and pulled out some clips and a wire. “Only if I make a mistake.”

He slipped his hand back under my shirt and began to carefully attach the clips and the wire to the leads.

“I saw his eyes, Harrison.”

He continued to work to attach the clips to the leads.

“The drawing of Gabriel is a fabrication. He doesn't exist. It's how he's hidden.”

He finished attaching one of the clips then slipped his hand across my chest to the other.

“He befriends one of his victims to give us a description then kills them later.”

“Philippe,” Harrison said, without looking up.

I nodded.

“He must have done the same thing in France.”

The words hung uncomfortably in the air for a moment, though I wasn't sure why. I heard the faint click of the second clip being attached to the lead, then Harrison withdrew his hand, picked up a small wire cutter and eased it up under my shirt. The absurdity that it took a bomb to feel the thin, soft hair of a man's arm on my chest made me want to cry, or laugh, I wasn't sure which.

Harrison positioned the blades of the clippers against the wire. I could feel its cold steel just above the warmth of his hand.

“If I've made a mistake, neither of us will know it.”

He looked up at me and I nodded.

“Cut it,” I whispered.

The muscles of his hand contracted and the blades sliced through the wire without a sound. He closed his eyes for a moment, a prayer, maybe, then took a deep, thankful breath.

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded.

He slid his hand out from under my shirt then settled his eyes grimly on the motion detector.

“Be very still,” he said softly as he moved in close to examine the sensor.

The words that I had left hanging surfaced again and demanded attention.

“What did I say about France?”

He glanced up from the bomb without having heard a word. “I'm a little busy.”

I ran quickly back through it.

“He befriends a victim then kills them after they've given the description.”

Harrison reluctantly took his attention away from the device. “Why is that important?”

I thought about it for a moment, but I had only gone through the report once, and that seemed like a lifetime ago.

“What's important is that . . .” The details slipped past my fingertips just out of reach.

“Shit.”

And then it settled right in front of me as if it were an answer in a trivia game.

“What's important is that it didn't happen.”

He looked at me, a question forming in his eyes. “What didn't happen?”

“The victim who gave the description in France survived. He wasn't killed.”

“He was lucky.”

Even before he had finished saying the words, Harrison looked at me and shook his head. The words just didn't fit, didn't apply to Gabriel, not “luck.”

“You don't believe that either?”

“No. He survived for a reason.”

“But what reason?”

“The simplest is always the best.”

“If you can see it.”

Harrison thought about it for a moment, but it eluded him.

I took a leap. “Why did Gabriel cut off Philippe's head?”

The lines around Harrison's eyes tightened as he pictured the scene in the Dumpster.

“To scare the hell out of us.”

“He's already done that. Why else?”

“To make ID impossible.”

“But why? What doesn't he want us to know?”

Harrison shook his head.

“There's a picture in my shirt pocket. Can you reach under the vest and get it?”

Harrison gently eased his hand in between the vest and
my shirt until he reached the pocket and slid the photograph out. He then inched his hand back out from under the vest, holding the photograph from Philippe's apartment.

I took it and looked at the eyes, but the detail wasn't there. It was too wide a shot.

“That doesn't help.”

I stared at the picture for another moment. He was standing in front of a large white building. There was writing above the entrance in French. There were cars, pedestrians, and—

“What are you looking for?”

“This.”

I held the photograph out and pointed to a blurry object moving in the background. Harrison studied it for a moment.

“An ambulance.”

“Look at the writing above the entrance. What is that?”

“I think it's a hospital.”

“Why would you take a snapshot in front of a hospital?”

“You don't—” He saw it. “Oh, Jesus.”

“It's where he killed his first victim,” I said.

“The murders in the hospital.”

I nodded. “This was the first picture for his collection.”

Harrison looked at me dumbfounded. “Philippe is Gabriel.”

I thought about it a moment to be sure.

“When I was blindfolded, Gabriel knew your name, but I had never mentioned it. He knew you because you took the bomb off his lap in Philippe's apartment.”

The pieces tumbled together like building blocks.

“And he wasn't taken from the safe house. He just cut his own hand and climbed out the window.”

It all made sense in a way it hadn't before, and the understanding only made my feelings of personal failure more profound. To have had a killer in custody and to have released him is every cop's nightmare.

“The body in the Dumpster is a security guard for Armed Response.”

“He had to know that we would eventually find that out.”

“But by then he'd be gone, so it wouldn't matter.”

We looked at each other in disbelief, and then tears filled my eyes.

“Goddamn, we had him.”

I buried my face in my hands and began to tremble with a flood of emotions.

“He fooled us all, not just you,” Harrison said.

I looked at him and shook my head.

“It's my case . . . mine.”

Harrison started to speak but held it. There was nothing to say, nothing more to understand.