Tick Tock - James Patterson [12]
“Jesus Christ. On whose eyes? Lawrence of Arabia’s?” said Chief McGinnis, making a spectacle of himself as usual.
“Who found the device?” asked Flaum, the tall, professorial-looking Intel head.
“An NYU student pointed out the unattended laptop to a security guard,” Cell said, jumping in. “The guard opened it, saw the message, ordered an evac, and called us.”
“Don’t they have a security check there?” Ciardi said.
“Yeah, some summer kid checks bags,” I said, looking at my notes. “But that’s just so people don’t steal books. Patrons can take laptops in. He said that white Apple laptops are all he sees every day.”
“What about security cameras?” said the stocky Counterterrorism chief.
“Deactivated due to a huge ongoing reno,” I said.
“Any threats from your end that might be relevant to this, Ted?” Assistant Commissioner Sander Flaum asked the senior FBI rep.
The taller of the two Feds shook his head.
“Chatter hasn’t increased,” he said. “Though Hezbollah likes to use plastique.”
Hezbollah? I thought. That was crazy. Or was it?
“You always seem to be in the middle of this kind of crap, Bennett,” the chops-busting chief of detectives, McGinnis, said. “What’s your professional opinion?”
“Actually, my gut says it’s a lone nut,” I said. “If it were Hezbollah, why not just set it off? An attention-seeking nut with some particularly dangerous mechanical skills seems to be a better fit.”
There was a lot of grumbling. The idea that the bomb might not be terrorism wasn’t a particularly popular one. After all, if it was just a lone, sick freak, then why were we all here?
“What about the explosive?” the Intel chief said. “It’s from overseas. Maybe the whole nutcase note thing is just window dressing in order to get us off balance. Are nuts usually this organized?”
“You’d be surprised,” Miriam said.
“If there aren’t any objections, I say we keep it in Major Case until further notice,” said the Counterterrorism head as he glanced impatiently around the table.
I was thinking about voicing an objection of my own about how I was supposed to be on vacation, until Miriam gave me a look.
“And try to keep your face from appearing on TV, huh, Bennett? This is a confidential case,” McGirth said as I was leaving. “I know how hard you find that at times.”
I was opening my mouth to return a pithy comment when Miriam appeared at my back and ushered me out.
Chapter 12
WITH THAT BUREAUCRATIC HURDLE painfully tripped over, we headed back to Manhattan. Sunday or no Sunday, we needed to go to our squad room on the eleventh floor of One Police Plaza in order to put together a Major Case Squad task force on the Lawrence Bomber Case, as we were now calling it.
I followed Miriam’s Honda through Queens and over the 59th Street Bridge. Beyond the windshield, Manhattan’s countless windows seemed to stare at me through the bridge’s rusty girders. The thought that somebody behind one of them might be right now meticulously plotting to blow up his fellow human beings was not a comforting one. Especially as I hurried across the rattletrap bridge.
I received a text on my smartphone as we arrived downtown and snuck in through the back door of HQ.
It was from Emily Parker, an FBI agent I’d worked with on my last case. We’d stayed close since the investigation, so I knew Emily worked a desk at the Bureau’s VICAP, Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which dealt with cheerful things like homicides, sexual assaults, and unidentified human remains.
Just heard about ur performance at NYCT Blue. Don’t u love working weekends? U the primary on the Library Bomb thing?
Talk about a security leak, I thought. How the hell had she found out about our secret meeting this fast on a Sunday? One of her fellow FBI agents at the meeting must have told her, I surmised. She wouldn’t actually go out with one of those organic-food-eating geeks, would she?
The fact was, Emily was an attractive lady to whom I’d become quite attached. Not quite firmly enough for my liking, but I did get to sample her lipstick in the back of a taxi after the case’s conclusion.