'But why Robert?' Abbie asked in apparent disbelief. 'He's responsible for taking Deems off of death row.'
'Deems is a sadist. Maybe he wants to kill you, but only after he's made you suffer by killing someone close to you.'
Abbie looked dazed. 'First the attempted break-in, then the attack on the coast. Now Robert is dead. I don't believe this is happening.'
'You're going to be all right, Abbie. We'll protect you and we'll find the person who killed Robert. But you have to be careful. You have to take this very seriously.'
Abbie nodded slowly. 'You're right. I can't believe I went off by myself tonight.'
'What were you doing out so late?'
'I got a call about a case. This man wanted me to meet him, but he didn't show up.'
'What time was this?'
'Around nine.'
Abbie paused, suddenly realizing why Stamm was asking about the call.
'You don't think the call and the bombing are connected, do you?' Abbie asked, but Stamm was not listening. He turned to one of the officers.
'Move your car away from the house, fast. Then get on the radio to Paul Torino. He's still at Justice Griffen's house. Tell him I need the bomb squad over here, right away.'
Stamm pulled Abbie to her feet and started dragging her toward his car.'
'What are you doing?' Abbie asked, still too dazed to realize what was frightening the district attorney.
'I'm getting you away from the house until the bomb squad's checked it thoroughly. If you've been out since nine, the person who set the bomb in your husband's car would have had plenty of time to rig something here.'
Chapter ELEVEN
The small windowless room in the basement garage of the Portland Police Bureau looked more like a storeroom than the office of the bomb squad.
Its walls were unpainted concrete and the floor was littered with cardboard cartons filled with scraps of metal, copper wire and pieces of pipe. A gray gunmetal desk next to the door was the only hint that the room was used for something other than storing junk, but the desk was covered with an unorganized collection of miscellaneous clutter and could have been mistaken for abandoned furniture.
Paul Torino opened the door and let Nick Paladino into his workroom.
Paladino had taken the elevator from the Homicide Bureau to the basement after Torino called. 'What's up, Paul?'
'I want to show you something.'
Torino sat at the desk and gestured Paladino into a chair beside him.
Then Torino cleared the top of the desk by shoving everything into a big pile on one of the edges. There was a torn cardboard carton next to one of the desk legs. Torino pulled several items out of it and placed them on the desk in a line. Then he drew a side view of a piece of pipe on a yellow writing tablet.
'This is a rough drawing of the pipe bomb that killed Justice Griffen.
The bomber has to attach the bomb to the underside of the car and there is a simple way to do that.'
Torino bent over the yellow sheet again and drew a rectangle.
Then he drew a horseshoe on the left end of the rectangle and another on the right end and placed a black dot in the center of the curve of each horseshoe.
'This is a strip of metal,' Torino said, pointing to the rectangle.
'These are magnets,' he continued, pointing to the horseshoes. 'You drill holes in the strip and affix the magnets to the plate with nuts and bolts, then you tape the magnetic strip to the pipe bomb. When you're ready to use the bomb, you just have to stick it to the underside of the car.'
'Okay.'
Torino picked up a charred and twisted strip of flat metal approximately six inches in length, one and a half inches wide and one quarterof an inch thick.
'What do you think this is?' Torino asked Nick Paladino.
Paladino studied the object and the drawing. 'The metal strip that the magnets are attached to?' he guessed.
'Right. I took this from the evidence room this morning. It was part of the pipe bomb that killed Larry and Jessica Hollins.
Do you notice anything unusual about it?'
Paladino took the metal strip from Torino and examined it closely. It was heavy. One end of the rectangle was flat and looked like it had been shaped by a machine. The other end was uneven and there was a notch in the metal that formed a jagged vee.
'The ends are different,' Paladino said.
'Right. This steel strip came from a longer strip. Someone put it in a vise and used a hacksaw to cut it so it would fit the top of the pipe.'
Torino pointed to the uneven end. 'Notice how this notch overlaps.
That's because the person who cut it cut from two directions.'
Torino picked up a clear-plastic bag with another twisted and charred metal strip.
'When the bomb exploded yesterday, Justice Griffen was seated directly over it. This strip was blown through the bottom of the car into the judge. It's what killed him. The medical examiner found it during the autopsy. Take a look at the right edge.'
The similarities between the notch on the metal strip that had killed Robert Griffen and the notch on the end of the strip from the Hollins bomb were obvious.
'So you think the same person cut both strips?' Paladino asked.
'There's no way I could say that for sure, but I can say that I've only seen a bomb constructed like this once before. This is the bomber's signature. It's unique like a fingerprint.'
'So Deems is probably our man?'
Torino did not answer. Instead, he picked up the last item on the desk.
It was also in a clear-plastic bag along with some metal shavings.
Paladino examined it. It was a clean steel rectangle with one machine-cut end and one end that had been cut by hand.
'What's this?' Paladino asked, certain he knew the answer.
Detective Bricker,' Tracy Cavanaugh said when the receptionist connected her to the Salem Police Department's Homicide Bureau, 'I don't know if you remember me . . .'
'Sure I do. You're Justice Sherzer's clerk.'
'Well, I used to be. I'm working in Portland now. I've got a new job.'
'I hope you didn't leave because of what happened to your friend.'
'No, no. The clerkship was only for a year.'
'How are you doing? Emotionally, I mean.'
'I think about Laura a lot, but I'm okay. The new job helps.
I'm pretty busy.'
'That's good. What's up?'
'I wanted to know how you're doing with the investigation.
Are there any suspects?'
'No. We believe Ms. Rizzatti was the intended victim rather than someone a burglar chanced upon, because someone ransacked Ms. Rizzatti's cottage. It may have been the person who rang the doorbell while she was leaving the message on your answering machine. But we have no idea who killed her, yet.'
'Oh.'
There was dead air for a moment. Then Detective Bricker asked, 'Did you have another reason for calling?'
'Yes, actually. It's . . . Did you hear about Justice Griffen?'
'Yes,' Bricker answered. Tracy thought she heard a little caution in the detective's tone.
'When I heard he was murdered, I couldn't help thinking . . . Have you considered the possibility that the two
