“Don’t worry partner. I got this.”
Gomez knocked on the front door, but there was no answer. He poked his head in.
“Abuela?”
Still no answer. He entered.
Finding no master bedroom on the first floor, he walked up the stairs and, as he hoped, heard June’s voice coming from beyond a set of closed double doors at the end of the hall. He approached, knocked gently, and spoke.
“Molly? I’d like to talk to your son. I’m not questioning him. I just want to see how he’s doing. But I need your permission.”
After some unintelligible whispers, it was June that replied.
“Go ahead, Ernie. It’s the one on the end.”
The walk took him past Sian’s room. The door was open, revealing a collection of Maroon 5 posters and Northwestern University swag.
She’s going to find out about this over the phone…damn.
Braden’s door was closed.
Is that kid still asleep?
“Hey, Buddy. It’s Detective Gomez. I work with your uncle. Can I come in?”
No answer.
“I’m going to open the door, okay? If you want me to go away, just say so. You hear me, amigo?”
The door slowly creaked open. Braden was not in his room.
“I’m not liking this.”
The boy had left in a hurry, too much of a hurry to turn off his computer, and too much of a hurry to close a foot locker he normally kept under his bed. It had been concealed by a ten-wide stack of (probably his parents’) DVD’s that now lay scattered.
“Not one bit.”
Jewel cases cracked as Gomez crept towards the trunk. sensing that he would discover nothing good inside.
His blood turned to ice as his line of sight cleared the rim.
“Madre Dulce de Dios.”
Powders. Wires. Casings. He was no expert, but he knew the ingredients of a bomb when he saw them.
He pulled out his cell phone and jogged down the hall, nearly side-arming Sian’s graduation picture off the wall in the process. He skidded to a stop at the double doors, eased the left one open six inched, and spoke as calmly and controlled as he could.
“Ma’am…”
In the space, he made eye contact with Molly Reilly. She was on her bed. She’d been crying. She would have known about her husband’s arrest for only fifteen or twenty minutes. She’d been crying much longer than that. She was in the fetal position with her comforter clutched against her chin so tightly that her feet poked out at the bottom. They were crossed…clenched tightly, and she still had her shoes on. She looked at him pleadingly as if she wanted to tell him something that she couldn’t bear to tell her mother-in-law. The detective’s heart sank. He knew the body language. He knew the face. He’d seen it so many times before, on the job, and in his old neighborhood.
Molly Reilly wasn’t sick.
Molly Reilly had been, at best, attacked; at worst, raped.
9. A Police Cruiser
Ian stared beyond the backs of his chaperones’ heads to the asphalt rushing beneath the car. The car smelled new.
“Truesdell, right? Officer Truesdell?”
“Yes sir.”
“And you…Brian something. I forget your last name.”
“Simon, Mr. Reilly. My last name is Simon.”
A short burst of puerile laughter shot from Ian’s diaphragm.
“Tell me, Kelly, or Brian. I don’t really care. Is this car new?”
Kelly answered.
“It is, sir. Few months old.”
“Ah…so this is where my taxes are going. My brother, who is supposed to be your brother too, is in a coma. The people who put him there are running around scot free. Meanwhile, I’m arrested and being driven to jail by a woman and a Jew in a car that I paid for. Love it.”
Brian answered.
“Not jail, Mr. Reilly, just the police station.”
“Are you even supposed to be working? Isn’t this the Sabbath or Sabbat or whatever the fuck? Shouldn’t you have your nose buried in a book you can’t even read with a beanie on your head?”
“Not quite. A couple of hours yet. But somehow…”
He turned to face his sardonically grinning passenger with a grin of his own.
“…this doesn’t feel like work.”
Kelly happily contributed to the discourse with a snicker made inaudible by the gratifying sound of chains jerking against their restraints. Temper, temper.
Then, the radio.
“P12, this is Detective Lynch. Kelly, you there?”
Brian answered.
“We got you, Jim, What’s up?”
“Pull over.”
“Come again, detective?”
“Wherever you are, pull over. We’ll be there in thirty seconds. When you see us park, unlock your back doors, both of them.”
Brian looked over at Kelly, who could offer nothing but a shrug as she put on the flashing lights and turned the wheel to the right.
The car shifted and bounced as the back doors were yanked open and detectives Lynch and Warner leapt in, landing on either side of Ian Reilly. Warner asked the question.
“Does your son know what happened to his mother!?”
Ian turned beet red but said nothing.
“Quit fuckin’ around, Ian! Did you tell your son what happened to his mother!?”
“Why don’t you ask…”
Lynch’s fist met Ian Reilly’s ribs. The big guy wheezed and hollered to the uniforms.
“Are you guys watching this?”
“I’m just a stupid girl.”
“Sorry…Sabbath…Baruch atah Adonai…”
Warner put an open hand to Ian’s face to regain his attention. Knowing what they knew, she and Lynch probably owed their perp a little sympathy, but there was a bomb in Potterford. Going in soft would have been a slow strategy. At the moment, slow was not a part of their universe.
“Now listen, Reilly. It appears that your well-adjusted teenaged son made a bomb. We don’t know what kind, or what he intends to do with it. There’s a good chance he’s going to try to hit the UJ if he knows what happened to his mother. If we confirm that, we can put all our resources on one path. If we don’t, we’ll have to split things up, and there’s a better chance he’ll be successful. If that bomb goes off, it will be considered an act of terrorism, and I don’t have to tell you what happens next. He’s only fourteen. It won’t be Guantanamo Bay, but it will be pretty damned close!”
Warner couldn’t be sure, but in
