Blown Away (19 page)

Wednesday, 8
P.M
.
Ten hours till Emily's birthday

“I'm never gonna find this clown,” Emily groaned, rubbing her burning eyes. The first name she'd looked for was Daddy's. She'd turned light-headed when she saw it pop from the end of the page—
THOMPSON, GERALD FLANDERS
—and quickly moved on. The hunt was tedious, and so far fruitless. She'd waded through the navy, air force, and half the army and still wasn't done with Illinois. Nobody knew for sure the Unsub was in fact ex-military. Criminal profiles were educated guesses, not facts.

Benedetti read over her shoulder. “USSOCOM. That's United States Special Operations Command. It fits. Do you remember him?”

She screwed her eyes shut, willing Kepp to appear. “No,” she complained bitterly. “My memory is so—”

“Just relax,” Benedetti said, studying the information. “Tell me about Kepp. He's your age. Lived in your neighborhood.” He frowned. “Wait, that doesn't fit. His house was more than a mile from yours. That's two neighborhoods away at least.”

“I attended Catholic school,” she said. “The parish boundary might have stretched wide enough to include both houses. I could know him from school but not from the neighborhood.”

Benedetti leaned against the table. “Makes sense. Were you friends with this boy?”

A little of Brady floated back. “He didn't have many friends, mostly kept to himself. He played baseball. Maybe football. I think I liked him. I don't know why.” She thought hard. “There was something about his family. Something unusual. I don't know what.”

Benedetti paced. “We'll search newspaper archives and police reports. All Kepp's government records. If there's anything there—”

Emily jumped to her feet. “I beat him up once.”

“You did? When?”

“In eighth grade. Brady asked me to a dance.” She closed her eyes, concentrating. “I blew him off for some reason. He got mad and called me a cunt.”

Benedetti tapped her elbow with his notebook. “Ah. Like Ray Luerchen did at the ditch.”

“Same result, too—I went after him. Brady fought back. He got in some good licks. But I was quicker and whaled on him from every direction.” She made a face. “All the kids gathered ‘round, chanting, ‘Fraidy Brady, beat up by a girl! Bed wetter! Retard!'” She felt mildly embarrassed. “Kids were pretty stupid back then.”

Benedetti wrote fast. “Em, that could be his motive. Revenge.”

“It was a school yard fistfight,” she argued. “No big deal. I had them twice a month. So did my friends. Fighting came with growing up on the Southwest Side. How could anyone be so angry about a meaningless little dustup”—she counted on her fingers—“twenty-eight years later?”

“Hey, tinfoil can jump-start a wacko,” Benedetti pointed out. “That's why they're wackos. Plus this kid was a bed wetter. Do you know if he tortured animals or set fires?”

She shook her head.

“We'll find out.” Scribble-scribble-scribble. “Did your school have yearbooks?”

Emily shook her head. “We had class photos, though. I threw them in the trash when I left for Madison—big, tough, unsentimental college girl, you know—but Daddy fished them out. I found them in the basement after he died, along with a note.
Your children will want these, Princess. Don't cuss too much. Love, Daddy.
” Her skin prickled as an image of Brady Kepp took shape in her mind. Stocky build, big puppy eyes, bright yellow hair, and dandruff. Handsome except for the ears sticking out like dinner plates. Eager to please in grades one through four, moody in fifth, surly till graduation. Her hatred for this man was building like a runaway train, and he wasn't guilty of anything but his name.
God help him if he's the Unsub!
“Maybe the FBI can age his school photos with their computers,” she suggested. “See what he'd look like at twenty, thirty, and now. If it matches his official photographs—”

“Passport, driver's license, military ID—”

“We'll at least know we're dealing with the same Brady Kepp.”

Benedetti summoned a computer tech and two detectives. He told them what he needed, Emily explained where she kept the photos, and they headed out. He dialed his cell phone. “She found a name, Ken,” he reported. “I'm coming up.” He disconnected, slapped the printouts. “Finish Illinois. Make sure there's nobody else. Then join us in the auditorium. We've got a lot of work to do in ten hours.”

Wednesday, 9
P.M
.
Nine hours till Emily's birthday

Finding no more names, Emily walked into the police station auditorium, a quarter acre of tiered seating, tables, computers, paperwork, and personal belongings. Everyone wore a badge. Most carried guns. Tall windows filled one wall. Corkboards of crime-scene photographs, diagrams, and notes filled the others. She wrinkled her nose at the wooly smell—too many people working too-long hours. A stained banquet table mounded with sandwiches, bagels, fruit, chips, pop, bottled water, and coffee was shoved in a corner. She looked around for familiar faces, heard somebody crow, “Hey! Look who's here!” She didn't recognize the plump man or his uniform but waved, anyway. Everyone turned, moved in, started talking at once.

“Emily! You look great!”

“Terrific job at the forest preserve! Against a machine gun yet!”

“We're gonna find this asshole and fuck him up!”

“You want coffee? How 'bout coffee? I'll get ya coffee!”

A tall, lanky-limbed woman in short heels offered her hand. “I'm Judy Stephens,” she said. “Head of the Chicago office of BATFE. Good to finally meet you.”

“Same here,” Emily said. “You're the one who determined Neuqua was a bomb, right?”

Stephens nodded. “We traced the plastic explosives to Eastern Europe….”

A half dozen such conversations later, Emily's stomach rumbled, reminding her the last thing she'd eaten was a Velveeta sandwich. She excused herself from a Naperville narcotics detective whose name she didn't remember and worked her way to the buffet, accepting more handshakes. She stabbed an arm between two state troopers and snatched a cinnamon raisin bagel, closing her eyes in worship.
God, if you're God, make this a doughnut! I've got a sugar jones that bagels can't possibly fix!

But it'd likelier turn into wine, she knew. Cross hated the Doughnut Cop stereotype so much, he vowed his first day on the job that his officers were going to lose their potbellies or else. He learned in a grievance letter that the union contract specifically prohibited physical fitness as a condition of employment. Cross retaliated by banning doughnuts from the station, jail, cruisers, and all departmental functions, and to this day the only doughnut at NPD was for hemorrhoids. She scraped the bagel through strawberry Philly, filled a cup with steaming coffee, and backed away.

“Ow! Watch where you're going!” someone carped as her heel mashed a toe.

“Oops, sorry,” Emily said. Then she saw who it was. “Gee, Ray, did I hurt you?”

“Hell, no!” Rayford Luerchen snapped.

“Too bad.” She slurped an inch off the top. “What are you doing here?”

Luerchen grinned. “Funny you should ask. Sheriff got first dibs on Branch's replacement. I'm it. And I've got you to thank, hon. If you weren't such a crummy shot at that forest preserve, Branch wouldn't be wetting his sheets at the hospital, and I wouldn't be named to the hottest task force in…Yeow! Shit!”

“Oops,” rumbled the narc. “Clumsy me, bumping Emily's elbow. What with her holding hot coffee and all.” His face was picture-perfect with concern. “Didn't burn yer pecker there, did I, Ray?”

Luerchen's eyes watered as he fanned his crotch. “You did that deliberately!”

“Not me, Bubba. I just heard what you said and damned if my hand didn't slip. By accident.” He held out a pink cocktail napkin and smiled. “Want me to pat yer crotch for ya, hon?”

Luerchen flushed. “Outside, you and me, right now—”

“OK, people, take your seats,” Cross boomed. “There's an important development.”

The narc balled the napkin and bounced it off Luerchen's leg. “You really oughta dry yourself, Ray,” he stage-whispered. “Don't want the bosses thinkin' you wet your sheets.”

Emily sat near a window so she could see the front of the police station, fire department headquarters, the animal control building, the pint-size skyline of Safety Town, and Lake Osborne, the retention pond with the grandiloquent name. The view made her happy. She'd sworn to defend Naperville, and this Public Safety Campus was ground zero for doing it. But the view also made her anxious—the city she loved was a deadly menace to her. Maybe sitting here wasn't such a good idea after all….

Benedetti entered the auditorium with Annie, who shooed cops from each side of Emily to plant herself and Flea. Benedetti conferred briefly with Cross, then took the microphone. Everyone in the room stole curious peeks at Emily. She shifted, uncomfortable in the center of this three-ring circus.

“We have a suspect,” Benedetti said without preamble, thumping the mike. “He's Brady Maurice Kepp, age forty. Retired Army Green Beret and a grade-school classmate of Detective Thompson's. She just confirmed she knows him. Our FBI liaisons are downloading Kepp's military dossier. You'll get copies shortly.” The hollow-eyed exhaustion of the room vanished, and a dozen hands shot up. Benedetti waved them down. “We'll do updates first, starting with Lucille Crawford. Sergeant Luerchen, go ahead.”

As Luerchen sprang to his feet, Emily looked outside to see children marching into Safety Town from long yellow school buses. Fourth-and fifth-graders, with their clean, scrubbed looks, staying up past bedtime to enjoy their treat for getting straight A's in school—a bonfire and ghost stories in Safety Town. Preceded, of course, by Safety Town's real mission, teaching them how to safely cross streets and railroad tracks, avoid rivers and retention ponds, use crosswalks, and escape burning buildings. The kids looked happy, pointing excitedly at police cruisers, geese waddling up from the lake, a prisoner truck rumbling toward the jail entrance. A hook and ladder backing into the firehouse burped its siren. The kids waved NPD ball caps. A FedEx driver ran inside with a carton, then drove off. Luerchen cleared his throat, and she reluctantly turned back to the meeting.

“The sheriff's CSI team discovered a hair in the stolen Porsche,” Luerchen began, tugging his polyester jacket over the wet spot. “It is a scalp hair. It does not belong to the deceased.” Marwood snapped to attention, and Emily felt a catty grin slide across her face.
So you
don't
know everything, huh, Mr. Designated Driver?
“It does not belong to the owner of said stolen vehicle, nor to anyone the owner says rode in said vehicle, nor to official personnels at the scene.” Emily cringed at the sodden language, having a new appreciation for Marty's hatred of copspeak. “Therefore, there is an excellent chance it belongs to the perpetrator. When we deem a suspect, we can use the DNA possessed in the hair's root to link said perpetrator to the wrecked subject vehicle and therefore to Ms. Crawford.” He detailed the rest of the lab results, then said, “Put all that together and it spells
h-o-m-i-c-i-d-e.
”

“Jesus Christ, he actually spelled it,” a cop behind her moaned. “What a moron.”

Benedetti nodded. “Thanks, Ray. Good brief.” He drained his foam cup. “Next up, BATFE on the Neuqua High bombing.”

The chief's cell phone burbled. He answered it, frowned, whispered to Benedetti. Then hustled up the auditorium stairs and out the rear exit. Dozens of eyeballs followed, snapping back only when Judy Stephens began speaking.

“Our analysis indicates the Unsub breached the safety fence around the construction tunnel and shimmied up the natural-gas main into the school,” she said. “When he reached the foundation wall, he attached two packages. Each consisted of plastic explosive, detonator, and timer. The first was a cutter charge, which sawed the pipe in half. Natural gas leaked for hours, saturating the soil and foundation. Then the second package detonated, igniting the gas.” Nods and murmurs indicated they all remembered the strike on Neuqua. “Lucky for us, he decided to limit the damage.”

“Are you kidding, Judy?” someone in back sputtered. “He crushed it like a pop can!”

“If the gas had ignited during school hours, we'd be shoveling several thousand children along with the debris,” Stephens replied. “So, yes, the Unsub chose to limit his damage. He wasn't interested in mass murder, only in recreating the Timebomb game from Detective Thompson's collection.” She glanced at her notes. “We recovered enough fragments to determine the particular timer used. It's a relatively new design, developed by NATO for use in Iraq.”

The auditorium's back door slammed open, making more than one cop reach for a gun.

Chicago
April 1975

“Boooooooo!” Dwight Kepp shouted as the umpire called a third strike on his son. “That pitch was ten miles off the plate! I'll double whatever Blessed Martyr's paying you!”

“This is a charity game,” Alexandra Thompson reminded the boor from nine rows back. She'd looked forward to this annual fund-raising event with Our Lady of the Blessed Martyr, and this idiot was ruining it with heckling. Not to mention distracting the players! “Why don't you be quiet so we can hear what's going on?”

The man whirled as the crowd clapped its approval. “I bought my ticket like everyone else, hon,” he growled. “And a hundred raffle tickets to boot. I have every right to question bad calls—”

“She ain't your hon,” Gerald Thompson said, plunking himself next to the hemorrhoid. “And the kids play great without any help from us parents. Give it a rest, friend.”

Dwight whipped around. How dare someone question his right to speak! Then he noticed the stranger's break-you-in-half physique under the Cream of Wheat expression. “Aw, I guess you're right,” he said, donning a mask of sheepish apology. “I get carried away seeing my boy play. I travel a lot on business—I'm the regional president of Chicago Life and Casualty—and rarely make his games.”

“I understand,” Gerald said, realizing where he'd heard this voice before—the jerk-off beating his son last fall. “We all want our kids to do well. But you're distracting them.” He offered his hand. “But, hey, it's a nice day out. Let's start fresh. I'm Gerald Thompson.” He nodded at the diamond. “The pitcher's my daughter, Emily.”

“Oh, she's a great one,” Dwight enthused. Inferiors were so easy to manipulate with a smile and false praise. “Her pitches swoop in like a pro. You should be proud.” He pumped the big redhead's hand. “The name's Dwight Kepp. My boy, Brady, hit that three-run homer in the first.”

“He's the left fielder?”

“Right!” Kepp enthused. “I mean, correct! This here's my wife, Alice. Honey, meet Gerry.” She said a faint hello and went back to her scorecard. Gerald made small talk as he kept shaking hands. “You know, Dwight,” he said, squeezing harder. “My wife and I take a walk every night after supper.”

“That so?” Kepp said, trying not to flinch.

“Yup. We stretch our legs while Emily does her homework.” He leaned in so only the hemorrhoid would hear. “Thing is, Dwight, I heard you beating the snot out of your kid. We don't put up with that garbage around here—a child abuser is the worst kind of scum.” He heard knuckles crackle and smiled to himself. “I run a steel union. My buddies from the mill can be at your house ten minutes after I call. You know what that means.” He paused to emphasize the next point. “Now you might think you're tough, beating up a kid and maybe your wife, too. But we're tougher, and the cops around here look the other way when it comes to kicking a child abuser into pudding. So here's the deal. I hear one more scream like I did that night, and you're gonna wish you'd never been born. You follow?”

Dwight's lean face was as white as chalk. Gerald released the hand. “It's good meeting you, friend,” he said. “You, too, Mrs. Kepp. Stop by the house sometime. Emily probably knows Brady from school.” He walked up the bleachers to rejoin Alexandra, humming “Dragnet.”

“What'd you say to him?” she asked, kissing his cheek.

“Just the facts, ma'am,” Gerald said, thumbing a mustard glob from her Vienna hot dog, which she'd accessorized the Chicago way with raw onions, sliced tomatoes, hot peppers, dill pickle spear, yellow mustard, bright green relish, and two shakes of celery salt, all stuffed into a steamed poppy-seed bun. He took a bite from the back end.

An inning later the game was over, Brady Kepp's tumbling dive catch preserving Emily's shutout. She tried high-fiving him, but he'd already turned to meet his parents. So she trotted to the opposing team's bench to find Blessed Martyr's catcher, who'd kicked dirt and grunted ethnic slurs at St. Mary's players when the ump wasn't paying attention. She saw him unbuckling his shin guards and pasted on her snottiest grin. “Gee, Beaver,” she said. “Don't you hate getting whipped by a girl?”

“Kiss my ass, Thompson,” the catcher snapped.

“I can't. Your head's already up it.” She laughed along with the catcher's teammates. “Face it, shit-for-brains, you're just a sore loser. You deserve getting your ass kicked by twelve runs for giving me and my friends so much fucking…Whoa!”

“You're headed for the showers,” Gerald grunted, tucking his daughter under his left arm like a loaf of bread. He marched Emily into the dusty field behind the bleachers, not stopping till they were clear of eavesdroppers. He dropped her, stared down into her wide eyes. “What was that about?” he demanded.

“What?”

“The cussing. The gloating. The snotty attitude. And did I mention the cussing?”

Emily met his eyes. “That boy had it coming, Daddy. He called Marcy a kike, Lawrence a wop, and Stan a Polack. Stuff nobody should say!” She put her hands on her hips. “Nobody else would tell him off because he's so big. So I did.”

Gerald knelt so they were face-to-face.

“Listen, Princess, don't get me wrong. I'm proud you stood up for yourself and your teammates. It takes guts, which I'm glad you have. But that doesn't give you permission to rub someone's nose in your success. Only poor sports do that.” He sat on the grass, motioned her to do likewise. “As for the cussing, you should never do that around people you don't know.”

“Why not?” Emily said, clutching her knobby knees to her chest. “When you fixed the boat motor and skinned your knuckles, I heard words I never knew before!”

“Yes, I did,” he admitted. “But I didn't know you were listening. I would never cuss at you or around you. It's disrespectful, and I won't do it.”

“You would if I was a boy,” she said, pouting.

“Wrong,” Gerald countered. “I don't cuss in front of kids. I also don't cuss around neighbors, acquaintances, or strangers. I don't know if they appreciate salty talk, so why would I offend them? You're a bright girl. You know there's lots of ways to make a point without cussing.”

Emily crinkled her face. “But I do cuss, Daddy,” she said. “I can't help it sometimes. When someone picks on my friends, I jump in, and those bad words just come out. Sometimes I even say…uh…”

“Go ahead.”

“‘Fuck' because it sounds cool.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

She looked away, embarrassed. “How do I stop?”

“Aye, there's the rub,” Gerald muttered.

“What?”

“Never mind. Here's what we're going to do. You're going to cuss only with me.”

Emily's eyes widened.

Gerald shifted to his other hip, allowing him to see Alex waving from the bleachers. He pointed at the station wagon, mimicked steering. She nodded. He turned back to Emily.

“That's right. I'm going to allow you to cuss your head off. But only in front of me,” he explained. “Whenever you feel the need, you tell me. We'll wander down to the basement, go fishing, whatever, and you can let 'er rip.”

Emily sat up taller. “Really?” she asked. “I can say anything?”

“That's right. ‘Shit' or ‘ass' or ‘fuck' or whatever you can dream up. I won't teach you any dirty words, but if you find them on your own, you can ask me what they mean. I'll give an honest answer.” He smiled. “And anything else you feel like asking about, like boys or kissing or sex—”

“I should go right to Mama.”

He laughed. “You're pretty smart for nearly ten,” he said, rubbing her hair with great affection. They chattered till Mama rolled up, and Gerald helped his daughter to her feet.

“Just remember our deal, Princess,” he warned, escorting her to the back door. “No bad language around anyone but me. Especially not around Mama. She doesn't like your using bad language, and you will respect her feelings. Break that little rule and your butt's gonna wear some blisters.”

Emily grinned. “I promise, Daddy. By the way, that man hollering from the bleachers was right. The umpire did have his head up his ass.”

“So far up he'll eat shit for supper.”

They laughed themselves silly, climbed into the station wagon, and she replayed for Mama all the way to the Dairy Queen “the best gosh-darn game of my career.”