Crimes of Memory (A Detective Jackson Mystery) (29 page)

“What happened?” Jackson had heard it from Maggie, but it was always good to check with other sources.

“Jenna was with Danny when the police shot him. Jenna eventually blamed Craig for getting Danny hooked on drugs and never spoke to him again. It broke Craig’s heart.”

“Have you seen Jenna lately?”

“Oh no. Not since Craig went to prison. Why?”

“Just wondering.” His phone made a beeping sound, and Jackson looked to see who was calling. Schak. “I’m getting another call, but I’ll keep you posted.”

He clicked over. “Did we get the warrant?”

“Indeed. Judge Volcansek has seen the
Hunger Games
movie. I’m on my way.”

CHAPTER 29

“Get on the floor, both of you! I have a bomb!” the young man yelled.

Sophie heard the word
bomb
and instinctively dropped to the floor. Had the crazy man seen her? She crawled under Rockman’s desk.
Oh hell.
Why hadn’t she run back into the little hallway?
Because the door behind her was closed and she wouldn’t have had time
. If the man had a gun too, he might have shot her in the back as she ran.

The crazy man yelled, “Give me your cell phones! Now!”

Under the desk, Sophie held her breath, waiting for him to come around and discover her. Instead she heard the cell phones slam down on the desktop over her head.

Now what?

Carefully, she shifted until she was sitting with her back against a wall of drawers and her legs bent in front. For the first time in her life, Sophie was glad to be short. She slipped her cell phone out of her jacket pocket and tried to decide if she could risk
dialing 911. No, she couldn’t speak out loud without giving herself away. But she could text someone and let them make the call. Her first thought was Jasmine, her lover, who happened to work for the public safety department. But Jaz didn’t check her messages very often. Sophie scrolled through her recent texts. Brian Jones, a newspaper photographer, was fifth on her list. Hands shaking, she muted her phone, then keyed in the message:
At R&L Ent. Man with bomb. Hostages. Call 911.
She pressed send.

A moment later Sophie panicked. What if Brian thought it was a joke? She quickly sent another text:
No joke! Call!

The bomber yelled at someone to get out of the building. The shout was followed by a scuffle, then the sound of someone being slammed into a wall. Who had he hurt? Sophie’s heart pounded so hard she felt her pulse beat in her ears.

A woman’s voice asked, “What are you doing, Russell?”

The crazy man had a name, and a third hostage was in the room. A young woman who knew him. His girlfriend?

Sophie heard the name Fiona, then the young woman said something she couldn’t hear. After that Mr. Rockman and Russell talked about environmental issues and Boy Scouts.
What the hell?

Sophie remembered the recorder in her purse. She scrambled to dig it out and get it turned on. She slipped the recorder into her pocket, where it could be effective but not seen. She had to assume the bomber would discover her eventually. When she tuned back in to what Russell was saying, she realized he wanted Rockman to shut down his factory. Russell was the eco-terrorist who’d firebombed Rock Spring!

She had to keep contacting people until someone responded. Sophie scrolled through her list of recent calls and found Agent River. She pushed the text icon and keyed in:
Terrorist at R&L with bomb. Hostages!

Or that’s what she intended it to say, but her shaking hands made errors and she had to correct the word
bomb
. Sophie left the other typos and pushed send. She hated releasing copy with mistakes, but now was not the time to be anal. It was, however, time to be a reporter.

Sophie tapped open the Twitter application on her phone, from which she posted Willamette News updates, and keyed in:
Hostage situation at Rock Spring office. Eco-terrorist demands shutdown. Tweeting the action from inside the building.

She couldn’t believe she said all that with 140 characters. In the room, she heard Rockman make a call and tell someone to send everyone home and close the factory. Sophie hoped that would alarm the foreman enough to call the police.

She checked her text messages to see if Brian or River had responded. Not yet. Sophie concentrated on the voices beyond her space under the desk. She heard Fiona say, “Why don’t you let Patrice, the receptionist, go? You have no reason to terrorize her.”

“When I’ve heard that the factory is shut down, I’ll think about it.”

Rockman spoke next. “You wrote the threatening letter, didn’t you?”

“Of course. Why?”

“I think your issue with me is personal and we can work through it.”

“Work through it?” Russell sounded stunned and angry. “Like it’s some employee grievance?”

Rockman stayed calm. “What did you mean by revealing what you know about me?”

“You know what I’m talking about, and today you’ll admit your guilt. But first, you have to burn down your factory, so it will never produce another plastic water bottle. If you don’t, I’ll blow us all up.”

Holy shit.
What a great video clip this would make—if only she could find a way to capture it on her cell phone. She would even send the clips to her competitor, Trina Waterman at KRSL, just to break the story.

“That’s insane.” Rockman’s voice wavered with anxiety.

“So is arguing with a man wearing a bomb.”

A long silence followed. Sophie checked her text messages while keeping one eye on the floor beside the desk, watching for the terrorist’s feet. So far he’d stayed in the open area of the room.

Brian, her coworker, had responded:
Seriously?

She texted back:
Yes! Come get pics. No visuals so far. Only tweets. Check Twitter for story.

Footsteps came her way and Sophie’s breath caught in her throat. The footsteps retreated. She quickly sent her next Twitter post:
Terrorist, Russell, demands Ted Rockman burn Rock Spring bottled water factory to the ground. Threat: 4 hostages will be blown up.

A moment later, a text came from Agent River:
Is young woman named Fiona or Dallas there? Is she OK?

Fiona or Dallas? That was weird. And how would Agent River know who was in the building? Unless the FBI had been following Russell and Fiona was an agent. Sophie texted:
Fiona is here and OK. Rockman, receptionist, and me. I’m under desk. Russell doesn’t know I’m here/sending.

A moment later, another text from River:
What kind of bomb?

Good question.

Dallas studied the bomb taped to Russell Crowder’s chest, trying to determine how powerful it might be. It looked simple, like sticks of dynamite connected to an igniter made from a timer.
He had set off a small firebomb at the Rock Spring factory, so she had to assume Crowder knew something about explosives and was willing to use them. But making a vest bomb with a trigger detonator was another level of skill—and bravery. Crowder acted nervous enough for the part, pacing and sweating and sounding emotional. Dallas hoped to maintain her cover for as long as she could, just to protect herself, but as soon as she’d seen the bomb, she’d stopped thinking of him as Russell. Given an opportunity, she would kill him to save the others.

Crowder’s demand that Rockman order his foreman to burn down his factory didn’t surprise Dallas. What better way to put a bottled water company out of business? What surprised her was Rockman’s reluctance.

“It’s just a building,” she whispered to Rockman. “Four people could die in here.”

Rockman ignored her and continued to engage Russell. “What if I put a twenty-cent return value on every bottle? Ninety-five percent of them would get redeemed and recycled.”

“But that won’t solve the whole problem. I want to send a message to bottled water companies everywhere. I want to shut down the whole industry.”

“You can’t do it from here,” Rockman argued. “It’s a global business. You’ll have to think in bigger terms.”

“Think globally. Act locally.” Russell smirked at his own comeback, then shifted moods again. He grabbed Rockman’s phone from the desk and pressed a key, then held it to his ear. “Is this the Rock Spring foreman? Is everyone out of the building?”

A pause, while he listened to the response.

Russell raised his voice, “Almost isn’t good enough. When the building is empty, pour gas everywhere, then throw a flame and run.” Russell made a satisfied sound. “Take pictures with your
phone and send them. I want to see it burning before I let anyone go.”

Another brief pause.

“You can talk to Rockman, but he’ll tell you the same thing. Because he doesn’t want to die.” Crowder’s voice grew loud and weird at the end, like an announcer for a creepy movie.

Dallas was reminded that he was still a kid. As a young male, his frontal lobe hadn’t fully developed, and he hadn’t yet processed how badly this would turn out for him.

Russell handed the phone to Rockman, who was practically hyperventilating. “Do what he says,” Rockman commanded. “It’s not just me in here. He has two women hostages as well. Get the fire department out there on standby. Nobody gets hurt and nobody’s property will be damaged but mine.”

Dallas wondered if the foreman would actually go through with it. Her next thought was:
Where the hell is the team?
Shouldn’t River or a crisis negotiator send a cell phone up to the exterior door so Crowder could communicate with them? They had little remote-controlled units to do that kind of thing. But this was a unique scenario. The person who could meet the terrorist’s demands was already in the building, making it happen. Russell wouldn’t need anything from law enforcement until it was time to escape. What the hell was his plan?

“While we wait for the pictures, we can talk about what you did to me.” Crowder fidgeted with the phone, slapping it against his palm.

“I really don’t know what you mean.” Rockman sounded like a man with no options.

Dallas felt sorry for him. Crowder was clearly off his rocker.

“Are you talking about the Boy Scout camping trip you took with my sons’ troop?” Rockman shook his head. “That was the only time I ever saw you before this.”

Russell’s face darkened with rage. “You molested me!”

The furious accusation caught them all off guard and they sat back against the wall. Dallas stopped looking at the bomb and studied Crowder’s face. His looks were distorted by the anguish in his eyes and the tight set of his mouth.

Next to her, Rockman jerked back. “What are you talking about? That’s just crazy.”

Russell hated when people called him crazy. Just because he’d been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and had been sexually abused by every male father figure he’d known didn’t make him a nutcase. He was trying hard to get closure, to get well, and to make a difference in the world all at the same time. Those weren’t the actions of someone still in denial. He accepted what had happened to him, but he couldn’t move forward until Rockman admitted it and went to jail. Or to hell, if that’s the way it worked out.

Russell’s therapist believed that confronting Rockman was essential. She thought Russell wouldn’t be able to let go of his anger until Rockman was publicly exposed as a pedophile. Exposed and punished! Russell understood that sending Rockman to jail as a sexual predator would make his own life better, but it would be a setback for his environmental cause. While Rockman served his time, his company would go right on bottling water in plastic containers, and nobody would have the authority to make the important changes that would benefit the environment.