The Eighth Day (24 page)

“Pleasant thought, Brooke.”

As they walked outside, Dennis spied an agent bending over with a pair of forceps and placing a small piece of paper into an evidence bag.

“May I see that?”

The agent deferred to Burrell and she nodded.

“Burger King, Vince Lombardi Rest Area, NJT. Dated today. 2:33 AM.”

“Jersey?” Dennis turned around and faced the four plaster casts that were starting to set in the tire ruts where the Camaro had been sitting. “Our boy reached in his pocket for his keys and the last thing he put in fell out. The receipt!” Dennis then noticed a Quickstart battery jumper on the side of the driveway. A note found a few feet away read, “I’ll pick it up tomorrow afternoon. Arnold.”

“Let’s be here when Arnold comes to get it.”

“Already on it.”

“I have to think this through. Brooke, can I come by your office later and see what more you have?”

“Sure. Sorry about the snafu.”

“It didn’t always go perfect for me either.”

BACK AT THE GLOBALSYNC OFFICE, Dennis used the low-tech comfort of a blackboard and chalk to figure out if there was a pony somewhere in the pile of Thomas Regan’s horseshit. The good news was that his protectee, Miles Taggert, had very little contact with, or reason to ever be in, New Jersey. Still, his team had the GlobalSync building and both of Taggert’s residences locked down.

Since the empirical evidence pointed to the fact that Miles was not a likely target of this nut, Dennis was free to dabble in a little extra-credit thinking. He was, at the end of the day, still a cop, and Thomas Regan was a crime waiting to happen. He could no sooner drop this than walk away from the trail of an eight-point buck on a beautiful day.

His main question was how and why a man would board a train on Long Island, east of New York, and wind up, at 2:33 in the morning, west of the city in New Jersey … at a rest area that can only be reached by car, no less. Why return to Long Island only to disappear? Why risk arson and boldly steal his own car right out from under the cops? He needed something desperately enough to risk capture … what was there last night that wasn’t there this morning? The backpack! He needed the backpack. Now it made sense. Forensics showed positive results for plastic explosive residue on the kitchen table and towels. “Suicide bomber?” he said out loud.

Scribbling the words “New Jersey Turnpike” in the center of the blackboard, he went over to the laminated write-on, wipe-off map he ordered to keep track of the various postmarked locations from which the threat letters were mailed. It now served to lay out the Tri-State area for Dennis and his extracurricular exercise of “Where’s Tommy.” He drew a red circle encompassing the maximum round-trip range at the barely legal speed of sixty-five miles per hour. Between the time he was spotted at Penn last night and his return to torch the garage this morning, had his car been in working order, Thomas could have reached any destination within that circle. He centered the timings around the 2:33 AM time stamp on the rest stop receipt. He made a mental note to get the FBI to pull all traffic summonses written last month in New Jersey for a Camaro or, God forbid it should happen the easy way, one Thomas Regan.

Dennis remembered all too well that the big break in the most heinous mass murder spree of all time in New York came not from some spectacular, police-show-styled shoot-out or car chase, but from some grunt cop—a blue uniform doing bench-warming work, sorting through thousands of parking tickets written around the times and places that the “Son of Sam” killed and killed again. It was a parking ticket, written to the mass murderer’s VW Beetle on the night he shot two lovers necking in their car that led to his arrest in Yonkers. More often than not, police breakthroughs turned on the details.

Dennis drew a second circle on the map in green that limited the distance by fitting Regan’s available time into the probable return schedule of the Long Island Railroad. It was a smaller circle subsuming 130 miles that embraced the Meadowlands Sports Complex, some radio transmission towers, the port of Newark, and the like. All of these potential targets were heavily protected and would not be severely damaged by a backpack full of explosives, especially since these places would be on high alert for Regan or any shoulder-bagged citizen. There were no apparent high-value targets that made sense. But when did a terrorist or madman ever make sense? There were thousands of lower-value or grudge-fuck targets that might be sacrificed to settle some imagined slight by a corporation or government.

Too many possibilities were like no possibilities at all. Dennis felt helpless. His eyes rested again on the center of the board. This rest area on the NJT kept coming back in focus. His hunter’s sense told him this animal was hungry, risking exposure, coming out from his sheltered cover to feed. This is when “patient” hunters got their chance. His phone rang.

“I figured I should make it up to you,” a familiar female voice said.

“I’m flattered.”

“How about I treat you to a late-night snack, say somewhere on the Jersey Turnpike tonight?”

“Brooke, you know I’m a married man,” Dennis said with a smile.

Brooke affected her best Southern-belle accent. “My word, Dennis, can’t a girl ask a father figure out for a bite to eat without being accused of being a harlot? Besides, the EI boys came up with a match. I’ll tell you all about it on the drive out.”

“What’s a father figure to say, except, ‘Your car or mine?’”

“Mine. I got all the radios and shotguns and stuff.”

“Sounds delightful.”

“I’ll pick you up tonight at eleven?”

“Thanks for including me.”

“You’ve earned it.”

It was a beautiful, cloudless night as they exited the tunnel with all of Jersey laid out before them. Little Miss “by-the-book” Brooke took a deep breath and a career-busting chance. Against the orders of her director, she blurted out, “Sabot!”

“The frankfurter?”

“No, that’s Sabrett. I’m talking about the Sabot Society. They’re against the industrial age.”

“A little late, aren’t they?”

“We’ve been monitoring their e-mails. There’s a person on the list whose address matches the one registered to Thomas Regan’s Camaro.”

“You mean the upstate New York woman, Williams?”

“You’re good!”

“Hey, I was running plates while you were having tea parties with your dollies.”

“Williams was her second husband’s name …”

Dennis snapped his fingers, “Regan was her first! So that’s why we couldn’t find him. He was hiding behind Mommy’s apron.”

The constant, unrelenting swoosh of New Jersey Turnpike traffic and the whine of big truck tires greeted them as they opened the car doors at the rest area at about 1 AM. Brooke checked all the tables.

Dennis went straight to the girl at the register.

“Hi. Were you working here last night?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Did you see this man?”

“Yes, he’s here a lot lately. Must have a route that takes him through here.”

“Route?”

“Yeah, isn’t he a truck driver?”

“Ever see him in a truck?”

“No.”

Dennis smiled to keep her talking. “About what time usually?”

“Around now. In fact, I saw him already tonight. About two minutes before you came in.”

Dennis quickly scanned the restaurant as Brooke came over to him. “He was here in the last two minutes. I’ll check the lot. You check here and the rest rooms.”

Dennis rushed outside and surveyed the cars in the lot. There, near the road, was the old, beat-up Camaro. The retired detective approached it cautiously. In the darkness, he could not tell if anyone was inside so he did what any guy would do. Walking about ten feet beyond the asphalt into the grass, he made a motion that made it appear he was unzipping his fly and assumed the universal stance of a man relieving himself. He counted to fifteen, faked a shake, then zipped up. As he turned, he looked casually into the car. The lights from the turnpike lit the interior from that angle. No one was inside. Peering through the windows, he checked the front and backseats but saw nothing except a mess. He walked back to the restaurant.

Brooke met him halfway. “You could’ve killed two birds with one stone if you had checked the men’s room,” she said, nodding to the grass area.

“That’s his car. Hood’s still warm.”

“I’ll call this in. Get some Jersey troopers to canvas.”

Dennis went back inside to the girl at the register. “Did you ever see him with anyone?”

“No, not that I remember.”

“Thank you.”

He rejoined Brooke outside. “How about we hang around for a while and see what happens?”

“Fine with me. I’ll bring the car over and we’ll go on our first stakeout together.”

“And you thought this wouldn’t be fun!”

In the car, Dennis squinted to keep a lookout for any suspicious car or person who came and went. Brooke reached around behind her and handed him a set of binoculars. “Here, use these.”

He brought them to his eyes, focused, and panned the area. “I just got a feeling about this guy and it tells me sooner rather than later.”

Through the binoculars, he was able to watch the Camaro, the approach to it, and any slow-moving vehicles passing by it. In the binocular’s field of view, trucks zipped back and forth at a dizzying rate. Big stainless steel tankers reflected the light from the rest area right back at him, like a mirror. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness after each one.

Then he caught sight of a figure near the pedestrian walkway that spanned the turnpike. The man was wearing a backpack and was starting up the stairs on the near side. He stopped at a landing midway. Dennis tried to look closely, but another truck’s reflection obliterated the view.

The figure on the stairs took off the backpack. As he turned to do so, Dennis saw the outline of … “A beard! I got a man on the stairs over there with a beard!”

In the middle of the staircase landing, Tommy reached into the backpack and turned on the gyroscope. The package suddenly had a mind of its own, as the minute jostling of it was resisted by the gyroscopic action. He held it like a basketball at the foul line.

Dennis caught a glimpse of the man holding the pack out in front of him, pumping it as if he was going to throw it, as yet another stainless steel truck washed his vision white. Then it hit him.

“Magnets!”

He followed the truck as it entered a large storage tank facility not far down the road. He whipped the binoculars back to the stairs, just in time to see Tommy throw the backpack out over a passing steel tanker. The truck was slowing down in the lane closest to the stairs to take the exit. Dennis watched curiously as the backpack flew perfectly flat—not tumbling or tilting as he would’ve expected. It landed solidly on the top of the tank trailer. The bag clamped down magnetically onto the steel tank, as if it were covered with Velcro.

“It’s a bomb! On that truck.” Dennis pointed to the truck turning into the plant. “You get the beard. I’ll take the car and warn the plant.”

Brooke reached into the backseat, grabbing her shotgun. She ran toward the walkway. Dennis slid over and hit the gas, swerving out of the rest area and right onto the turnoff to the storage tank facility.

He screeched to a halt in front of the barrier by the security gate, yelling to the guard in his shack, “That truck has a bomb! Let me in. Call the cops!”

The guard, making an instant decision that Dennis was one of the good guys, raised the barrier and picked up the phone. Dennis drove over to the portico just as the truck pulled out and headed for the large storage tanks. Dennis raced ahead and cut the truck off.

The driver came down from the cab cursing. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Are you crazy?”

“There’s a bomb on top.”

After a second, the word bomb registered in the driver’s mind. He ran. Dennis looked up at the truck and the huge tanks it was now nestled between. What he said next was between him and God. He jumped onto the ladder and climbed to the top of the truck. He slipped, but caught himself as he cautiously stepped across, past the filler hatches in the recessed gully at the top of the truck’s tank. When he reached the backpack, he got on his knees and inspected it. It was humming. He hummed along with it in an attempt to steady his nerves. Reaching for the zipper, he stopped his hand, thinking, “booby trap.”

His humming turned into “Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree,” Cynthia’s favorite song.

“I love you, girl,” escaped his lips as he meticulously inched the zipper back, revealing the contents of the blue nylon-parachute-material bag.

Agent Burrell walked with the shotgun behind her back as she came upon Tom Regan stepping lively from the overpass, not paying any attention to her, hurrying toward his car. As he passed her, she raised the gun and pumped it … loud. The sound made Tom stop dead in his tracks.

“Freeze, FBI! Put your hands up above your head and drop to your knees,” Brooke said in her calmest command voice. “Drop to your knees, NOW!”

She saw that Regan was hesitating. She understood the confusion in his mind.
Could he beat a woman? Surely she couldn’t be as tough as a man. He might have a chance.
If that’s what he was thinking, it didn’t last long, as Brooke slammed the butt of the shotgun into his back with so much force that it drove him into the ground. She flipped the shotgun over like a baton and pushed it into his cheekbone as he lay sprawled, her foot on his neck. “Move and I will blow your face off! Was that a bomb you put on the truck?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Regan managed with the shotgun in his bearded cheek.

She pulled out her service weapon and placed it on his leg. “Last chance. Is that a bomb on the truck?”

“Fuck you!”

She fired her piece, the bullet entering his leg right above the knee. He screamed out in pain.

“The next one shoots your balls off, tough guy.”

She placed the gun at the seat of his pants. “Tell me what I want to know or kiss your balls good-bye, Tommy boy.” She pushed the barrel deep into his buttocks to accentuate her point.

Through his moaning, he managed to say, “Yes, yes it’s a bomb.”

“How is it triggered?”

He hesitated. She nudged his ass again. “It’s going to be terrible up there in heaven with seventy-two virgins and you with no balls, buddy, unless you tell me how the bomb is triggered.”

“I am not a terrorist!”

“Last chance. How is it triggered?”

“Okay, okay! It’s a contact timer, once it makes contact it’s set for five minutes.”

“Shit.” She slapped cuffs on him, then looked up and realized a small crowd had surrounded her. She picked the meanest-looking truck driver in the crowd and flashed her FBI ID. “You! I’m an FBI agent. Make sure he doesn’t move ’til the troopers get here. I need a car! Somebody give me a car.” No one stepped forward. She saw a man watching from a Lexus. She grabbed the shotgun and her piece and ran. She held up her ID. “FBI. I am commandeering your car.” The driver saw the ID in the same hand as the shotgun and got out. She jumped in, throwing the shotgun and her piece in the front seat. She took off for the plant, not the least bit phased by the gun oil from the Remington pump action soaking into the leather seat.