Keeper of the Bride

Oh, no. Lord, no. She was going to break down and cry right here on the steps. In full view of every damn car driving past on Forest Avenue.

“Nina? Nina, dear.”

She turned. Reverend Sullivan was standing on the step above her, a look of worry on his kind face.

“Is there anything I can do? Anything at all?” he asked. “If you’d like, we could go inside and talk.”

Miserably she shook her head. “I want to get away from here. Please, I just want to get away.”

“Of course. Of course.” Gently, he took her arm. “I’ll drive you home.”

Reverend Sullivan led her down the steps and around the side of the building, to the staff parking lot. She gathered up her train, which by now was soiled from all that dragging, and climbed into his car. There she sat with all the satin piled high on her lap.

Reverend Sullivan slid in behind the wheel. The heat was stifling inside the car, but he didn’t start the engine. Instead they sat for a moment in awkward silence.

“I know it’s hard to understand what possible purpose the Lord may have for all this,” he said quietly. “But surely there’s a reason, Nina. It may not be apparent to you at the moment. In fact, it may seem to you that the Lord has turned His back.”

“Robert’s the one who turned his back,” she said. Sniffling, she snatched up a clean corner of her train and wiped her face. “Turned his back and ran like hell.”

“Ambivalence is common for bridegrooms. I’m sure Dr. Bledsoe felt this was a big step for him—”

“A big step for him? I suppose marriage is just a stroll in the park for me?”

“No, no, you misunderstand me.”

“Oh, please.” She gave a muffled sob. “Just take me home.”

Shaking his head, he put the key in the ignition. “I only wanted to explain to you, dear, in my own clumsy way, that this isn’t the end of the world. It’s the nature of life. Fate is always throwing surprises at us, Nina. Crises we never expect. Things that seem to pop right out of the blue.”

A deafening boom suddenly shook the church building. The explosion shattered the stained glass windows, and a hail of multicolored glass shards flew across the parking lot. Torn hymn books and fragments of church pews tumbled onto the blacktop.

As the white smoke slowly cleared, Nina saw a dusting of flower petals drift gently down from the sky and settle on the windshield right in front of Reverend Sullivan’s shocked eyes.

“Right out of the blue,” she murmured. “You couldn’t have said it better.”

“You TWO, WITHOUT A DOUBT, are the biggest screwups of the year.”

Portland police detective Sam Navarro, sitting directly across the table from the obviously upset Norm Liddell, didn’t bat an eyelash. There were five of them sitting in the station conference room, and Sam wasn’t about to give this prima donna D.A. the satisfaction of watching him flinch in public. Nor was Sam going to refute the charges, because they had screwed up. He and Gillis had screwed up big time, and now a cop was dead. An idiot cop, but a cop all the same. One of their own.

“In our defense,” spoke up Sam’s partner Gordon Gillis, “we never gave Marty Pickett permission to approach the site. We had no idea he’d crossed the police line—”

“You were in charge of the bomb scene,” said Liddell. “That makes you responsible.”

“Now, wait a minute,” said Gillis. “Officer Pickett has to bear some of the blame.”

“Pickett was just a rookie.”

“He should’ve been following procedure. If he’d—”

“Shut up, Gillis,” said Sam.

Gillis looked at his partner. “Sam, I’m only trying to defend our position.”

“Won’t do us a damn bit of good. Since we’re obviously the designated fall guys.” Sam leaned back in his chair and eyed Liddell across the conference table. “What do you want, Mr. D.A.? A public flogging? Our resignations?”

“No one’s asking for your resignations,” cut in Chief Abe Coopersmith. “And this discussion is getting us nowhere.”

“Some disciplinary action is called for,” said Liddell. “We have a dead police officer—”

“Don’t you think I know that?” snapped Coopersmith. “I’m the one who had to answer to the widow. Not to mention all those bloodsucking reporters. Don’t give me this us and we crap, Mr. D.A. It was one of ours who fell. A cop. Not a lawyer.”

Sam looked in surprise at his chief. This was a new experience, having Coopersmith on his side. The Abe Coopersmith he knew was a man of few words, few of them complimentary. It was because Liddell was rubbing them all the wrong way. When under fire, cops always stuck together.

“Let’s get back to the business at hand, okay?” said Coopersmith. “We have a bomber in town. And our first fatality. What do we know so far?” He looked at Sam, who was head of the newly re-formed Bomb Task Force. “Navarro?”

“Not a hell of a lot,” admitted Sam. He opened a file folder and took out a sheaf of papers. He distributed copies to the other four men around the table—Liddell, Chief Coopersmith, Gillis, and Ernie Takeda, the explosives expert from the Maine State Crime Lab. “The first blast occurred around 2:15 a.m. The second blast around 2:30 a.m. It was the second one that pretty much levelled the R. S. Hancock warehouse. It also caused minor damage to two adjoining buildings. The night watchman was the one who found the first device. He noticed signs of breaking and entering, so he searched the building. The bomb was left on a desk in one of the offices. He put in the call at 1:30 a.m. Gillis got there around 1:50, I was there at 2:00 a.m. We had the blast area cordoned off and the top-vent container truck had just arrived when the first one went off. Then, fifteen minutes later—before we could search the building—the second device exploded. Killing Officer Pickett.” Sam glanced at Liddell, but this time the D.A. chose to keep his mouth shut. “The dynamite was Dupont label.”

There was a brief silence in the room. Then Coo-persmith said, “Not the same Dupont lot number as those two bombs last year?”

“It’s very likely,” said Sam. “Since that missing lot number’s the only reported large dynamite theft we’ve had up here in years.”

“But the Spectre bombings were solved a year ago,” said Liddell. “And we know Vincent Spectre’s dead. So who’s making these bombs?”

“We may be dealing with a Spectre apprentice. Someone who not only picked up the master’s technique, but also has access to the master’s dynamite supply. Which, I point out, we never located.”

“You haven’t confirmed the dynamite’s from the same stolen lot number,” said Liddell. “Maybe this has no connection at all with the Spectre bombings.”

“I’m afraid we have other evidence,” said Sam. “And you’re not going to like it.” He glanced at Ernie Takeda. “Go ahead, Ernie.”

Takeda, never comfortable with public speaking, kept his gaze focused on the lab report in front of him. “Based on materials we gathered at the site,” he said, “we can make a preliminary guess as to the makeup of the device. We believe the electrical action fuse was set off by an electronic delay circuit. This in turn ignited the dynamite via Prima detonating cord. The sticks were bundled together with two-inch-wide green electrical tape.” Takeda cleared his throat and finally looked up. “It’s the identical delay circuit that the late Vincent Spectre used in his bombings last year.”

Liddell looked at Sam. “The same circuitry, the same dynamite lot? What the hell’s going on?”

“Obviously,” said Gillis, “Vincent Spectre passed on a few of his skills before he died. Now we’ve got a second generation bomber on our hands.”

“What we still have to piece together,” said Sam, “is the psychological profile of this newcomer. Spectre’s bombings were coldbloodedly financial. He was hired to do the jobs and he did them, bam, bam, bam. Efficient. Effective. This new bomber has to set a pattern.”

“What you’re saying,” said Liddell, “is that you expect him to hit again.”

Sam nodded wearily. “Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

There was a knock on the door. A patrolwoman stuck her head into the conference room. “Excuse me, but there’s a call for Navarro and Gillis.”

“I’ll take it,” said Gillis. He rose heavily to his feet and went to the conference wall phone.

Liddell was still focused on Sam. “So this is all that Portland’s finest can come up with? We wait for another bombing so that we can establish a pattern? And then maybe, just maybe, we’ll have an idea of what the hell we’re doing?”

“A bombing, Mr. Liddell,” said Sam calmly, “is an act of cowardice. It’s violence in the absence of the perpetrator. I repeat the word—absence. We have no ID, no fingerprints, no witnesses to the planting, no—”