Later

28

We went upstairs. Mom made coffee and gave me a cup. My first, and I’ve been a fool for the stuff ever since. I told her almost everything. How Liz had been waiting outside school. How she told me lives depended on finding Thumper’s last bomb. How we went to the hospital, and to Therriault’s building. I even told her how awful Therriault looked with half his head blown out of shape on one side. What I didn’t tell her was how I’d turned around to see him standing behind Liz’s car, close enough to grab my arm… if dead people can grab, a thing I never wanted to find out one way or the other. And I didn’t tell her what he’d said, but that night when I went to bed it clanged in my head like a cracked bell: “I’ll be seeing you… Champ.”

Mom kept saying okay and I understand, all the time looking more distressed. But she had to know what was happening on Long Island, and so did I. She turned on the TV and we sat on the couch to watch. Lewis Dodley of NY1 was doing a stand-up on a street with police sawhorses blocking it off. “Police appear to be taking this tip very seriously,” he was saying. “According to a source in the Suffolk County Police Department—”

I remembered the news helicopter flying over the Frederick Arms and figured it must have had enough time to chopper out to Long Island, so I grabbed the remote from my mother’s lap and flipped over to Channel 4. And there, sure enough, was the roof of the King Kullen supermarket. The parking lot was full of police cars. Parked by the main doors was a big van that just about had to belong to the Bomb Squad. I saw two helmeted cops with a pair of dogs on harnesses going inside. The chopper was too high to see if the Bomb Squad cops were wearing bulletproof vests and flak jackets as well as helmets, but I’m sure they were. Not the dogs, though. If Thumper’s bomb went off while they were inside, the dogs would be blown to mush.

The reporter in the chopper was saying, “We’ve been told that all customers and store personnel have been safely evacuated. Although it’s possible this is just another false alarm, there have been many during Thumper’s reign of terror—” (Yup, he actually said that) “—taking these things seriously is always the wisest course. All we know now is that this was the site of Thumper’s first bomb, and that no bomb has been found yet. Let’s send it back to the studio.”

The chromo behind the news anchors had a picture of Therriault, maybe his City of Angels ID, because he looked pretty old. He was no movie star, but he looked a hell of a lot better than he had sitting on that bench. Liz’s manufactured tip might not have been taken so seriously had it not caused one of the older detectives in the department to recall a case from his childhood, that of George Metesky, dubbed the Mad Bomber by the press. Metesky planted thirty-three pipe bombs during his own reign of terror, which lasted from 1940 to 1956, and the seed was a similar grudge, in his case against Consolidated Edison.

Some quick researcher in the news department had also made the connection, and Metesky’s face came up next on the chromo behind the anchors, but Mom didn’t bother looking at the old guy… who, I thought, looked weirdly like Therriault in his orderly’s uniform. She had grabbed her phone, then went muttering into her bedroom for her address book, presumably having deleted Liz’s number after their argument about the serious weight.

A commercial for some pill came on, so I crept to her bedroom door to listen. If I’d waited I wouldn’t have heard jack shit, because that call didn’t last long. “It’s Tia, Liz. Listen to me and don’t say a word. I’m going to keep this to myself, for reasons that should be obvious to you. But if you ever bother my son again, if he even sees you, I will burn your life to the ground. You know I can do it. All it would take is one single push. Stay away from Jamie.”

I scurried back to the couch and pretended to be absorbed in the next commercial. Which turned out to be as useless as tits on a bull.

“You heard that?”

Her eyes were burning, telling me not to lie. I nodded.

“Good. If you see her again, you run like hell. Home. And tell me. Do you understand?”

I nodded again.

“Okay, right right right. I’m ordering take-out. Do you want pizza or Chinese?”