Oliver Stark: 88 Killer

‘God, I hate these injuries. Humiliate the life out of me at every moment,’ said Carney.

‘How’d you hurt the leg?’

‘Afghanistan,’ said Carney.

‘You in the service?’ asked the security guard.

‘Yeah, until the IED blast. You’re a soldier too, right?’ said Carney.

The security guard showed his tattoo. A Marine. Carney nodded.

‘Those bastards bombed the fuck out of us and what did our government do? They withdrew troops.’

‘It’s too bad.’

Carney shook his head. He felt close to tears. Sincere tears. He pushed down his jeans and stood up.

‘I gotta thank you, fella.’

‘Not a problem. Good to help a soldier.’

Carney stood up and, with the aid of his crutches, hopped towards the gate with the security guard. ‘I hope I didn’t embarrass you.’

‘Not at all. War wound is something to be proud of.’

‘You’re a real gent.’ Carney pointed at the metal detector. ‘You don’t want me to hop through there without these babies, do you? I’ll be flat on the floor again if you do.’

‘No, man, that’s cool, just walk through.’

Carney walked through. The machine beeped. He stopped and turned.

‘Am I all right to go on?’

‘Sure, man, take it easy.’

Carney walked slowly down the corridor away from the gate. He could feel the sweat soaking his shirt and his hands shaking, but he was smiling now, not that they could see it. He found the elevator, pressed the button and waited.

The problem was that Lucy was about the only person he’d ever felt safe with. Why was it? Why was he so complicated? A Jew who was not a Jew, who hated Jews, who was betrayed by a Jew. He had felt safe with hatred. Hatred silenced all his self-loathing.

Carney walked into the bathroom on the second floor. He felt warm and flushed. He threw water over his face. She’d remember him after today, wouldn’t she? In the mirror, a worn-out man stared back at him. Older than his years. He was tired, red and looked mad as hell. In his head, he’d felt like a hero. He turned his face away quickly.

He took out a folded piece of paper from his coat pocket and opened it up. On it, the words looked small and hazy. He couldn’t focus, even in the bright fluorescent lights of the toilet. He recited the words. One powerful paragraph. Only eighty-eight words.

Crown Heights, Brooklyn

March 15, 11.02 a.m.

Harper made a judgment. Crown Heights had the largest number of synagogues in the area. He picked up Denise from the hospital. He needed someone with knowledge of Brooklyn. They drove towards the first on his list. He stopped and got out of his car, stretched his neck to get a good look up and down the street. Denise got out beside him.

‘Anything?’ she asked.

‘No,’ said Harper. ‘Let’s try the next.’

Harper saw a huge flock of starlings rise in a single movement from the rooftops. He looked up. It was a moment, that was all. He didn’t have time to wonder. A second later, a massive explosion ripped through the morning air with a horrifying shriek of violence. In a heartbeat, the world had changed once again.

At the shock of the explosion, Harper dived. His knees bent, and almost instantly as the first soundwave rushed by, he darted towards Denise with an outstretched arm, using his body to shield her. His mind was still taking in the noise, his body in adrenalin production, as he held Denise close to his chest. Time slowed. The blast lasted under a second, but the soundwave continued, lessening, widening like a gunshot disappearing over a plain, ricocheting off tall buildings.

A second after the blast, the treetops rushed with sudden air. Then the air was still.

And for a fragment of a second, it was so quiet. Maybe it was longer. It seemed longer. The silence seemed to hang in the air. Then someone took off the pause button and the scene burst to life with the shriek of car alarms and children crying.

Harper and Denise stood up. The blast had been close. Close enough for them to feel the shockwaves. Close enough for them to hear the raw burst of force and pressure. Maybe half a mile away, or less.

They watched a plume of black and gray smoke rise above the rooftops.

Harper’s ears rang and he saw the people all around dash into huddled groups. Taking Denise by the hand, Harper raced back to his car. ‘Get in,’ he shouted. They pulled away, turned and drove towards the center of the explosion.

Crown Heights, Brooklyn

March 15, 11.18 a.m.

Harper and Denise abandoned their car a street away. The traffic was too bad. Hundreds of cars packed tight. They got out and ran hard towards the scene. There was no telling what the bomb had done or how many were injured. The priority for the team was to get the injured out of there and to secure the scene. His priority had to be to stop Jack Carney.

Harper moved through the crowds at the end of the street. He slowed as he came across the scene. A gray New York street spread out from the center-point of chaos. Scattered, twisted, smoking metal. The wasted hulk of an exhumed truck, quietly breathing gray-black smoke. The spread of debris. Dazed victims, some staggering at the edges of the blast, some moving on the ground, others still. The whole front wall of the museum blasted to pieces. Carney hadn’t targeted the empty synagogue but a museum full of people. What’s more, like some final insult, he’d chosen Aaron Goldenberg’s workplace. Harper’s mind raced.

He stared at the devastation in a civilian street. Blood on concrete. Torn clothes. Papers and shoes. Body parts against fast-food wraps. The pressure wave had been enough to crush the closer victims. Their bodies were hit by an impenetrable wall of high pressure and had been thrown against the buildings. Further out, the shrapnel had caused carnage. The mix of bright red blood and black soot was smudged across the entire frontage of the museum.

Harper made for the makeshift Incident Command. He scanned the scene quickly.

There was no one in the bomb zone except the essential medical services and the Bomb Squad. There were two Bomb Squad detectives in big green EOD 8 Bomb Suits, fifty layers of Kevlar shielding them from any potential explosion. Thank God that they’d put the city on red alert. Every team had been up and mobile. The response time was astonishing and it meant that lives were being saved. The bomb crew were on all fours looking under cars along the street with a mirror.

A great phalanx of injured bodies lay at the entrance of the Museum of Tolerance. It was the epicenter.

‘There’s too many. Far too many bodies,’ said Harper.

Denise was in shock. She turned. ‘What?’

‘Something’s wrong. A street scene at this time wouldn’t have been this busy.’

Harper watched for a moment as the paramedics continued the pre-hospital triage — a hell of a thing to be doing in a New York street: tagging each of the wounded red, amber or green depending on how long they’d live. The red-tags were already being moved to the ambulances. Amber and greens would have to wait in the street in horrible agony.

As soon as Harper and Levene entered Incident Command, they spotted Sergeant Luce Colhoon, who called them across.

‘Just got here,’ Harper said. ‘You have anything on the bomber?’

‘Listen, we’ve got emergency services taking care of the wounded. Three dead already in ambulances. We got the utilities on it — there’s a burst gas main somewhere down the street, but they’ve closed off the gas already. I’ve got no idea about the bomber. What we got to know, Detective, is this: what the hell happened?’