Alex Kava - Black Friday

Who was he fooling? No professional firefighter would climb inside a commercial dryer and shut the door.

Sweat trickled down his back and down his face. He had to constantly wipe it out of his eyes. The overalls stuck to him. It was crazy hot inside the dryer. How long had it been? It felt like hours, but he knew that it hadn't been long. Twenty minutes? Forty? Maybe an hour.

He'd exhausted himself with the initial panic. His shoulder ached where he had slammed it over and over against the immovable door. The only thing that stopped him from yelling for help was explaining to Frank's meaty face why he was stuck in a dryer.

He concentrated on peeling and plucking out the rubber seal around the door. The last piece, finally. Only it didn't make a difference. Not even a slight bit looser. The sucker still wouldn't budge. Now his fingertips hurt from squeezing them between the metal, hoping to bend or pry open the door. His injured palm hadn't started bleeding again but it was throbbing. He was running out of ideas. And eventually out of air, despite his theory about the vents.

Okay, so this was bad but at least it wasn't a freezer.

That first time he'd met Maggie she was working a case in Connecticut. The killer ended up making national headlines—a psycho who cut the diseased body parts from his victims, collecting his specimens in Mason jars then stuffing the bodies in fifty-five-gallon drums hidden in an abandoned rock quarry. The guy managed to throw Maggie into a chest freezer and left her there to die. By the time anyone found her, hypothermia had set in. Hypothermia so bad the doctors had to drain all her blood out of her body, warm it up and put it back in. Amazing what they could do. Amazing that she had survived. Actually Maggie was pretty amazing. Why was he only now realizing that?

Back then she had been a total stranger to Patrick. He felt bad for her but not much else. Still, he came to see her, sat at her hospital bed a few times and kept her company. But what else could he do? Besides, that fall he had plenty of other things that required his attention.

After that, he and Maggie had gotten together for lunch or dinner a few times. He liked hearing the stories about their dad, but, like Maggie, Thomas O'Dell was a stranger to Patrick, too. There was nothing tangible to connect to. No memories. No photos. Nothing handed down. Patrick didn't even get the man's surname.

To make matters worse, his mother told him the subject of his father was "off limits." She wouldn't discuss it and insisted he respect her wishes. She said she knew she could count on him to not make this issue a problem. How could she not see that refusing to talk about "the subject," "this issue," actually prevented Patrick from knowing about

himself?

As a result, he had opted to spend Thanksgiving with friends who thought they knew him so well they could leave him to fend on his own, instead of spending the holiday with family who didn't know him at all.

They all thought he was the mature, independent twenty-three-year-old who could handle anything and everything thrown his way because he'd taken care of himself so well for so long. Maybe he was sick and tired of taking care of himself. Maybe he wanted to lean on someone else for a change.

The heat continued to soar inside the dryer. He laid his head back against the drum. Not exactly the right time to count on someone else. If everyone thought he was so capable then certainly he should be able to get the fuck out of this dryer. Maybe he just needed to sit back and look at things differently.

He couldn't remember where the hinges were. What side? Had there been a handle that he had to pull up on? He'd been in such a panic he just climbed in and swung the door closed behind him. Was it possible he was knocking his shoulder against the hinged side?

Maybe he needed to take a different approach.

Patrick twisted and turned his body, making the metal drum whine. He slid and shoved himself so that his back leaned against the back of the dryer. His knees splayed out to each side of him in order for him to plant his bare feet on the door. He didn't care if he broke the round glass and cut his feet. He needed to breathe. He needed out of here. He pulled back his legs and kicked both heels against the door as hard as he could.

The door popped open.

Nick had been punching buttons back in the video surveillance room, trying to follow the sequence Jerry Yarden had taught him, when he got Maggie's call. Moments earlier he'd finally convinced Yarden to go home, be with his family, get some rest, although Nick imagined home for Yarden was a small studio apartment and his family probably a cat, maybe two cats. He tried to hide his surprise when Yarden—humble but proud—opened his wallet to show Nick his family: a beautiful brunette, three handsome boys and a small white fluff-ball of a dog on his wife's lap. Nick hadn't even been right about the cat.

"You sure you'll be okay?" Yarden's parting words, accompanied by a glance at the panel of keyboards and monitors. Nick wondered if Yarden worried about leaving Nick alone or leaving his surveillance equipment alone with Nick.

"I'll be fine. Go hug your wife and kids, Jerry. You did good, real good. If I need you, I'll call."

Nick had been feeling like there wasn't much more he could do. He was exhausted but he avoided going to his hotel room. Before he arrived in Minnesota he'd reserved a room at the same hotel that was now the command center, but he hadn't had a chance to get back there and even open his suitcase. He kept checking his watch. He had called his boss, Al Banoff, to give him an update. It was too late, or rather too early in the morning, to call Christine and check on his father.

So instead of his hotel room, Nick had gone back to the mall. He went back to the video surveillance room and started cueing up video segment after segment of the third bomber. He had the image of Patrick Murphy stamped into his mind now and he wanted to see if the third bomber, or the bomber's friend, could be Murphy. But in all the segments they had found, as soon as the two young men and woman got off the escalators onto the third floor, they disappeared into the food court and disappeared out of surveillance range.

Then Maggie called.

Okay, it was silly but he felt a new surge of adrenaline just hearing her voice. Having her ask for his help was a bonus. Inviting him to her hotel room…It was a case, he reprimanded himself. They were working a case—a horrendous, sad, scary case. So why did his heart start pounding a little faster? Why did the gusts of wind that bit and pulled at his coattail not chill him? As he entered the hotel lobby, after walking all the way from the mall, he stripped off his leather gloves to find his palms sweating. He actually had sweaty palms. It was ridiculous. He was ridiculous.

He stopped at his own room to pick up his laptop computer, the one request Maggie had made of him. Once in his room, he shed his coat, took one look at himself in the mirror and continued to pull off his shoes and socks, trousers, shirt and tie. He would be a few minutes late, but he needed something to revive him. He needed a shower.

Henry Lee stared at the wall clock in the ICC waiting room. He'd been here for a good fifteen minutes, watching the hands of the clock crawl. The wait strained his already frayed nerves. Just five more minutes and he could make his next call to Dixon.

Someone had left the Saturday Tribune on the unmanned and empty registration desk. Headlines and colored photos of the bombing dominated the front page. He didn't want to see any of it. Couldn't even look at it.

He tried to keep still. He'd bitten half his fingernails to the quick—just like his grandson. It had been an old habit he thought he'd replaced with single malt Scotch, but he hadn't been able to have a drink since Thanksgiving. Now here it was Saturday morning.