Jonathan Kellerman - Time Bomb

The fog had grown thicker; I couldn’t see ten feet in front of me. I put the wipers on high, but the windshield kept beading with moisture and fogging up on the backbeat of the four-four. I reduced speed, rolled closer, saw movement through the haze- a manic blur of movement, trapped by my headlights. Then harsh music: dull percussion followed by a solo of breaking glass.

“Hey,” said Linda, “what the- that’s my car!”

More thumping and shattering. The crunch and scrape of metal against metal.

I gunned the engine and sped forward. Movement. Clearer, but not clear. Human movement. The pad of footsteps over the swoop-swoop of the wipers. Then another engine revving. I opened my window and screamed, “What the hell’s going on!”

Tires squealed and the taillights diminished to pinpoints before disappearing into the mist.

I jammed the Seville into park and sat there, breathing hard. I could hear Linda’s respiration racing ahead of mine. She looked terrified but made a move to get out. I held her wrist and said, “Wait.”

“Oh, Jesus Lord.”

I turned off the wipers. We endured an evil minute, then another. When I was convinced we were alone, I got out of the car.

Cold silent street. The fog had an ozone smell.

Beads of glass littered the street, vitreous against the damp pavement, like melting hail.

I looked up and down Esperanza. Down the row of ranch houses, still dark.

The silence stretched and became absurd. Not a hint of movement, not a single window yellowing, or the merest creak of curiosity.

Despite the racket, Ocean Heights slept soundly. Or pretended to.

Linda got out of the Seville. We examined her Escort. The windshield of the little car had been punched out. So had the windows on the driver’s side. The hood had been caved in and was riddled with fissures that were raw metal around the edges. Bubbles of safety glass dusted the surface and pooled in the low spots.

“Oh no,” she said, gripping my arm and pointing.

Another type of assault: the once-white roof was a cyclone scrawl of red and black spray paint.

Abstract art: a coiling, dripping portrait of hate.

Abstract except for one clear bit of representation.

Covering the driver’s door, sprayed and resprayed for emphasis, its diagonal cruelty unmistakable even in the fog, was a black swastika.

Her hands were shaking too hard to get the key in the lock, so I opened the door to the school. She managed to find the corridor light and flip it on, and we went to her office, where I phoned Milo. He answered, sounding groggy. When I told him what had happened, he said, “Wait right there.”

He arrived half an hour later. Thirty silent minutes with my arm around Linda’s shoulders, feeling the rigidity of her body, then watching her pull away, pace, shuffle papers, fuss with her hair. When Milo walked in she composed herself, thanked him for coming, but seemed cold.

Something about cops…

If Milo noticed it, he didn’t let on. He questioned her with a gentleness I’d seen him use with child witnesses, then put away his note pad and said, “Sorry you had to go through this.”

“So what else is new,” she said.

He stood. “I’ll use your phone and get the print boys down here, but that will take some time. So why don’t the two of you go on home. I’ve got all the info I need.”

She said, “No prints. Not another media circus.”

Milo looked at me, then back at her. “Dr. Overstreet, we’re in hear-no-evil territory- if anyone across the street saw what happened, they won’t let on. And even if we manage to find an honest person, chances are they saw nothing worthwhile ’cause of the fog. So pulling prints from the car is really our only chance of getting anywhere.”

“They were using crowbars or something like crowbars. What’s the chance of pulling any prints from the car?” she said.

“Slim,” he admitted. “Unless they slipped and touched the car. But without prints, we’ve got nothing- might as well forget the whole thing.”

“That’s what I want, Detective Sturgis. To forget it.”

Milo scratched his nose. “You’re saying you don’t want to file charges?”

I said, “Linda-”

She said, “That’s exactly what I’m saying. The children have been through enough. All of us have. The last thing we need is another fright, more attention.”

I said, “Linda, if there’s some danger, don’t you think the children and their parents should be aware of it?”

“There’s no danger- this is just more of the same garbage we’ve had since the beginning. The sniping put us back in the spotlight and another cockroach crawled out. And there’ll be others- phoning, mailing. Until they find someone else to pick on. So what would be the point of advertising this? No one would be caught and more kids would be scared into dropping out. That’s precisely what they want.”

Gutsy speech, but by the end of it she was talking in gulps, almost hyperventilating, and digging her nails into the arm of the couch so hard I heard fabric scrape.

I looked at Milo.

He said, “Did you keep any of the hate mail?”

“Why?”

“In the unlikely event we ever find the piece of shit who trashed your car, maybe we can match a print to one of the pieces of mail and add a federal charge to his grief. You’d be surprised how nasty those postal inspectors can get.”

She said, “I told you I don’t want to go public.”

Milo sighed. “I understand that, and I promise you there’ll be no official investigation. And that’s why I said ‘in the unlikely event’-‘near impossible’ would be more accurate. But let’s say the perp returns- emboldened by getting away with it. And let’s say someone catches him in the act. You’re not saying you’d want us to let him go, are you?”

She stared at him, threw open a desk drawer, and yanked out a stack of envelopes bound with string.

“Here,” she said, thrusting it at him. “My entire collection. I was going to donate it to the Smithsonian, but it’s all yours. Happy reading.”

“Who else touched the contents besides you and your secretary?”

“Just us. And Dr. Delaware.”

Milo smiled. “I suppose we can rule him out.”

She didn’t respond.

“Got something to put it in?” he said.

“Always happy to oblige, Detective.” She opened another drawer, found an interoffice mail envelope, and dropped the stack into it. Milo took it.

I said, “What about some kind of protection, Milo? In-creased patrol.”

Both of them turned to me, then exchanged knowing glances. Cop and cop’s kid. I felt like a new immigrant who didn’t know the language.

He said, “I can have a patrol car drive by once each shift, Alex, but it’s unlikely to make a difference.”

She told him, “Sorry for bringing you down here. If I’d thought it out rationally, I wouldn’t have bothered you.”

“No bother,” he said. “If you change your mind or need to file a report for insurance, let me know. I can push some paper for you, maybe speed things up. Meantime, let’s get your car towed.”

“If it still drives, I’ll take it home myself.”

I said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Why not?” she said. “The damage is probably all to the body. If it rolls, home it goes. I’ll call my insurance company tomorrow and have it towed from there. The district will pay for a rental- one advantage of being a civil servant.”

“Linda, without a windshield you’ll freeze.”

“Fresh air. I’ll survive.”

She searched in her purse and pulled out her keys.

I looked at Milo. His shrug said, Nolo contendere.