The Boardwalk Bomber

By Michael Jesse

Chapter 3

I left my keys hanging in the door and sprinted back down the boardwalk. I knew this was going to be bad. There was a cloud of sand in the air and chunks of deck boards littered the path as I rounded the corner where the boardwalk blends into Jockamo's deck, which wraps around the side and back of the building.

It was evident where the bomb had gone off. The deck was blown apart and the tables and railing near it destroyed. Someone was vomiting near a figure on the ground. As I approached I could see why.

What was left was mainly the upper torso. The lower body had been blown to bits, legs separated from each other and the lower trunk a bloody mass, intestines spilling out around it. Above the chest the body was almost undamaged, having probably been shielded by the tabletop. The victim was a woman about 40, blonde hair with a little gray, a gold crucifix still around her neck. Her eyes - blue - stared at nothing.

Behind me a guy in his 20s was screaming into a cellphone. "It's by the beach! It's by the beach!"

"Tell them North Beach!" I shouted. "Woodman Marina at the end of North Beach Road!" I took the phone from him, wanting to at least be sure it was a 911 dispatcher he was screaming at. It was, and I gave our exact location. "We have at least one dead," I said into the phone before handing it back.

Several people were bloody, but the injuries were mostly lacerations. They'd be okay. I saw a man slumped against an overturned table. He was barely conscious, his shirt soaked with blood.

I knelt by him and opened his shirt. He had a deep laceration wound in his stomach, bleeding fast and was close to losing consciousness. I pulled off my t-shirt and balled it up, pressing it against the wound.

"Sir," I said, patting his face to get his attention. "Hey, what's your name, buddy?"

He looked at me a moment as if uncomprehending. Then slowly he said, "Raymond." His head was also gashed open. Not bleeding much, at least not on the outside.

I could hear the sirens. "Listen to me Ray," I said. "The ambulance is coming and you have to help me here." I grabbed his hand and pressed it against the rag, which was already bloody. "Ray, can you press against your stomach right here?" He did, nodding a little. "Good," I said. "Keep doing that a few minutes, okay? I'll
be right back."

A few yards away an elderly woman was tending to a college kid with a bone-deep gash in his leg. She was trying to tug his belt off to use as a tourniquet. But he was a heavy kid, too hysterical to help her any, and she looked to be around 90, both in age and weight. I helped her get the belt off and tried to get the kid calmed down. She nodded her thanks and whipped the the belt around his thigh, pulling it tight with one deft yank.

"You a doctor?" I asked.

"Retired veterinarian," she replied, smiling briefly with perfect white dentures. "I'm used to uncooperative patients."

I hurried back to Ray and patted him on the face again. "Ray, buddy." I was shouting at him, trying to get him to stay awake. "Ray, stay awake. We're gonna help you."

The EMTs arrived and I ran towards them, waving them to the most seriously injured. From experience I rattled off the injuries to both and I pointed out the dead woman. Someone had covered her up with a beach towel.

I was running on automatic, not really thinking. I was helping to load the stretchers onto the ambulance when I realized the EMT had his hand on my chest, pushing me away.

"We have it under control now sir," he was saying, calm but firm. "You need to back off now."

It took me a second or two to hear what he was saying but when I did I stepped back and let them do their jobs. I took a breath or two and stood there. One of my legs was shaking as the adrenaline began to subside.

I stayed until the last of the injured was taken away. My shirt was gone and there was blood on my skin and my jeans. I walked into the water and let myself sink under for a long moment -- so long that when I came out again Rita was running toward me from the shore.

"Jesus, Jack," she exclaimed as she waded into the lake and took me by the arm. "I'm about to have a heart attack as it is. I don't need you drowning yourself on top of it." She led me back to the ruined deck and we sat together in the sun.

"Sorry I scared you," I said.

"I'm way beyond scared," she replied holding her face in her hands. "I've never seen anything like that."

I had, but it still bothered me. I'd seen more than my share of dead people. On a few occasions I was the one who made them dead. That bothered me too, but in a different way. Shooting a perp is one thing. Seeing innocent civilians blown apart by random violence is something very different. I don't want that to ever stop bothering me.

The local cops were on the scene talking to witnesses. It was the same two who'd responded to the last bombing. I had a real ugly feeling about these attacks. The one at my place was easy enough to shrug off. But now someone was dead. And this time there was no question the bomber meant to hurt someone.

One of the cops came over to me. "You're the bookstore guy, right?" I nodded. "Can you tell me what you observed sir?"

"I didn't see it go off," I said. "I ran down from my place when I heard it."

"Did you see anyone leaving the scene or watching from a distance?"

I shook my head. "I might have heard a car on the access road, but I didn't look around. I was watching the damned sailboats."

Rita suddenly stood up. "I saw that car," she said. "Is that important? Does it matter? I saw a car on the access road just before the explosion."

The cop looked up from his notebook. "What did you see, ma'am?"

"Well, I was cooking on the grill and I could see a car idling for a while on the access road. That lane only goes to the shops and it's just usually used only by the people who live and work her so a different car just tends to stick out."

"Absolutely," the officer said. "So what did this car look like?"

"Well, for one thing it was an old Mustang from the sixties. Or maybe the early seventies. It was kind of longer, more stretched out than the other Mustangs I've seen."

"Color or license plate?"

"I didn't see the license, but the color was just a dull grey, like it was about to be painted."

"Can you describe the driver?"

Rita paused. "Not really," she said. "I mean, I know I could't identify anyone in a line-up or anything like that. I didn't really get a good look."

"Did you see the person at all," I asked. "Black or white? Male or female?"

"White and female, I think," she said. "Long blondish hair and sunglasses were all I really saw."

And it hit me. "I heard that car idling," I said. "I was standing there looking at the sailboats with my back to the road and I heard the engine and almost looked around but I didn't."

"Before the explosion?" the cop asked. "I thought you said you weren't here then."

"I was here a few minutes before. I came down to the marina store and then walked back past here.

"And how long was that before the explosion?"

"Five minutes maybe. Long enough for me to walk from here to my shop. I was just opening my door when it went off."

The cop asked Rita and me a few more questions and then went on to someone else. Rita asked if I wanted a drink but I waved it off and walked back to my place where I took a long hot shower. I tried to remember exactly what I had seen before the explosion. I'm usually a pretty good observer. I tend to notice exactly what and who is around me and the details stay in my short term memory long enough to be recalled if something happens that makes them important.

But this time I had been lazy. I had been watching the boats out on the bay and hadn't paid any attention to the people on the deck or that car. Granted, it was an ordinary thing and not something you'd necessarily notice. But we don't get much traffic on the access road and I remembered that the sound of the engine was strong and deep, definitely a fast car. I put my head under the steaming water and pictured myself walking down the boardwalk past the shops and then past the deck. There were perhaps 15 or 18 people scattered among the tables, clustered in ones and twos and a bigger group or two. Rita at the grill flipping omelettes, waving to me. There was music on the outdoor speakers in front of the bar. Lucinda Williams. A young woman pulled a paper umbrella out of her drink. A grey-haired man was reading a newspaper. It flapped in the wind as he struggled to fold it. Ray.

I tried to focus on the area where the bomb went off. There was a blonde woman wearingà sunglasses and white shorts that showed her tanned legs. Tanned legs that would be ripped from her in a moment. I wanted to warn her: Get up! Run!

I remembered trotting up the steps at the marina store. The locked door. The clock sign in the window. Back down the steps. Two sailboats on the water, tacking together. The deck. Same people, still sitting there. Run! A white-haired couple holding hands across the table. Ray's newspaper flapping. A waitress carrying a tray of glasses. The engine noise in the background. Sailboats. Watching my shoes on the boardwalk. My key in the door. Bang.

I was lying on my bed, watching this play on the ceiling again like a flickering movie, when I realized someone was calling my name in the shop below. I had probably left the door open."Mr. Durham?" the voice came again. I recognized it.  Pulling on jeans I came to the balcony railing and looked down. It was Molly McCain.

"Up here," I called. She looked up and saw me. I knew why she was here. "I'll be right down," I said and stepped back into my room to grab a t-shirt. I pulled it on as I came down the steps.

"I understand you were at the scene of the explosion today. What can you tell me?"

I gave her an account of what I saw and what I thought. "This bomb was under that woman's table," I said. "Under the deck board probably. You saw how it was blown out?"

"I saw it," she said without inflection. "What about this car? Did you see it at all?"

I shook my head. No, I didn't bother to look around, even though I wondered about it slightly. Rita said it looked like an old Mustang and that certainly fits what I heard. It was a muscular old car of some kind." McCain wrote it all down. "That helps," she said.

"No it doesn't," I said. "I wasn't paying enough attention."

"People usually don't. You did fine."

Yeah, fine for the college-town bookseller I pretended to be. Jack Durham did fine, but I didn't.

"Do you know of anyone who might have a grudge against the owners of the bar; any talk of trouble with customers or employees?"

I shook my head.

"Can you think of any association between you and them that might cause you both to be targeted; perhaps some property dispute?"

I shook my head again. "No, there's nothing like that." She turned to go. "You still have my card?"

I nodded again. "If I think of anything else I'll let you know."

I followed her out into the sunshine. It was a bright, hot day and the sun felt like a blessing. I've seen some pretty gruesome crime scenes in my time and afterwards I usually find myself noticing how beautiful everything else is by comparison. Trees, birds, boats on the bay, people walking by doing their ordinary things.

Detective McCain paused at the railing to look out at the bay, and I looked at her a little. She was a real carrot-top, especially out here in the sun, with a redhead's complexion -- stark white skin and clusters of freckles on her cheeks and shoulders. It was a hot day and she wore a sleeveless white shirt with baggy pleated pants and a jacket folded over her left arm. She held it so it mostly obscured the holster strapped to her belt. Her arms, bare to the shoulder, were white and well-muscled. With her height and build she looked like she belonged in the WNBA. I was tempted to ask if she played, but I figured she heard that all the time.

She turned back to me, eyes as blue as the sky. "The officers said you did quite a job providing first aild down there. A real pro they said."

"Well, I used to be ... an EMT," I said, not really prepared for that question.

"Back in New York?"

"Um, yeah. How'd you know?"

She laughed for the first time, eyes crinkling. "It doesn't take a lot of detective work. You have an accent."

I laughed too then, partly in relief, and we stood grinning at each other for just a second or two before she got serious again. "Thanks for your help, Mr. Durham." She turned to go.

"Hope you catch this guy soon, detective." I said. "He's not just blowing up trashcans anymore."

"Well, if we're lucky maybe that's all he meant to do today," she said. "Maybe he didn't count on the crowd being there on a Sunday morning. Maybe killing someone will scare him."

"You really think that?"

She shook her head. "Not really. I think he's probably just getting started."