Demolition Angel by Robert Crais Page B

Chen. He looked stricken.
    “What is it, John?”
    “It’s a radio receiver like they put in those remote-control cars for kids.”
    Now all of them stared at him because what John Chen was saying changed everything they’d been thinking about this bomb and the anonymity of its explosion.
    “Charlie Riggio didn’t set off this device, and it didn’t just happen to explode. It was radio-controlled.”
    Starkey knew what he was saying at the same time as everyone else, but she was the one who said it.
    “The lunatic who built this bomb was right there. He waited until Charlie was over the bomb, and then he set it off.”
    John Chen took another breath.
    “Yes. He wanted to see someone die.”

3
•   •   •
    Kelso tasted the coffee he had just poured, making a face as if he’d sipped Drano.
    “You really think the bastard triggered the device from the scene?”
    Starkey showed him a fax she had received from a sales rep working for the radio control’s manufacturer. It listed the receiver’s performance specs and operating requirements.
    “These little receivers operate on such low voltage that they’re only tested out to sixty yards. The guy I spoke with gives us a ballpark maximum distance between transmitter and receiver of about a hundred yards. That’s a line-of-sight distance, Barry. That puts our guy in open view.”
    “Okay. So what’s your idea?”
    “Every TV station in town had a helicopter overhead, broadcasting the scene. They had cameras on the ground, too. Maybe one of those tapes caught this mutt at the scene.”
    Kelso nodded, pleased.
    “Okay, I like that. That’s good thinking, Starkey. I’ll talk to Media Relations. I don’t see why there’d be a problem with that.”
    “One other thing. I had to split up Marzik and Hooker. Marzik is interviewing the residents, and Hooker is talking to the police and fire personnel who were at the scene. It would help if I could get more people to help with the field interviews.”
    He made the sour face again.
    “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”
    Kelso started away, but turned back.
    “You’re still okay with this, right? You can handle it?”
    Starkey felt herself flush.
    “Asking for more bodies isn’t a sign of weakness, Barry. We’re making progress.”
    Kelso stared at her for a moment, then nodded.
    “Yes. You are. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”
    That surprised Starkey and pleased her.
    “Did you talk with Sergeant Daggett yet?”
    “No, sir.”
    “You should talk to him. Get him to thinking about the people he might’ve seen in that parking lot. When we get these tapes, you’re going to want him to look at them.”
    When Kelso closed his door, Starkey went back to her cubicle with her stomach in knots. Daggett would be confused and angry. He would be shaken because of what happened; second-guessing every decision that he’d made, every action, and every movement. Starkey knew he would be feeling these things because she had felt them, too, and didn’t want to revisit them.
    Starkey sat in her cubicle for twenty minutes without moving, thinking about the flask in her purse and staring at Buck Daggett’s address in her Rolodex. Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore and stalked down to her car.
    Daggett lived in a cramped Mediterranean-style home in the San Gabriel Valley, identical with its beige stucco and tile roof to a hundred others in the low-cost housing development just east of Monterey Park. Starkey had been there once, for a Bomb Squad cookout three months before Sugar died. It wasn’t much of a house. A sergeant-supervisor’s pay would cover something nicer, but Starkey knew that Daggett had been divorced three times. The alimony and child support probably ate him alive.
    Five minutes after she left the freeway, Starkey pulled into Daggett’s drive and went to the door. A black ribbon had been tied to the knocker.
    Daggett’s fourth and current wife answered. She was twenty years younger than