[Cole Sage 03.0] Helix of Cole Read online

  As he neared the gate, he shifted the backpack so it’d be barely visible to anyone he approached. His hands were in his pockets, and the lapel of his jacket hid the strap. A cop and a security guard at the gate were smoking and chatting. The cop in the patrol car was reading the paper, waiting to direct the crowds. Reed slipped the backpack off his shoulder, letting it gently drag on the ground, then opened his fingers and let it drop against the wall. He put his hands back in his pockets and crossed the street, circling back to where he parked the car. He got in, rolled down the window, and waited. Six minutes after getting in the car, he heard the explosion. He smiled, started the car, and drove back to the parking lot where he made the bombs. The Indians said nothing the previous night when he parked in their space at the end of the apartment building. They would say nothing tonight.

  The light of morning woke Reed. He checked his watch: 6:48. He had about 45 minutes. Reed returned the seat back to its unreclined position and got out of the car. He walked to the corner of the lot and peed against the stucco wall. A cat scurried from behind a garbage can where it scavenged for food. He hissed at the cat and smiled.

  Reed lifted the lid of a dumpster at the end of the apartment building. Within seconds, he found a brown grocery bag. It was folded and not soiled or wet. It would work very nicely for what he needed. He returned to his car and opened the trunk. He removed the pink child’s backpack from the trunk, put it in the grocery bag, and rolled the bag closed. He put it under his arm.

  At a corner grocery store, he bought a packaged ham and cheese sandwich and a pint of orange juice. He ate as he walked the six blocks to where he would wait. Just as the day before when he followed the school bus, the street was empty. He found the house with the tall hedge he saw the day before and tucked himself between the hedge and the house. From this vantage point, he could see both ends of the street. Reed checked his watch: 7:27. He waited. At exactly 7:30, a little dark girl in a pink sweatshirt came out of the house next door and stood on the curb.

  At 7:43, the sound of a school bus could be heard coming around the corner. The bus pulled up and parked just to the right of where Reed was hidden. As he quickly moved from the hedge, he dropped the little pink backpack out of the grocery bag. His pace quickened as he crossed the street and rounded the back of the bus. He waited for the sound of the bus doors opening, then peeked to see the driver exit to escort the little girl across the street. Reed quickly went to the open bus door and went up on the first step.

  “Ashley! You forgot your backpack!” he called into the crowded bus, then turned to a little Asian girl in the front seat. “Sweetie, will you pass this back to Ashley?” He handed the girl the backpack and left the bus.

  Reed walked quickly to the end of the bus. As he heard the doors close, he walked more quickly. The street showed no signs of life. He walked to the corner and made a sharp left turn. It was then he heard the explosion.

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” Reed said as he pushed his hands deep into his pockets and walked the six blocks back to the apartments and his car.

  The Sentinel building loomed high above the smaller commercial buildings surrounding it. The traffic was heavy on the sidewalk, and no one noticed the nondescript man with the backpack enter the building. Reed walked up to the receptionist desk and asked for directions to the Classifieds desk.

  Without looking up, the receptionist said, “Around the corner. You’ll see the sign.”

  As he rounded the corner, Reed did indeed see the sign. He let the backpack slip from his shoulder and, as he stopped at the window, let it drop to the floor.

  “May I have a rate sheet, please?” Reed asked.

  “Here you go,” a young blonde said brightly. “Any questions, our number is on the back.”

  “Thanks.”

  Reed returned the way he came. At the end of the hall, he passed a very pregnant black woman and her three small children. Reed left the Sentinel building and again disappeared into the stream of people on the crowded sidewalk.

  “My goodness! Someone left their bag,” Millie Stevens said to the young blonde at the Classifieds window. “You got a Lost and Found?” she asked, shifting the baby on her hip and handing the backpack through the window.

  “Sure do. I’ll check for ID when we’re through and give the owner a call. How can I help?”

  Cole slept little. The café mocha he picked up on the way to the Sentinel soured in his stomach. All night Cole tossed and turned, role-playing in his head what he would say when the bomber called again. He tried tough, he tried pleading, and he tried cold directness, but now sitting in the office waiting for the call, he still didn’t know what he’d say. His head ached with thoughts swirling in his mind.

  Five minutes later, the pretty young blonde in Classifieds remembered the backpack at her feet. She didn’t live to remember anything else. The explosion and its load of nails rocked the Sentinel building and could be heard and felt four floors above. The five women in the small office were all killed in the blast. It was 11:05 a.m.

  Cole Sage and the FBI team were all waiting in place when the building shook from the blast. Harris and Washington were discussing the similarities between the Wrigley Field bomb and the one that devastated a South Side school bus earlier that morning.

  “Oh, God, no!” Washington said as he gazed down.

  Harris was out the door, running for the stairs.

  Cole stood and turned to Washington. “Call your people. This is out of control.”

  “11:05. He’s supposed to call in less than an hour. You stay here. Just in case. Don’t leave.” Washington was out the door in a run.

  Cole spun around and kicked a chair across the room.

  On the ground floor, smoke and dust filled the air. In the entry, large chunks of the ceiling had fallen, and the T-bar and tiles fell into the hall leading to the Classifieds window. The wall in front of the Classifieds office was blown out by the blast, and the concussion blew the nails back into the office. The five bodies against the back wall resembled pincushions. Computer monitors were in pieces all over the room. Nails cut a path across the room. Several large windows were blown out into the street. One passerby was lying on the sidewalk, severely lacerated by flying glass.

  Tom Harris stepped over the debris in the hall and into the exposed office, stepping over what had been the front wall. He felt the slickness of tissue as his foot touched the wet carpet. This was where the young blonde woman unzipped the backpack, releasing its hellish fury. Her body was blown to pieces in the blast and would not be identifiable. Farther into the room, he saw the bodies of the office workers thrown like so many ragdolls against the back wall. Harris knelt and checked the pulse of a woman who still had color in her face. It was too late. She, too, was dead.

  Harris looked out the shattered window and saw a man who looked to be in his 80s on the sidewalk struggling to get up. He hopped out the window and knelt beside the man.

  “What happened?” the man asked weakly.

  “A bomb,” Harris offered. “Here now, lay back. Help is on the way.” Harris removed his coat, rolled it tightly, and put it under the man’s head.

  “Where has my America gone?” the man asked in an Eastern European accent.

  Harris could not answer. He used his handkerchief to wipe the blood and tears from the old man’s eyes. He patted the man on the shoulder and waited with him until the ambulance arrived.

  Cole paced and thought and talked to himself as he waited in the fourth floor conference room. What was the damage, how many were hurt? His mind raced for an explanation of why all this was happening. From his pocket, he pulled the copy of the article that the caller quoted. It was written more than 20 years ago. What relevance could it possibly have today? There were no real revelations. It posed a lot of questions. It gave facts and dates and told the whereabouts of a group of ’60s radicals. Could the caller be one of them? Impossible. They were all dead or living out their lives above ground.

 
Cole stayed in the conference room as Washington ordered except to use the restroom. In the hall, he heard no activity. He stopped and listened for a long moment. The fourth floor was silent. The noisy bustle of the office was stilled. The building was evacuated. Cole remembered an evacuation years before when a gas leaked was discovered. That lasted only a couple of hours. The paper got out on time. Now, a search of the building would take hours. It would be a late edition for sure, and the Sentinel would be its own headline.

  Carter Washington’s call for assistance was answered within minutes of the blast as a full team of FBI investigators arrived on the scene. Members of the crime scene investigation team flew in from all over the Midwest after the Wrigley Field bombing. Their numbers were split between Wrigley Field and the school bus scene, but the team that arrived at the Sentinel was still larger than everything available in the Chicago office.

  At ten minutes to twelve, Washington came back to the conference room. He sat quietly at the far end of the table. Cole sensed he should not speak to him. The agent’s face was grave, and he seemed to be deep in his thoughts. After several minutes, he stood and joined Cole in watching the emergency vehicles below.

  “Nails. At Wrigley, the bus, and now here. These are very sophisticated, very lethal explosives. The best we can figure so far is that the bombs are in backpacks. There are no witnesses. No one survived who might’ve seen the guy. If anyone even saw him at all.” Washington unconsciously wiped a smudge off the window.

  “A boy on the bus said he remembered passing a backpack on the bus shortly before the blast. He was in the front of the bus. Said he was tying his shoe when the bomb went off. He wasn’t sure how it got on the bus. Said he thought somebody’s dad brought it.” Washington took a deep breath and sighed heavily. “Seventeen children are dead, six more injured, most won’t make it. The driver’s dead. Now we have six dead women downstairs.” Washington cracked his knuckles. “Five to twelve.”

  “What am I going to say? I don’t understand how I connect to this. Every angle comes back to this article.” Cole waved the photocopy. “It was a puff piece. It filled space. Could all these people be dead over something I knocked out in an hour?”

  Washington looked at him. “One thing I’ve learned is that things don’t have to make sense to make them true. This time, the call will be monitored in Washington. A roomful of our top people from the Behavioral Science Unit will be listening in. They’re working on a profile of our bomber.

  “You’re a smart guy, Sage. I’ve been reading your stuff. Follow your instincts. Interview this guy. Don’t let him interview you. Turn it around. Keep him talking, because the more he says, the more we have to work with.”

  The door opened, and Harris and FBI technician Nutting came in.

  “Moral support,” Harris said to Cole. “Okay with you?” he said to Washington.

  “We need all we can get.”

  Cole gave Harris a half-hearted smile and looked at the light on the phone. It blinked twice and the phone rang.

  “He’s anxious. Let it ring five times.”

  Cole picked up on the fifth ring. “You’re early.”

  “My name is Jason Reed. I am the one who designed and delivered your warnings.” The voice was firm and confident, but the connection was not good.

  “My warnings?” Cole asked.

  “Now you know how serious I am.”

  “The people in my article never killed the innocent. What threat are children to your revolution?”

  “You care nothing for children. Your government and its failed policies are responsible for the deaths of thousands of children every day. But they aren’t white, so your government doesn’t give a shit. Children? Please.”

  “So, this is all about killing white children, baseball fans and secretaries? If what you have is some kind of political agenda, that’s failed policy.”

  “My agenda was set by the God. He came and showed us the way, and you belittled Him.”

  “You mean Lyman?”

  “You people didn’t know who lived among you. Mel taught us that suffering is always the consequence of denial, and nothing in God’s creation can be denied. Man is God’s highest creation. If man’s not going to survive, God’s not going to survive. You said Mel was a footnote in history. He was the Christ, the Messenger of God. Your government killed him. Now I will complete the job he started.”

  “Mel Lyman didn’t kill anybody. He didn’t espouse that kind of violence.”

  “Violence is as American as apple pie. It’s the only thing Americans really understand. That’s why your government invades all those little defenseless countries—Grenada, Panama, Bosnia, Iraq. It’s like Mike Tyson beating up kids on a playground. I like violence. I understand it. It brings with it a message of strength. In my case, a message of a new beginning.” The sound of cars passing muffled some of his words.

  “So, what have I got to do with all this? I just write for a newspaper.”

  “You’re too modest. You have the power of the pen. More people have died from the stroke of a pen than from all the guns that ever fired a shot. You’re going to use the power of your pen to get my message to the people, Mr. Cole Sage of the Chicago Sentinel.”

  “I don’t even work here anymore. You knew that. They told you the first time you called. You haven’t done your homework, Tim.”

  “Don’t call me ‘Tim.’” There was a change in the voice. For the first time, there was no confidence behind it.

  There was a long silence. Cole heard a horn honk and the sound of music in the background.

  “Reed, you still there?” Cole said, breaking the silence.

  “You work somewhere. They said you worked.”

  “That’s when you got angry. You didn’t let the operator finish her sentence. You denied her, Tim. Nothing in God’s creation can be denied. Isn’t that what Mel Lyman said?”

  There was laughter at the other end of the line. “You’re trying to provoke me. It won’t work. Tell me where you work.”

  “I write for the San Francisco Chronicle.” Cole suddenly felt naked. Did he give away too much?

  “This will be the Summer of New Love. I will send you my Statement of Truth.”

  “Your truth or Mel’s truth?”

  “They are the same.”

  “Then you are God, the Christ? Are we to worship you now? Come on, Tim, two Christ’s are company, three’s a crowd.”

  “I never said I was the Christ. You are twisting my words, Mr. Cole Sage. That’s a dangerous game to play. You have been warned. Next, you will be punished. This game has been fun. You’re a good match for me. We think alike, but it’s time to stop playing games.

  “I will bring down your government. The people will rise up to join me in freeing the people of the world of the Jews and their control of the world’s economy. Your government infected Africa with AIDS. I will bring healing. Your government keeps the people of South America enslaved to puppet governments that they prop up with drug money. I will send a message to the working people of America that they can free themselves from the chains of a government that is really their enemy. Television and McDonalds have poisoned them. They will respond when shown the way. You will print my words.”

  “I’m just a writer. I have no say in what is printed. You must know that, Tim.”

  “There you go again with the ‘Tim’ thing. Give it up, Sage, it ain’t workin’.” Reed laughed but it sounded forced. “I’ll send an envelope to you in San Francisco. You’re a writer. Talk to your editor. Tell him what can happen if I’m not given a platform for my words. Print what I send. Then you will have reserved your place in the history of the New Beginning.”

  “If I help you, I need some assurance you won’t hurt anybody else,” Cole said.

  “What was it my grandma used to say? To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. I’ve just begun to break eggs. Okay, here’s what: I won’t do anything until I see my message in your paper. I will send the s
ame envelope to CNN, Fox, and all the cable news people. But you and your paper, they will be my testament.”

  The sound of a harmonica suddenly drowned out Reed’s words. The phone was picking up music, loud music. The voice was gone but there was still the sound of the blues coming through the phone.

  “He’s in a blues club! That’s the music I keep hearing in the background.”

  “Good call. He’s on Halstead somewhere around 14th. He’s long gone by now. Nice touch, the music on hold.” Washington smiled at Cole. “Nice work on the phone. Did any of that make any sense to you?”

  “Obviously, he’s got no lack of ego. How many bad guys call in their names? What’s bugged me all along is the Mel Lyman thing. Lyman was an acidhead who went from seeing God to believing he was God. He wrote a lot of rambling anti-Vietnam war, hippy trippy be-one-with-the-universe crap. Nobody paid much attention to him outside his little commune. He even tired of that and went to Oregon. Died. Nobody knows exactly how or when.” Cole stood and ran his hands through his hair.

  “Reed is a real dangerous man. Rest assured there are a dozen people in Washington right now combing files, photos, and similar bombings. We’ll know who he is very soon.” Washington smiled with the assurance only past experience could bring. “Once we know who, the where gets a lot easier.”

  “I need to get home. When can you get me on a plane?”

  Washington flipped open a cell phone and asked about planes and departure times. He flipped the phone closed and said, “Seems you and I aren’t quite rid of each other yet. I’m going with you. We leave in an hour.”

  “I have got to get back to work, too,” Harris said as he made his way to the door.

  “Hey, Tom, next trip is yours. I don’t think I’ll be in Chicago again soon.” Cole turned and shook hands with his old friend. “Thanks for the moral support.”

  “Been a hell of a weekend.” Harris slapped Cole on the shoulder and was out the door.

  * * * * *

  Within minutes of laying down the phone, Reed was winding south and west out of Chicago. In the seat beside him was his leather bag with the dozen or so peyote buttons. Reed reached out and gently stroked the bag.