Final Seconds
Highest Praise for
John Lutz
“John Lutz knows how to make you shiver.”
—Harlan Coben
“Lutz offers up a heart-pounding roller coaster of a tale.”
—Jeffery Deaver
“John Lutz is one of the masters of the police novel.”
—Ridley Pearson
“John Lutz is a major talent.”
—John Lescroart
“I’ve been a fan for years.”
—T. Jefferson Parker
“John Lutz just keeps getting better and better.”
—Tony Hillerman
“Lutz ranks with such vintage masters of big-city murder
as Lawrence Block and Ed McBain.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Lutz is among the best.”
—San Diego Union
“Lutz knows how to seize and hold the
reader’s imagination.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“It’s easy to see why he’s won an Edgar and two
Shamuses.”
—Publishers Weekly
Serial
“Wow, oh wow, oh wow . . . that’s as simple as I can put
it. You gotta read this one.”
—True Crime Book Reviews
Mister X
“Mister X has everything: a dangerous killer, a pulse-pounding
mystery, a shocking solution, and an ending
that will resonate with the reader long after the final
sentence is read.”
—BookReporter.com
“A page-turner to the nail-biting end . . . twisty,
creepy whodunit.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Urge to Kill
“A solid and compelling winner . . . sharp characterization,
compelling dialogue and graphic depictions of evil....
Lutz knows how to keep the pages turning.”
—BookReporter. com
Night Kills
“Lutz’s skill will keep you glued to this thick thriller.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Superb suspense . . . the kind of book that makes you
check to see if all the doors and windows are locked.”
—Affaire de Coeur
In for the Kill
“Brilliant . . . a very scary and suspenseful read.”
—Booklist
“Shamus and Edgar award–winner Lutz gives us
further proof of his enormous talent . . . an
enthralling page-turner.”
—Publishers Weekly
Chill of Night
“The ingenuity of the plot shows that Lutz is in rare form.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Lutz keeps the suspense high and populates his story
with a collection of unique characters that resonate with
the reader, making this one an ideal beach read.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A dazzling tour de force . . . compelling, absorbing.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“A great read! Lutz kept me in suspense right up
to the end.”
—Midwest Book Review
ALSO BY JOHN LUTZ
*Pulse
*Serial
*Mister X
*Urge to Kill
*Night Kills
*In for the Kill
Chill of Night
Fear the Night
*Darker Than Night
Night Victims
The Night Watcher
The Night Caller
Final Seconds (with David August)
The Ex
Single White Female
*featuring Frank Quinn
Available from Kensington Publishing Corp. and
Pinnacle Books
FINAL SECONDS
JOHN LUTZ and DAVID AUGUST
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Praise
ALSO BY JOHN LUTZ
Title Page
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
Epilogue
AUTHORS’ NOTE
PULSE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Copyright Page
Prologue
For the kids at a New York City high school, a bomb scare is like an extra recess.
As the student body of H.S. 146 in Queens poured down the back steps and out into the schoolyard, there were a few hushed and frightened kids among them, but only a few. The small number of gangbangers, who probably knew something about the bomb, were keeping silent and watching the police warily. But the rest of the kids were glad to be out in the crisp autumn air. Mock brawls broke out. Skateboards clattered to the pavement. Caps were snatched from heads and games of keep-away began. Red-faced, shouting cops and security guards struggled to get the kids back in line and keep them moving to the far end of the schoolyard. Back toward the fence, away from the patrolling teachers, two boys were mooning the camera crew on the sidewalk. The crew had been sent by one of the local television stations, just in case the school blew up.
In addition to the blue-uniformed cops who were trying to keep order in the schoolyard, there were brown uniforms from the Traffic Division, who were closing the street with sawhorses and yellow tape, and suits from the Detective Division, who were questioning a suspect near the steps of the building. So there were a lot of cops on the scene, and they were busy, but when the gray van inched between the sawhorses and rolled slowly up to the gates, all of them paused to take a look. It was a moment to be grateful you had the job you did—and not the job the cops in the van had come to do.
The gray van was an old and battered Ford Aerostar. It had the shield of the NYPD on the side, and above that the words BOMB SQUAD. It came to a stop and both doors opened.
Out of the driver’s side jumped a wiry young man in his mid twenties. He had curly black hair, fair Irish skin, and handsome features. He was aware that people were staring at him. It showed in the studied nonchalance of his movements as he walked around the van and lifted the back door.
The man who’d gotten out of the passenger’s side seemed oblivious to the attention. His hair was going gray at the temples and he had a sergeant’s stripes on the sleeves of his uniform shirt. He stood well over six feet, with wide, sloping shoulders and a linebacker’s neck. He had a broad face, with a lined brow and wide-set hazel eyes. It was the face of a craftsman or a musician—of someone who had learned the habits of deep concentration.
By the time he got around to the back of the van, the young man had his arms full of equipment. The sergeant picked up several cases and shut the door.
The young man went up to the Scene Control Officer, who was standing at the gate of the schoolyard. “EOD Team 6,” he said, “Officer Fahey and Sergeant Harper. Want badge numbers?”
The cop shook his head and wrote down the names. He looked up from his clipboard as the sergeant walked by. “No kidding,” he said to Fahey, “that’s Harper?”
Fahey grinned. “That’s him.”
He hurried to catch up with Harper. They walked past a skinny Latino teenager with his hands cuffed behind him who was being questioned by detectives. This would be the kid in whose locker the “suspicious parcel”—as it was officially termed—had been found. Fahey and Harper didn’t look at him. How the parcel had gotten in the kid’s locker was the detectives’ problem. Getting it out was theirs.
A school security guard was waiting for them at the door to the building. The last of the students were just coming out. As he led them upstairs to the second floor, Fahey questioned the guard. The parcel had been found during a routine search of the lockers for drugs. It had an unpleasant chemical smell. No one had touched it.
Harper listened to Fahey’s easy banter with the guard, all the time eliciting information. Fahey liked to joke around and stay loose. Most bomb scares turned out to be false alarms. No need to get tense until you were sure you were up against the real thing, that was how Fahey saw it.
Harper liked Jimmy Fahey. He’d had him in training classes, and they’d been partners for six months. When you were partners in the Bomb Squad, you spent hours together in the ready room at the Sixth Precinct, waiting for the call to come in. You got to know each other very well. Jimmy Fahey was a good man. But Harper disagreed with him about this bantering stuff. Harper preferred to keep quiet in the last moments before facing a “suspicious parcel,” emptying his mind of extraneous thoughts, sharpening his focus. It was better to assume the worst. Then you’d be ready for it.
Fahey was saying, “Or one time—this really drove us nuts—it was a fake bomb. Some kid’s chemistry project. No explosives in it, but even under the fluoroscope we couldn’t tell it was fake.”
“This one’s real,” said the guard grimly. “You work in a high school these days, you learn a lot about ordnance.”
Fahey got quiet after that. They were walking down a second-floor corridor. They reached a turning in the hallway and stopped. Harper and Fahey dropped their heavy equipment. The guard pointed down the line of lockers and said, “It’s in 176.” Then he turned to go.
“Hold it,” Harper said.
Ignoring him, the guard started to walk away. He figured he’d done his job and he didn’t want to linger around locker 176.
“Stop,” Harper said, quietly but with emphasis.
The guard halted and turned. His expression was receptive. Harper pointed. Across from the lockers was a row of windows. Through them, he could see a brick office building on the other side of the street. People were moving around inside it. Traffic noise was drifting up from the street.
“Go to the Traffic Division guys. Tell whoever’s in charge he better close that street and evacuate the building opposite. Right away. If the bomb blows, those windows’ll turn into shrapnel.”
“I’ll tell him,” said the guard, and went on his way.
Fahey was grinning. Harper said, “What?”
“So when do I learn that voice?”
“What voice?”
“The one that makes people do what you say.”
Harper shrugged and bent down to open one of the cases.
“C’mon, Sarge,” Fahey went on. “When you were down under Astor Place Station with a bomb and they handed you the phone and Mayor Giuliani was on the line, and you said he better shut down the goddamn Lexington Avenue line now—was that the voice you used?”
Not for the first time, Harper wondered who made up these stories about him. “I didn’t say anything like that.”
“Okay, but you used the voice—and he shut down the Lexington Avenue line.”
Harper shrugged again. He was already struggling into his blast protection suit. Fahey grabbed the nylon pants from his own bag and started to climb into them. It was a special kind of nylon, heavy and stiff as chain mail, and intended to serve the same purpose.
Putting on the protective suit ought to have been reassuring. But it never had that effect on Harper. This was the last step. Once you fastened the final strap, you went to face the bomb. His heartbeat was growing more rapid and his insides were tightening up. With a conscious effort, he began breathing more deeply, slowing his movements.
Fahey, straightened up with his helmet in his hands. His fair-skinned, Irish face was very pale now. He said, “Say, Sarge? Does this part ever get any easier?”
Harper shook his head.
“But after you’ve done it hundreds of times and come through, you must start to think—”
“You start to think the law of averages is going to catch up with you.”
He’d blurted it out without considering, and it brought him up short. Now he tried to dismiss the thought from his mind.
Fahey was blinking at him in surprise. “But you could’ve stopped going out on calls years ago, couldn’t you?”
“I did,” said Harper. “Then came the budget cuts and personnel shortages. So I came back.”
“They’ll kick you upstairs for good pretty soon,” Fahey said. “And you know what? I bet you’ll mind plenty.”
“No, I won’t,” said Harper, as he attached a Velcro strap on his wrist. “I like investigative work and training. I’ll be happy when that’s all I do.”
“That right?”
Harper nodded. “It’s every teacher’s dream, teaching bomb disposal. Your class tends to pay attention.”
Fahey grinned. “Well, if you really don’t mind leaving the field, that’s fine with me.”
Harper looked at him, puzzled. “Why?”
“ ’Cause I want to be the next you.” The handsome youthful face wasn’t smiling now. He meant it.
Embarrassed, Harper looked away. He bent down to pick up his helmet. “If that’s what you want, I expect you’ll get your chance. There are plenty of terrorists around.” He lowered his helmet, a steel box with a glass faceplate, over his head. “Let’s go, Jimmy.”
They walked slowly, two moon-men in an empty corridor. Noises filtered up from the street, but the building itself was quiet. The door of locker 176 was standing ajar. Fahey carefully opened it all the way.
A big cardboard box rested on the bottom of the locker. The guard had been right about the chemical smell: gasoline, Harper thought, and something else, a smell he couldn’t identify. But it was a bomb, all right. All his senses told him it was a bomb.
“Mind if I handle this one, Sarge?”
Behind the glass plate, Fahey’s face was calm and alert. There was no trace of the nervousness of a few minutes ago.
“Go ahead, Jimmy.”
Fahey went down on his haunches. The flaps at the top of the box weren’t sealed, but he didn’t take a chance on lifting them. You never went in the way a bomber would expect you to. He took the glass knife out of his tool kit. If the bomb had a magnetic detonator, a metal knife could set it off. Fahey made a slit in the side of the box.
He glanced at Harper, who nodded for him to go on. Using a cold light, he peered through the slit.
After a moment, he gave a breathy chuckle. “Well, Sarge, the first thing I see is the timer. It’s a cheap alarm clock, and the hands are not moving. Repeat, not moving.” He sat back on his heels and grinned up at Harper through his faceplate. “This baby hasn’t been armed.”
Harper blew out his breath in relief. His faceplate clouded over. He started to take off his helmet, then thought better of it. “What else can you see?”
Fahey went down on his knees and used the knife to lengthen and widen the slit. He probed with the light. “The timer’s wired to a fifty-volt dry cell battery, which is wired to a stick of—it looks like gelignite. There’s also a ca
n of gas, straight from the service station. Strictly a high school kid’s job.”
“Okay.” Now Harper took off his helmet. That first breath you drew after taking off the helmet always felt so deep and fresh. “Go down and tell the detectives.” The fact that the timer hadn’t been set indicated that the boy they had in custody was the bomber. It would be good news for the detectives, a chance for Fahey to rack up some points.
“Right, Sarge.” Fahey rose to his feet and started to unbuckle his helmet.
“The bomb wagon should be there by now,” Harper said, referring to the armored vehicle that would transport the bomb to the range for disassembly. “Bring up a containment chamber and we’ll move the package right into it.”
Harper glanced out the window and frowned. There were still people in the opposite building. And it sounded as if they hadn’t closed the street yet. It didn’t matter now, but still—he made a mental note to have a word with the Traffic Division guy when he got outside.
“Jimmy!” he called after Fahey, who was walking down the corridor. “Make sure they understand, they can’t let anyone back in till we have the bomb out of the building, okay?”
“Okay,” Fahey called without turning.
Harper tried to think if there was anything else, but nothing came to him. He was alone with the bomb. He squatted down and lifted the flaps. It was a crude, amateur job, as Fahey had said. The smells were stronger—the gasoline, and the other one he hadn’t placed yet. When Harper saw the grease stains on the cardboard around the stick of gelignite, he realized what the smell was.