WHEN THE MUSIC DIES (MUSIC CITY MURDERS Book 1) (37 page)

Mike slowed the car as he put away his cell. He crossed West End Avenue under a green light and pulled halfway onto the sidewalk across the street from the hotel.

Mike and Cris grabbed their Kevlar vests from the trunk and were still tightening the Velcro straps when they started their dash across the street.

The deluge of shattered glass from the top floor windows followed the deafening blast from the explosion. The detectives’ self-preservation instincts caused them to stop, flinch and raise their arms to shield their faces.

“Damn it,” Cris shouted. “He blew the bomb.”

“Let’s go,” Mike yelled.

As they approached the hotel entrance, glass from the ballroom windows was still striking the cars parked near the building.

They ran through the evolving chaos outside the hotel and fought their way into the lobby. Mike was confident, as he cleared the hotel doorway; his pledge to Burris had been voided by the explosion. Cris tried her best to keep up with Mike, but the crowd was thick and his strides were more than her short legs could match.

Mike made his way through the mass of people. He reached the bank of three elevators only to be stopped by a sergeant who had seized the lifts and was already rationing their use to EMS teams and officers evacuating the injured from the ballroom level. Cris caught up in time to hear Mike.

“Cris,” Mike shouted. “The stairwell is back there where we came in.” He pointed. “Are you up for fifteen flights?”

“Hell yes,” Cris said, hoping she was right.

“Come on.”

As he entered the staircase with Cris on his heels, Mike heard a high-pitched alarm coming from the upper levels of the building. He climbed the metal and concrete steps fearing the explosion may have caused a fire, and a fire within a crime scene was the adversary of any detective trying to put together the already disjointed pieces of a homicide puzzle.

The detectives kept to their right as they fought their way up the flights, facing the flow of kitchen help and servers escaping the top floor along with guests from the upper floors who felt the shock or heard the alarm.

When they reached the fifth floor level the alarm went silent. Mike knew it had to be a good sign.

On the ninth flight they came up behind a Nashville Fire Department team that had obviously been assigned event duty at the conference. They were carrying a backboard and emergency medical kits. Cris was thankful the pair were slowing her climb, but wasn’t about to let it show. She hung in behind Mike and used the opportunity to catch her breath. As soon as another mass of hotel employees passed by, Mike moved left to overtake the gear-laden team. Cris hesitated, summoned her strength, and followed him.

Less than a full flight later, Mike slowed again to acknowledge an injured officer being supported by a fellow policeman as he made his way awkwardly down the stairs. His left arm and hand appeared hastily bandaged and he looked dazed.

The smell of blood was in the air. As they climbed, Mike and Cris passed several more officers and hotel employees with minor injuries. Each was being escorted down the stairs by others who appeared unhurt.

As he approached the fourteenth floor, Mike could hear muffled shouting from above him.

“I need some help over here.”

“Hold on, Damn it. This man needs to go now.”

Mike stepped onto the fifteenth floor’s half-flight landing and looked back to see Cris pulling herself up with the handrail.

“We’re almost there.”

“Good,” Cris gasped.

As he finished the exhausting climb, Mike grabbed the stairwell door and pulled it open for another young EMS team who had just passed Cris. As he and Cris followed the team in, he was struck by the chaos, the noise, and the sight of so many injured people.

They walked the hallway dodging gurneys and emergency teams who were working their way toward the elevators with the injured.

Mike spotted a stretcher against the hallway wall with a large German Shepherd lying on it. Blood was drying as it seeped from the dog’s ears. He was receiving oxygen through a mask made for humans and occasional medical attention from an EMS tech nearby. The tech’s time was split between caring for the K-9 and a small group of officers with minor injuries. One officer was sitting next to the stretcher with his hand securing the oxygen mask in place and stroking the dog’s motionless head. Even without the K-9 arm patch, it would have been obvious; he was the dog’s partner.

Mike and Cris entered the ballroom which looked more like an Iraqi war zone. They could see EMTs, as well as police and fire department teams, attending more than two dozen officers. Mike never saw or smelled any sign of fire, but the soggy carpeting and the collapsed wet ceiling tiles confirmed the sudden increase in air pressure from the explosion had blown out some of the thin glass bulbs in the sprinkler heads. The resulting spray of hundreds of gallons of water further reduced the chances Mike and Cris had of collecting meaningful evidence. With Nashville Fire Department personnel already on site, someone had wisely shut down the flow to the sprinkler system soon after the explosion, once the threat of fire was eliminated.

“The water and this number of people are going to destroy most of the evidence,” Mike said.

“What the hell?” Cris bent over to pick up a half dozen of the thousands of small steel screws from the wet carpet.

“They must have been in the bomb,” Mike said. “Look.” Mike pointed to numerous screws implanted into the room’s drywall.

“There had to be some folks severely injured with these things flying around,” Cris said.

“Looks like it,” Mike said. The folks we saw in the stairwell, I’m sure, were some of the minor injuries.”

“Mike,” someone yelled from across the ballroom.

Mike turned and moved toward the voice. As he came closer, he realized it was Sergeant Rick Hughes. Rick and Mike survived the MNPD Academy together.

“Hey, Rick.”

“Are you two working this disaster?” Hughes asked.

“We’re gonna try, if there’s any evidence left.” Mike scanned the room looking at the activity. “We suspect this mess may be related to a couple of homicides we’re already working.”

“Well, in case it’s any help, I was in here when Parker’s K-9 took the Arab bastard down.”

“Great,” Mike said, as he pulled out his note pad and pen. “What can you tell us?”

Sergeant Hughes explained the sequence of events as he witnessed them.

“Where was the bomber at the time of the explosion?” Cris asked.

“He was right there on a stretcher being transported.” Hughes indicated. “He was unconscious after the EMT’s injection. Lieutenant Cole and the two officers stayed with him until Smolinski got here from the Bomb Squad. The contraption he was wearing was already off him and hauled out by the Bomb Squad at least five minutes
before
the explosion.”

“Before?” Cris asked.

“Right. I saw Smolinski leave with it. Then the bomb went off over there next to the speakers’ platform.” He pointed to the four-foot diameter hole torn open in the ballroom floor.

“Where were you when it detonated?” Mike asked.

“I was walking back into the room through that door.” Hughes pointed. “There were about twenty uniforms in all. We all went down. Glass, furniture, flesh, blood and screws all over us.” He looked down at his wet uniform and picked at something still hanging from his shirt. It was a screw, caught in the fabric of his shirt. “My ears are still ringing,” Hughes said.

“Hadley and Stephens were hauling his sorry ass out on a stretcher with one of the EMTs.” Hughes pointed again. “The blast ripped him and our brothers to shreds,” Hughes pinched his lips together with his teeth and looked down. He took a deep breath, “not to mention the damage, physical and otherwise, it did to the officers coming back in with me. We were going to help get this place back in order for the conference.” Hughes paused, looking around at the destruction. “This is wrong. It’s so wrong.”

“I’m sorry, Rick,” Cris said, touching his arm.

Hughes nodded.

“Where in the hell did the bomb come from?” Cris asked, “and why didn’t the dogs pick it up?”

“I don’t know,” Hughes said.

“Well, we’ve got to find out,” Mike said. “Did you see any cameras in here?”

“None inside the ballroom,” Hughes said. “I’ve already looked.”

“Thanks, Rick,” Mike said. “Have you been checked out by the EMTs?”

“I’m waiting until they get through with those guys.” He nodded toward the injured officers.

“Make sure you let them check you too,” Cris said.

“I will,” Hughes said.

“Cris, let’s get busy,” Mike said. “We need to get statements from the others before they’re gone.”

As Mike and Cris were approaching a couple of officers receiving medical attention, Mike’s phone rang.

“Mike Neal.”

“Mike.”

“Yeah, Lieutenant.”

“We received a call from a man who said the bomb at The Centurion was Semtex.”

“How does he know?” Mike asked.

“He says he’s the one who sold it to the bomber.”

“Did he also tell us who the bomber is?”

“Yeah. He said he sold the Semtex to Carl Garrison yesterday.”

“Carl Garrison?
The
Carl Garrison, our favorite racist cult leader?

“The same.”

“So, I’m sure the caller identified himself, right?”

“Negative,” Burris said.

“How do we know this jerk’s credible and not a disgruntled cult member trying to nail Garrison and his redneck camp? And how does he already know about the bomb anyway?”

“It’s all over the media,” Burris said. “Everybody in the city knows by now. The caller was on long enough for us to determine he was calling from a pay phone off the Interstate at a gas station in Logan County, Kentucky. He said he was in the demolition business and had access to the Semtex. He said Garrison came to him and made him a cash offer he couldn’t turn down. Garrison told him the Semtex was for clearing a large beaver dam on his property in southern Tennessee. He told him the beavers were causing a creek to flood his pasture land.”

“Bullshit,” Mike said.

“When this guy heard the news media break into regular programming he said he put two and two together and figured it must have been Garrison. He said if he knew Garrison was going to kill police officers with the Semtex he wouldn’t have sold it to him. He said he felt terrible and wanted to do the right thing.”

“So, he’s turning himself in?” Mike asked.

“He wasn’t
that
interested in doing the right thing.”

“Figures. Did we get any other usable information from this honorable and concerned citizen? There couldn’t be a camera in the vicinity of the pay phone, could there?”

“No. I already called Kentucky State Police,” Burris said. “No cams.”

“Prints?” Mike asked.

“Phone was wiped clean.”

“Damn,” Mike said. “He did the right things, all right. Have we picked up Garrison yet?”

“Tennessee HP and the Hubbard County Sheriff are on their way to his home now. We called, but there was no answer. We got his machine. If he’s not there, we’ll get him at the lodge.”

“Mike,” Cris shouted, interrupting his call. “Jason says he’s bagged some body parts. One is a severed forearm with most of the hand still attached. The arm is partially burned, but he says he’s got at least three good fingers. He said the skin color looks dark.”

“Lieutenant, hang on.” Mike lowered his phone. “Jason.”

“Yeah, Mike?”

“I need prints. I need them
now
.”

“I’ll have them for you in ten minutes.”

“Lieutenant,” Mike said. “One of the criminalists found a hand. Looks like it could belong to the waiter.”

“Get the prints scanned and sent to TBI immediately. I’m calling them now to give them a heads-up so they can rush them through the state’s AFIS and the FBI’s nationwide.”

“I’ll call you when Jason sends them over,” Mike said.

“Thanks. Hey, Mike?”

“Yeah, Lieutenant.”

“While Jason’s working on getting those prints, I’d like you and Cris to come to my office for a few minutes. I need to discuss something with you.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Seriously?”

“Now. It’s important.”

“If you say so.”

Hubbard County, Tennessee

Thursday Afternoon

“He’s dead,” Brad said as soon as the phone was answered.

“Good. I told the thieving bastard to leave it alone,” Roger said. “You’d think he would have picked up on the fact that I’m not the type of man you want to screw over.”

“I warned him too,” Brad said. “Money makes folks do stupid things. Garrison must have gone straight to the lab as soon as I dropped him at the lodge.”

“I’m sure he planned to make a fortune, but trying to steal my formula was a bad idea. His attempt to use a laboratory which is one of the same ones I’ve worked with for over five years, was a supremely bad idea; no—a deadly idea.

“I’ve known the lab’s owner, Al Bryson, since the ‘80s. He told me he thought he recognized the scent when his technician brought him the sample. Al called me when the analysis came off the gas chromatograph.”

“What did Garrison tell them when he ordered the analysis?” Brad asked.

“He gave them some bullshit story about having a partner in a chemical firm who he believed was attempting to rob him of his share in a potentially substantial discovery. He said he needed an independent third-party analysis of the sample to protect his interests.

“When Al called me, I told him to feed Garrison some bunk about the chromatograph acting up in order to delay the feedback on the sample.”

“I’m not sure what made him do it other than greed,” Brad said. “I don’t know about his financial situation, so I can’t speak to that. But, I know he was building up his racist army for some major hostilities. I apologize for getting you involved with him,” Brad said. “There will be no fee for this.”

“That’s not necessary. You were hooking us up for what you believed was a mutually beneficial exchange. You had nothing to gain and you didn’t know this asshole Garrison was a thief.”