The scene of the explosion was complete chaos. Orange, red, and blue lights flashed against the buildings; the roadway was cleared and blocked off with police barricades and multitudes of civil servants were crawling all over the place.
I stood for a moment, stunned, before weaving past a barricade and searching for Knox.
“Sir—excuse me, sir! You’re not allowed past here.”
I held up my badge, an item all prosecutors receive that is very similar to a police badge, but my stare remained straight ahead. The officer saw the flash of metal and didn’t look any further, perhaps my murderous stride making him recede out of my peripheral vision.
I found Knox sitting in the back of the third ambulance I checked, his face alight with red and orange, but on a canvas of bloodless skin. As I came closer, a bandage across his head became noticeable.
“Knox!” I called, dodging individuals walking across me.
He turned to the sound. “Jesus Christ,” I said once I reached him. “What happened?”
“I’m fine,” Knox said and gently prodded his bandage. “Concussion from the blowback, they said.”
I looked to the right, assessing the damage to the three-story brownstone I hadn’t bothered to study when zeroing in on Knox. Smoke billowed and merged into the night—the tangy scent of metal and water mixed with the acrid afterburn and fire hoses still out and strewn about the slick road. Fireman entered and exited the building while others stood on the sidelines, pointing and discussing potential weaknesses that could remain in the structure.
“Is this Ed’s place?” I asked.
Knox nodded, then winced under the movement. “The dickwad booby-trapped the entrance.”
I squinted harder at the damage. “Ed couldn’t have—”
“We knocked first,” Knox said, seemingly not hearing me. “No answer. We were all under such urgency, all the facts pointed to Emme being kept in there, so we went to the next move. I directed the guys to get the ram and stood back while they blasted the door open.”
“You’re lucky you weren’t in the front,” I said.
“Two guys are severely injured,” Knox said. The lights surrounding us added to the bleakness.
“Levi?” I asked quietly.
“No.” Knox wiped his nose with his jacket sleeve. “But they’re good men with families, and we don’t even have Ed Carver in custody to show for it. If I’d known, I would never…”
“I know.” I bent to his level. “And they know. There was no way you could’ve predicted that Ed liked to build bombs.”
“Actually, there was.” I straightened at Knox’s words. “I should’ve gone about this cleanly and done a more thorough background on him. Instead, I had Levi talk to Ed Carver’s parents while I banged into his apartment and didn’t wait for any additional information Levi could’ve given me.”
I pointed to the building. “Because you believed Emme was in there, that’s why. And any time wasted is more opportunity given to the kidnapper to kill her.”
“Turns out our Eddie has a penchant for building explosives, ever since he was a small child. Lighting up trees, throwing cherry bombs in toilets, toiling in junkyards to find things to light on fire later. It was all there.”
I turned back to the building, unable to keep the confusion from controlling my features. Was this yet another coincidence?
“Knox, I’ve been calling you because I had new info,” I said. “But with all this, I have no fucking clue what to do with it.”
“Tell me. I ain’t going anywhere for a while, and don’t even ask me where my phone went. Probably over there buried in the lawn.”
“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. The thought of what could’ve happened hit home. I’d been texting and leaving voicemails, growing more annoyed with this guy by the second, and all the while Knox was lying on the ground.
“I have a feeling the worst is yet to come,” Knox said, and the moroseness in his tone had me peering closer.
I hesitated. “I’m not too sure you’re going to believe it.”
“Well, I didn’t wake up this morning thinking I’d get a bomb to my face, so I’m pretty open to new discoveries at this point.”
“I came across information that lead me away from Ed Carver as the suspect,” I said. “When you left, I went into the interview room with Jack and Perry, remember that?”
“Yeah, sure.” Knox rubbed at his temple, but his attention stayed on me.
“Jack has always been hard to get to know, but you’re aware of that.”
Knox didn’t bother to play dumb. “What’d you get from him?”
“He’s been hiding a past that we’d never’ve figured out.” The idea of that, of failing to discover this kind of connection, had the centipede writhing. “Jack and Dex Abrams have been harboring a secret for decades.”
“Wait—District Attorney Dex Abrams?”
“A girl died while with Abrams and Jack helped him cover it up.”
Knox’s brows rose at the news, but he lowered them with a grimace. “You think Emme’s abduction is related? Is that where you’re going with this?”
“A few months ago, Jack broke down to his wife, told her everything. And he called Abrams and confessed that he needed to go to the police and couldn’t live with the lie anymore. This is career-ending shit, Knox. And it held enough risk that Abrams would be willing to do something about it, don’t you think?”
“Like kidnap Jack’s daughter and instead of contacting Jack directly, he contacts you?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“And holds her for an indeterminate amount of time, with no demands, as well as abducts Emme publicly enough that police are instantly on the scene.”
“Yep.”
“And decides to carve out time in his busy schedule to have a chat with Emme’s ex-fiancé and not her current fiancé, and all while running an office and making public appearances and seeing you often, he’s storing a high-profile kidnap victim in his basement.”
My mouth flatlined. “You don’t believe me.”
“I think I’d give it more credit if you mentioned Max Torro or his crime family.”
I gnawed on my cheek while glaring at him, wondering if this was the time to mention my second theory involving Uncle Manny.
Knox relented. “Spence, it’s not that I don’t think you’ve found something crucial here—clearly you have. But how can it possibly relate to Emme’s situation?” Knox indicated the charred front door of the building beside us. “Look at where we are.”
“This could be a diversion. Some kind of setup. Emme was probably never here.” A terrible thought popped into existence. “Abrams is smart enough to concoct this kind of tactic.”
“How in the hell can you put Ed Carver and District Attorney Dex Abrams together?” Knox asked.
“I’m not…I can’t get there yet.” I paced a few steps, then came back to Knox. “But it’s perfect. We’re over here, scrambling to control a fire and make sense of this situation, when meanwhile Abrams is able to transfer Emme somewhere else, or worse. He has the opportunity to kill her.”
“Listen to yourself, buddy.”
“You think I’m not aware of how crazy I sound? I’ve been going nuts with all kinds of scenerios since this started! Nothing makes sense! Why she was taken, why I can’t give enough of myself to find her because I lost two and a half years of knowing who she’s become—”
Knox reached out. “Spence, sit down.”
“Why her fiancé doesn’t know who the fuck she is or who in their lives would take her, when you know what? I would’ve.” I pounded a fist into my chest. “If we’d stayed together, I’d know how she’s doing, what her favorite new restaurant is, who is bothering her at work, what her friends are up to. I would’ve asked her how her day went. Every day. And listened to her response. He went every morning without seeing her even though she laid next to him—that guy had the chance to learn more about her every second that ticked by but he fucking squashed it. And for what? At the one moment where knowing everything about the woman he supposedly loves is crucial—her life is on the line—he’s useless.”
Knox hesitated before saying, “Are we talking about Dave, or about you?”
The noise of the surrounding chaos beat around us, and Knox didn’t add to it with more questions. He regarded me silently, and that stare had weight. I said, more calmly, “Maybe my assumptions don’t completely add up, but you’ve got to give me the credit of thinking about them. We’re involved in a case that doesn’t line up regardless of what line of evidence we pursue.”
“Which is why we came here,” Knox said. “And got blown up.”
“This is some kind of setup, Knox. Or coincidence. I can’t explain it but my gut is saying we have to look into Abrams’s—”
“Goddamn it. Do you really think Ed rigged a bomb for the next Jehovah’s Witness passing by, or is it more likely he knew police were going to come to his door because he locked a girl in his crawl space?”
“Crawl space?” I rocked back, then asked, very carefully, “why are you mentioning something so specific? Why not basement?”
Knox palmed his face, then pulled back, cursing, “Ah, fuck.”
“What are you holding back?”
He replied, without looking at me, “Please don’t storm into the brownstone, it hasn’t been cleared for safety yet and we’re still scoping the place for evidence.”
“Knox,” I warned.
Knox raised his head. “They found a body inside.”