Chapter 15
Chapter 15
“Fuckity-fuck-FUCK!”
Kip has made plenty of mistakes in his four-year career on the Coastal Bureau police force, but he’s fairly certain that this is the biggest one yet. The only thing on his mind as he led the charge of two police vehicles and two ambulances, sirens blaring and lights flashing, up the long, winding hill to La Fin du Monde was reaching the victim. Saving his life . When he came to the obstacle of a white van parked sideways, effectively blocking the road, Kip knew—or should have known from the hours of endless video training—protocol said to wait. Do not approach the van. Assess the situation.
But it was an emergency! A man’s life hung in the balance beyond the van, and Kip felt the urgency and made the call. Stationed behind his open police car door, gun drawn and pointed at the van, Kip sent Groebner, the newest man on the force, to clear the vehicle, first the back and then the front.
Kip literally—embarrassingly—didn’t even think of the possibility of an explosive device, until his partner, Sandy, said to him over the hood of their car, right when Groebner’s hand reached for the van’s door handle— Wait…what if there’s a bo —and the night around them shattered in a burst of sound and light and flame.
Now he sits in the back of an open ambulance, being treated for the ringing in his ears and the growing knot on the back of his head from where it slammed into the pavement when he was thrown from his feet, and he clutches a cell phone, trying to explain himself to Franklin Zimmerman, the LAPD chief of police, whom Sandy called—along with the local fire department—in the aftermath of the bomb. Thank God for Sandy.
“Fuckity-fuck-fuck!” he repeats.
“No need for all the language, Grayson,” Zimmerman chides him like a patient grandfather. “Now, just slow down and tell me what happened.”
How to explain? Kip looks at Sandy, his mind replaying the entire incident. “Is Groebner dead?” Oh God. Please don’t let Groebner be dead. It’s all his fault.
“They got him in the other ambulance. Luckily, the door blew off and shielded his body from most of the blast,” Sandy says. But thanks to the ringing, all Kip hears is a low mumbling. He stares at his partner’s lips, as if he’s suddenly gained the power of reading them, but alas, he has not.
Kip lets out a half sob. “He’s dead, isn’t he? Oh God.”
“No—can you not hear me? Grayson!” Sandy snaps her fingers to get Kip’s attention, at the same time Zimmerman yells through the earpiece, “Grayson!”
“I’m tryyyyying.” Kip stares at Sandy. He doesn’t mean to whine, but he’s in shock. And the ringing. Well, it’s getting slightly better now. She points at the phone Kip has to his ear and mouths, Start talking .
Right, Kip thinks, nodding. He’s senior officer. He’s got to take control of this situation. He gives his head a firm shake, trying to clear his mind.
“You need to run me through this,” Zimmerman says. “Your partner says it was a 10-71. At the restaurant. And now you’ve got a van on fire? Possible IED? What in tarnation is going on there?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know.”
“Walk me through the dispatch.”
Kip takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, then speaks: “Nine-one-one got a call. Ten-seventy-one, like you said. Gunshot victim in the restaurant. Needed medical attention immediately. That’s it. About halfway up the road to the restaurant, a white van was perpendicular, blocking the route. Upon approach”—Kip sees no need to rehash the fact that he instructed Groebner to open the door—“the van detonated.”
Zimmerman pauses, as if he’s analyzing the information, and then: “Something’s not right.”
Seeing as how Zimmerman is technically his superior, Kip has to swallow a sarcastic What was your first clue—the bomb ? Plus, considering he set the bomb off with his clumsy police work, Kip doesn’t exactly have a high horse to sit on. He merely mumbles “mmhmm” in agreement.
“I’m calling in SWAT and the bomb squad. ETA about two hours. Set up a perimeter. Don’t go near the van or past it—we’re gonna have to sweep for secondary devices. And call the restaurant. Find out what in the hell is going on up there. Ask if they need a medevac. Santa Barbara’s got a chopper. Keep me posted.”
“Yes, sir.” Kip fills with relief, grateful to have a plan, to have someone telling him what to do. He hangs up and relays the information to Sandy and McLeod, the officer from the second police car, directing them to set up the perimeter. Then he types La Fin du Monde in the search bar of his cell. It takes a minute to load—service is shit out here in the woods—but the number finally appears. He clicks it and listens to the phone ring eight times before he hangs up and tries again. Then he lets it ring ten times. He waits a beat and tries again. Seeing as how this is his only duty, he has all the time in the world.
While Kip waits, phone to his ear, he watches Sandy and McLeod set up the crime tape, giving the van and the firemen putting out the blaze a wide berth while simultaneously sweeping for evidence, marking anything, without touching or moving it, that could possibly aid the bomb squad in their investigation. The bomb squad! Of course, Kip thinks, they wouldn’t have to hold and wait for the bomb squad if Guillermo had only listened to him when he suggested adding a Range Rover Sentinel to the force’s fleet of vehicles. A few years ago, Kip had been tasked with coming up for ideas on how to allot the extra half a million surplus dollars in the Coastal Bureau’s government-allotted budget.
“An armored vehicle that can tolerate a thirty-three-pound bomb exploding less than seven feet away,” Sheriff Guillermo read aloud when Kip presented him with the list.
“Yes.”
“Grayson,” Guillermo said, peering at him over his glasses. “In the four years you’ve been on the force, how many bomb threats have you been called to?”
“Well, just the one, sir, but—”
“And was it real?”
“No, sir.” Turned out, an innovative eight-year-old at the local elementary school didn’t want the cafeteria’s beef nachos for lunch and thought pulling the fire alarm and yelling Bomb! throughout the halls would be the most expeditious solution to that problem. Kip remembered how the child kept giggling every time the handcuffs slipped off her tiny wrists, as if they were playing a game, and Kip was getting so increasingly frustrated, he fired off a self-righteous memo that evening asking how he was supposed to do his job properly if he didn’t have the appropriate equipment, namely youth-size handcuffs.
“Exactly,” Guillermo said. He scanned the list once more. “We’ll go with the robot dog that can take folks’ temperatures in the event of another pandemic.”
“But, sir—” Kip had just included the robot dog as a filler option because Guillermo had asked for five ideas and he could come up with only four. And then he remembered his then-wife mentioning the dog offhandedly one evening, after reading an article about the controversy it stirred in Honolulu, when the police force there had bought one with their extraneous Covid funds. The robot dog was cool—don’t get him wrong—but Kip could see how it also could be viewed as a waste of government funds. The Range Rover Sentinel, on the other hand—well, a serious bomb threat was more likely than another pandemic, wasn’t it? Seeing as those only seemed to come around every hundred years or so. Regardless, Guillermo wouldn’t hear another word of it.
Now Kip wishes Guillermo were here to see just how right he was. A real bomb! That almost took out Groebner!
Kip sighs and keeps redialing until, on his seventh try, someone—finally—picks up.
“Hello?”