Deadly Beloved(92)

“Phil!” Dr. Halloran shouted. “Phil, come over here. Of course it was a pipe bomb. It was just a little pipe bomb.”

“It blew out the elevator,” Gregor pointed out.

“That was because it was stuck in an enclosed space,” Dr. Halloran said, distracted. He was suddenly joined by a short, slight, middle-aged man who looked eerily like one of those economic advisers the Clinton administration was always trotting out to talk to television reporters about the economy. “This is Phil Borley,” Dr. Halloran said. “He’s with the bomb squad.”

“Hi,” Philip Borley said.

“Pipe bomb, my ass,” Dr. Halloran said again.

“I think Dr. Halloran is trying to say this wasn’t a bomb,” John Jackman said. “Or that it wasn’t much of a bomb. Or something—”

“It wasn’t much of a bomb,” Philip Borley confirmed. “I’m going to take it down and run it through a few tests next to the ones we’ve got already, the one from the garage and the one from the other night. I figure we’ve got a good chance of them all being the same thing, don’t you?”

“We’ve been counting on it,” Gregor Demarkian admitted.

Philip Borley nodded sagely. “I guess you would be. I can’t see us having two mad bombers running around at once though. Not that this one is much of a mad bomber. Lots of noise. Lots of mess. Not much damage.”

“How can you say there hasn’t been much damage?” John Jackman was indignant. “There are at least two people dead, not including the one she shot, assuming it’s the same person—”

“It’s the same person,” Gregor Demarkian said. “She should have stuck with guns.”

“Why didn’t she stick with guns?” John Jackman demanded.

“Because she didn’t think she was going to kill anybody else,” Gregor said patiently. “She thought she was going to kill her husband, blow up the car, and disappear. And that was going to be it.”

“Well, she did disappear,” Phil Borley said. “If it’s this Mrs. Willis you’re talking about. I’ve been reading the papers just like everybody else. She’s gone.”

“She’s in the papers,” Gregor pointed out. “I don’t think she expected that to happen.”

“She blows up her car in a municipal parking garage and she doesn’t expect to get into the papers?” John Jackman was skeptical.

“Oh, she expected to get into the papers with that,” Gregor said. “It’s too bad she couldn’t have picked her time better. I think she was probably in a bind, or she would have. As it turned out, she blew up her car during a slow news week, and it got more attention than she had expected. Although it was supposed to get some attention.”

“He talks like this all the time,” John Jackman said. “Sometimes I’m ready to kill him. God only knows what he wants up here now.”

Gregor walked over to the body bag and looked down. “You said it was a small bomb, and yet she died anyway. She must have been sitting right on top of it.”

“Almost literally, I think,” Dr. Halloran said. “The wounds are consistent with that interpretation anyway. I think somebody put it under her like a whoopee cushion.”

“Which would mean it would have to be somebody she knew,” John Jackman said. “Except that according to you, Gregor, she was supposed to have known Patsy MacLaren. In college.”

“The message on the phone was garbled,” Gregor said, “but I’m fairly sure that’s what she said. But I don’t think she would have let Patsy MacLaren get into a position to plant a bomb underneath her, do you?”

“What do you mean?” John Jackman blinked.

“Well,” Gregor said, “look at it this way. For a week or so now, the news has been full of stories about how Patsy MacLaren murdered her husband and blew up her car, and lately there have been even more stories about how she’s a suspect in the bombing of the town house where Congresswoman Corbett was giving a reception. This isn’t what I would call a wonderful person to let get behind your back, would you?”

John Jackman looked confused. “You mean it wasn’t Patsy MacLaren who planted this bomb?”

“As far as Patsy MacLaren could do anything, she planted this bomb,” Gregor said.

John Jackman looked disgusted. “Except she couldn’t do even that, because she’s dead. You know, Gregor, we do seem to have a situation here where bombs are going off left and right and people are dropping like flies and there’s no end in sight, and when we get into a situation like that, I begin to feel that it’s not really all right for us to—”