Rune nodded, though she had no idea what that was.
"They mix that with a sevacate and an isobutylene, oh, and a little motor oil--those are for stability, so it doesn't go off when you sneeze. You don't need very much at all for a very, very big bang. Detonation rate of about twenty-seven thousand feet per second. Dynamite is only about four thousand."
"If you haven't sent it to the lab how do you know it's C-4?"
"I pretty much knew when I walked in. I could smell it. It was either that or Semtex, a Czech explosive. I also found a bit of plastic wrapper--with a U.S. Army code on it. So it'd have to be C-4, and old C-4 because it didn't completely detonate."
"What set it off?"
He was absently examining burnt pieces of metal and plastic in the bag, squeezing them, sliding them around. "The C-4 was molded around an electric detonating cap attached to a little box that contained a battery and a radio receiver. The wiring was also connected to the switch that closes the circuit on the phone--so the device wasn't armed until someone picked up the receiver. That's the problem with radio detonation. You always run the risk that somebody, police or fire or a CB operator, will hit your fre
quency by mistake and set the charge off while you're planting it. Or when there's somebody in the room you don't want to kill."
Rune said, "So Shelly picked up the phone, called the number, and whoever was on the other end--what?--used a walkie-talkie to set it off."
"Something like that." Healy was staring out the window.
"And that's the phone number your friend's trying to find out."
"Only he's not as enthusiastic as he ought to be."
"Yeah, I kind of saw that. Hey, there're phone booths on the corner," Rune said. Nodding out the window. "Would he've been nearby? So he could see Shelly go inside."
Healy said, "You're a born cop."
"I want to be a born film maker."
"So I already called somebody at your unit this morning."
"My unit?"
He glanced at her jacket. "CS. Crime scene. It's on their list to dust all the phones that have a clear visual path to the building here."
Definitely not a grunt. Or a techie. He sounded like a real detective.
Rune said, "So somebody followed us here.... You know, there was someone spying on Shelly and me, near where I live. I went to see and he beat me up."
Healy frowned, turned toward her. "You report it?"
"Yeah, I did. But I didn't get a good look at him."
"What did you see?"
"Broad-brimmed hat--kind of tan color. He was medium build. Wore a red jacket. I thought I saw him earlier too. Around the theater that night I saw you. A week after the first bomb."
"Young, old?"
"Don't know."
"Red jacket ..." Healy wrote some lines in a notebook.
Rune poked at the metal bits through the plastic bag. "You know what's kind of funny?"
Healy turned to her. "That this is the kind of setup you use when you want to kill someone specific? Is that what you're thinking?"
"Well, yeah. That's exactly what I was thinking."
Healy nodded. "This is what the Mossad and PLO and professional hit men use. You just going to make a statement, like the FALN or the Sword of Jesus, you leave a timed device in front of the office. Or in a movie theater."