Tears came into Timko’s eyes, beaded up on her lower lid, and spilled over.
What the hell?
“Someone else died because of Chuck’s?” she asked me. “How is that better, Sergeant? What kind of person are you, anyway?”
I guess my face registered surprise, even shock.
This made no sense. Last time I’d seen Timko, she was threatening to run me through a meat grinder.
And then Timko’s face lit up. She was beaming at me.
Man, oh, man. She was like a shape-shifter.
And I remembered that the first time I saw Timko, she was on a monitor attending a Chuck’s senior staff meeting virtually. And she’d been crying.
Crocodile tears.
Timko said, “I kind of love this, Sergeant. Do you know what it’s like to be treated like you’re nothing? Like you don’t even exist? No. That’s my life. Well, I don’t feel like nothing right now. I think I could bend steel bars with my bare hands.”
I had wanted Timko to scoff. To say that this latest bomb was all hers and Walter’s, that there was no accomplice, no copycat. That one of their bombs had been sitting in a freezer until it was slapped onto the grill and served up to a soldier.
I especially wanted her to tell me if there were other bombs out there lying dormant in Chuck’s kitchens, and that she knew where they were and that she’d trade that information for a deal.
But no.
I wasn’t playing Timko.
She was playing me.
Still, she was telling me her motive for the killings. She did it for the power: over her victims, over the police, over the heads of Chuck’s, over the FBI, and over me.
She was grinning, and I felt the twist, like a knife between my ribs. The more bombs that went off while she and her brother were in jail, the better it was for them.
She said, “I had nothing to do with any bombs, Sergeant. And you can’t prove anything. In fact, our attorneys are going to call this ‘reasonable doubt.’
“Problem solved, right?”
She winked, then called out toward the barred door.
“Bubbleen, get your fat ass in here. Sergeant Boxer and I are done.”
My husband is a modest guy, and he’s almost always right. He’d said to me after the first bombs, “Sooner or later, the bomber is going to take credit.”
Well. Hadn’t happened yet.
As soon as I got out onto the street, I called Jacobi.
When he answered, I shouted into my phone, “Jacobi. Timko admitted nothing, but bombs are gonna go off. Call the FBI. Call the mayor. Get Chuck’s closed! Every last Chuckburger has to be recalled so no one else dies.”
Jacobi snuck in a few words edgewise.
“Exactly right,” I said. “We nail them on hindering prosecution, interfering with a police officer, reckless endangerment, everything else we’ve got. We buy time. We buy time and find the one forgotten thing. We find the thing that proves that she and Walter made those damned dirty bombs.”
PART FIVE
HIGH NOON
CHAPTER 103