“Yes, sir.”
Stahl stepped outside and walked around the car and gas pumps at a distance of about six feet as he spoke into his handheld radio. “This is Bomb Squad Team One. We have a suspected car bomb at the gas station. Please clear the airspace above Laurel Canyon and Moorpark. And we’ll need at least a block on each side of us cleared of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. And please be prepared to evacuate the apartments and businesses on both streets.” He signed off and completed another circle of the car, stopping now and then to squat or kneel and look under the car or study the chain without touching it. “A Chevy Malibu, twenty thirteen. Let’s get a set of manuals for it on the laptop and get familiar with the parts breakdown, particularly the schematics for the electrical system.”
“Yes, sir,” said Hines. She stepped to the bomb truck, opened the laptop, and began to search for the manuals.
Stahl’s radio came to life. “This is Captain Holman at North Hollywood. You’re asking for a lot of space, Captain,” he said. “We’ll have three or four miles of gridlock.”
Stahl said, “If the car is full of explosives, moving everyone a block away won’t be far enough. If it sets off the gasoline tanks under the station, four blocks won’t be far enough.” While he talked, he watched Hines and Elliot looking at the manuals on the computer screen.
“Is that likely?” said the captain.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I can. Until then, I think we need to be cautious.”
“All right. You’ve got whatever time you need. Just keep us informed.”
Stahl watched Hines and Elliot selecting the equipment for the preliminary examination. Hines carried a small mirror on a long handle, and Elliot had a closed-circuit TV inspection system, a cable scope with a camera lens and light at the end, and a box with a small color video screen for viewing the images. It was designed for plumbers inspecting pipes and other cramped, unreachable spaces.
Stahl went to the corner of the station and looked east, west, north, and south on the streets. The cars had been diverted by police officers to other routes. When he returned to the truck Hines said, “Think we ought to cut the power to the pumps first?”
He could tell she was feeling nervous and scared, but he judged it was the intelligent way to be right now. “Normally I would say yes, but this guy could be the one who booby-trapped the house yesterday. If so, he’s after us, and he knows cutting the power is something we’d do. The device could have a solenoid or a magnet that holds the switch in the OFF position until the power is cut. Examine the car first.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take a look.”
She extended the mirror and walked around the car, keeping her distance and looking underneath for thin trip wires or filaments, for any additions to the factory-installed parts that might complete an electrical circuit if touched. When she found none, she approached and looked into the interior from all sides, and then the backseat. She looked at her colleagues and shook her head.
She extended the long-handled mirror and slid it under the car again, looking at the reflection for anything attached to the undercarriage, the wheels, axles, gas tank, engine.
“Take all the time you need,” said Stahl. “I think this car isn’t here to blow up Mr. Wertheim or his customers. No timer, no cell phone, no fuzes. Looks like the bomber wants whatever sets it off to be something a Bomb Squad does.”
“You really think so?” asked Elliot. “This setup doesn’t look professional.”
“I have no proof,” said Stahl. “But my theory is that the wired-up house yesterday was done to attract as many bomb techs as possible and kill them. I can’t explain it any other way. The guy who called it in wasn’t who he said he was, and it’s hard to think of anything he could have gotten out of blowing the place up except killing cops. And one day later we get this.” He gestured toward the car. “I think this could be a trap set by the same guy, and he wants us to outsmart ourselves. Let’s take our time and not touch anything until we’re sure we’ve figured this out.”
“Yes, sir.” Elliot took his closed-circuit television scope, moved the small camera at the end of the cable under the car, and studied the image on the screen. He moved the camera forward and back, then side to side so he could be sure he saw every square centimeter of the car’s underside. He sometimes raised the camera on the cable so it would be an inch or two from the underside, and sometimes he bent it at the end to look sideways along a depression.
“Can you get a look at the wire bundles in the engine compartment?” Stahl said. “Look for ties that aren’t dirty. A smart car bomber will try to make his wires look like the car’s wiring, and maybe even use the same gauge and color wire. And be sure you trace anything that might be drawing power from the car battery.”
“Right,” said Elliot.
Hines said, “There are no bundles that look like they’ve been redone recently, and no boxes or packages that could hold explosives. Now I’m looking for parts that don’t look like they were there a week ago, and nuts that have scrapes where a wrench would have slid on them.”
“Good,” said Stahl. “Keep thinking like that. And don’t move anything. This guy probably knows we’d rather not engage with his contraption. We’d rather tow it out of here and detonate it on a range. So I’m pretty sure he will have made it dangerous to try to move it away from the gas pumps.”
“Hey!” said Diane Hines. “We’ve got a hole under the trunk.”
“Let me get a look.” Stahl stepped close and took the mirror. He moved it around under the car. “I see,” he said. “The hole was cut with an electric hacksaw. It looks about five inches in diameter. There’s a space up and above that seems to be a tube of silver metal.”
Hines said, “There’s no visible connection with the ignition system and no direct link to the battery.”
“The connection could be to the light circuits in the trunk—brakes, backup, taillights, and the trunk light. That way we wouldn’t see new wires.”
Stahl went to the bomb truck and got on the radio. “This is Captain Stahl of the Bomb Squad. I need to speak with Officer Engle, from the unit that arrived first at the Moorpark scene.”
The dispatcher was on for a moment, calling unit Twelve Mike Seventeen.
“Twelve Mike Seventeen, go ahead.”
The voice was Engle’s, so Stahl said, “When you watched the security video, did you see the suspect approach the car in any way after he towed it in? Did he open the trunk or the hood or a door?”
“Not that I saw,” Officer Engle said. “He drove a truck in with the car on a tow bar. No license plate on the truck. He got out of the truck, then broke the cameras on the outside of the building. You can’t see him well because there were no lights on. He looks about average height, average weight, wearing a hoodie over a baseball cap with no markings. After that there was nothing.”
“Did you see him look into the car window or under the car or anything?”
“The indoor camera footage showed he knelt down to unhook the two hooks from the undercarriage, got in, and drove away.”
“How did the car get chained to the two gas pumps?” asked Stahl.
There was a pause. “I don’t know, sir. The outside cameras were broken. I didn’t see it happen on the recordings from the cameras inside the building.”
“Okay. Try to remember. Was there a point in the recording from the inside cameras of the building where there was a jump in the action, or a period of static where you couldn’t see anything?”