Brainquake Read Online Free Page A

that Zara was color blind when it came to homicide.
    Paul looked over toward the ambulance, saw Ivory Face sitting up, watching the scene anxiously. He wanted to go over to her, find out if she was all right, tell her she didn’t have to face this alone.
    But when he made a move in her direction, the cop on the Blood Bay drove Paul back to his spot.
    * * *
    Zara watched the Bomb Squad ready the X-ray. If there was a bomb…if it exploded with that baby still on top of it…
    What happened six years ago could happen again. Six years ago Tolly Coleman used the headline BLACK MAN BLOWS UP WHITE WOMAN WITH GRENADE to cause a riot. A massacre—fourteen blacks had been killed. The men who held the bats, the pipes, the bricks were punished, sentenced, but Coleman? Coleman’s weapons were words. Zara failed to nail Tolly Coleman with multiple murder.
    Of course Tolly Coleman was dead now. Four months later Tolly Coleman had raped a 15-year-old black girl in her basement. In court, found guilty, Tolly Coleman went berserk, seized a cop’s gun, shot him, ran out into the street shooting people, and was shot dead by another cop in front of the traffic-jammed Criminal Courts Building.
    But Tolly Coleman’s organization, White America First, was still alive. The headline BLACK PSYCHO MURDERS WHITE BABY could bring another massacre.
    But then, hell, so could BLACK PSYCHO USES WHITE BABY TO KILL ITS FATHER .
    Zara had to talk to the Police Commissioner. He’d listen to her. A battalion of cops at the White America First headquarters would be enough to stop them from using this incident as a reason to butcher more blacks.
    She would speak to the Commissioner right after the Bomb Squad did its job.
    But the baby came first.

5
    Caked blood stung the baby’s face. Its howls could be heard all over Central Park. Zara squatted down beside the three men at the foot of the carriage.
    She had seen baby skeletons in the remains of fires; hoisted from a rotted barge; under garbage; in stinking wooden boxes abandoned by mothers; in sewers, attics, excavation dumps.
    Now—through the powerful X-ray machine—she saw, for the first time in her life, a tiny skeleton screaming for help. From the moving skull to the moving phalanges, she saw a living skeleton thrashing, wailing.
    Charlie pointed. “The extension’s a different make.”
    Zara ignored the dead wire holding up the toy monkey to focus on the extension spliced to it and continuing through tiny metal rings behind the upholstery of the carriage.
    Charlie felt her body trembling against his.
    “You okay, Lieutenant?”
    “Are you?”
    “No,” Charlie said.
    Zara’s eyes followed the extension down the side, snaking under the comforter to end fastened to the trigger. The small gun was snugly wedged in a wooden box. The muzzle was between the tiny tarsal bones of the baby’s kicking feet.
    Charlie said, “A pro would’ve used more metal rings to make sure the extension wouldn’t snag.”
    “But it didn’t snag.”
    “No, it didn’t.”
    “Is that shape under the pelvis the bomb?”
    “No, that’s part of the carriage.”
    “Under the femur?”
    “No. It’s under the spinal column.”
    She saw a small, round area of darkness on the X-ray. “You sure that’s what it is?”
    “Uh-huh. See that thinner wire that blends with the cartilage?”
    “No.”
    “Lowest vertebra.”
    “Still can’t see it.”
    “Near the disk?”
    “Still can’t see it, Charlie.”
    “Hidden behind the markings of the gun butt.”
    “Thin as a strand of hair?”
    “That’s extension number two tied to the trigger.”
    “
Two
wires on the trigger?”
    “Uh-huh. When the wire pulled the trigger that fired the gun, the second extension simultaneously activated the agitator over here.” He pointed.
    “But then the bomb’s a dud, Charlie. It didn’t go off.”
    “It’s reverse action. Weight keeps it from exploding.”
    “The baby’s weight?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “You mean lift the