Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1999

He turned to look at it, recalling the way the man in Spellman’s uniform had it open, its contents hidden from their view, when he and Timmons arrived on the scene. Becker felt a sudden chill ripple down his spine.

Had that been an act? Had the suspect just been going though the motions, pretending to search the case in order to convince them that he was who he appeared to be? Or had he been doing something else entirely?

Like setting a timer.

No, Becker thought, his mind racing. He wouldn’t have waited that late to set it, even if he had been surprised by Rice and Spellman. The scattered contents of the shelves was a good indication that at the time he was interrupted he had been about to hide the bomb, not to arm it. That would surely have already been done.

But what had he been doing with the briefcase?

Becker approached the desk. As Timmons turned to watch him in the eerie stillness of the now-silent room, he took a deep breath, held it, and placed his ear against the side of the case.

It was ticking.

Becker’s heart lurched.

The bomb was in the briefcase.

And at that moment it all came together. The truth hit him like a slap in the face.

The bomber hadn’t been setting the bomb’s timer; he’d been resetting it.

Keeping his head down and motionless, Becker raised his eyes to meet his partner’s. He opened his mouth to tell Timmons to alert the others, to warn them away, but it was too late. Even now Becker could hear the footsteps of a dozen cops in the corridor. And all of them, he realized, were about to be killed. He and Timmons and the men in the hall and heaven knew how many more in the street below.

Because they were out of time.

Becker knew it; he could feel it in his bones. The bomber had already been gone for almost ten minutes, and the timer wouldn’t have been reset for a minute more than the man thought it would take him to fake his grief and get out of the building. He would want all the witnesses to go up with the blast.

At the very instant that all this was flashing though Becker’s mind, one of the policemen stuck his head through the doorway and looked in at him and Timmons.

“You guys the bomb squad?” the man asked.

Becker straightened up, his heart pounding in his chest. “We are now,” he answered, half to himself. In the same tone of voice he said with a glance at the new cop, “Get away from that door. All of you, he down in the hall and stay there.” To Timmons, whose face showed he knew, Becker murmured, “Be ready. You’ll have to get the window.”

Timmons hesitated, then understood. He stepped back as Becker drew his pistol and fired through the open doorway, four shots, his bullets shredding the lock on the door across the hall. Timmons was already moving, dashing out and across the hallway, lowering his shoulder and crashing through the ruined door of 3245. At the same moment, his ears ringing, Becker dropped his gun, picked the briefcase up by the handle, and ran after him. As Becker passed through the doorway and crossed the hall, he had a glimpse of a corridor full of cops, all of them lying on the floor and staring up at him with wide, frightened eyes.

Not as frightened as I am, he thought.

In the office across the hall Timmons had snatched up a heavy chair and slammed it through the window as Becker charged through the open door. Now the window was open as well, a gaping hole in the center of the glass. While Timmons dived out of the way Becker made a full three hundred sixty degree windup and flung the briefcase out and through the jagged hole and into space. It spun away into the black night like an oversized Frisbee.

Becker didn’t stop to watch its descent into the construction pit behind the building. He hit the floor three feet from his partner and folded both arms over his head, waiting.

Four seconds passed. Five... six... seven...

The explosion rocked the building and blew out what was left of the office window. It also, though they did not yet know it, blew out all the other windows on that side of Remington Tower. Most of the cops in the hallway, some of them hardened veterans, cried out like kids in a thunderstorm.

When the rumble finally died down, Ed Timmons raised his head and brushed a dusting of glass fragments from his hair.

“I was half right,” he said. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

Two hours later both of them were still in the building. They had been debriefed in the lobby by both the chief and their captain and had spoken at various times to the mayor, the police commissioner, three TV reporters, two journalists, and a pair of constipated-looking agents from the FBI. What little feedback they had received so far indicated that there were, incredibly, no reported casualties and no serious damage to the building itself. Most of the force of the blast had been absorbed, as Becker had hoped it would be, by the earthen and stone walls of the thirty-foot-deep pit.