“C-3,” Healy said. “I'd know that smell anywhere.”

“What happened?” Rune asked.

“It just exploded.”

“You mean that thing you were bringing out? It just blew up? Oh, Sam, you could have been killed.”

For some reason Rubin was laughing at that. Healy himself was fighting down a grin.

He looked at her. “I'm going to be here for a while.”

“Sure. I understand.” She didn't like the glazed, wild look on his face. It scared her.

“I'll call you tomorrow.” He turned and began speaking to a man in a dark suit.

She started back to the sidewalk and then glanced at the tailgate of the Bomb Squad station wagon. Sam Healy's briefcase was resting on it.

She wasn't exactly sure why she did it. Maybe because he'd scared her, looking the way he did. Maybe because she'd spent the day setting up little squares of plastic and enduring small-minded people.

Maybe because it was just in her nature never to give up a quest — just like it was in Sam Healy's to go into buildings like this and find bombs.

In any case Rune quickly flipped open Healy's briefcase and examined the contents until she found his small notebook. This she thumbed through until she found what she was looking for. She memorized a name and address.

She glanced toward Healy, standing in a cluster of other officers. No one noticed her. Their attention was on a clear plastic envelope Healy held. A moment later Rune's voice, theatrical and low, filled the theater. “ The third angel blew his trumpet and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water.' ”

Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Look, I'll talk to you. But you can't use my name.”

They sat on the deck of Rune's houseboat that night, drinking Michelob Light. The skinny young man continued, “I mean, my mother thinks I was in a car crash. If she ever found out...”

Warren Hathaway was the witness whose name she'd found in Sam Healy's notebook. He'd been in the Velvet Venus Theater when the first bomb blew. Rune had called him and asked if she could interview him.

“I'm the only person in the world who got blown up my first time in a porno theater...” Then he caught her amused look. “Well, okay, maybe not my first. But I don't go all that often.”

Hathaway was about five six, early thirties, pudgy. He had bandages on his neck and his arm was taped. He spoke loudly too — just like Rune after she'd witnessed the bombing — and she guessed the explosion in the Velvet Venus had temporarily deafened him. “How did you find me?”

“The policeman who interviewed you? Detective Healy? I got your name from him.”

The camera was set up. Hathaway looked at it uneasily. “You can mask my face out, can't you? So nobody'll recognize me?”