Bomb Attack on Hodges’s Car

The Bomb Attack on Hodges’s Car is Brady Hartsfield’s attempt to kill the retired detective with a bomb hidden in a shoebox inside Hodges’s Toyota. Planned around the memorial service at Soames Funeral Home, the attack depends on a remote trigger, a staged opportunity to enter the parked car, and Brady’s expectation that Hodges will drive away alone. Instead, Janey is at the wheel when the bomb explodes. The plot’s decisive reversal is brutal and precise: Brady delivers the promised attack, but kills the wrong person.

Planning the attack

Brady prepares the bomb in his room from homemade explosive and a disposable cell phone. He puts the phone in a shoebox and rigs it to a simple detonator powered by double-A batteries, briefly turning the phone on to check it before switching it off. The device is to remain inactive until 10:20 the next morning, when he expects to find the Toyota behind Soames Funeral Home during the memorial service. He has checked that a nearby bus stop gives him a plausible explanation if anyone catches him in the lot: he can claim he was cutting through to the next street.

The plan is shaped by the funeral’s timing and by Brady’s confidence that the mourners will be indoors. He intends to use Thing Two to unlock Hodges’s car, leave the shoebox on the floor behind the driver’s seat, and let the Toyota travel to the next intersection before setting off the bomb. He also means to stay far enough away to be relatively safe from the blast. The details make the attack more than a planted device: Brady builds in a cover story, a specific parking location, a remote means of access, and a delay that lets him watch his target drive past.

Planting the bomb

On the morning of the service, Brady walks past the funeral home in an unhurried manner, then turns back and enters its drive. He sees Hodges’s Toyota parked by the rear fence, positioned nose-out for a quick departure. A hearse blocks the view from the funeral home’s rear windows as Brady takes Thing Two from his shopping bag and uses it on the car. The signal works: its green light flashes, and the Toyota’s headlights blink. Brady opens the rear door, turns on the phone in the shoebox, places the bomb behind the driver’s seat, and walks away at a deliberately steady pace.

Brady does not leave immediately. Remembering that he has forgotten something, he returns to the corner and points Thing Two at the Toyota again, completing his operation before the mourners come outside. Later, he watches the funeral procession of cars leave in the direction of Sugar Heights. He recognizes the Toyota by its appearance and by Hodges’s old-fashioned hat, which he can see through the glare on the windshield. He does not focus on Uncle Henry’s rental Chevrolet as it passes; his attention is fixed on the car he believes carries Hodges.

The detonation and fatal reversal

Brady calls the number of the phone in the shoebox and taunts the person he believes is driving, invoking his earlier promise that Hodges would not see him coming. He presses send. In the Toyota, Janey reaches to turn on the radio as a cell phone rings. She assumes it has been left in the glove compartment and reaches toward it; a second ring makes her realize the sound is coming from behind her. The bomb explodes before she can respond. Her last sound is a laugh, and she dies in the blast.

Brady’s confidence that he has identified his target is what makes the attack’s outcome so devastating. He had assumed Hodges would leave with Holly and imagined that the blast would kill them together. Instead, he has mistaken Janey’s car for Hodges’s occupied Toyota, and the intended victim is not in the vehicle. The attack succeeds as an explosion and fails as an assassination: Janey is killed, while Brady’s central objective remains unmet.

Aftermath and significance

Holly bolts from the rental Chevrolet while the explosion is still reverberating, with Uncle Henry braking and Hodges running just behind her. Hodges feels a stab of chest pain as he runs, briefly thinks he may be having a heart attack, and then reaches the wreckage. His Toyota has been blown off its axles and is burning amid broken glass; the back seat lies on its side twenty feet away, its upholstery on fire. Nearby, a man staggers with a bleeding head, and a woman sits by the shattered window of a card-and-gift shop. For a moment Hodges thinks the woman is Janey, then realizes she is not.

Hodges initially blames himself, thinking that Janey would still be alive if he had used his father’s gun two weeks earlier. He forces that thought aside and recognizes that responsibility belongs to the person who planted the bomb: the same attacker who drove a stolen car into job-seekers at City Center. The distinction does not lessen the shock of Janey’s death, but it redirects the scene from self-reproach toward the continuing pursuit of the perpetrator. The blast destroys Hodges’s car and kills Janey without killing its intended target, turning Brady’s calculated threat into a catastrophe whose victim is determined by his own misidentification.