Текст книги "Airtight"

Автор книги: David Rosenfelt

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

“That’s the first thing I thought about,” I said. “There’s no way we’d be able to narrow it down in time. But it doesn’t matter what Bryan watched; what matters is what he’s going to watch.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You have a friend at the satellite company, right? The guy you got the weather outage info from.”

“He was helpful; I wouldn’t call him a friend.”

“Either he’s going to be your friend today or I’m going to strangle him with my bare hands.

“Let’s find out where he is and get him up and in his office,” I said to Emmit. “And get a court order just in case.”

“I’m lost,” Emmit said. “What are we asking this guy to do?”

“I’m going to e-mail Bryan and tell him what to watch. We’ll do it in a way that stands out. Then we’ll get this satellite guy to sit at his computer and find out where the house with that watching pattern is.”

Julie opened her purse and took out a notebook. She turned a few pages, and said, “His name is Daniel Robbins. I think his office is in Morristown.”

Emmit stood up, said, “I’ll make the calls from the room phone,” and walked away, his large frame moving faster than I thought it could walk and showing no ill effects of the shooting. If I were Daniel Robbins, I would do whatever Emmit asked.

“This had better work,” I said.

“I think it can,” Julie said. “They should have the technology to pull it off.”

I didn’t take too much comfort in what she said, since she had as little knowledge of technology as I did, which is to say she had none. For the moment there was nothing to do but e-mail Bryan and wait for Emmit.

Ten minutes later my phone rang. I took a quick look and saw that it was a number I didn’t recognize, so I figured it was Emmit calling from upstairs. “Emmit?”

“Lieutenant Somers, this is Alex Hutchinson,” the caller said, in a female voice that sounded nothing like Emmit’s.

It took me a moment to place the name, and when I did I said, “Alex, yes … I-”

She interrupted me. “You said I should call you if I knew something important, and I know it’s early, but-”

I returned the interruption. “I’m sorry, Alex, I’m in the middle of something. Can I call you back at this number?”

She seemed uncertain. “Yes, I guess so. But I think you’ll want to hear it. It’s about that man that was killed.”

“I definitely want to hear it. I promise I’ll call you back soon,” I said, though I didn’t really plan to. I’d have Emmit call her back when the opportunity presented itself. I knew she was a serious person who would not be wasting my time, but I was going to focus on Bryan, and only Bryan.

Three minutes later, Emmit came into the room. “We’re going to meet him at the tech center. Let’s go; it’s just ten minutes from here.”

“Can he do it?” I asked.

“He’s not sure.”

Bryan, we’re going to want you to do something with the television, probably starting in an hour or so. I’ll send the instructions soon, so watch for my e-mail.

Do you have power on the computer?

Do you have a remote control for the television?

Please confirm that you got this e-mail.

Got it.

Down to 9 % on the computer, so I can’t check that often. I’ll try every fifteen minutes, for now.

I have a remote control.

I’ll wait for your instructions.

We were at the tech center in fifteen minutes.

Daniel Robbins was waiting for us outside. He was younger than I expected, probably not even thirty, but that was okay. In my experience the younger the person, the better they were with technology. I don’t think I’ve ever met a sixty-year-old computer geek.

He had a serious, intense look on his face; Emmit had obviously impressed him with the urgency of the situation. “Follow me,” he said, and we all started walking. “I’m not supposed to do anything like this without authorization.”

“Whoever gives you a hard time I will shoot in the face,” I said.

He nodded. “That should do the trick.”

He led us into an enormous room, the kind you associate with NASA mission control. There were probably a hundred seats at desks, each one with a large monitor. On the wall there were main monitors, with lights and numbers flashing, and maps with display lights. I’m sure it all had meaning to somebody, but not to me.

There were thirty or so people manning the desks, who I assumed were still the night crew. Robbins pointed towards a glass-enclosed office in the back of the room, on the balcony floor. “We’re up there.”

We followed him up to the room, which looked something like the communication center on the starship Enterprise.There were two people already there, a man and woman, both younger than Robbins. “This is Howard Mueller and Sarah Gayda,” Robbins said, and everybody nodded. No time for handshakes.

“Howie, you have the floor.”

He nodded, and began. “We’ve never done this; we don’t have any interest in what people are watching in the moment; it’s always after the fact. That’s more than ample for advertising decisions.

“But I think we can set it up for ongoing monitoring; it just might take a little while, because some of the cross-checking will be manual. The computers aren’t set up this way, and it might take more time to try and program them than to get things going.”

“OK, good,” I said. “I need to tell Bryan what he should be doing.”

“Sarah?” Howie said, and Sarah took the floor.

“Our computers are designed for fifteen-minute increments. So he should watch something for fifteen minutes, and then go to the very next channel for fifteen, then the one after that for fifteen, and so on.”

“Got it. Does it matter which channels?”

“Mmmm,” she said, “good question. Tell him to start with 318, then work his way up. Sometimes the number jumps; for instance the one after 319 is 324. But that doesn’t matter; he should turn to whichever one is next.”

“When should he start?”

Howie again: “It’ll take us at least forty minutes to set it up.”

I looked at my watch. “OK, he’ll start at eight forty-five.”

Robbins said, “We’ll be back at eight twenty-five,” to Howie and Sarah. Then to us, “I’ll show you where the coffee is.”

I walked over with Robbins, Julie, and Emmit, but knew that if I sat there and had more coffee my head would explode. I decided to call Alex Hutchinson back. She answered on the first ring.

“Lieutenant?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks for calling me back. I’m sure you read about the man that was killed the other day in the explosion; they haven’t given his name out.”

“I’m aware.”

“He was walking around the area where we’re protesting just before he died. I thought what he was doing was strange, so I approached him.”

“What was he doing?”

“Sort of examining the land, checking out the drilling rigs that were already there, that kind of thing. But that’s not why I called you.”

“Why did you call?”

“Because I talked to him and he said some strange things that I thought you should know. I figured he was with Hanson, so I told him we wouldn’t let him drill on the land, and he said that nobody was going to. Then he told me to leave him alone, that he was saving my life. I may not have the exact words right, but that’s basically what he said.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, he said that the state police were going to throw us off this land, and said we should listen to them. Then he said I was a pain in the ass,” she said, and then laughed. “Which showed he knew what he was talking about.”

There would come a time when all this would be interesting to me, when I would try to bring down everyone involved in the Brayton mess. But that wasn’t the time, especially with Emmit across the room signaling to me about something.

“Thanks, Alex. Let me think about this for a while.”

“OK,” she said. “If you need me, I’ll be out here on the land. We’re not leaving, and we’re not the ones committing the violence, no matter what they say.”

I got off the phone and walked over to Emmit, who was reading something on his own cell phone. “What’s going on?”

Emmit looked up. “Richard Carlton is dead. Murdered in his own home.”

“I guess Gallagher got his justice,” I said.

Julie shook her head. “No, he didn’t. Carlton was alive when Gallagher left his house. Lou mentioned that he looked in the window and Carlton was holding his arm at a weird angle and yelling at some guy who was there with him.”

“William,” I said. “He was like Carlton’s assistant or something, but he looked more like a something than an assistant.”

“Could he have killed him?” Emmit asked.

“I don’t know, and right now I don’t give a shit. I’d be fine if they dropped a nuclear bomb on Brayton.”

I looked over at Howie and Sarah, still hovering over their computers; it was hard to believe that we were depending on them to save Bryan, but that’s where we were. Maybe it was to get my mind off that, but I started thinking about Gallagher again. “Carlton must have told Gallagher something. And whatever it was sent him to the drilling site.”

“And Carlton knew where he’d be going, and sent someone to kill him, so Gallagher couldn’t reveal what Carlton had said,” Julie said.

I shook my head. “More likely that somebody, maybe William, killed Carlton for talking and then went after Gallagher. My bet would be that the same person killed Carlton, Gallagher, and Rhodes.”

“It would have to be the protesters,” Julie said. “Carlton and Hanson have gotten what they wanted. So they killed Carlton for revenge, and they killed Gallagher because they thought he was on Carlton’s side.”

What she was saying didn’t ring true for me, but I shut my credibility bell off entirely, because Robbins was signaling for us to come over. Howie and Sarah were apparently done, and we were about to find out if our last chance was still feasible.

“OK, we’ve got good news and bad news,” Robbins said.

“Let’s hear all of it.”

“Howie?”

Howie took over. “The short answer is that we can do it. We can tell you who’s watching a particular show at a particular time, in the moment. We can’t do it in exactly the target area you’re talking about, our range is going to be a little wider, but we can do it.”

“And the bad news?”

“Two things. One is that a home will be recorded on the list as long as it’s on at any moment within the fifteen-minute time frame. So if they scroll through it, it’ll be there. That will increase the number of homes and the size of the list.”

“What’s the other thing?” I asked.

“We have no way of cross-checking the lists by computer; it will have to be manual.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Julie asked.

“Well, put it this way. We can print out a list of everyone watching ESPN from eleven to eleven fifteen. Then we can print out a list of everyone watching CNN from eleven fifteen to eleven thirty. But we can’t tell you, or at least our computers can’t tell you, who is on both lists.”

“Can you separate the lists by area?”

He nodded. “Yes, by zip code.”

I nodded. “Good. So we’ll each take different lists, and go over it by hand. We’ll get it done,” I said, though I had no idea if we could, since I had no idea how many lists there would be, what form they would take, or how many names would be on them.

I asked Robbins, “You have people that can help?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Only those you can trust completely, that you don’t think will be careless and miss anything.”

“I understand.”

“Good,” I said. “I’ll tell Bryan we’re a go.”

Bryan,

At eleven o’clock, turn on channel 318, at eleven fifteen, turn on channel 319. At eleven thirty, move to the next channel in order. If it skips numbers, that’s fine, just make sure it’s the next channel.

Any problem, let me know immediately.

Lucas,

Got your e-mail, and I’ll do exactly what you say.

I’ll let you know if there’s a problem, but please, you do the same. I only have hours left, and I’m not sure how many.

4 % on the computer.

Hurry.

Edward Holland was frustrated and angry.

The District Court had declined to provide a court order removing the protesters, choosing to give them more time to respond to Holland’s motion. That effectively removed the possibility, for the time being, of state or Federal intervention.

The murder of Richard Carlton was announced after the court issued its ruling, and there was no way they would reconsider before Monday.

Monday wasn’t good enough.

It was an uncomfortable position for Holland to be in. He had been the champion of the people he represented, and now he was at least temporarily on the other side. But he was positive that more violence was on the way, and he had to do whatever he could to prevent additional loss of life.

To that end, he again called Brayton’s police chief, Tony Brus. “What have you got on the Carlton murder?” he asked.

“He took three bullets in the back from ten feet. No witnesses. Also had a broken arm that happened premortem. Coroner won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but his guess is the arm happened within minutes of the shooting. Different gun killed Rhodes.”

“Anything that might lead you to the killer?” he asked.

“Hard to say. We took prints, but no results yet. But this was not an amateur job.”

“We’ve got to act,” Holland said.

“I’m acting,” Brus said, annoyed at the implication. “I’ve got every officer working fourteen-hour days. You want more action, get me more people.”

“I want the protesters removed from the mining site.”

Brus was tired of dealing with this asshole, especially since he was more and more inclined to run against him in the next election. “Mayor, I was just there. Everybody is calm; they’re barbequing and throwing Frisbees, for Christ sake.”

“People are getting blown up and shot in the parking lot.”

“I’ve told you, the violence is being committed by outsiders. I don’t know who, but there’s no way the people camping out on that land are killing people.”

“I don’t want anyone killed. By anyone. I want them gone before dark tonight,” Holland said.

“You’re making a mistake.”

“Your point of view is noted. Now I’m the Mayor, and I want them out. Bring tear gas, hoses, whatever the hell you need, but get them out.”

Brus was furious, but maintained control. “It will take me a while to put the operation together.”

“Do it,” Holland said, and hung up.

Brus hung up the phone with one thought on his mind. He would do his job, but there was no way he was teargassing his friends. And whatever he did, he would make Mayor Holland look bad in the process.

The day was already a month long, with no sign of ending any time soon.

At least that’s what it felt like, waiting for Howie and Sarah to set up the machines that would start monitoring TV viewership throughout northwest New Jersey.

Of course, at the same time, the clock seemed to be moving at a mile a minute, as it literally wound down the time left in Bryan’s life.

All we could do was watch and wait. Every time Howie frowned, I was afraid that he had just discovered something to make the entire project technologically unfeasible. And he never seemed to smile, so there was nothing to provide an upbeat counterbalance to that worry.

Robbins brought three people in, two women and a man. None of them were over twenty-five; retirement age in this company had to be thirty. But they seemed sharp when Robbins downloaded them on what was going to happen, and I further impressed the life-and-death seriousness on them.

I’ve been present when Julie gave closing arguments to a jury in capital cases, but I’ve never seen anything approaching the tenseness in her face and body as I did at that moment. Bryan was her family, and Bryan was her friend, and imagining him suffocating to death was completely and totally unacceptable.

I was able to spend the time beating myself up over not having thought of this earlier. I had known Bryan had television from almost the beginning; all this could have been accomplished with time to study the data, with more than four percent power on his computer, and a lot more than a few hours of air for him to breathe.

“OK,” Howie finally said, looking up at us. “We’re as ready as we’re going to be. It’s ten forty eight; we’re set to go at eleven. We’ll have the printout about six minutes after the time period is up, so we’ll get the first one at eleven twenty-one. That won’t do us any good, because we’ll have nothing to cross-check it against. We’ll have the second report at eleven thirty-six. There’s no way to tell how many reports we’ll need to eliminate all but one.”

He seemed to be a smart and confident guy, which made me feel better that he knew what he was doing. I liked him, and if he screwed it up, I was going to kill him.

But the bottom line was that we would not have anything to cross-check for forty-eight minutes. Since each minute seemed to take about four hours, we were looking at a long wait.

I didn’t want to e-mail Bryan, because I didn’t want him to use up computer power in responding. There was also no need; he knew what he was supposed to do, and would do it as long as he could.

I called Barone and told him what was going on, and asked him to send backup officers and position them in various areas in the three counties we were looking at. I wanted us to be able to get to Bryan as fast as possible once we knew where he was.

And then my mind wandered back to Brayton, again probably because I didn’t want to think about Bryan, counting on us, waiting in that room.

Ordinarily, in a situation like that, I would write down everything I knew. It helps me to think clearly, to make sense out of things that sometimes seem nonsensical. I didn’t have time for that now, so I couldn’t get my mind around certain questions.

Why would Carlton have been killed? He was no longer a factor in the mining operation; Hanson had already bought the land from him. Was it revenge by the townspeople? That hardly seemed likely. Was it to keep him quiet? Quiet about what?

What could Carlton have told Gallagher, and why did it send him to the drilling site? And what was he doing feeling around in the dirt, and looking at the drilling equipment?

They were questions I would answer, but they would have to wait. It was eleven twenty-one, and the first set of lists was being printed out.

Sarah handed them to us. They were different sizes, and probably averaged about six hundred addresses on each one. We spread them out in front of us on large desks, looking over them, and discussed the best way to go about the cross-checking.

But for the time being we were unable to do anything with the lists.

That would wait for the next list, which would provide something to cross-check them against.

Then it would be showtime.

The situation was way out there beyond the Planet Surreal.

Bryan could see that, even through the haze of fear that was enveloping him.

He was sitting underground, running out of air to breathe, counting on TV programs to save him. On the same table as the remote control was a glass of water and two pills, which he would use to kill himself at the first sign of impending suffocation. And the last person he would probably ever hear speak was on television, trying to sell him a miracle kitchen gadget.

He had a million questions that he wanted to ask Lucas, most of them about Gallagher and the situation in Brayton. For a short while Lucas had been so upbeat about it, and then he stopped mentioning it.

Bryan wondered what had happened, why it had gotten to the point where this thing with the television became what seemed to be his last chance. Had Gallagher refused to intervene, and had Lucas now given up on that?

But Bryan did not want to send an e-mail asking those questions. The computer had long ago told him that it was on reserve power, and he wanted to conserve what little he had left.

He wished he could go online and learn how he would feel when the air started to run out. Would there be a period of time where he felt only short of breath, and slightly dizzy? Would it allow him time to take the pills, and alleviate the suffering? And how long would the pills take to work? All of these questions would go unanswered.

Bryan considered writing a final message to the world, on pencil and paper, a medium that didn’t slowly reduce its “percentage of power” remaining. He had thought about it frequently during the previous six days, but didn’t know that there was anything special he wanted to say. Or that anyone would ever find the note, or his body.

So all he planned to do was switch the dial at each fifteen-minute interval and wait to be rescued, or to die.

The second set of lists came right on time, six minutes after the time period ended.

Nobody said a word; we all just launched ourselves into the job of cross-checking it with the first lists. It was a tedious, time-consuming job, made even more daunting by the tremendous pressure we were feeling.

My approach was to take the first address on list one and try to find it on list two. If I did, I’d put a checkmark next to it on both lists. If I didn’t, I’d put an “x” by it on list one, but I didn’t cross it out, in case it was on list two and I had just missed it.

It was so slow that I had the sinking feeling that we were going to fail, even if the process worked. I wanted to speed up the work, but I was haunted by the fear that in doing so I’d miss something. If Bryan’s address was on there and we passed over it, just once, then all hope would be lost.

It took me an hour and five minutes to get through my list, and I found thirty-seven addresses common to both lists. I was the first one finished, Julie was second, and the others were all done within fifteen minutes of me. The strain everyone was under was evident in their faces.

While we were working, other lists were being generated, as other fifteen-minute segments concluded. Since we only had to cross-check them against those names that were common to the first two sets of lists, this would go much faster but still take some time.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon before we narrowed it down to a manageable number. At that point we had seventeen addresses in the target area, though I was suddenly flooded with the fear that maybe we weren’t looking in the right place at all.

We had only narrowed it down to northwest Jersey because of the weather outages. What if the information we had been given was wrong? What if there had been outages someplace else? Bryan could be in Connecticut, or New York. Or what if Bryan’s particular outage wasn’t weather related at all? What if it was a local glitch?

But we were where we were, and seventeen was a limited-enough list to get started. I called Barone, and told him to start sending officers to the locations.

I was torn, not sure whether to go out in the field myself or wait for another list that would narrow it down further. I decided to wait, at least for one more list. And then I’d be on the move.

But first I had to make sure that Bryan believed we would save him, so he wouldn’t take his own life. If I was wrong, and I knew that could very well be the case, it would be a last, terrible betrayal.

We’re coming for you, Bryan … it won’t be long now.

You can count on it.

The rally was set for 6 PM, and it would be huge.

That became obvious when people started arriving before noon. They joined those already camping out there, and by two o’clock, with four hours still to go, the crowd had swelled to almost six thousand.

Edward Holland and Tony Brus agreed on a plan to clear the land of people. Holland would speak at the beginning of the rally, asking everyone to leave. Neither man had any real hope that his words would be effective, and Brus would have his officers on the scene, ready to move in if it became necessary.

Brus had instructed his officers on procedure. The goal was to get the people out of there and then quickly construct barricades to prevent them from coming back. There was no desire to arrest people; these were not criminals and should not be treated as such.

Brus had originally had the idea to fence off the area before people could arrive, but it was impractical, since so many protesters were already there and others arrived so early. This was going to be a first of its kind for Brayton, and Brus told his second command that it would “permanently change the way we’re viewed by the people who live here.”

But even a town as small as Brayton has procedures in place for situations like this, and they spent the late morning going over them, and talking about how they would react to various scenarios that could come up.

When they were finished and ready, Brus called Holland. “Mayor, we are as prepared as we will ever be.”

“Good. I’ll speak to them, and alert them as to what is going to happen. If they don’t listen to me, you move your men in.”

“You’re the boss,” Brus said, signaling his reluctant agreement to go along with the plan. He thought this was a serious overreaction, even after the Carlton murder. On the positive side, if it all went the way he expected, Holland wouldn’t ever get another vote in Brayton.

“Tony, I know you think I’m overreacting on this,” said Holland. “But the downside to doing it is that people will be pissed at us. The downside to not doing it as that people can die.”

“OK,” Brus said, “I can see that.” He knew that Holland did not want any citizens of Brayton to be killed. He also knew that Holland especially did not want them to die on his watch.

The reports coming in from the field were not good.

Barone called to say that officers had already checked out nine of the seventeen matches and come up with nothing. I took down the list of the ones that had been checked out, so that I could check them off our lists.

“What are they doing if the houses seem to be empty?” I asked.

“Hey, Lucas, you think I’d let them leave it at that? Our people are instructed to enter and search the homes, whether people are not home, or not cooperative. We’ll deal with the fallout later.”

“Thanks, Captain.”

“I’ll keep you posted as reports come in.”

I got off the phone and saw that the next group of lists was coming out. We got started on them, and I didn’t eliminate the homes that Barone had reported were already checked out, just in case the officers missed something.

Thirty-five minutes later we had the pared-down list. There were six homes on it, four of which had already been checked by Barone.

Which left two possibilities, one of which was only fifteen minutes from where we were. I called Barone and gave him this new information, and he said that officers were only ten minutes from the other location. He was close to there as well, and would meet up with them.

He would also send some as backup for us, but we were closer than his officers were, so we’d likely get there first.

When I got off the phone, I said, “Let’s go. We’re covering one of the two; Barone’s got the other.” I turned to Robbins. “You know how to get to this address?”

“Yes.”

“Then come on,” I said, and the four of us were off.

The address was in Mount Freedom, a small town northwest of Morristown. Robbins was only partially familiar with it, but told us he thought the address was on the outskirts of town, in mostly undeveloped farmland.

I drove, only because I got in the driver’s seat first. Emmit got in the back with Julie, and Robbins sat in the passenger seat. I drove in a way that emulated Emmit’s technique, which is to go so fast that the front wheels start to leave the ground. It was all open road, so I turned on the siren and let it rip.

I didn’t turn on the GPS, trusting Robbins’s assurance that he knew the way. This appeared to be a major mistake when at one point he said, “Turn right here-no, wait.” But he soon seemed to get his bearings, and told us he was positive he knew where he was going.

And he did.

We turned off on a small dirt road and pulled up to a farmhouse, small but in good condition. There was a car parked outside, and a pickup truck that looked like it had been a while since it was serviceable.

We got out of the car and ran to the front porch. I rang the bell and no one answered. I rang it again … no response.

So I nodded to Emmit, and he kicked down the front door.

The four of us went inside and started looking around. “We’re looking for doors in the floor,” I said. “Move every piece of furniture; the door might be hidden.”

So we searched, with Julie screaming Bryan’s name periodically, even though there was no way he could hear us even if he were there. The house was a small one, and we covered every piece of floor at least three times, then went out and looked around the yard.

I could see the satellite dish above the garage, so we went in there and searched just as carefully.

Nothing.

Bryan was not there.

My phone was ringing; it was Barone.

By five o’clock the number of protesters had exceeded ten thousand.

Even though there was no official program, a number of people had gotten up and made impromptu speeches from the stand that had been constructed for the occasion. Everyone knew that Mayor Holland was going to speak at six o’clock and Alex Hutchinson after that.

Holland had not arrived, but Chief Brus had, and was walking among the protesters. The courtesy with which he was greeted, and the almost festive atmosphere, confirmed his conviction that Holland was overreacting to the perceived danger. For God’s sake, Brus thought, half the children in town were there with their parents. Would people about to commit violent acts want their children there?

Holland was an idiot.

Brus’s strategy was a simple one. He would execute Holland’s order and send his men in to clear the place out. If they went peacefully, then that would be the end of it. Holland would take some political grief for having done it, but he could cover himself by claiming to only be concerned with the safety and welfare of the citizens.

If they resisted, Brus would not instruct his men to forcefully remove them. Holland would go nuts, and would demand the use of tear gas or other irresistible force. There would be a public disagreement between the two men, and Brus would not back down.

The net result would be that it would cost Brus his job; Holland had the right to fire him, and would exercise that right. But it would firmly and permanently elevate him well above Holland in the minds of the townspeople, and would be the perfect kickoff for his candidacy for Mayor.