Amid the Shadows (9 page)

19

Christine turned on the
small table lamp in the living room to give them some light.
 
The sun was down, and they were trying to
remain distracted.
 
She taught Sarah how
to make a paper airplane which had kept her busy for the last hour, and Sarah
was now making her most colorful version yet.

Behind her, Christine
moved through the rooms and double-checked the doors and locks.
 
She had to admit some doubt was beginning to
creep in on how much danger she was really in.
 
Things had been incredibly quiet since they got there, and she was
wondering if some of this had been an initial overreaction.

She certainly didn’t
know why Sarah’s mother was killed or under what circumstances.
 
Was it possible that she had some terrible
skeleton in her closet?
 
Maybe she had
made the wrong person angry, or maybe she had an ex that was jealous or
crazy.
 
Even in her old job, Christine
had seen so many life tragedies first-hand that she didn’t think anything could
surprise her at this stage, including what Barbara Baxter might have had in her
history.

And what about the
elevator?
 
That horrible memory would
keep playing itself out in slow motion if she let it.
 
The police were sure it was sabotaged,
but…could it have been sabotaged for someone else?
 
There were other people on that elevator.
 
Was it possible that she and Sarah were just
in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Sarah’s gift had saved them?
 

No.
 
She shook her head.
 
Chance didn’t work like that.
 
A homicide and a near-homicide that close
together could not be an accident.
 
And
Danny was sure they were in danger.
 
He
wouldn’t have moved them to a safe place unless he was really worried.
 
She had to trust him.
 
She may not have romantic feelings for him
anymore, but she sure as hell remembered how smart he was.
 
She wondered where he was right then.

Christine turned after
she was hit in the arm by what looked like a flying rainbow.
 
She faked a troubled look at Sarah and
reached down to pick it up.
 
Just as she
stood back up and pointed the paper airplane back at Sarah, she heard something
outside followed by a loud knock on the door.

They both jumped and
stared at the front door.
 
She motioned
at Sarah who quickly ran around the couch and stood behind Christine. They both
remained frozen wondering who it could be.
 
How could someone just walk up to the front porch?

The knocking came
again, this time louder.
 
Christine and
Sarah did not move.

“Ms. Rose?” a man’s
voice called.
 
“Ms. Rose, are you in
there?”

She slowly looked down
at Sarah, and then back to the thick brown door.
  
She took a deep breath.
 
“Who is it?”

“Ms. Rose, I’m from the
FBI.
 
I need to talk to you.”

The FBI?
 
That would explain how he made it to the
porch.
 
“Who are you?”

“My name is Glen
Smith,” he shouted through the door.
 
“Ms. Rose, I just need to ask you some questions.”

“About what?”

“About Barbara Baxter,”
he replied loudly.
 
“She called me before
the accident.”

Christine glanced down
at Sarah at the mention of her mother’s name.
 
She just stared back up at her with her left hand clinging to
Christine’s pant leg.

“Ms. Rose, I can show
you my ID.
 
Just look through the peep
hole.”

Christine slowly
approached the door.
 
When she reached
it, she instinctively put her hand on the deadbolt handle to make sure it was
locked and turned as far as it would go.
 
She glanced back at Sarah one more time and slowly put her eye to the
small hole.
 
“Okay, show me.”

On the other side of
the door, a badge came into view.

Christine studied it,
but it was too small to make out any details.
 
The picture looked blurry and far away, but she thought it showed
someone with light brown hair.

“Please, Ms. Rose,” he
said.
 
“I just need to get some
information on what you know.
 
We’re
trying to find out who did this, and you might have some details that can
help.”

Christine did not reply.
 
Instead, she stood still thinking.
 
The badge did look official, and she’d seen
enough to remember generally what they looked like.
 
Reluctantly, her hand moved to the deadbolt.

Suddenly, Christine
heard something behind her.
 
She quickly
turned and looked through the kitchen at the back doorknob.
 
It was
moving
back and forth.
 
A moment later, the deadbolt higher up on the
back door could be seen turning from the other side, slowly unlocking itself.

Christine gasped and
instantly flipped up the light switch on the wall next to the door.
 
The warning signal.

Standing on the front
porch, Glen Smith shielded his eyes when the bright light came on.

Just over a hundred
feet away, the unmarked police car sat silently in the dark.
 
Inside, the two officers sat in the front
seats, each with a trickle of blood running down their neck and pooling around
their collars.

Christine backed up,
away from the door, and waited to hear the running footsteps from outside.
 
She kept waiting and reached back to grab
Sarah’s arm, feeling her way down to her tiny hand.
 
There was still no sound of the officers
running toward them.
 
Christ, how long
could it take?!

Christine turned to see
the deadbolt on the kitchen door finally complete its turn.
 
Next the doorknob moved again, but it was
locked too.
 
The knob was quietly being
turned from the other side, but this small lock was preventing it.
 
It stopped turning.
 
Then it began to shake.
 
Someone was trying to break it.

“Oh god!” Christine
cried and pushed Sarah into the corner.
 
“Somebody please help!”

Just then the back door
burst open, and four men dressed in black rushed through.
 
They scanned the kitchen in a fraction of a
second before spotting Christine at the far end of the adjoining room.
 
They covered the distance quickly, raising
assault rifles to their shoulders.
 

Suddenly without
warning, a figure came crashing through the front window of the living room,
sending glass in every direction.
 
Before
hitting the floor, he fired from a large gun in his right hand, and the first
two shots hit the lead attacker approaching from the kitchen.
 
The black-clad figure crumpled to the floor
in front of the other three.

The man in the living
room jumped out of the way as bullets tore into the floor where he was
kneeling, and pieces of wood and carpet jumped into the air after him.
 
Bullets continued to follow the man across
the room as he crossed the floor and ducked into a corner, out of direct sight
of the kitchen.
 
In a blur, he took
advantage of the momentary safety and raced to the edge of the wall where the
men in black were simultaneously trying to step over their dead friend as well
as swing around the large door jamb to get another clean shot at him.
 
The second attacker, now in front, came
around quickly but saw two flashes before he could squeeze off his own
shots.
 
He fell face first next to his
lifeless friend.

Christine screamed and
dropped to the floor, pulling Sarah down with her.
 
She grabbed the girl’s small frame and
quickly pushed her back behind the large sofa.
 

Three more shots went
off. She could hear the sound of powerful punches landing and things getting
smashed.
  
It sounded like the whole
kitchen was getting demolished.
 
Christine flinched when she heard something huge crash against the floor
on the other side of the couch.
 
She kept
her head low and frantically grabbed Sarah’s arm.
 
In one quick motion, Christine pushed off of
her knees and they ran for the front door.
 
She grabbed the doorknob and quickly unlocked both it and the dead bolt,
flinging the door wide-open just as she heard a grunt behind her. Someone fell
to the floor with another thud.

They were out and
running!
 
Christine came to a sudden
stop on the grass and looked around.
 
She
spotted the unmarked police car and sprinted towards it, still pulling Sarah
behind her.
 
“Where were you?!” she
yelled, reaching the driver’s side and yanking the door open.

She shrieked when she
saw both men sitting in the front seats, dead.
 
“Oh god!” She looked back at the house.
 
More gunfire could be heard inside.
 
She shuddered and grabbed the driver. Cringing and with her eyes half
closed, she pulled him out and let his body fall with a crunch onto the hard
pavement.
 

Christine quickly ran
to the other side of the car while Sarah hid behind the driver’s open
door.
 
With a disgusted look, she pulled
the second officer out and onto the ground.
 
“Get in!” she cried to Sarah.

They both jumped into
the car and crawled over each other to the opposite sides, where Christine
grabbed the keys still in the ignition and started the car.
 
Instantly, without seat belts or even closing
the doors, she dropped it into gear and punched the accelerator.
 

With a giant surge, the
car lurched forward with both doors slamming closed from the momentum.
 
Spinning tires left long skid marks as
Christine peeled out, sideswiped a nearby truck, and sped away.

20

The large, thick door
buzzed and slid open, allowing Cheryl Roberts to step in from the lobby
outside.
 
She held up her ID and badge
and lay them on the small table in front of her.
 
The officer before her, dressed in body
armor, scanned the ID.
 
He then typed in
her badge number and waited to see if the photo in the database matched.

Roberts looked around
the large room where two more armor-clad officers stood by watching her
carefully.
 
Behind them, the rest of the
room looked more like a common office than the first floor of an ultrahigh
security building.

The nondescript, gray
building was the new electronic and security nerve center of New York
City.
 
All computers, security systems,
phones, and electronics for the largest police department in the world came
through this stronghold.
 

Most people, even
residents, did not know that New York had more than 6,000 security and
surveillance cameras installed throughout the city, monitoring tens of
thousands of citizens daily.
  
They also
had thousands of microphones planted in public buildings, airports, bus stops,
and many other places where groups of people formed.
 
The microphones were constantly listening and
feeding the audio back to the nerve center which searched every stream for
patterns of words that were considered
interesting
.

A young man approached
Roberts.
 
With red hair and light
freckles, he looked like someone new to both the uniform and the
workforce.
 
In fact, he barely looked out
of high school.

“Officer Roberts?” he
asked.
 

“Yes.”
   

“Hi, my name is Justin
Fischer.
 
I’m your tech.”

“My tech?” she asked.

He nodded.
 
“Everyone accessing the cameras is assigned a
tech for assistance.”

“For assistance or
supervision?” she asked.

He grinned but did not
reply.

“Okay.” She reached out
to take her identification back but was cut short by the officer behind the
table.

“We keep these until
you come out,” he said dryly.

“Both?”

“Yes.” He finished
typing and clicked his mouse, then turned to retrieve a printout.
 
He lay the paper down in front of her and
handed her a pen.
 
She looked it over,
surprised how much of her information was on the form.
 
After signing, she looked at Justin who was
waiting patiently with a slight slouch.

The larger officer
picked up her paper and filed it.
 
“You
get your ID and badge when you leave.”

She rolled her eyes and
shrugged.
 
“Okay.”
 
She walked past him to where Justin was
standing. “I guess I’m all yours.”

Justin smiled
politely.
 
“Follow me, please,”
 
he said and led her down a long hallway to
the stairs.
 
After descending two floors,
they wound their way through a series of twists and turns.
 
As they walked, they passed several large
rooms each with walls completely covered with hundreds of video screens.
 
In front of the screens sat a dozen team
members watching as the views automatically switched from street to
street.
 

“Wow,” Roberts mumbled,
passing their fourth giant room.
 
“This
is amazing.”

Justin stopped at a red
door labeled simply with a number 6.
 
He
opened the door and waited for her to walk in first.
 
Inside was a huge desk with three giant
monitors in front of the keyboard, all displaying dozens of small windows from
different street cameras.
  
“So, you said
you needed to look at a specific camera,”
 
Justin commented as he sat down.
 
He motioned for Roberts to sit down next to him.

“That’s right,” she
said, taking the seat.
 
She looked at the
images.
 
“I can’t believe how clear the
pictures are.”

“All cameras installed
in the last three years are high def,” Justin replied.
 
He typed in his ID and password and brought
up a map of the city.
 
“Where are we
looking?”

Roberts squinted and
looked at the map.
 
“Between 5
^th
and Madison.”

Justin typed in
“Madison Street”, and the map quickly zoomed in.
 
An older picture of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral
was easily recognizable from the top.
 
Justin looked at her.
 
“Saint Patrick’s?”

“Mmm..hmm,” Roberts
answered, studying the map.
 
“Do you have
a view of the north side?”

Justin zoomed in further.
 
“Well, we have a camera here on the corner of
Madison and East 51
^st
.”
 
He
used his mouse to bring up a separate window with a list of all connected
cameras.
 
He then entered the two street
names which displayed an icon on top of the map.
 
Clicking the icon instantly filled the right
hand monitor with the live video feed from the Madison intersection.

Roberts was
impressed.
 
She stared closely at the
picture, trying to get her bearings. “Which direction is this facing?”

Justin pointed to a
small compass display in the right hand corner.
 
“This is facing east.”

Roberts looked
disappointed.
 
“So it’s facing the wrong
way?”

“Not necessarily.
 
They’re bidirectional.”
 
Justin said, moving the mouse.
 
“Let me see if we can view the opposite
direction.”
 
He clicked another button,
and it switched the view to west.
 
“Most
of these cameras are actually quad units which means we can view each of the
four directions.”
 
They both watched the
camera feed switch to a disturbing view of a black and smoldering block of
rubble.

“What time and day?”

Roberts looked at
him.
 
“Saturday morning at 11:00 am.”

Justin began typing in
the date when he stopped and looked back her.
 
“The time of the attack?”

She nodded.

“Some of us have spent
a lot of time with the FBI going over these feeds.”
 
He entered the date and waited several
seconds while the video picture changed.

The picture switched to
an older video feed showing the giant cathedral still standing tall and
majestic in the morning sun.

“Can you freeze that?”

Justin clicked his
mouse and froze the picture.
 
Roberts
leaned in over his shoulder and looked closer at the screen.

“This is five minutes
before the explosion.”

“Correct.”

“Can you roll it
forward in slow motion from here?” she asked.

“Yep,” he replied and
adjusted the video speed.

They both sat silently
watching the scene slowly unfold.
 
The
crowd outside the cathedral consisted of several groups of varying sizes, most
likely tourists, and many more individuals looking, talking, and pausing for
pictures.
 
Just as the timer on Justin’s
screen approached 11:05, he slowed the video further until they were viewing
almost frame by frame.
 

A black and gray cloud
of smoke suddenly burst from the giant double doors which stood wide open.
 
Giant pieces of debris followed in the same
instant, showing what looked like large chunks of rock and wood.
 
One piece moved through the video screen so
fast that Roberts had no idea what is was.
 
Another giant piece right behind it was clearly a large piece of a pew
bench.

Many of the figures
standing in front of the church before the explosion disappeared into
 
a cloud of debris that enveloped
everything.
 
When it began to clear,
Roberts felt a sick feeling in her stomach when she saw how many of the people
were no longer there.

The scenes were
awful.
 
Watching in this level of detail
made her feel like it was happening all over again.
 
She wanted to close her eyes and turn it off,
but she was afraid she might miss something crucial.
 
Then finally, after several painful minutes
of watching frame by frame, she saw it.

While dozens of people
ran back and forth, two figures caught her eye.
 
They were running down the steps, away and toward the outside edge of
the camera’s coverage.
 
It looked like a
mother and daughter.
 
What was strange
was that while everyone else was running away, these two figures suddenly
stopped and remained still for a few seconds before continuing.

“Can you zoom in on
those?” she asked.

Justin complied, and
the computer isolated the frames from the camera and zoomed in, self-correcting
for pixilation at the same time.
 
He
zoomed in as far as he could, and even though the picture was stretched due to
the angle of the camera from down the street, Roberts could clearly make them
out.
 
It was Sarah and her mother.

Justin froze on the
clearest frame while Roberts studied them.
 
It looked as though Sarah was tugging at her mother, and yet she was not
looking at her.
 
Sarah was looking at
something else, something out of camera shot.

“Can you determine what
angle this little girl is looking at?”
 
Roberts asked.

“Hmm,” he said.
 
“Maybe.”
 
He brought up a new window and began typing in it.
 
To Roberts, all computer syntax looked like
Greek.
 
“If we can correct the angle of
the picture,” Justin said, watching as the computer squared the dimensions,
“then we can overlay our cardinal points of direction.”
 
Next, the video screen was covered with four
lines labeled north, south, east and west.
 
“And if we can approximate the direction the girl’s head is
facing…”.
 
He typed more lines and the
computer then zoomed out to an overhead view of the street, with a red line
approximating the angle that Sarah had been looking in the frame.
 
“It looks like she may be looking
about…here,” he said.
 
He pointed to the
street corner almost directly across the street from the cathedral.

Roberts frowned.
 
“But we can’t see it.”

Justin shrugged.
 
“Well, not on this camera.
 
But we might be able to see it from the
camera facing the opposite direction one block down.”

After another ten
minutes of angle adjustments and computer enhancements, Roberts could see what
she believed Sarah had been staring at.
 
A tall man, in a dark suit, standing on the corner watching the chaos
unfold.
 
Unfortunately, she could not see
his face.
 
What was very strange to her
though was that everyone was running or reacting to the carnage of the
explosion, even people on the other side of the street.
 
Everyone
except
this man.

Roberts collected her
badge and identification and signed out.
 
She walked purposefully across the lobby and through the double, sliding
glass doors, and was crossing the parking lot when her cell phone rang.
 
She immediately recognized the extension from
the 19
^th
Precinct and accepted it.
 

“This is Roberts,”
 
she answered.

“Cheryl, this is
Deborah from the station.
 
I was told by
the deputy to give you a call.”

“Hey Deb, I was just on
my way back, what’s up?”

“Cheryl, there’s been
an incident.”

Roberts’ pace suddenly
slowed.
 
“What incident?”

“Darlington said you
were using one of the safe houses.”

Oh no
, thought
Roberts.
 
She closed her eyes and took a
deep breath.

Deborah continued.
 
“There were shots fired.
 
We’re on the scene now, but I don’t have a
lot of detail yet.
 
You might want to get
over there.”

“Oh god!” she said,
ending the call and running for her car.
 
She fumbled for the keys as she ran.
 
When she got to her car, she swung the door open and quickly jumped in,
jamming her key into the ignition.

In her rush, she did
not notice the dark figure crouched down in her back seat.