Unwanted Company - Barbara Seranella (28 page)

"So what does this guy do?" Cassiletti
asked while they waited for the light to change.

"I'll have him give you a demonstration,"
Mace said.

They turned down Douglas and stopped at Gatehouse C.
A uniformed guard emerged from the booth. "Can I help you,
sirs?" he asked.

Mace handed over his badge and identification. "We're
here to see Dr. Rudy Roberts. Building 107."

"Just a minute, sir." The guard returned to
his booth with Mace's ID. They watched him make a call, nod, then
reemerge with a clipboard. The guard returned Mace's badge and walked
to the rear of the detective's unmarked car, where he wrote down the
license plate number. Then he consulted his watch and made yet
another notation.

"Pretty intense security," Cassiletti said.

Mace smiled. just wait."

The guard lifted the barrier gate. Mace pulled into
the parking lot, finding a space marked VISITOR. Before leaving the
car, he folded his police ID over his front pocket so that the badge
was clearly visible. Cassiletti followed suit. Mace opened the trunk
and retrieved three boxes of videotapes, which he transferred into a
brown-paper lunch sack. They walked over to the building marked 107.
The door was locked. Mace rang the buzzer. A tall, good-looking man
wearing a suit came to the foyer. When he saw Mace, he smiled and
opened the door for them.

"
Hey, Dr. Rudy," Mace said, extending his
hand. "Thanks for seeing us. This is my partner, Tony
Cassiletti. "

"Detective," the man said, sizing
Cassiletti up with friendly, but intense blue eyes.

"
Call him Tiger." Mace clapped the big man
on the back. "This here is Dr. Rudy Roberts. The Department of
Justice's answer to that guy in the James Bond movies who makes all
the gadgets for 007."

"Q?" Cassiletti said.

"Please," Roberts said, "I'm basically
an engineer."

"Yeah," Mace said, "that's right. Like
George Foreman is basically a boxer. "

"What do you do here?" Cassiletti asked.

Roberts hesitated for a moment before answering. "We
do support research for various federal agencies. " He turned to
Mace. "So, you have some videotapes you want me to look at?"

Mace handed over the brown-paper sack. Roberts pulled
out the three videotape boxes. "Are these the originals?"
he asked.

"
No," Mace said. "But these haven't
been played since I made the copies."

"All right," Roberts said. "We'll see
what we can do. What are you looking for?"

"
The first two videos are from surveillance
cameras mounted on fifteen-foot poles at the entrance of an apartment
building. I've got some people in the back of a limo that I want to
identify. "

"
And the other?" Roberts asked, seemingly
weighing the third videotape in his hand.

"Pretty poor quality on that one, I'm afraid,"
Mace said. "It's from a Bank of America roof camera. It was
pointed down a dark alley behind the apartment building where some
homicides occurred. The other videos are from that building's
security cameras."

"
Time-lapse?" Roberts asked.

"Yeah, but then it switched to real-time when
the gate's keypad was operated. The cameras were positioned at either
side of the entrance driveway."

"Okay, good. What about the bank video?"

"Time-lapse and like I said, the alley was dark.
You can just make out a figure hopping the back wall. According to
the time line of events, it was after the homicide. Anything you can
give me on that guy would be great."

"
We'll see what we can do," Roberts said.
He handed each of the detectives plastic clip-on visitor badges.
"Let's go to the lab. I'll load these on to the computer and
we'll see if we can find you any valuable information?

They followed Roberts out of Building 107 and deeper
into the complex. The concrete paths were all clean and the
landscaping well maintained. None of the buildings they passed had
any identification on it other than a numerical designation. "It's
pretty amazing what a computer can do with a blurry picture,"
Mace told Cassiletti. "Just like you see in the spy movies. All
that CIA stuff."

Roberts slowed his pace and turned to face the two
detectives. "We taught them everything they know," he said.
Mace winked at Cassiletti.

"
Rudy," he said. "You ever hear about
an operation called Southern Air Transport?"

Again, the engineers pace faltered, but this time he
didn't turn around. "I can neither confirm nor deny knowledge of
that operation," he said.

"
So it's like that," Mace said.

"Like I said," Roberts repeated, "we
do support research for various federal entities." They were
crossing an immaculate courtyard. Concrete benches sat between
planters full of maple and oak trees.

Mace directed Cassiletti's attention to a three-story
building surrounded by an electric fence. Then he nodded to the
louvered air vents beneath the benches. "That's actually a
five-story building," he whispered.

Cassiletti nodded, his eyes wide.

A Chevy Suburban pulled in front of the building. Two
beefy men emerged and studied their surroundings with somber faces.
Mace would have pointed out the gun turrets in the Suburban, but the
men were staring at him and Cassiletti.

"
How's it going?" Mace said.

"Just great," the man who had been driving
answered. His tone was courteous, but his expression was grim. They
faced off for another few seconds. God, Mace wondered, do these guys
ever blink ?

When they were out of earshot, Cassiletti asked,
"Spooks?"

"I'd say so," Mace answered dryly.

They arrived at another group of buildings. An armed
guard checked their badges, then opened the door for them. The
hallway they entered was something out of a futuristic novel. Steel
casing, eight inches wide and two inches deep ran down the center of
the ceiling. Fuse-box-looking steel boxes were attached at various
junctions.

"
What's all this?" Cassiletti asked.

"
Cable," Roberts said.

"
And these?" Cassiletti asked, pointing to
an overhead shower nozzle.

"
In case of chemical spill," Roberts said.
"We also have eyewash stations, and self-contained breathing
apparatus."

Mace stared through the thick glass window at the
laboratory on his right. Technicians were loading petri dishes into
some sort of oven. They wore protective gear over their eyes, face
masks, and heavy gloves. He didn't want to know. He was just grateful
for the airlock separating them.

Roberts turned into a room full of computer
equipment, several large television monitors, and stacked audio
equipment. He stuck the Gower apartment building video into a VCR and
turned on his computer. "This won't take very long,  he
said. "First I need to load the tapes into my computer system.
Once they're there I can play around with the images."

"Like a TV, right?" Cassiletti asked. "You
adjust the tint and contrast. "

"A little more than that," Roberts said,
his eyes brighter now that he was back in his environment of choice.
"You know what a pixel is?"

"
Yeah, it's like a little dot that's part of a
picture."

"
Yes. A typical broadcast television picture has
six hundred and forty by four hundred and eighty pixels. With
videotape surveillance video, you have even less resolution. However,
we have ways to improve on that. Every pixel stores information.
'When you have a series of pictures of the same object—a vehicle,
for instance, driving down the road—each frame has its own pixels,
and each of those pixels has slightly different information. By
superimposing the pixels of the same vehicle from a series of frames,
we come up with a much more detailed image."

"You see?" Mace asked, nudging his partner.

The beginning of the surveillance video appeared on
Roberts's screen. He rolled his mouse on its pad and the video
played.

"Where do you want me to start?"

Mace consulted his notes. "Eleven twenty-nine."

Roberts split the image on his screen and advanced
both videos to the specified time. The picture of the limo appeared.
"It's pretty murky," he said. "I don't know how much I
can do with this." They watched and listened as he demonstrated
how he could eliminate shadows, suppress glints, adjust contrasts and
tones, and eliminate background. The face in the limo refused to
materialize. After thirty minutes, he had to admit defeat. "All
right," he said. "Let's try the bank tape." He
repeated his earlier procedure, and soon the footage of the dark
alley appeared on the screen.

"There," Mace said, pointing. A dark figure
had appeared at the top of the apartment complex's cinder-block rear
wall. The next frame showed the figure on the ground.

"
Is that your guy?" Roberts asked, his
fingers busy on his controls.

"Yeah, pretty poor image."
 
'"
There's a few more things we can try here.
The bank uses infrared cameras on their rooftop jobs. I've created a
few image-contrasting algorithms that will bring out thermal
characteristics not visible to the naked eye."

"
In English?" Mace said.

"
The CCD array collects in the infrared spectrum
. . ."

Roberts paused, looked from one detective to the
other, and said, "Uh, heat registers as a color."

"How does that help us?" Mace asked.
 
"
Let's find out." Roberts
worked his magic and soon the same scene had color. The face and
hands of the figure took on a reddish hue. "We're reading skin
temperature. This guy must have been pretty worked up." He used
his pointer on the screen to advance the time-lapse photos.

"
What are we looking at now?" Mace asked.

"The guy moved his hand to his mouth,"
Roberts said, studying the screen intently. "Isn't your suspect
bald?"

"Yeah, you saw his picture in the other tape."

"
What we're looking at here," Roberts said,
pointing to the red man's head, "is not a bald head, or it would
be the same color as the face. Hair acts as insulation."

"Maybe he's got a hat on," Cassiletti said.

"l don't think so," Roberts said. "See
the scalp line? The ears? N0, this is hair."

"
We've got another suspect—possible
accomplice," Mace said. "He might be a CIA operative."

"Hmm," Roberts
said, rolling his mouse again. "Now what would a mostly hollow
head look like?"

* * *

Raleigh used a pay phone to call in. That day's code
was a beep and screech that sounded like a fax line. Raleigh pressed
8, 5, 6, then the star key. A woman's voice came on asking what
extension he wanted.

"Two bravo echo six," Raleigh replied.

"
Confirmed," she said. "Please hold."

Seconds later another voice took over—this time a
man's. "We've been unable to locate the woman," he said.
"Her full name is Ellen Summers. Hard copy to follow. The LAPD
is also looking for her. "

Raleigh's stomach muscles contracted painfully. She
could blow everything. "What else have they got?" He popped
an Altoid in his mouth and followed that with an amphetamine. "The
lead detective has been ordered to stand down from his investigation.
His reports will be in the packet. Frankly, his case is very
damaging. He knows about the business in Mexico. He recovered pieces
of medical tape off of a murder victim that they've conclusively
linked to the Band-Aid Ki1ler."

"Son of a bitch," Raleigh said.

"You've been sloppy. This can't go on."

"I'll take care of it, " Raleigh said.

"We've already confiscated the physical
evidence," the man said. "But you better hope we find that
witness before the cops do."

"
Any leads?"

"She's back in town. It's all in the reports."

"I'll pick them up now," Raleigh said.

"
What about Gameboy? "

"He's going to bring me a sample. I told him to
make it happen, and it will. You've got my personal guarantee on
that."

"
His compensation requests have been approved."

"I'll pass that on." Raleigh looked at his
own dilapidated Vega and felt a fresh surge of resentment. Where was
the justice in this world? The plan was that when the deal finally
went down, Victor would be keeping the monies paid for the plutonium.
Which was only fair, the Romanian had reasoned, and no skin off of
America's vast back. Victor's participation in the international
sting operation ensured that the United States government would be
able to confiscate the radioactive contraband, thereby preventing it
from falling into the hands of terrorists or fanatics.

Raleigh knew Victor's motives were far from
altruistic. After slipping Victor an opiate/ amphetamine cocktail
back in December, the Romanian had let slip all the other extenuating
circumstances that would make his return to his homeland once the
Olympics had concluded a most unpleasant one. But that wasn't going
to happen. The United States was going to provide him with a new
identity and history, and he would quietly slip away under the cover
of his new life.