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.”