Schultz checked his watch. It had a black face and was on a black plastic band. Probably wearing black shorts, Dart thought. Schultz looked up at the van’s ceiling, which Dart now understood was this man’s reaction to radio communication, because as lead detective Dart was also able to hear the voice traffic from the operations van. “Two minutes,” Schultz told his troops.
Dart felt the prickle of heat in his scalp.
Exactly two minutes later, following a brief communication check between members of the unit, the van started up and turned into Hamilton Court.
Schultz rattled off orders. “Single file, people. We stay in shadow where possible. Brandon will scope the back gate; we move on my signals-we speak as little as possible. Any resistance, we withdraw to the park and our support transportation. Questions?”
“If we encounter weapons fire?” one of Schultz’s men asked.
“Dartelli leads the retreat to park. You, Brandon, and I take up defensive positions and follow ASAP. Anyone else?”
Dart felt his heartbeat strongly. He wanted to think of this as a drill, but his adrenaline told him differently. The van stopped and the doors flew open. The team moved quickly, quietly into the shadows. Dart, a part of them, could barely see the others.
“Okay,” Schultz said.
He followed at the back behind Gritch. The unit was well trained and moved as an entity. The van, having hesitated only long enough to disgorge the team, purred down the alley. Schultz held them in shadow for exactly one minute and then moved himself and his gadget man, Brandon, across to the green wooden gate. The two knelt and Brandon uncoupled the black snake from his leg and inserted it under the fence. The snake was, in fact, a fiber-optic camera, the small dentist mirror at his eye a viewing scope. Brandon inspected the back garden area and, with a hand signal, pronounced it clear. Schultz, using a speed key, unlocked the gate and then signaled the unit forward, his ERT man leading the way, followed by the evidence technicians and then Dart.
Within seconds, the unit was lined up in shadow alongside the house. Dart’s heart pounded heavily and he felt sweat trickling down his ribs. Brandon slipped the fiber-optic camera under the weather seal of the back door and used the video gear to inspect the inside. A moment later, Schultz had opened this door as well. Again, he waved them forward.
They were inside.
Dart had only used night-vision equipment once, in a seminar hosted by the New England Law Enforcement Association. The goggles were bulky, and the view from within them an eerie combination of green, black, and white. The unit moved ahead fluidly, but Dart felt awkward and disoriented, as if he had stepped into a video game. With his world reduced to glowing colors, he moved forward one unsure foot at a time.
Inside, the house was as it was outside-old and worn. In this first room there was a shoddy couch, a tilting standing lamp, a frayed recliner, and an old television set. Gritch and Yates fixed their attention onto Dart, who immediately pointed to the recliner; the two evidence technicians attacked the piece, working silently, efficiently, pulling cushions, sweeping, dusting for latent prints, digging at the crevices. Glassine and white paper bags, premarked with room locations, were used to capture the finds. In seconds the recliner was itself again. “No prints,” Gritch whispered into her microphone, playing in Dart’s right ear.
Dart scanned the room, experiencing tunnel vision, annoyed by the goggles.
Schultz and his commandos were gone, presumably conducting a preliminary search. Gritch tried dusting the television remote. She shook her head at Dart. Yates took a special solvent and cleaned the dust away, leaving no trace of their having been here.
Dart looked across at an upright piano missing several keys. There were a half dozen photographs in acrylic frames on top. He pointed these out to Gritch and Yates as well, and again they descended on their targets with an uncanny quickness and efficiency. Bags were opened-somehow silently-and Gritch produced a special camera. Yates removed what looked like a flashlight from his pouch, switched it on, and directed it at the photographs. Without the goggles, the special light would have appeared an extremely dull violet. Inside the night vision it appeared as if he had shined a halogen flashlight onto the subjects. Gritch fired off a series of shots, and to Dart’s surprise the camera worked in absolute silence. It would be explained later that the camera was digital, recording the images onto a computer disk. These images could be enlarged and manipulated electronically.
Room by room, the team moved through the house. The kitchen was tiny. Gritch and Yates spent most of their three minutes there dusting objects and pulling tape in hopes of lifting latent prints. Dart checked the refrigerator and made mental notes: male food. Bacon, eggs, hot dogs, beer, Diet Coke, turkey sausage, English muffins, ice cream, orange juice, and a dozen frozen dinners. Yates swiped the toilet rim and bagged the tissue from the downstairs half bath. Gritch seemed to inventory the cleaning products, paying special attention to those that retained price labels.
All the while, a steady stream of communication flowed in to Dart and Schultz from the operations van. Mostly, this came in the form of a running time count: “one minute,” “two minutes thirty seconds …” These were punctuated by announcements of “traffic approaching” and “traffic clear.” This barrage instilled in Dart a sense of protection, of security; knowing that three plain-clothes street officers were working the immediate neighborhood and were in constant touch with the operations van.
They had been inside the building just over five minutes before Dart began to understand Schultz’s actions more clearly. Saddled with a team of six-concerned for the unit’s safety-the team leader was deftly deploying his manpower to avoid having more than three people occupy any one of the small rooms. Dart, Gritch, and Yates were orchestrated as a team, while Schultz and his three armed ERT men swept the next area and kept on constant alert.
Dart and the evidence team next found themselves headed down a narrow wooden staircase into an unfinished basement area that housed a washer/dryer, a clothesline, several cardboard boxes of storage, and, just to the side of the staircase, a workbench cluttered with fly-tying materials and hardware. Gritch signaled Dart, pointing to the side of the clothes washer, and to the shelves above. She shook her head no. Dart returned the gesture. Her message was unclear to him. She touched her communication pack and whispered, “No detergent, no bleach.” Dart saw then what wasn’t there, realizing, as Zeller might have once schooled him, that what was missing was as important as what was present, and that Gritch and Yates had been carefully schooled in such matters. Dart nodded, making a mental note.
Dart pointed out the fly-tying work area, and the team descended on it, furiously photographing, sampling, and collecting. Again, Dart found himself impressed, all their combined movements measured, coordinated, and productive. They left the basement within two minutes.
Schultz directed Dart and the evidence team to the second floor, where a narrow hall accessed two bedrooms and two baths. The main bedroom was larger than the guest room and had its bath adjoining. There was enough ambient light here that Dart could remove the annoying goggles, but Gritch and Yates kept wearing theirs.
“Seven minutes,” came the steady voice in Dart’s earpiece.
The evidence pair went about photographing and sampling areas of the room while the detective stood back, studying the layout. The bed’s headboard was centered between two windows that faced the alley. Across from the bed, a chest of drawers awkwardly spanned the corner, just clear of the door to the bath, to the right of which was a door to a closet. Something about the room troubled Dart, though he couldn’t put his finger on it-the neatness? the cleanliness? the lack of personality? He wasn’t sure.