SANCTUARY SWAT
Thirty miles south, a lumbering Black Bear, carrying twelve armed swat officers, wearing puffy blue hazmat suits over thick black Kevlar vests and helmets, turned off Ocean Drive onto the empty driveway of the aging Victorian house on the hill. The breathing tanks on their backs made the trip more crowded and uncomfortable.
Squatting in readiness, the team waited for the word. Then it came, the doors slammed open, officers ran quickly, quietly, up to the house and surrounded it, covering every door and ground-floor window, their assault rifles pointed inward.
At the front door, the burly team leader, Deputy Geoffrey Stilson, banged his fist several times and shouted, “Simon Fogner? Open the door! Sheriff’s department. Come out with your hands up.”
Nothing. No movement through the door’s side windows, no opening of the door. No sounds. Nothing. Only an occasional crashing of a wave, far to the rear of the house.
“Battering ram!” he ordered. It hit with explosive force, sending doors, glass, and splintered wood flying inwards.
Rushing through the opening, the team scrambled into the entry hall and on into the darkened spaces, sweeping their M4s across rooms, lit by windows and barrel-mounted lights, while another group rushed up the stairway into the upstairs rooms. Strains of a Vivaldi concerto echoed down the hallway from the rear of the house. Then the music stopped; a woman yelled, “Music room clear!” One-by-one, voices continued, announcing, “Clear!”
With the team reassembled in the entrance, a radio voice announced, “All clear.” Its members had swept the house for Fogner and other occupants and found it empty of life.
Deputy Gene Keller, also wearing a blue hazmat suit, waited alone in the BEAR for the signal. He grabbed the Geiger counter and rushed up the sidewalk into the entry hall, encountering a group that looked to him to be a Smurf flash mob. Stifling a chuckle, he nodded at Stilson, took a hand-drawn map of the house from him, and activated the counter. Slowly, cautiously, he began to roam the structure, holding the Geiger counter out, probing, as the team waited for the results of his survey.
In areas that flashed the alarm and buzzed, he yelled, “Hot!” and marked an X on the map. Even though the background level in the house was much higher than he expected, portions of it still triggered the counter, alarming lethal radiation levels.
Minutes later, he returned, white-faced. “I’ve been in nuclear reactors less radioactive than this house. I suggest we follow through with our inspection as quickly as possible. Check your dosimeters for the little green light on top. If it turns red and beeps, get the hell out; you’ve exceeded your limit.” He handed the map covered with Xs over to the commander and pointed to the larger kitchen X. “I think we should start here. There’s a hotbed of activity in there. Must have been his hangout.”
“Stand down and wait here,” Stilson commanded. “Brown, Loger, follow me.”
Entering the darkened kitchen, Keller flipped on the lights. He saw it was messy, a bloodied butcher knife and dirty dishes in the sink, a hardened salami slice on the floor below a table, covered with cigarette ashes, an overflowing ashtray and a burned out cigarette laying over a scorched burn. An empty glass sat by it. The nearby wall, a vertical pincushion, was covered with pin holes. Small tears of newspaper hung from some, but nothing readable. “Check the trash for newspapers,” he said. “We may find what once covered this wall.”
“We’re on it,” said Stilson. He and crew dumped wastebaskets on the floor leaving nothing but a few dust particles. “Empty here, deputy.”
Keller photographed the room while scanning for radioactivity. It buzzed with radiation, especially the table and pincushion wall. He opened the hutch cabinet and stared at the bottle of Plymouth gin for seconds. It was red hot, half-empty and smeared with brown and yellow streaks. He looked back at the empty glass by the ashes and thought, Gin Nose.
“Nothing much here,” he said. “I’m surprised he didn’t burn the house down, though. Careless drinker. Let’s try the music room. That was overly hot, too.”
As the thin sounds of cellos vibrated the phonograph needle, Summer whispered on without amplification. Keller walked to the turntable and noticed it was on “Auto”; he pushed the “Replay” button and watched the arm move to the beginning groove of the LP and drop in. The violins of Spring began whispering, accurately trilling the birds of the season.
Probing the Geiger counter over the turntable, he noticed it alarmed strongly. Nearby LPs, standing in vertical slots, showed similar levels. Standing in the last slot, to the far right, was a small manual, titled SHAZAM: Explaining the algorithms. His camera flashed on it, lying on the countertop by the turntable where he placed it. Not aware of anything named Shazam, he thought it of enough interest to photograph it. Had it been radioactively cool, he would simply take it into evidence. Rather than taking it, with its radiation dangers, back into a civilian world, he could use its photograph to find the manual on the web and order it. Sounded safe to him. Quickly, he placed the Vivaldi’s Four Seasons LP and its slipcover, front and back, on the countertop and individually photographed them. Not knowing why, he sensed a link to the case. Their high radioactivity enforced that sense.
Finished taking prints from the piano, Stilson with Brown and Loger at his side, approached him and asked, “Our dosimeters were green. Now they’re green, blinking red. What does that mean?”
Keller looked back at the entrance foyer and noticed some team members nervously looking down at their pockets. Their dosimeters were edging to alarm as was his. “It means we have to evacuate. Now!” Stilson and team trailing far behind, Keller passed through the foyer, off the porch and out onto the lawn before stopping.
“Check the back,” Stilson said to his team.
They sped stealthily around the house into the back yard and stopped with rifles drawn, scanning the maze, tennis court and topiary for movement. A few of them ventured forth into the landscaping features, yelled “Clear,” and then returned. They were drawing zip, nada; Keller knew there must be something else. Then he spotted the trail leading off down a hill from the rear of the yard. He motioned to Stilson in that direction as he walked onward. Soon he came upon the elevator cage, its lift at the bottom. There was no button to bring it up, so he stood, thinking, looking down through the shaft, then over the sand and out to the boathouse. He noticed no fresh footprints in the sand, but then Fogner could have covered them behind him as he walked.
He imagined Fogner fleeing and making the trip down upon their arrival. Could he be down there? They couldn’t leave without confirmation either way. There was no way to traverse the steep fifty-foot cliff without rappelling but they were not equipped for that. They would have to drive down the coast to the nearest beach, then travel back several miles over the sand, and finally reach the boathouse he could throw a rock at and almost hit.
Frustrated, he conferred with Stilson. Near the DOWN button was an EMERGENCY STOP switch. He toggled the switch to STOP, preventing the elevator’s return, then radioed the Coast Guard to check the boathouse, the only one for miles on the Dana Point coastline. Giving its street location on Ocean Drive, he warned that hazmat gear must be worn by everyone entering the boathouse.