‘Why drag away a dead body?’
‘How do we know the Celtics guy was dead? Maybe the shooter wanted him alive.’
‘Then why not take this person before he entered the house?’
‘I don’t know yet. But we do know that someone ran up the back deck stairs and tracked mud into the living room. Those footprints lead up the steps but not down. I’m thinking the shooter was watching from the woods.’
‘So now we’re talking about an entirely separate person – a third party that wasn’t part of what went down in the house or that Rambo group we met in the woods?’
‘Yes. And I also think the shooter cut the kid loose.’
‘Why? What’s the reason?’
‘I don’t know. If that son of a bitch hadn’t –’
‘I saw the guy’s badge and ID. They were the real deal. So was the paperwork.’
‘I’m not blaming you, Artie, I’m just pissed off. He played us and cost the Hallcox kid his life. I just wish I knew what the hell he wanted with him.’
‘Have you seen any sign of Phillips or whoever he is?’
‘No. ’
‘What about the others?’
‘Not yet.’
‘What about the prints taken from the house? Any luck there?’
‘The lab techs got back about an hour ago. They’ve just started working.’
The taxi came to a sudden stop against the pavement.
‘I’ve got to go,’ Darby said. ‘I’ll call you as soon as I know something.’
She ran through the rain clutching a clear plastic bag. It held brown-paper bags of evidence to keep them from getting wet. She was soaked by the time she reached the front doors of One Schroeder Plaza. She had to go through the maddening check-in process before she could reach the lab.
She logged in the evidence, then went to her office to check messages. She had one. Nicholas Garcia, the homicide detective liaison to CSU, asked her to call him back. She had asked him to run the brown van’s plates.
Garcia answered on the first ring and got right to it.
‘They’re phantom plates,’ he said. ‘They don’t exist.’
‘So how did they get the plates?’
‘Probably through a contact at the DMV. It’s not as impossible as it sounds. You pay someone on the inside to get the plate and then they erase any way to trace them.’
‘Can you look into it for me?’
‘I wouldn’t pass up such an exciting opportunity.’ Garcia chuckled. ‘Don’t pin your hopes on finding anything. I’ve been down this road before.’
Darby was walking down the corridor to talk to Coop when her mobile rang. Ted Castonguay, the head of the photography unit, had finished reviewing the tapes and digital pictures and wanted to speak with her inside his office.
She found the former college wrestler seated at a desk in a quiet but cluttered corner. His shoulder and back muscles looked like rocks moving underneath cloth as he worked the mouse.
She grabbed a chair and wheeled it over to him, looking at the flat-screen monitor holding a black-and-white video still of the hospital’s elevator. The time-stamp recorded on the videotape read ‘August 15, 2009. 1.03 a.m.’.
Castonguay knew she was harried and frantic. He didn’t waste time with pleasantries.
‘This is the time you entered the hospital,’ he said, clicking the mouse.
The security video started. The camera was pointed down at the white corridor. She could see part of the nurses’ station.
The elevator doors opened and she saw herself and Pine walk out and move down the corridor until they disappeared. A moment later they reappeared with Patrolman White, and the three huddled around the corner from the nurses’ station and began talking.
Click and the video started fast-forwarding.
‘Eighteen minutes elapsed from the time you stepped off the elevator to the time you went to talk to the Hallcox boy,’ Castonguay said. ‘The Fed appears just under twenty-two minutes later.’
Twenty-two minutes. He must have followed me from Belham. She watched the images fast-forwarding across the monitor and thought about the TV cameraman she’d seen watching the house this morning. If he had been there last night, mixed among the other reporters, he would have seen her getting inside Pine’s Lincoln Town Car.
Castonguay started playing the video at its normal speed. She looked at the digital timestamp on the bottom-right-hand corner: 1.23 a.m.
‘Here’s where it gets interesting,’ Castonguay said. ‘Watch the elevator.’
She did. When it opened, the video started to fill with static. She couldn’t see the person who got out of the elevator – she couldn’t see anything.
The static grew stronger and then images disappeared.
The screen went dark.
‘That’s it,’ Castonguay said, and swivelled around in his chair to face her. ‘I checked the tapes for the other cameras. There’s nothing else, just static and then they all go dark.’
‘Any idea what caused it?’
‘For all the cameras to shut down like that, you’re talking some sort of HERF – a High Energy Radio Frequency weapon – or maybe a directed magnetic pulse. Could even be a microwave pulse. The two people talking to you in the video, they were standing in the corridor while you were talking to the vic. Did they say anything about being burned?’
‘They didn’t say anything to me.’
‘I doubt it’s microwave anyway. Those devices aren’t easy to conceal. Let me ask you this, then: did they report feeling nauseous or dizzy? Any vision problems?’
‘Not that I know of, but when I saw them standing in the doorway of the room, they were both struggling to catch their breath – like they had just finished running a marathon.’
‘Breathing difficulties are one of the symptoms of close exposure to electromagnetic or HERF exposure.’
‘My understanding is that to use a HERF weapon, you have to have a parabolic reflector and aim it at a target.’
‘Yes, you’re correct. And I should mention that to build one of those devices, you can find the materials you need in any electronics store. They’re somewhat big and bulky. Not easy to conceal. I was thinking along the lines of the smaller devices I’ve seen over the past year – the ones the size of, say, a paperback book or a pack of cigarettes that use a high-energy radio frequency. These smaller devices act more like a grenade – they have a certain blast radius. The smaller the device, the smaller the blast radius. You hit a button, flood an area with HERF and cook the electronic circuits in the area. That’s the only thing I can think of that would have caused this kind of damage so quickly. I’d be interested to see if the security cameras or any other nearby equipment was damaged last night.’
‘I’ll call and ask,’ Darby said. ‘These HERF grenades – can you build them?’
‘Not to my knowledge. I know the army uses them. They’re part of their non-lethal weapons tactics programme.’
‘What about the CIA or the FBI?’
‘I don’t see why not.’ Castonguay turned to the keyboard. ‘Now I want you to look at the pictures you took.’
22
‘I just need a moment to tinker with the file,’ Castonguay said.
Darby went to her office to use the phone. She called St Joseph’s and asked to be connected to the nurses’ station on the fourth floor. A new rotation had started. After identifying herself to three different people she finally found one left over from the day shift.