Authors: Michael C. Grumley
15
Christine woke up on
the couch, still in her clothes.
She
looked down to see Sarah lying against her with her head nestled against
Christine’s arm.
From the window, a thin
sliver of early morning light beamed across the small living room and lit up
part of the wall behind her.
She winced and
carefully adjusted her neck, then looked at her watch.
It was almost seven thirty.
The room looked
different in daylight and quite a bit dirtier.
She wondered how long ago it was last used.
She grabbed a small pillow from the floor and
slowly pushed it behind her head.
Staring up at the dusty ceiling, she went through the last couple days
in her head.
Her feelings were a jumble
of worry and confusion, but strangely not as much fear as she would have
expected.
She looked at the light
switch near the front door, the switch that Griffin told her would bring two
officers running if she turned it on.
Sarah began to stir,
taking a deep breath and slowly looking up from Christine’s arm where her small
head was resting.
Christine smiled.
“Hey there, girlie.”
Sarah made a tired
smile and looked around, stopping at the clothes on the table that officer
Roberts had given them.
She looked back
at Christine and then lay her head back down gently.
Christine reached down
and gently stroked her hair.
“How did
you sleep?”
Sarah nodded without
raising her head.
“Are you hungry?”
Christine asked softly.
Sarah paused for a
moment to think about the question, then nodded again.
Christine waited a
moment, then slid Sarah off to the inside of the couch and got up.
She walked into the kitchen and looked
around.
There were some folded grocery
bags on the counter, and opening the small refrigerator revealed a jug of
orange juice, eggs, bread, and some other basic staples.
She walked back and looked at Sarah, who was
sitting up and examining the room.
“How about toast and
orange juice?”
They both sat at the
small metal table in the kitchen which reminded Christine of the table they’d
had when she was a little girl, back in the late seventies.
Along with the chairs, the set almost looked
retro if she hadn’t suspected they were originals.
Sarah quietly made
quick work of the toast and juice, all the while peering outside through the
small window at the large trees.
She
looked at Christine.
“Are we going to be
here for a long time?”
Christine frowned and
shook her head.
“I’m not sure.”
Sarah nodded and kept
looking around the room.
“Is that your
phone?” she asked, pointing to the object on the counter.
“Yes.”
Christine only now remembered Griffin’s
instructions from last night to keep her cell phone off.
He had turned it off and placed it on the
counter in front of her for effect.
“Are you scared?” Sarah
asked shyly.
Christine thought about
her question and finally nodded her head.
“A little bit.
Are you?”
Sarah nodded too.
“A little.
Are we safe here?”
“I hope so.”
Sarah trusted her, and Christine had decided
to be as honest as possible.
The last
thing she needed now, on top of everything else, was lies.
Sarah seemed to accept
her answer and continued looking around.
She spotted an old doggie door at the bottom of the kitchen’s back door.
It had long been rusted shut.
Sarah frowned and looked back to
Christine.
“I’m sorry about your kitty.”
Christine gave a
painful nod.
“Thank you, honey.”
“I tried to stop her.”
“I know.”
Sarah’s face
saddened.
“But you wouldn’t let me.”
Christine nodded.
“I’m sad, but I guess it was just one
of-”
She suddenly stopped and looked at
Sarah.
“Wait, what?”
Sarah shrugged
innocently and looked down at her bare feet.
“I don’t-”
Christine stuttered.
“What does that mean?
What were you trying to stop, Sarah?”
“It was happening.
Her shadow was black.”
Christine looked at
Sarah with a puzzled expression.
“Her
shadow was black?
You mean Cassie?”
“Mmm hmm.”
Christine still wasn’t
following.
“I don’t understand.
Where was her shadow?”
Sarah looked back at
her shyly.
“All around.”
Christine remembered
the picture Sarah had drawn the day before at her office.
She quickly got up, went to the counter to
dig through her purse, and pulled it out.
On it were the three figures with circles around them.
The circle around the small stick figure cat
was colored black.
“You mean these
shadows, Sarah?”
“Yes.”
Christine studied the
picture for a long moment.
“What does a
black shadow mean?”
Sarah looked up from
her picture to Christine.
“It means
you’re gonna die.”
Christine was
speechless.
She stared at Sarah trying
to decide if she heard her right.
“Did
you say
die
?”
“Uh huh.”
Sarah looked at her empty plate and was
considering whether to ask for more.
“Do you see other shadows?”
“Yes,” Sarah
answered.
“Everyone’s.”
Christine felt a tingle
run down her spine.
“You see everyone’s
shadow?”
“Mmm hmm.” She nodded
again.
“Are other people’s
shadows black?”
Christine asked.
“Sometimes, like the
people in the elevator.”
16
Christine sat frozen at
the table, trying to comprehend what she had just heard.
“What?” she said
quietly. “What was that about the elevator?”
Sarah looked at her
innocently.
“Their shadows were
black.
The people inside.”
Christine thought back
to what had happened.
“You’re not afraid
of elevators?” she asked.
Sarah shook her head.
“Not at all?”
Sarah shook again.
Christine found herself
searching for some other explanation, but couldn’t find one.
Was it possible?
Could she really see what she claimed?
“So you knew something was going to happen to
those people?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know
what
was going to happen to them?”
“I was just scared
something was going to happen to us too.”
Christine could see the
fear in Sarah’s eyes.
She reached out
and covered Sarah’s tiny hand with her own.
“You did good, honey.”
After breakfast,
Christine sat on the couch looking at Sarah’s picture again.
She looked curiously at the little girl who
sat in front of her playing with an old set of Legos she’d found in one of the
closets.
She hummed quietly to herself
while she pushed the pieces together, then reconsidered and pulled them apart
again, searching for another in the box.
Christine leaned
forward with the paper in her hand.
“Sarah?”
“Mmm hmm.” Sarah
replied, still sifting through the old cardboard box.
“Do you see anything
else when you look at people?”
When
Sarah turned and looked at her, she held up the picture.
“You and your mommy have different colors in
this picture.”
Sarah looked at it
again and then back up at Christine.
“I
see lots of colors.”
“Besides black?”
Sarah nodded.
“What do the other
colors mean?”
She pointed to the
small stick figure which had a light colored circle around it.
“Kids are always white.
But grown-ups are different colors.”
“And what do the colors
mean?”
“Yellow means good,”
she said.
“And orange means a little
bad.
Red means really bad.
A lot of grown-ups are orange.”
Christine looked back
at the picture and at the stick figure that Sarah claimed was her mother.
There was a large yellow circle around
it.
“Your mommy was yellow?”
Sarah nodded again.
Christine took a deep
breath.
“Sarah, what color am I?”
She realized she was suddenly afraid to hear
the answer.
“You’re yellow.
Like mommy was.
Until the bad men came.”
Christine felt her
heart sink.
She thought about when she
first met Sarah at the police station.
“Honey, is that why you came with me, because I was yellow like your
mom?”
Sarah was back to
playing with her Legos, but she nodded.
“Mommy said I could trust yellows.”
“Are there a lot of
yellow grown-ups?”
she asked.
“No.”
Sarah said, adding another block to her Lego
house.
17
Griffin exited the
store and let the glass door close slowly behind him.
He walked across the small parking lot where
Buckley was leaning against the side of the car, waiting.
They had hit the morning commute traffic in
Baltimore about three hours into their four-hour drive from New York to
Washington D.C.
Since they still had a
couple hours before their appointment, they decided to stop at a cellular phone
store in Baltimore to kill some time and wait out rush hour.
“You all set?” Buckley
asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
Griffin held up his new
phone.
“Yep.
Guess it takes a little while to move my
number over to the new carrier.
The good
news is that I now have access to over ten thousand applications that I will
never have time to use.”
Buckley laughed.
“You can always quit your job.”
He put the cup down and folded his arms
across his chest.
“So listen, I’ve been
thinking.
Barbara Baxter suddenly took
her daughter out of school and time off work…at the same time that someone was
trying to find her.”
Griffin nodded.
“She was running.
We already talked about this.”
“Right,” Buckley
replied.
“She was probably running and
came to New York to see someone.
Maybe
someone who could help her, like that Glen Smith at the FBI.”
“That’s the most
logical explanation,” Griffin agreed.
“But,” said Buckley,
“what if she
wasn’t
coming to see someone?”
Griffin paused and
thought it through.
“Then why come to
New York?”
“Exactly.
Just for the sake of argument, let’s assume
she wasn’t coming to see someone.
Why
else would she run and come into the city of all places?”
He saw where Buckley
was going.
“Because it was the most
densely populated location available to her.”
“Right.”
Buckley nodded.
“So either she came to New York to meet
Smith,
or
she came to hide in one of the largest crowds on the planet.”
“Okay, I’m with you,”
Griffin said.
“So why all this talk
about a plan B?”
This time Buckley held
up his own phone.
“Because while you
were inside, I called the FBI office in New York.
There is no Glen Smith.
In fact, they only have two Glen Smiths in
the entire bureau. One in Texas and one in California.”
Griffin’s eyes
narrowed.
“Now I’m really hoping
she came here to hide,” Buckley continued.
“Because if she didn’t, then she may have ended up walking right into
the arms of the very person who was tracking her down.”
“That could explain her
going through the window at the Marriott.
She and Sarah show up and Smith, or whoever he is, is waiting for her
with a few friends.”
Griffin gave
Buckley a disturbed look.
“Maybe there
is a Glen Smith working at the State Department.”
Buckley stood up and
walked to the driver’s side.
“Well,” he
said, opening the door, “I guess we’ll find out.”
The US State Department
is the federal department responsible for all international relations.
It was the first federal department,
established in 1789 under the country’s new constitution.
The original responsibilities of the State
Department included management of the U.S. Mint, being keeper of the Great Seal
of the United States, and acting as the depository of more than 200
multilateral treaties.
In essence, the State
Department advances U.S. objectives by implementing the President’s foreign
policy, and it also supports the foreign activities of other departments such
as the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency.
With an annual budget of more than $50
billion, the State Department’s global reach was massive, operating in over 270
locations, 172 countries, and conducting business in 150 currencies.
Located just a few
blocks from the White House, it took Griffin and Buckley almost two hours to
drive from Baltimore, through traffic, to reach the Harry S. Truman Building on
C street where the Department had been located since 1947.
Housing over 1.5
million square feet of usable space with a roof over 7 square acres in size and
over 4,000 windows, the giant buff-limestone building gave off a look of raw
power and influence.
It was a little after
11 a.m. when the detectives were escorted into the Deputy Secretary’s office.
Many claimed the Deputy Secretary actually ran the department, as opposed to
the political figurehead appointed as Secretary whose job consisted of little
more than photo ops and golfing with other government elites.
Even the Deputy’s
office was massive, decorated in an old turn of the century architectural theme
with a view overlooking much of downtown D.C.
It was clearly a position of appreciable power that most people knew
little about.
Griffin and Buckley
turned away from the giant window as William Zahn walked in with his aide.
At six feet three, Zahn was an atypical
bureaucrat.
He had a muscular build, was
exquisitely groomed, and had a focused look on his face that was all
business.
His aide was similar in size,
but with shorter hair, and appeared to be of middle eastern descent.
Zahn looked at the
detectives and crossed the room.
“Hello
gentlemen, you must be the detectives who wanted to see me.”
He reached out and shook their hands.
“This is my aide, Kia Sarat.”
Sarat nodded and silently extended his hand
as well.
“Thanks for your
time.
I’m Dan Griffin and this is Mike
Buckley.
We’re detectives with the 19
th
in New York.”
Zahn raised his
eyebrows.
“New York?
That’s quite a long way.
What brings you down here?”
He glanced at his phone and walked around his
large desk.
The detectives
approached from the other side.
“We’re
investigating a homicide,” Buckley said.
“I see.
And how exactly does this homicide bring you
here?”
Zahn smoothly sat down in his
chair, motioning for them to use the chairs in front of his desk.
His aide, Sarat, moved to the side and remained
standing.
“Actually, we were
hoping you could tell us,” Griffin said, filling his seat.
“I’m not sure what I
can do, but I should warn you, I have to leave to catch a plane in a few
minutes.”
Zahn extended his arm and
looked at his watch.
“So what is it
about your investigation that involves the State Department?”
“Well,” Griffin cleared
his throat.
“A woman was thrown out of
an eighth-story window just days after she suddenly left town with her
daughter.”
Zahn looked at Sarat
and then back at the detectives, spreading his arms in a curious gesture.
“I’m sorry to hear that.
So what does that have to do with us?”
Griffin leaned
forward.
“During those few days, it
looks like someone was trying to locate her.
We spoke to the phone company and someone had instructed them to track
the victim’s location through her cell phone.
That instruction came from your State Department.”
Zahn looked
confused.
He remained quiet,
thinking.
“Perhaps there is a connection
between this woman and some investigation we have underway.”
“Perhaps,” Buckley
said.
“It just strikes us as a little
odd, since the Department of State is an international organization, not
domestic.
So why would the department be
following, or trying to find, a woman who has never traveled outside the
country?”
Zahn shrugged.
“I’m afraid I don’t know.
Again, perhaps she was involved in something
or with someone that -”
“She didn’t have a
criminal record either,”
Griffin
interrupted.
“And while it’s possible
that she was involved in something or with someone who did, in our experience
that’s pretty uncommon.
People who stay
out of trouble generally tend to have relationships and friends who also stay
out of trouble.”
Zahn shrugged
again.
Griffin noted that he was
beginning to look a little irritated.
“Well then, perhaps she was romantically involved with someone who she
didn’t know very well.
We do have an
office in New York.
Maybe she was
involved with someone within our employ and things did not end well.”
He shook his head and looked at his watch
again.
“I’m sorry detectives.
I cannot even begin to imagine the range of
personal or professional issues that my thousands of employees might have.
My schedule is extremely busy and I’m afraid
I’m just not briefed in the details of everyone’s lives within this
department,” he added with sarcasm.
“We understand,” Buckley
said.
“And we know that you are very
busy.
It would be helpful if we could
have a look at some of your phone records to see if we might learn who it was
that made the call.”
Buckley tried to
maintain a non-threatening tone.
“Of
course, this can be a little tedious, so we’re happy to do the grunt work to
ensure we don’t waste anyone’s time.”
Zahn gave a coy
smile.
“Well, I appreciate the offer Mr.
Buckley, but as you can imagine, communications within the department are
frequently of a confidential nature.
You
can understand the challenge it would pose for us, turning over internal
information without first reviewing it.”
Back in New York in the
forensics department, Mike Ramirez sat in front of his computer looking through
the telephone company’s phone logs.
He
looked closely at the digital entry that had originally launched the searches
for Barbara Baxter’s location.
There were some special
characters included in the record details that he did not recognize.
He looked at the byte count, or size of the
record, and noticed that it was significantly larger than the rest of the log
records.
Ramirez thought to himself,
tapping his nose with his index finger.
It looked like some kind of
attachment
to the actual record.
He looked at the initials of the person who
had added the entry.
It read KL.
Ramirez picked up the
phone and dialed a number.
It only rang
once before it was picked up.
“Hey
Steve, this is Ramirez again.
So listen,
I’m looking through the logs you sent me, and I see that the person who entered
the search instruction has the initials KL.
Does that ring a bell?”
After a pause,
Ramirez’s contact at the cellular company replied, “Yeah, that’s Kelvin
Lu.
He was a manager, but he doesn’t
work here anymore.”
“Hmm…,” Ramirez sat
thinking.
“It looks like this record has
more data to it.
Like something
appended; like an attachment.
Can you
open it up?”
On the other end, Steve
started typing quickly and fell silent.
After several seconds he came back on the line.
“Unfortunately, I can’t get access since he
was a manager.
You’ll need to send a
formal request to his replacement to have a new password applied to Kelvin’s
account.
And that usually takes a couple
weeks.”
Ramirez grimaced.
They didn’t have a couple of weeks.
He needed it now.
“Any chance we can break into his account?”
Steve lamented,
“You didn’t just say that.”
Ramirez smiled on the
other end of the phone.
“Say what?”
Ramirez suddenly
noticed something show up in the chat window on his computer.
It was from the same person he was speaking
to.
Can’t say on the phone.
Chat is encrypted and safer.
Ramirez cleared his
throat and spoke into the phone again.
“Okay, thanks Steve.
Hey you want
to go to the game next weekend?”
“Sorry can’t,” Steve
replied.
“Maybe next time.”
“Sure, I’ll catch you
later then.”
Ramirez hung up, put down
his phone, and immediately typed a reply.
What system are these requests accepted
from?