Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity (32 page)

Embarrassed, I brushed away a tear.

With every ounce of the little self-control I retained, I squared my shoulders and surveyed the officers gathered before me. “If Gabriel lives up to our agreement, we’ve got half an hour to get my family out alive,” I said. “How do we make this happen?”

“It’s our opinion, at the Bureau, that this man won’t kill your family,” said Scroggins, walking around the room, tapping a pointer he’d lifted from one of the desks. I’d been listening to his pronouncements and staring at my watch for nearly ninety seconds with no hint of what he intended. Now it appeared he planned to tell me. “Lieutenant, it’s you he really wants, and he’ll wait for you. Our tactic is to keep promising you but not produce you,” he explained. “We want to wear him down, wait until he’s tired, hungry, and then negotiate to gain release of the hostages.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“He will kill them,” I said, bridling in crushing frustration. “The man you’re talking about is a psychopath who has killed at least six people. He loves nothing better than torturing and murdering. And now, he’s suicidal. He knows his run is over, that he’ll
never leave this building alive and a free man. What he’s done here, Agent Scroggins, is to orchestrate his own suicide, a dramatic finale. He intends to go out in a blaze of glory, but not alone. If we do nothing but talk, in precisely twenty-eight minutes, my mother, my daughter, and an innocent young boy will all die truly horrible deaths.”

“That’s not true, Lieutenant,” Scroggins insisted. “You’re too close to this and not looking at it rationally.”

Was he right? Could I be wrong?

“What do you think, David?” I asked.

Glaring at Scroggins from across the room, David said, “I agree with Sarah. We cannot assume Gabriel will not kill his hostages. This is a highly motivated killer who has expressed what could reasonably be taken for suicidal intentions. We need to act as quickly as possible.”

“I don’t agree,” said Scroggins. “I’m telling you—”

Ignoring him, I turned to Jim Perkins.

“Jim, what are our options,” I said. “How will your team proceed?”

“As I explained to Agent Scroggins before you arrived,” he replied, “if our SWAT team runs this scene, we do it with no interference from his men. I’ve already stationed officers around the building perimeter, outside the observatory door, and snipers on the rooftops of every adjacent building. I have a helicopter with a decoy on its way, so we can have it land on the grounds outside as a diversion, to stage your arrival. A specialist is ready to infiltrate the observatory with a pinhole tandem microphone and camera device to establish surveillance, as soon as he gets the order.”

“What are you waiting for?” I asked.

“Assurance that we’re in charge, Sarah,” he said, motioning at Scroggins. “Currently, we’ve been ordered to stand down.”

“I told you, Perkins, you don’t need cameras and microphones.
It’s never getting to that point.” Scroggins bristled. “As for who’s in charge, the FBI is in control of this scene. That means, as the senior agent, that I’m in charge, and there’s no way in hell I’m letting you burst in and get innocent people killed. We’ll negotiate those hostages out of there. We’re not forcing entry.”

“Who put you in command?” I questioned, my anger rising to the surface.

“When the FBI is on a scene, we run the show,” Scroggins said, a thin coat of sweat glistening on his forehead, and his voice thick with resentment. “If Captain Perkins wants to hang around to see how it’s done, well, that’s up to him. But I’m calling the shots.”

I couldn’t take it any longer.

“Your services are no longer needed here,” I snapped at Scroggins. “Get out.”

“Sarah, we might need their help,” David objected. Except to answer my direct question, he’d hung back, listening. I didn’t know what he was thinking. Maybe he thought this was my fault, that I’d put my family in danger. Maybe he was right. “Let’s scope this situation out first, before we start sending people away.”

“No,” I said, inwardly wondering if I was making the right decision. Yet my gut screamed one thing: something had to be done and it had to be done fast. “I want Scroggins and his men out of here, now.”

“That’s not your decision, Lieutenant,” Scroggins shot back, anger spilling out with every word. “Your position in this room is that of a concerned relative of the hostages. Nothing more. On this case, you have no stature as a law officer.”

“Captain,” I said, turning to my boss, who leaned against the wall near the door. “They can’t do that. Can they?”

“Well, Sarah…”

“I’m telling you, this is the way it is,” said Scroggins, so haughtily his entourage, milling about the room, looked uneasy.

“Ted, we need to listen to the lieutenant. It’s her—” Nelson ventured.

“Listen, you damn redneck, sit down and shut up,” Scroggins barked. He then turned to his men. “Now, I want a phone line directly hooked up to—”

“Captain,” I said again, a lump of bile swelling in my chest. “Isn’t it true that the FBI is on this scene at our department’s invitation?”

“Technically…”

“Well then, fire them.”

“You sure, Sarah?”

“Yeah,” I said, swallowing hard. “I’m sure.”

Eyes narrowed, Captain Williams said, “Agent Scroggins, your services and those of your men are no longer required. Please leave the scene.”

“You can’t…” Scroggins blustered. “Washington will hear…”

“Go ahead, call D.C.,” the captain said, frowning. “But in the meantime, get the hell out.”

Scroggins glared at me but didn’t argue.

“Thanks, Captain,” I said. I was about to turn toward Jim Perkins, when I thought better of it. I wanted one more shot at Scroggins, who was angrily stalking toward the door.

“By the way, did you leak the information on this case to the press to set me up to take the fall when your case against Priscilla Lucas fell through? Is that why you did it?” I shouted.

Scroggins turned back to face me, his face contorted with anger. He said nothing, but I knew without question, I’d been right. David must have reached the same conclusion because he said, fuming, “Ted, leave. Get out of here before I throw you out.”

Dr. Mayer, who’d been silent yet looking rather pleased throughout the entire exchange, smirked at Scroggins and observed, “Looks like you’re just in the way here, Agent Scroggins.”

After shooting the professor a smoldering gaze, Scroggins turned
on his heels and stormed from the room, followed by his minions. Nelson hung back.

“I’d like to help,” he said. “In any way I can.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said. Then I turned to Jim. “Okay, how long before you have surveillance, and how do we get inside?”

“Sarah, just a minute,” he said, motioning to one of his men. “Anderson.”

“Yes, Captain Perkins.”

“Get that camera positioned and functioning; you’ve got three minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sarah, this is what I’ve got in mind…”

T
he situation was a difficult one. The building we were in, SRI, was the tallest on this section of the campus, ruling out any possibility that snipers would have a shot at taking Gabriel out. The gunmen were stationed merely as a backup, to prevent his escape if he attempted to run from the building.

Pushing books, papers, a telephone, and everything else aside, Jim unrolled a blueprint of SRI on a desk. He explained that the observatory consisted of a rectangular room capped by a thirteen-foot dome. Perched on the roof at the west end of the building, the facility’s sole entrance was accessed via a special sixth-floor stairway. A fire door positioned at the top of the stairs led directly into the observatory, while a second door, positioned off the same landing, led to the roof.

“How does the observatory door lock?” I asked Dr. Mayer.

“With a key from the outside, but it also has a bolt-lock mechanism on the inside. The students use the telescope to take photographs, and then develop their film inside the observatory,” he said. “Bolting the door from the inside prevents it from being opened, admitting light, and ruining their film.”

As Jim described it, the observatory had three openings and, therefore, three possible points of entry: the first, the fire door; the second, two sliding panels, or shutters, in the dome itself that, when fully opened, measured forty-eight-inches wide. They formed the observatory’s aperture, the opening through which students pointed the telescope to view the moon and stars.

“The only way to control the aperture, the rotation of the dome, and the telescope itself is through a small control panel attached to the telescope,” explained Dr. Mayer.

“Our office pulled a satellite photo of the campus and it appears that the shutters are currently open approximately eighteen inches, and the aperture is pointed west,” Jim said.

The observatory, not attached to the building’s heating and air-conditioning systems, had no vents in the walls or the floor. The floor itself was a solid concrete slab, but the walls were a less-substantial construction, concrete block. The third and final opening in the structure consisted of an eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch hole housing an air-conditioning unit.

“That’s where Anderson is inserting the camera. He’s snaking it through the unit’s filter until it’s flush with the lower grate. It should be well camouflaged. Gabriel won’t be able to detect its presence,” Jim assured us. “The good news is that the upper dome is fiberglass, easily penetrated. But then there’s the bad news: the entire observatory is surrounded by a gravel rooftop, making it likely our guys’ movements would be audible from inside.”

To muffle any noise and prevent Gabriel from discovering their presence, Jim’s men were carefully laying a special insulation material over the gravel. The first area they’d covered, from the door to the air conditioner, was already being used by Officer Anderson to quiet his footsteps as he inched his way around the perimeter of the dome to install the camera.

“Anderson’s in,” someone yelled, and we hurried to the adjoining
office, where a laptop computer manned by an operator had already been set up. At first an image flickered, then swam across the screen as the tiny camera made its way through the final layers of the air conditioner’s filter and stopped just behind the mesh that covered the lower third of the unit. When the camera settled into place, the computer operator keyed in instructions and a clearer black-and-white image filled the screen. The wide-angle lens gave an elongated view of the inside of a dim room. I saw desks and chairs, dusty bookshelves, a framed photo of the moon on the wall, photographic enlargers, and in the very center, on a tall black pedestal, a large white-barreled telescope pointed toward a shaft of light, the dome’s opening.

“Where are they?” I said, frantically scanning the screen.

“There,” said David, pointing at an object protruding from a far wall.

“He’s got them locked in the equipment storage locker,” said Dr. Mayer. “But I only see two people. A boy and a woman.”

Even through the distortion of the camera, I could see the images of Mom and Strings locked inside what appeared to be a wire-mesh cage. I could hear muffled voices.

“Turn up the volume,” Jim ordered.

The operator clicked on an icon and voices came through, loud and clear.

“Well, you’re eventually just going to have to let us go,” Mom could be heard arguing. “You can’t keep us here. Why would you do that? We haven’t done anything. We haven’t hurt anyone. They’re just children.”

“I told you to shut up, old woman,” Gabriel ordered, from somewhere off-camera.

Strings cut in, “You shouldn’t talk to Mrs. Potts that way.”

“Be quiet,” Gabriel shouted.

They’re alive
, I thought.
But where is Maggie? Where is she?

“Jim, I don’t see Maggie,” I said.

Just then, I heard her voice. “You know, my gram is a really good person, and you’re not being nice to her,” she said, her voice strained by fear. “No matter what you say about being on some stupid mission and not really wanting to kill people, you’re just a stupid killer.”

“Shut up!” Gabriel shrieked. “Now!”

“There she is,” Jim said, pointing to a small figure on a stepladder, near the base of the telescope.

“Oh, God, David, he’s got her tied up,” I said, as the camera zoomed in. Gabriel had used what looked to be electrical cord to tie the equipment locker shut and to bind Maggie’s arms and legs to the ladder’s frame. “He’s going to kill Maggie.”

“Sarah, stop,” David ordered. But I saw my own terror reflected in his face.

“I need a schematic of this room,” Jim ordered the operator. “We’ve got eighteen minutes before the hour’s up. I need to know everything that’s in that room, down to the smallest detail, in three. Now, do it.”

As the computer tech and an assistant turned their attention to Jim’s order, Dr. Mayer asked the question I’d been thinking, “Where’s this bad guy? I don’t see him.”

We watched the screen for long moments, listening to the conversation inside, the camera adjusting and readjusting to every possible angle, zooming in and then pulling back until a figure emerged from the shadows, a lean, rigid young man with shoulder-length blond hair, dressed all in black. He looked in the direction of the air conditioner.

“He’s seen the camera,” I said, just as Gabriel walked toward us and stopped, within inches of the air conditioner. He looked directly into the lens, and I stared into the eyes so many had seen just
moments before their deaths, the same eyes that had terrified Lily Salas. They were penetrating and empty.

“Do we need to pull the camera out before he makes it?” David asked.

“No, give him a minute. This thing’s really small and it shouldn’t be visible. Just hold on,” said Jim, as on the screen Gabriel reached up toward the camera. He seemed to be twisting something.

“He’s trying to turn on the air conditioner. It doesn’t work,” Dr. Mayer said, with a shrug. “I’ve been complaining to maintenance about it for weeks. A little uncomfortable in there now, but in a couple of months, once summer starts, it will be absolutely intolerable.”