The Premise

by Andy Crossfield

  Six more bodies were recovered by noon, and progress was being in made pulling the car out of the pit when Sheriff Glover got a radio call.

  "Sheriff Glover?"

  "Yes Carol?"

  "We got a call from the governor’s office. They want you to stand down and turn the scene over to Randall… Over"

  "Say what?"

  "We got a call from the gov…"

  "I copy, I copy…" Sheriff Glover yelled into the microphone. "Did they say why?"

  "Jurisdiction I think. I didn’t ask too many questions. Over."

  "They’ll be on scene at 5 pm. Our orders are to stand down and secure the scene until then. Over?"

  "Roger, copy that. Try to get the governors office on the phone again Carol. I want to hear their reasoning myself."

  "Yes sir, anything else?"

  "No, keep me posted."

  Sheriff Glover jumped in his car and sped away toward the high surrounding hills. As soon as he had a signal, he pulled over and called the morgue.

  "Hey, Phyllis. Say, who’s working the bodies we brought in last night?"

  "Phillip, why?"

  "Is he around?"

  "Sure, hang on Sheriff."

  "Phillip Hernandez…"

  "Yeah, hi Phillip, Sheriff Glover here."

  "Hi Sheriff, …I haven’t had a chance to start…."

  "No, Phillip, that’s not why I’m calling. Sorry to put you in the middle on this, but I’d like you to take some samples ASAP from the bodies and keep them safe from confiscation. I have reason to believe the military will be in today to take possession of the bodies and I’d like you to remove some samples to help us in our own investigation… can you do that for me?"

  "Sure Sheriff, I guess… what would you like?"

  "Oh, anything that could shed some light on the cause of death. Accelerant used, presence of an explosive… that sort of thing. Clothing scrapings and tissue from the lungs would be useful, don’t you think?"

  "Yes sir, …I’ll work on it right away."

  "Oh, and Phillip, let’s keep this to ourselves, okay? Keep the chain of custody intact of course, but there’s no need to bring your boss in on this one just yet, if you know what I mean."

  "Yes sir," Phillip said, sounding puzzled.

  "Keep me posted on what you find, okay?"

  "Okay, but if I’m keeping this on the down low, how’m I supposed to allot the time to run the…?"

  The sheriff cut him off as if he didn’t hear his objection "Bye, Phillip, and thanks!"

  Kyle had been on scene since early morning and was just downing his eighth coffee of the day when the sheriff returned from the mesa.

  "We’re making good progress sheriff!" Kyle said when he got close enough to hear him.

  "Got some bad news son: we’ve been asked to stand down."

  "Stand down?" Kyle replied in a tone that reflected his disbelief. "By who?"

  "Governor’s office. I’m trying to get clarification now, as of now, we turn the scene over to Randall at 5 o'clock."

  "But I thought you said this was county land, why are we being stopped?"

  "Truth is, son, I’m not sure if this is county land or not. I just said that to the Colonel to get him to back down. Looks like he went over our head."

  The sheriff looked at his watch: 2:45.

  "Hey Wilson, take some men and see if you can collect some scrapings from the burned areas of the car over there. Evidence rules in effect, okay? And I want the bodies placed in new body bags and the old bags kept out of sight, understood? And be quick about it, we’ve got less than an hour, get a move on!"

  Kyle was about to ask what was going on when Sheriff Glover turned to him and said "We’re going to cooperate with the military on this one… and they’re going to cooperate right back," he said with a wink. "Whether they realize it or not!"

  Dan put his hand on his witness’s shoulder. "Take a walk with me Kyle…" he said.

  "Whereabouts would you say the doctor’s car was when he got hit?" Sheriff Glover said as he walked and looked down at the side of the road.

  "I can’t be sure, I saw it from so far away, and until it exploded, it was just a nothing-special car on a lonely road," Kyle said apologetically.

  "Well, I think we’re safe in assuming it was somewhere along here, where the shoulder has been dug up. Look at the pavement for any sign of burning or melted plastic…"

  As soon as Dan said it, Kyle spotted a small patch of melted plastic with a piece of shredded metal embedded in it.

  "You mean like this?" Kyle said as he pointed to the pavement.

  "Damn right!" Sheriff Glover said excitedly as he took a photo and pulled an evidence bag from his pocket. He knelt down to pry a sample off the pavement with his pocketknife.

  "See any more?"

  Kyle looked around and saw a long, fresh groove in the pavement and more melted plastic or rubber, next to a broken piece of red plastic turn signal that had been melted on one side.

  The sheriff took a photo of the groove and the area with the signal, and put the plastic in another evidence bag.

  Warden Cooley saw them searching the road and came over to help. He began scouring a new section of the roadside when he came upon an area of jumbled bolts, shredded metal pieces and glass. It was obvious somebody had swept the road to that point but didn’t clean up the pile very well.

  "Hey Sheriff, over here… I think I’ve got the mother lode!" Bill said, smiling broadly.

  The sheriff got photos and another, bigger bag, swept the pieces into it and labeled it.

  "Here," Sheriff Glover said to Kyle. "Take these to Wilson. Tell him to take all the evidence to the office and log it in. Would you do that, Kyle?" The sheriff had a serious look on his face. Kyle realized what he was asking him to do was pushing the law– or at the very least bending his orders from the governor.

  Kyle finished loading the evidence taken from the bodies, the camera, the evidence they had found on the road and the original body bags, then slapped the side of Wilson’s cruiser. "That’ll do it." Kyle told Wilson. "You better get scarce. We're about to get real busy around here."

  Ten minutes later, four transports full of airmen arrived and the sheriff surrendered the scene an hour early.

  On the way back to Crimson Desert Prison, Kyle called Colleen to fill her in on the situation, but his call went straight to voicemail. "Hi Dr. Baker, its Kyle. Just wanted to give you an update on Mark and what we found. It’s complicated… I’ll call you later."

  Chapter 16 Maid in the Shade

  The phone ringing loudly on the nightstand interrupted their deep sleep. Jack woke first with a realization that something was wrong. He rolled over and reached instinctively toward the source of the noise.

  "Hey Jack?" said a familiar voice. "You sick? I thought we were on for breakfast? We have a show in an hour! I wanted to get some sound checks done…remember?"

  Jack sat up in bed as Colleen was just beginning to wake.

  "Who is it?" She asked in a small morning voice. Jack didn’t hear her; he was concentrating on what Tom had just said and trying his best not to panic.

  "Oh, sorry Tom, late night last night… I’ll be down in ten… twenty tops…"

  Jack fumbled the hang up and dropped the phone on the floor as the leapt out of bed and into the shower. In three minutes he was drying off and in five more he was dressed and moving fast toward the door.

  "So sorry to run, Colleen," he said as he passed the bed and a still sleepy Colleen. "I’ll catch up with you after my show!" Then he stopped, kissed her goodbye and said, "You look amazing in the morning! I’m really sorry I have to run!"

  He waited for the elevator for what seemed like years, and then decided to take the stairs.

  He leapt down the steps arriving one floor below his and moving fast when he noticed the sign intended for firefighters on the landing: 12th floor.

  "I knew it… they put me on the 13th floor after all!" He said out loud, his voice
bouncing off bare concrete in all directions. "Must be a dummy button in the elevator!" he thought as he continued down, taking three steps at a time before almost slipping and falling onto the landing half a floor below him.

  Tom was just finishing breakfast when Jack sat down at the table, out of breath and sweating.

  "You beat your own best time!" Tom said, barely looking up from his paper. "Care for coffee?"

  "Did you know the bastards put me on the 13th floor?" Jack said as he dabbed his forehead with a napkin.

  Tom folded his paper and placed it by his plate, then looked at him with absolutely no sympathy. "So which is it Jack?" Tom asked calmly. "Are you more irritated that they deceived you, or that they have done their best to accommodate your irrational fear of numbers? Kind of hard to build a tall building without putting a 13th floor in there, you know."

  "See, that’s what I mean… no compassion, Tom… you’ve got no compassion at all!"

  "And all this time I thought that’s what you liked about me!" Tom said feigning injury. "In fact I’ve been slathering on the indifference hoping for a raise! Not like you’d notice though."

  "Whoa, what side of the bed did you wake up on?" Jack said as he offered his cup to the waiter.

  "Uh…the one without a beautiful woman in it?"

  Jack smiled as he thought of Colleen and last night and then turned to Tom, realizing what his comment meant.

  "You know? How?" Jack said, unable to suppress a smile.

  "Maybe next time you’ll hang up the phone correctly."

  "Well, as you also know, that was a most unusual occurrence!" Jack said hoping the matter would drop.

  "Yeah, kinda like the census?" Tom quipped, smiling at his own wit. "Every ten years?"

  "Hey, it wasn’t that unusual!"

  Jack finished his coffee and they walked to the auditorium where they ran through the equipment checks and lighting configurations.

  Jack placed the air horn in the podium and tested it by pressing the button several times, emitting a blast of sound that caught Tom off guard, causing him to almost tumble off the stage.

  "Oops, …horn check" Jack said with an impish grin as he pulled the horn from its hiding place and pointed it toward Tom, threatening to unleash it again.

  "Take a miserable pill, will you? Tom said from across the stage. "I’m not sure I can handle the new, sexually satisfied you!"

  Jack smiled broadly at his comment, causing Tom’s face to sour more.

  "You know Tom, the Scots have a saying" Jack said looking at the way Tom was contorting his face. "They say after forty, we wear the face we’ve made, not the one we were born with!"

  Tom stopped a moment to consider the saying, and then slightly tossed his head to the side as if to discard it and any application to his personality.

  The checklist proceeded on schedule and the rest of the hour passed quickly. Before Jack had a chance to call Colleen, it was time for him to take the stage.

  The show was SRO, perhaps because at 10:30 in the morning, it didn’t compete with any of the traditional Vegas shows. Or the fact that it was free, or the fact that spouses of convention attendees had already lost their agreed upon amounts at the casino and were looking for some alternate entertainment.

  The presentation went more or less according to plan. There were many questions, but Jack was able to handle them with his typical ease and concern for their understandable fear of the new future he painted. Jack couldn’t help searching the audience for Colleen, hoping she would make the effort to see him in action; but she hadn't made it down.

  Two men sitting down front were the show’s only oddity. They sat with no emotion throughout the entire performance… didn’t move a muscle, didn’t crack a smile, showed no outrage, nothing got through to these guys. They didn’t even reach under their seats for the money envelope! They just sat stone-faced watching every move Jack made. Jack concluded they were fraternity brothers, or maybe in a gang, since they had the same tattoo on their wrist.

  __________________

  Back in Jack’s room, it took Colleen woke, taking more than a few minutes to process her surroundings and then to realize Jack was gone and wasn’t coming back to bed. She ordered room service and took a leisurely bath and decided to take her time getting ready. Her one and, up until now, only chance in a suite was to be savored, and she wasn’t going to rush it as she made several notes on possible connections between her research and Mark’s death. She hadn’t come up with much when there was a knock on the door.

  "Room service" said a voice from the hall.

  Colleen looked out the peephole and saw the familiar cart and attendant and opened the door. As she held the door for her breakfast to be brought in, she saw the maid across the hall cleaning her room. Something didn’t seem right. The room wasn’t even slept in, and yet the maid seemed awfully busy. Colleen chalked it up to the hotel's exceptional service and let the door close, desiring instead to check out the wonderful aroma of breakfast now being set out for her at the table.

  As the waiter struggled with the cart to leave, Colleen jumped up to open the door in time to see the maid slip her briefcase into the laundry cart and try to cover it with dirty towels.

  "Hold on a minute!" Colleen yelled. Dressed only in a nightgown and robe, she ran into the hall and grabbed the briefcase out of the dirty clothes. "What the hell are you doing taking my briefcase?"

  Colleen rushed back to Jack’s room and put the case on the end table, grabbed her phone and went back to the hallway.

  When maid tried to get away, Colleen blocked her path, enlisting the room service attendant to help and hold the maid in the hall. After being convinced the waiter could control her, Colleen tried to get back into Jack’s room but the door had closed, so she rushed into her room and dialed the front desk, demanding hotel security.

  "Is Willis Santiago there?" Colleen said in a voice cracking with emotion.

  "No Ma’am, He’s not due in until noon. Can I help you?"

  "Yes, I just caught a maid stealing my briefcase! This after my room was ransacked yesterday! What the hell does security do in this place?"

  "I’m so sorry ma’am…"

  "Never mind sorry, …I’m pressing charges! Send someone up here to take custody of this thief, and get Willis Santiago on the phone and tell him Dr. Colleen Baker is not happy!"

  Colleen ended the call, trembling with adrenalin surging through her body.

  She went back in the hall and instructed the waiter to escort the maid to her closet, where she locked it from the outside and forced a chair back against the knob. Then she went about checking to see if anything else was disturbed.

  After the waiter apologized in broken English and left with his cart, Colleen sat on her bed and started to cry. Then she got mad.

  The room phone rang and Colleen dried her eyes as she answered.

  "Dr. Baker?"

  "Yes"

  "Willis Santiago here, I got a report…"

  "Mr. Santiago, in what kind of security does the hotel pride itself? I’ve been robbed… twice, accosted in the hall, and now I have one of your maids locked in my closet awaiting someone with the authority to take her into custody! Does that sound like your idea of security?"

  "I’m on my way, only half an hour out… in the meantime, I’ve instructed Jason Mathews to take the maid to our holding cell until the police can take her downtown. I assure you this is not how we run the hotel, and I promise you I’ll get to the bottom of why you seem to be the focus of these criminal acts."

  Colleen was silent a moment while his words sunk in. Something in the forcefulness of his voice struck Colleen as reassuring, although Willis’ history was far from that. Still, he was responsive, and seemed genuinely concerned.

  "Well, when is this Mr. Mathews going…"

  Colleen’s question was interrupted by a knock at the door.

  "Ah, …you may have redeemed yourself, Mr. Santiago… that must be him now!"

  Willis h
eld on while Colleen went to the door.

  He heard only an abbreviated scream and a thump, and then a muffled voice until someone carefully replaced the receiver and the line disconnected.

  _____________________

  Jack’s usual routine was to stand outside the exit to the theater and chat with those members of the audience who had questions. He found he often got valuable information as he listened to their comments and accounts of how the presentation played out in their mind. Besides, he found it a good use of his time while Tom finished the data retrieval and wound down the electronics backstage.