Brian Sadler Archaeology 04 - The Bones in the Pit

by Bill Thompson

  “I have cameras! We can check the cameras!” Brian hadn’t thought of that either but it could be the key to finding out what had happened just prior to the bombing.

  The detective looked up, speaking calmly in order to soothe Sadler. “I was betting you had security cameras. Now I hope you’re going to tell me the data’s stored offsite. If your server’s in there”…he pointed at the gallery…”we probably won’t have anything to look at.”

  “No, it’s offsite. Everything feeds to a server housed at 41st and Lex.”

  “That may be the only good news today. Can you call the service and get the ball rolling on producing those videos?”

  By seven pm, when the full effect of what had happened hit Brian Sadler, he was at home in his apartment. Nicole had checked on him several times during the day. His parents had too.

  Around three pm the Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI in New York had called Brian’s cellphone, giving him a grim report – there were no survivors in the wreckage that had been Bijan Rarities. The remains of eleven people had been removed from the smoking rubble on Fifth Avenue. Seven people had died in the second and third floor offices above Bijan. The other four were in the gallery itself. Only three were intact. The fourth was the driver – parts of his body had been recovered from the truck’s cab. Although none of the deceased had yet been identified, Brian counted in his mind. Collette. The guard. The driver. One more, probably a customer. He dropped his head into his hands and sobbed uncontrollably. What the hell is going on? Why did they target me?

  Brian talked to Nicole as a news report, broadcast from the same Fox studio where he himself sat only six hours earlier, flickered on the screen in the background.

  Tears flowed as he talked to his girlfriend. “Nicole, it’s all gone. It’s all gone. My people, my customers, my gallery. It’s all gone. For what? What’s this all about?”

  Brian had asked the same questions all afternoon, first to himself, then the authorities, now to Nicole when they finally had gotten time to talk.

  “Sweetie, they’ll figure it out. I know you’ve been through a lot. Did you hear from Harry?” She tried to get his mind off the stark reality of the loss of two employees. She knew how much he would miss Collette, a trusted friend and valuable asset to the business.

  “Yes, he called earlier.” William Henry Harrison IV, the President of the United States, had been Brian’s college roommate. Harry had called to offer his condolences; he told Brian he had spoken personally to the FBI director to ensure expeditious handling of this case.

  Chapter Seven

  Despite the urgency of the situation it took over twenty-four hours for the security monitoring service to retrieve all the footage, edit it into readable format and courier a CD to the FBI. Once it was ready the Special Agent-in-Charge asked Brian to come downtown and view the footage.

  The agency sent a car to bring Brian to 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. The loss Brian had suffered was beginning to take its toll; he was staying mostly in his apartment on the Upper West Side and found himself weeping profusely without warning on a regular basis. He figured he shouldn’t be surprised – Nicole had warned him yesterday that healing could take days, maybe months.

  In a small conference room at FBI headquarters the Special Agent-in-Charge, Jack Underwood, and another agent were waiting. A laptop sat on the table, ready to display onto a large wall-mounted screen.

  Agent Underwood began. “We have the data from all your cameras from the time the store opened at 10 am to the end of the day or when they stopped recording, which of course includes the blast. Have you viewed data from your cameras before, Mr. Sadler? Are you familiar with how to navigate the data?”

  Brian confirmed he was so he took the chair in front of the laptop. Accessing the CD the security company had provided, he scrolled through the cameras by number. There were six – he knew their numbers from memory.

  “I think we should look at the primary camera in the showroom first,” Brian said. “It’s motion-activated and has about a 200 degree panorama. Three other cameras are fixed on various parts of the gallery and two are outside. After this one we can go wherever you want.” He felt reasonably good at this point. He was interested to see what happened but knew the footage could hit him hard, depending on what had gone on at the gallery.

  They watched Brian enter the showroom at 8:37 am followed by Collette Conning at 9:31 and the guard promptly at ten. No customers arrived until 11:31 am when a man dressed in a suit and tie was admitted. The guard dutifully checked his name off a sheet on a clipboard.

  “Pause for a sec,” Underwood said. “The guard was expecting your customer, from what I see here. Is that normal?”

  “Yes. Our front door is always locked. Given the rarity and value of our items, walk-in traffic is discouraged. A sign on our door says, well I guess I should say said, that we operate by appointment only. People make appointments and Collette gives the information to the guard. He knows who to expect and marks their names off a sheet when they arrive.”

  Underwood turned to the other agent, “Make a note. See if we can retrieve any information off the backup of Bijan’s computer system about the appointments the customers made for the day of the bombing.”

  “We back up automatically every night,” Brian commented. “I think we can get access to Collette’s information. Presuming the customers made appointments the day before, that is. If it was the same day as the bombing then it won’t work unless by some miracle her hard drive still exists.”

  Brian restarted the video. Collette situated the customer in a small consultation room and brought in two old vases for his examination. Then she went to her desk at the rear of the showroom.

  At 12:45 pm the guard admitted a priest dressed in the black robes and hat of a Jesuit. He dutifully made a mark on his clipboard. Obviously the priest also was expected.

  The priest walked to Collette’s desk. She stood and greeted him and he sat. They spoke for a moment then she gestured to a display counter to her left. The priest walked to the counter and Collette went down a hall that was out of range for the camera they were viewing.

  “I think she’s going to the vault,” Brian said as the footage continued to run. “We can look at another camera to figure that out.”

  In a moment Collette reappeared carrying a manuscript on a tray. As she walked almost directly under the camera Brian stopped the video. Using the arrows on the keyboard and a function key, he zeroed in on the object on the tray.

  “What the hell…”

  “What is it, Mr. Sadler? What’s that old book?”

  “She wasn’t going to the vault. I figured she was going for one of the old bibles we have locked up. That priest actually was interested in something that was in my office. We recently got eight old manuscripts from a client for valuation. Seven of them are likely very rare – they’re in the vault. The eighth is the one she’s carrying. It’s a ratty book that I think has no value. It’s part of a set, the rest of which is missing, and it’s in extremely poor condition. It was just thrown on a table in my office. Why did the priest want to see that particular book?”

  “I want to come back to that. For now let’s keep going.”

  Brian restarted the feed and they watched Collette put the tray on the counter in front of the priest. She donned cotton gloves as the priest glanced at his watch, then pressed a button on it.

  “Stop the video!” Agent Underwood said abruptly. “What’s he doing?”

  Brian rewound then put the feed on slow mode. The frames crept along. Collette spoke to the priest, put on the gloves then looked in his face as the priest raised his left hand, checked his watch then moved his right hand to his left wrist. The Special Agent motioned for Brian to stop the video.

  “Look at the time on the video feed. It’s exactly 1 pm. Looks like an alarm went off on his watch. He looked at the time, said something then hit the button to silence it. Is that what it looks like to you?”

&nbs
p; Brian and the agent agreed.

  Underwood made a note on a legal pad. “Let’s continue.”

  Collette opened one worn page of the book, then another. The priest absently looked at them. He appeared to be disinterested. Odd for a man who had made an appointment to see the book she was showing him.

  Less than thirty seconds later all hell broke loose, the camera duly noting the action. In the background it was easy to see glass begin to fly into the showroom. Agent Underwood said, “Put it on slow motion.”

  “I have another camera that’s aimed directly at the front door. Do you want to switch to that one?”

  “No. Let’s keep the camera on the priest while we watch the crash so we can see what he does.”

  Brian backed up to just before the glass breakage and restarted, keeping it on slow motion. They watched the frames slowly click by. The priest looked at the pages Collette had opened. Suddenly he reached under his cassock and drew up his arm.

  “Stop and zoom in!”

  Brian paused and increased the size of the image on the screen. The priest was aiming a pistol at Collette.

  “Go forward a few frames.”

  Brian watched in shock. The picture couldn’t be zoomed any larger but it was clear what was happening. In vivid detail the priest’s hand moved back slightly as the gun recoiled. Blood spattered on Collette’s chest as her mouth opened in surprise. She began to fall to the floor behind the counter.

  “I…I can’t watch this,” Brian said, his breath coming in short gasps. He was hyperventilating. “Oh my God. He killed her. He killed Collette.” Brian began to sway and the agent moved closer to keep him from falling.

  “Mr. Sadler,” Underwood said soothingly, “we have to continue. I know this has to be devastatingly hard for you to see. Time is absolutely of the essence and if you can muster the strength to help us get through this it may help figure out what happened and why.”

  “I’ll try,” Brian said weakly. “I need some water.”

  The second agent brought Brian a bottle of water as Underwood moved him to a chair nearby. “We’ll run it from here and get your help when we need to know something specific.”

  At the very instant Collette was shot, jagged shards of the huge plate glass windows overlooking Fifth Avenue began to shoot inward. Simultaneously the guard looked toward the priest and drew his weapon. A second later the front of a pickup could be seen as the entire front door caved in, pushed forward by the momentum of the vehicle. The truck turned toward the guard who fell under the front wheel on the driver side. In horror Brian watched each slow frame as the pickup very deliberately crushed the hapless guard.

  Brian sobbed, chest heaving as he struggled to watch. It was difficult to do.

  The pickup came to a stop in the middle of the showroom. Artifacts on display were strewn everywhere, broken and shredded. The priest calmly closed the manuscript Collette had shown him, picked it up and put it under his cassock. He glanced at the driver of the pickup but appeared to say nothing to him. Stepping over debris and glass, the priest walked to the front of the store and through what had been a large window. At that point the camera could no longer pick up his image.

  “Stop for a second,” the Special Agent said to the man at the computer. “Look in the bed of the pickup.”

  There were ten large canisters, the kind you store gasoline in. They were roped together and appeared to have wires running from each of their tops to all the others.

  Restarting, the men watched the drama continue. Two seconds after the priest left, a single frame of the footage showed a small flame erupt from one of the gas cans in the pickup bed. The flame grew then suddenly the video stopped.

  The computer screen went blank as Underwood spoke quietly. “As hard as this has to be, Mr. Sadler, we now know the sequence of events that caused the explosion. It’s no comfort but your assistance now can maybe help in some way stop the person or people who caused the deaths of your people. Are you up to continuing?”

  “As long as I can, I’ll try to help.” His hands were shaking and sweat poured off his forehead.

  Before they picked back up they enumerated the people who had been present. Brian himself had entered the building that morning but departed for the Fox broadcast. The priest had also entered and left. The video clearly showed that Collette, the guard, an apparently unrelated customer and the priest were the only people in the building when the truck hit. Collette and the guard were dead and the other customer lay on the floor, apparently unconscious. He must have died in the blast.

  After the explosion their three bodies had been recovered, mostly intact. Then there was the driver. He had been in the cab of the truck and only small parts of his body were recovered due to his proximity to the gasoline cans that had created the blast.

  “We have a clear head shot of the driver,” Agent Underwood commented. “There wasn’t much left of him but this may help us figure out who he was. As far as the priest, we did get one good image of him. Can we look at another camera to see him better?”

  “The outside camera will show the priest as he enters the building and also when he leaves. The others inside won’t be as specifically positioned as the one we just watched. I think you’ve seen the best inside shot but I’ll guide you through all of them if you want.”

  “We’ll watch them all but you won’t have to stay,” Underwood said. “We can take notes and ask questions later. I’d like to run through the outside camera footage with you, just from where the priest arrives until after the blast.”

  Brian explained there were two cameras outside, one mounted directly above the entry door and one on a pole at the curb. The former was aimed at the street, to capture people arriving, while the latter displayed the front of the building itself. Both would help determine what happened and when.

  It took almost an hour to watch footage that captured less than twenty minutes of lapsed time. They went slowly over much of the video. They saw the priest arrive – his head was bowed slightly so his face was obscured. This angle wouldn’t give them any help on identifying him.

  Then they watched in slow motion as the driver jumped the curb, hit a pedestrian and sent him flying to the side. Underwood postulated the truck was going perhaps twenty miles an hour when it hit the building squarely at the front door, imploding the huge plate glass windows on either side of it and driving the door and frame into the building as momentum propelled the truck forward.

  Brian watched silently as the footage showed the priest step onto the sidewalk, going through the hole where a plate glass window had been. This time there was a clear view of his face as he looked up. He walked a hundred feet to the north then reached his hand into his pocket. Removing it, he turned and extended his arm toward the building. Immediately the explosion occurred.

  “He detonated the gasoline cans in the truck.” Special Agent Underwood asked for the video to be rewound and they watched it again. “He used a remote device to set off the explosion. Keep this to yourself for now, Mr. Sadler. We won’t release this to the press yet. In fact I’d appreciate your declining all interviews for the time being.”

  Brian agreed. He didn’t think he had the stomach to talk about what had happened to a group of news-hungry reporters.

  Watching the video up to when the first responders arrived, the FBI men saw no one who appeared to be involved with the bombing. Bodies of pedestrians lay on the sidewalk and cars were blown across Fifth Avenue, but frenzied activity consisted mostly of people using cellphones and peering inside to see if they could help. Others were running away, probably afraid of a second bomb.

  Underwood said, “Mr. Sadler, thanks for your help. We’ll be calling often, I’m sure. Our focus at this point is to find out who this priest was, how he arranged an appointment with your staff and why he did all this just to steal an old manuscript. Nothing makes sense now, but nothing usually does at the beginning. There’s undoubtedly much more going on here than a single priest on a single mission. We
want to figure out what it is. First thing tomorrow I want to know everything you can tell me about that book.”

  Agent Underwood also explained that an FBI agent from the Financial Services Unit would be calling Brian. “Please don’t read anything into this, Mr. Sadler. It’s routine in cases like this that we ask for your financial records for the past few years, just to make sure you didn’t have a financial motive yourself in this crime. Given what we just saw on video it appears unlikely but desperate people have done some pretty crazy things in the past.”

  “Are you kidding? This is bullshit. You think I could have done this? Blown up my gallery? Gotten a priest to steal something to throw you off? Kill my own employee? What the hell do you think I am? Some kind of psycho?”

  “Please calm down. As I tried to explain, this is purely routine. We hope we’re all on the same page here, Mr. Sadler, but it’s really early in this investigation and my job is to leave no stone unturned. That’s how we do it.”

  He asked Brian where he would be over the next week or so.

  “I haven’t given it much thought. Maybe you ought to tell me where I’ll be in the next week or so. Sounds like I’m a damned suspect myself here. I guess I’ll be at my apartment while I’m in New York…speaking of which, am I free to travel overseas? I have a gallery in London that…” He swallowed hard. “…that I guess will be my headquarters now.”

  Agent Underwood spoke calmly. “You may travel anywhere you wish. As long as you’re accessible to us by phone I’m fine with that for now. Right now nothing’s certain, but I’m not considering you a person of interest at this point.”

  Brian’s face registered the alarm evident when he said, “At this point? When the hell can I be considered on the same side as you?” Brian’s voice trembled as he spoke.