"I like that," James said. "Home." He pulled her into his arms and hugged her tight.
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CHAPTER 24
MELODY woke up to the sound of James' voice coming from the other room. She heard another voice that she almost recognized, then heard James again. She rolled over and found the clock. To her dismay she discovered it was four-thirty in the morning.
Moving slowly, she rolled out of bed and rubbed her temples. The headache there felt slight, and she knew it wasn't worse because James had her so relaxed by the time she fell asleep. Her arm ached where the bullet grazed it, but it was just an annoying pain and nothing major.
He'd brought her to his — to their apartment and made her eat a bowl of soup, then he ran her a hot bath, lighting scented candles in the bathroom. She'd sipped on a cup of spearmint tea while she soaked, and when she found herself nearly dozing off in the tub, he'd made her lie face down on the bed while he gave her a gentle massage. At some point during his ministrations, she'd fallen asleep.
She turned on the lamp by the bed as she stood, feeling slightly wobbly. After she dressed she went to the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water. The cool splash of the water eased some of the headache, but she went ahead and took two headache pills from the nearly full bottle in the medicine cabinet.
She found James in the living room with Roberts and Suarez. The bookcases that covered the wall were slid back, revealing a very intense and high speed electronics system complete with a large wall-sized monitor and several smaller monitors. James held a wireless keyboard in one hand and typed something very rapidly on it with his free hand while Suarez loaded a disc into a DVD player.
"Hi," she said. All three men looked up, surprised. "What is this? A command console?"
"Just some toys." James looked up, distracted.
She realized that at that moment, her love for this man doubled. "Is that the news footage?"
James set the keyboard down and his eyes cleared. He walked to her, taking her face in his hands and looking at her closely. He rubbed his thumbs across the shadows under her eyes and said, "You should have slept for at least another hour."
"I'm fine, James. I'm not going to collapse on you," she said.
"Let me hear you say that after you finish your dance rehearsal today," he said, kissing the tip of her nose.
"Touché." She sat down on one of the leather chairs near the chess set, drawing her legs under her. "Where's Jen?"
"Sleeping while these guys are here. She made a pallet in my office."
She looked at Roberts. "Were you gentlemen able to find anything out at the Philips arena yesterday?" she asked the detectives as James went into the kitchen.
"Anything about this note strike you as odd?" Roberts tossed an evidence bag on the coffee table. Inside and visible through the clear bag was the note from the rose. It read:
BANG! YOU'RE DEAD.
Melody nodded. "Looks like the same handwriting and same kind of paper."
Suarez said, "Right on both counts."
James returned with a cup of coffee which he offered to her. She gratefully accepted it.
Suarez pulled out a notebook and began to flip through the pages, but Roberts spoke before Suarez found what he was looking for. "Nothing from any witnesses. However, we did pull the footage from the hidden security cameras we installed. One of them points directly at your dressing room door. We have that with us now. Someone left that rose and that note for you. That someone had to go into your dressing room."
James said, "Perhaps he's made his first mistake."
Roberts answered him, "We can only hope. He might have guessed they were there, but we know for a fact no one could see them."
"The first tape is from Channel 4 News. They were on the scene from twelve until the shooting, which puts them there for approximately thirty-five minutes," Suarez said.
James turned one of the couches around and pushed it across the room closer to the consule, then gestured at it for the detectives to sit. Then he sat adjacent to Melody and hit the 'play' button on the remote. They watched a young newscaster give a brief synopsis of Melody's career as the cameraman made a sweep of the parking lot and the building. She stopped halfway through a sentence a few times and started over, rather tediously. Then she went on.
They watched as the crowd grew, and the police continued to monitor the entrance into the building. Melody gave the names and jobs of those coming in that she recognized. For the people she didn't know by name, she told the men that Hal would know. Then the sound picked up the excitement of the crowd as Melody and Hal emerged. They saw Hal guide Melody to the car, saw her wave to the crowd then start toward it before Hal stepped in front of her. They watched the red stain suddenly cover Melody's chest then they heard the shot. In a heartbeat, Hal had Melody picked up and shoved in the back of the car while Peter jumped into the front and the car tore away.
The cameraman scanned the crowd and behind the crowd, but his movements were so jerky, and he did it so late that they weren't able to see anything. He apparently calmed down and redid the scan, waiting for the anchor to get up off the ground. The sound picked up her sobbing then getting herself under control before she ordered the camera to be trained back on her. She gave an accounting of what she saw, then she said, "cut," and the tape was over.
"Wow," James said in a hoarse voice.
A tremor rushed through Melody's body. "No wonder everyone thought I'd been shot," she said, running her hands through her hair and taking a sip of her coffee with jerky movements. "I just thought I was shot." She couldn't sit still so she surged to her feet to pace. "Play the next one," she said as she waved a hand in the direction of the screen.
The next one was similar to the first, without the big preamble and a slightly different angle of the shooting. This cameraman didn't panic, and immediately swept the area behind the crowd, but they saw nothing out of the ordinary.
"Look up," James said.
Melody took her eyes off of the screen long enough to look at him. "Why?"
Suarez was the one who answered. "With a crowd that size, he couldn't have been coming from behind them. And Mr. Coleman has a good eight inches on you. The bullet went through his shoulder and nicked your arm." He gestured with his hands. "Obviously moving at a downward angle. The time between impact and the sound of the shot indicates that the shooter was between 1 and 3 hundred yards away. Close for a supersonic round from a high powered rifle."
There was nothing different in the beginning of the other two tapes, and by the end, Melody was trying hard to feel immune to the sight of Hal's blood spraying all over her. She concentrated on faces when the cameramen turned to scan the crowd behind them. The last one they saw, the camera jerked up accidentally, and for a brief moment, they saw a gleam coming from the upper window of a building. "Function voice. DVD, pause. Back ten frames, pause. Advance and pause by frame," James ordered.
To everyone's astonishment, the TV began to execute the commands James spoke. He replied to Melody's questioning look. "Sometimes it's easier to just talk things out." He looked back at the television. "Play. Pause." He walked over to the large screen and double tapped it several times then drew a box with his fingertips.
The image zoomed forward, refocused, zoomed forward, refocused, enhanced, and zoomed forward until an image clearly appeared in the window of a building behind the arena. "There," he said, pointing to the screen. "DVD, show count by hundredths of seconds." In the corner of the screen appeared 362.14 seconds.
Suarez jotted it down in his book and said, "We'll have the lab guys calculate the trajectory."
James nodded again. "Function voice. DVD compile all imagery and model for 3-D with wire frame. Build CAD. Texture light. Extrapolate at 30 percent. Execute and show count."
The last three DVDs worth of footage became wire frame three dimensional overlays of the area. The limousine became the central point of reference in an artificial world the computer instantly created
, treating all the input as data. Before their amazed eyes, the computer James had in his living room built an entire world out of electrons. Each set of footage was represented by a different color and the overlays became textured with the participants involved. When the count reached zero, James said, "Calculate trajectory and force of projectile. Intersection-resection and zoom. Extrapolate at 50 percent. Execute and show count."
He nodded to his guests and explained, "This will take longer."
Roberts said, "Oh. Well, no problem, Mr. Montgomery. We have a minute."
After perhaps three minutes the computer had calculated the trajectory of the shot and compiled all available footage to enhance the area of the shot's origin. "I wonder if that could be further enhanced," James speculated.
"Maybe," Suarez said. "We'll definitely take it in to the lab and see what they can do with it."
"Mind if I keep a copy and give it to my guys?" James asked. "I probably have equipment that's a little more advanced than what you currently have."
Suarez stood. "That's evidence. I'm afraid we can't release it to you. Can you point me in the direction of your rest room?" James sighed and gestured in the general direction.
"Mind if I help myself to a glass of water?" Roberts asked on his way out of the room.
James lifted an eyebrow, but made no comment. Then, to Melody, it sounded like he said something like, "Function voice. Write full mem to waffle, 3 through 370 seconds layers all. Compile to bin and offload differentials in 240 hurts increments. Alarm upon complete." She could only imagine the technical acronyms and jargon if she were later forced to write down his words. In about twenty seconds, a box below the monitor made a low chime sound like someone ringing the doorbell on a dollhouse.
Roberts returned from the kitchen a second later, empty handed. "What does something like that cost?" he asked James, visibly impressed with the equipment.
"Right now, about two point six million dollars in R & D," James said, pushing a button to retrieve the micro-SD card, no larger than the nail of his pinkie finger, and pocketing it as Suarez returned to the room.
Roberts let out a low whistle then offered, "If you're ever feeling charitable, the Atlanta Police Department could probably use something like that."
"Find this guy, and you can consider it done," James said, meaning it.
"Let's look at the security footage," Suarez said as he took a sip of his coffee.
James loaded it in the machine and told it to play at fast speed. A period of about two hours was covered, and several people went in and out of her dressing room. They stopped it when they saw Suarez go in, showing that the shooting had already occurred, and backed up, beginning the process again. James left the room after the first run. Melody looked at her watch. It was seven-thirty.
"Who's that?" Roberts asked her, pointing to a woman with dreadlocks and a large bag going into the room.
"Lisa, my makeup and hair artist," Melody said tiredly.
"Why would she be going in?" Suarez asked her.
"Probably to catalog my outfits and boots for the concert. I have ten to twenty seconds to change clothes, and she needs to be ready for me when I step off the stage."
"Who is that?"
"David Patterson, owner of Patterson Records, my record label."
"Why would he be going in?"
"He was probably looking for me or Hal. There was some point that we were up in the lighting booth, talking with the tech up there."
"Who is that?"
"Steve Masters, my lead guitarist." She held up her hand to keep him from asking the next question. "I know the routine. He was probably going in to check e-mail. His wife is pregnant and due in a few weeks." She watched for the next person. "Gina Cobb, backup singer. She's delivering a pair of boots in Atlanta Falcons colors." Roberts slanted her a look out of the corner of his eye. Melody shrugged. "They probably have a shot at the Super Bowl this year if he plays deep in his bench in the early quarters."
Suarez looked impressed, "You get no argument from me on that point."
Melody continued, "I have a jersey the team signed and I'm going to sing that song they play before Monday Night football," she smiled. "It's a crowd pleaser." She continued, "That's a sound tech. Some wiring was delivered and accidentally stored in my room instead of the storeroom. Hal sent him in there to get it out. I don't know his name." She went on through the list, knowing most names, but not all. She did, however, have a reason for everyone who went in.
Suarez was frustrated. "You have a lot of traffic in and out of your dressing room," he said to her.
"Most of the people had a specific purpose for going in there."
"That's about all we have for you to review, now," Suarez said.
Melody felt frustration well up in her chest. "We didn't find anything!" she said.
"Sure we did," Suarez said, but Jen came into the room and interrupted him.
"Has the FBI stepped in yet?"
Roberts nodded. "Sniper shooting in this area is almost certainly going to be labeled as domestic terrorism. They're just advising at this point, though. Suarez and I are still on lead."
Jen handed her phone to Roberts. "Can you give me your digits? I'll need a POC."
"A what?"
Her eyebrows knitted momentarily. "A point of contact."
"That can be either one of us," he said. "We're pretty much on this full time as of yesterday."
James came back into the room, dressed in a gray suit with a dark green striped tie, fastening his watch. "I need to leave to finish a meeting I started yesterday. I'm going to take Melody to the hospital. There's still a police guard at the door, and she'll have Jen here to escort her wherever she needs to go."
Roberts and Suarez stood simultaneously. "We appreciate your time, Mrs. Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery. We'll take the other disc to the lab now. Hopefully they can get something useful from it."
Melody nodded.
"Keep me updated," James said, walking the men to the door.
Melody went into the bedroom and ran a brush through her hair. She looked through a drawer in the bedroom until she found her cap and glasses. She tucked her hair into her hat to get ready to go.
She turned and jumped when she saw James watching her from the doorway. "Do you want to get something to eat before we go?" he asked her.
"No. I can get something at the hospital. Knowing Morgan, she's probably brought a buffet for Hal to choose from."
He smiled, figuring she was right. "I called and spoke with Kurt. He's already dropped Morgan off there. The doctor said you guys can take him home anytime."
"I'm so glad they're releasing him."
They walked into the living room. Jen nodded toward the door. "I'm going to go secure the vehicle. Wait 8 minutes then take the elevator straight down. I'll see you in the lobby."
"We'll be right down." James looked at his watch as he turned to Melody. "Do you have any of your CDs here with you?"
"Yeah, in my bag. Why?"
James cleared his throat, looking a little uncomfortable. "Rebecca said that the gentlemen I was in a meeting with yesterday are fans. I just spoke with her, and she said that they are drilling Kurt with questions about you, impressed with our relationships with you." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Could you possibly autograph three of your CDs so that I can present them as tokens of apology for leaving yesterday's meeting?" He looked at the floor while he spoke.
"Of course." She dug through her bag until she found the CDs and went to his office, spotting Jen's rolled up pallet in the corner by a black canvas bag. She pulled a permanent marker out of a pen holder and sat at the desk. "What do you want me to say?"
James got a piece of paper and wrote something on it, then set it in front of her. She looked at it, paused, then looked at him. "What is that?"
"That's Japanese cuneiform. This says, 'Doumo arigatou gozaimasu', which is 'thank you very much'. The last symbol is your name in Japanese."
"You speak Japanes
e?" she asked him.
"Yeah. I learned it when we knew we were going to pursue this deal."
She sat back and crossed her arms. "You learned it to do this deal?" She raised an eyebrow. "Do you speak any other languages?"
"Do we have to go into this now?" he asked her, color flushing his cheeks. "I'm already late."
"Then I suggest you answer my question."
He let out a big sigh, then looked at his hands. "I speak Japanese, French, and Spanish. I learned Greek to read the Bible. I tried to learn Mandarin but Rebecca is fluent so I only learned tourist Chinese. I have just enough of an understanding to get by with a conversation."
"Just get by, huh?"
"Well, it's a difficult language, and I haven't really had the time to study it. There are a lot of dialects."
"Well, in that case, you're forgiven." His humility at his genius absolutely floored her. "How do you speak all those languages?"
He tapped his temple and shrugged. "The memory, remember? It's almost perfectly photographic. It makes it a little easier for me. I watch movies with foreign language dubbing, and read the captions in the same languages. It helps me learn faster." He began to tap his fingers on the desk. "Can you just do that so we can go?"
"Why James, you're embarrassed." She laughed and put a hand on his cheek. "I love you and think you're remarkable." She gave him a warm kiss then said, "All right, let's see that paper. I'll write the thank you thing but I'm just signing my name. That way they know it's the real deal."
¯¯¯¯
MELODY found Hal sitting up in the bed, scowling. She smiled as she kissed his cheek. "Hi there. What has you so riled?"
"Clarissa was just here, blubbering all over the place. That woman seriously makes me uncomfortable," he said.
She sat down and narrowed her eyes. "What did you say to her?"
"I told her you weren't paying her all that money so she could hang out in my hospital room getting all weepy." He fidgeted as Melody's eyes narrowed further. For some reason, he felt the need to defend himself. "The tour starts in just four days. There were dancers waiting for her at the studio."
A Melody for James (Christian Suspense) Page 22
