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 finan
cial 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.
“Mr. Sadler, please relax. You’ve been through an immense crisis. It’s going to be hard for you for a long, long time. You have a lot to do as far as your company’s future’s concerned. You’re free to travel to London since sadly there’s not much left here. I do promise you we’ll let you inside the gallery once we finish our preliminary investigation and the building inspectors determine it’s safe. You’re free to travel anywhere you wish, Mr. Sadler. Please consider us all on the same team. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be. I’ll keep you informed as much as possible about our findings. Please call me if you have any ideas, any thoughts at all, or if you hear anything I should know.” He gave Brian a business card.
Brian dozed in the back seat as the FBI sedan took him uptown to his apartment. Every fiber of his body ached – he had never felt so drained, physically and emotionally.
He stumbled as the doorman held the door for him and plodded to the elevator like a zombie. Finally at his condo he fumbled, finding it difficult even to insert his key into the lock. He was exhausted and wondered if he should just collapse in bed without even undressing. At the moment that didn’t seem like a bad idea at all.
He closed the door behind him and plodded into the living room. From his bedroom he heard, “About time you got here.”
He felt a hundred percent better just hearing that totally unexpected voice. As exhausted as he was, everything was OK now.
Chapter Eight
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.”
“Me too, sweetie. Sorry I wasn’t here yesterday but I came as quickly as I could.”
Yesterday in Dallas Nicole Farber had petitioned the Court for a postponement of the trial that was to begin today. She and the Judge were friends – not close, but well acquainted. He knew she would never request a postponement if something weren’t seriously wrong. She was always just the opposite – pushing to go to trial while the prosecution tried to delay things.
Like most Americans, the Judge had heard the news reports from Manhattan about the explosion on Fifth Avenue. Nicole told him it was her boyfriend, Brian Sadler, who owned the gallery and was facing the trauma of the losses of his valued employees and his New York location. He quickly granted a ten-day continuance and Nicole had caught the first plane from DFW to LaGuardia this morning. She didn’t tell Brian she was coming; he thought she was in trial and she hoped a surprise might perk him up.
And it did. She was wearing sweats when he walked in the bedroom and he commented that she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. They kissed and held each other for what seemed like forever but was only a minute or so. He hated to let her go.
As he undressed she prepared a hot bath, got him settled into it and brought him one of his favorite things – an XO vodka martini in a glass he kept in the freezer along with the vodka bottle. It was ice-cold and wonderful. He lay back in the steaming bath and sipped on the drink. Meanwhile Nicole stuck a pizza in the oven.
When he stepped out she knelt and dried every inch of Brian’s body. Ordinarily this would have been incredibly stimulating but they both knew better than to expect that tonight. Instead of the sexual overtone it normally would have, this was just another wonderful thing Nicole did to help Brian relax right now. She got him into bed, propped pillows behind him and brought in the pizza. They sat next to each other and ate.
“I want to know all about what’s going on,” she said softly, “but not tonight. Let’s talk in the morning.”
After a couple of pieces of pizza Brian felt himself drifting as though he were slipping into a coma. “How long…how long will you be here?” His words slurred.
She took the plate from his lap and helped him scrunch down into bed. “For as long as you need me.” She pulled the covers up to his neck and he smiled.
As his eyes closed he murmured, “That could be a really, really long time.” Then he was asleep.
She smiled, patted his arm and walked to the kitchen to clean things up before she came to bed.
Brian slept fitfully. His arms flailed and his thrashing woke Nicole more than once. In his sleep he yelled Collette’s name. He was obviously dreaming, rehashing the horrible events of the day. Nicole put her hand on him to calm him down and it worked for a while. But the dreams returned.
She woke around 5:30 am and felt his side of the bed. He wasn’t there. She got up quickly to find him and be sure he was OK. He was sitting on the couch in his living room, staring out the window. The sun was just rising and the view from his balcony was beautiful – Central Park and beyond that the tall buildings of Fifth Avenue on the east side of the park. She knew how much Brian loved the city and hoped this crisis wouldn’t dim his appreciation for it.
“How’s it going? Rough night, I think.”
“Yeah. I feel like I’ve been run over.”
She saw a coffee cup in front of him. “Need more?” she said, gesturing. He declined and she stuck a K-cup in the machine on the kitchen counter for herself. She took out a mug, added milk and a pack of sweetener and brought it to the couch. She sat close to him.
Nicole leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Sorry for the dragon breath.”
“No problem. You’re a dragon I’ll deal with anytime. And hey, I don’t think I ever said thanks for coming. Nicole, I just can’t tell you…” He broke down in heaving sobs. “I can’t tell you how glad I am you’re here.”
She held him tight. “I’ve got some time, sweetie. I’ll be here to help you with anything you need. And I’ve got some ideas on things I might be able to help with professionally. When you’re ready we can talk. Not now, though. Let’s just sit here and watch the sun rise.”
“Let’s get in bed and watch the sun rise, dragon breath.” Brian smiled as he wiped tears from his eyes, stood up and took her hand.
“I’ll brush my teeth first. That might help,” she laughed.
The view from Brian’s bedroom window was the same spectacular one as in the living room. As they slowly, quietly made love the sun’s rays peeped over the massive skyscrapers on the other side of the park and enveloped their bed with soothing sunshine.
When they finished Brian fell asleep. Thankful for his peaceful snores and afraid she might wake him, Nicole lay quietly next to him and ultimately dozed herself. The sound of Brian’s cellphone ringing woke them both. As he answered she glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Twelve noon.
Brian talked for a few minutes then said, “I’ll check and let you know.” He disconnected and
told Nicole that was Agent Underwood, the Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI who was running the investigation. He asked Brian to try to access Collette’s email. He hoped to find something on the customer and the priest who had been in the gallery.
It was simple and if Brian hadn’t been so emotionally drained yesterday he would have remembered that. He kicked himself for not thinking clearly when he was at the FBI office.
Underwood had also asked Brian to tell him more next time about the book the priest had stolen.
Invigorated from Nicole and his sleep, Brian went to work on Collette’s account. He knew the user ID and password Collette used to access mail. She knew his too – they worked so closely together on projects they often checked each other’s mail so no one missed anything. He also knew she always communicated with the guard by email so he would have a record. The guard viewed the mail on his phone then noted the information on the clipboard he carried. The clipboard was long gone at this point but email wasn’t.
Brian accessed her account and quickly located the two mails she had sent to the guard. The first, sent the day before the bombing at 2:13 pm, read, “Paul Tremble from the Met will be here at 11:30 am.” That would have been the customer in the gallery who was looking at old vases in one of Bijan’s small offices.
By now the world had connected the name Paul Tremble to the tragedy. The Metropolitan Museum of Art contacted the FBI within minutes after the bombing to advise he was most likely in the gallery at the time it happened. Once the bodies were removed fingerprints verified the man’s identity and the information was made public.
The critical thing now for Brian was to find out about the priest. He saw the mail, sent at 4:17 pm the day before the bombing. Collette had told the guard, “A Jesuit priest will be here at 12:45 pm.”
Not a name. Just “a Jesuit priest.” That was most unusual and certainly unhelpful. Now Brian had to figure out how Collette had been informed he was coming.
“I’m going to call the FBI back and tell them what I’ve found,” he said to Nicole.
Brian Sadler Archaeological Mysteries BoxSet Page 71
