Airtight

by David Rosenfelt

  I had the dream a little after five in the morning, and the reason I know that is because that’s what time it was when I jumped up like someone shoved a hot poker up my ass.

  I grabbed the phone and called Julie and Emmit. “Meet me downstairs in fifteen minutes,” I said to each of them. They both asked what was going on, and I just repeated, “Meet me downstairs in fifteen minutes.”

  I was down there in twelve, and Julie was already waiting for me. Emmit was there a few seconds later. There was coffee in the lobby, and we each grabbed a cup and sat down.

  “Bryan e-mailed me that he watched The King’s Speech,” I said. “He’s had television service throughout.”

  They didn’t say anything, probably hoping that I was going to offer more than this old news.

  I was.

  “I read an article a while back, I think it had to do with targeting advertisements to people, but the point of it was that the satellite and cable companies know what you are watching. They keep records of it; they even know what people record.”

  “I think I read that,” Emmit said.

  I could see excitement building in Julie’s eyes, but it was tempered. “But you know how many people watched The King’s Speech that night?”

  “That’s the first thing I thought about,” I said. “There’s no way we’d be able to narrow it down in time. But it doesn’t matter what Bryan watched; what matters is what he’s going to watch.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “You have a friend at the satellite company, right? The guy you got the weather outage info from.”

  “He was helpful; I wouldn’t call him a friend.”

  “Either he’s going to be your friend today or I’m going to strangle him with my bare hands.

  “Let’s find out where he is and get him up and in his office,” I said to Emmit. “And get a court order just in case.”

  “I’m lost,” Emmit said. “What are we asking this guy to do?”

  “I’m going to e-mail Bryan and tell him what to watch. We’ll do it in a way that stands out. Then we’ll get this satellite guy to sit at his computer and find out where the house with that watching pattern is.”

  Julie opened her purse and took out a notebook. She turned a few pages, and said, “His name is Daniel Robbins. I think his office is in Morristown.”

  Emmit stood up, said, “I’ll make the calls from the room phone,” and walked away, his large frame moving faster than I thought it could walk and showing no ill effects of the shooting. If I were Daniel Robbins, I would do whatever Emmit asked.

  “This had better work,” I said.

  “I think it can,” Julie said. “They should have the technology to pull it off.”

  I didn’t take too much comfort in what she said, since she had as little knowledge of technology as I did, which is to say she had none. For the moment there was nothing to do but e-mail Bryan and wait for Emmit.

  Ten minutes later my phone rang. I took a quick look and saw that it was a number I didn’t recognize, so I figured it was Emmit calling from upstairs. “Emmit?”

  “Lieutenant Somers, this is Alex Hutchinson,” the caller said, in a female voice that sounded nothing like Emmit’s.

  It took me a moment to place the name, and when I did I said, “Alex, yes … I—”

  She interrupted me. “You said I should call you if I knew something important, and I know it’s early, but—”

  I returned the interruption. “I’m sorry, Alex, I’m in the middle of something. Can I call you back at this number?”

  She seemed uncertain. “Yes, I guess so. But I think you’ll want to hear it. It’s about that man that was killed.”

  “I definitely want to hear it. I promise I’ll call you back soon,” I said, though I didn’t really plan to. I’d have Emmit call her back when the opportunity presented itself. I knew she was a serious person who would not be wasting my time, but I was going to focus on Bryan, and only Bryan.

  Three minutes later, Emmit came into the room. “We’re going to meet him at the tech center. Let’s go; it’s just ten minutes from here.”

  “Can he do it?” I asked.

  “He’s not sure.”

  Bryan, we’re going to want you to do something with the television, probably starting in an hour or so. I’ll send the instructions soon, so watch for my e-mail.

  Do you have power on the computer?

  Do you have a remote control for the television?

  Please confirm that you got this e-mail.

  * * *

  Got it.

  Down to 9% on the computer, so I can’t check that often. I’ll try every fifteen minutes, for now.

  I have a remote control.

  I’ll wait for your instructions.

  We were at the tech center in fifteen minutes.

  Daniel Robbins was waiting for us outside. He was younger than I expected, probably not even thirty, but that was okay. In my experience the younger the person, the better they were with technology. I don’t think I’ve ever met a sixty-year-old computer geek.

  He had a serious, intense look on his face; Emmit had obviously impressed him with the urgency of the situation. “Follow me,” he said, and we all started walking. “I’m not supposed to do anything like this without authorization.”

  “Whoever gives you a hard time I will shoot in the face,” I said.

  He nodded. “That should do the trick.”

  He led us into an enormous room, the kind you associate with NASA mission control. There were probably a hundred seats at desks, each one with a large monitor. On the wall there were main monitors, with lights and numbers flashing, and maps with display lights. I’m sure it all had meaning to somebody, but not to me.

  There were thirty or so people manning the desks, who I assumed were still the night crew. Robbins pointed towards a glass-enclosed office in the back of the room, on the balcony floor. “We’re up there.”

  We followed him up to the room, which looked something like the communication center on the starship Enterprise. There were two people already there, a man and woman, both younger than Robbins. “This is Howard Mueller and Sarah Gayda,” Robbins said, and everybody nodded. No time for handshakes.

  “Howie, you have the floor.”

  He nodded, and began. “We’ve never done this; we don’t have any interest in what people are watching in the moment; it’s always after the fact. That’s more than ample for advertising decisions.

  “But I think we can set it up for ongoing monitoring; it just might take a little while, because some of the cross-checking will be manual. The computers aren’t set up this way, and it might take more time to try and program them than to get things going.”

  “OK, good,” I said. “I need to tell Bryan what he should be doing.”

  “Sarah?” Howie said, and Sarah took the floor.

  “Our computers are designed for fifteen-minute increments. So he should watch something for fifteen minutes, and then go to the very next channel for fifteen, then the one after that for fifteen, and so on.”

  “Got it. Does it matter which channels?”

  “Mmmm,” she said, “good question. Tell him to start with 318, then work his way up. Sometimes the number jumps; for instance the one after 319 is 324. But that doesn’t matter; he should turn to whichever one is next.”

  “When should he start?”

  Howie again: “It’ll take us at least forty minutes to set it up.”

  I looked at my watch. “OK, he’ll start at eight forty-five.”

  Robbins said, “We’ll be back at eight twenty-five,” to Howie and Sarah. Then to us, “I’ll show you where the coffee is.”

  I walked over with Robbins, Julie, and Emmit, but knew that if I sat there and had more coffee my head would explode. I decided to call Alex Hutchinson back. She answered on the first ring.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks for calling me back. I’m sure you read a
bout the man that was killed the other day in the explosion; they haven’t given his name out.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “He was walking around the area where we’re protesting just before he died. I thought what he was doing was strange, so I approached him.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Sort of examining the land, checking out the drilling rigs that were already there, that kind of thing. But that’s not why I called you.”

  “Why did you call?”

  “Because I talked to him and he said some strange things that I thought you should know. I figured he was with Hanson, so I told him we wouldn’t let him drill on the land, and he said that nobody was going to. Then he told me to leave him alone, that he was saving my life. I may not have the exact words right, but that’s basically what he said.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, he said that the state police were going to throw us off this land, and said we should listen to them. Then he said I was a pain in the ass,” she said, and then laughed. “Which showed he knew what he was talking about.”

  There would come a time when all this would be interesting to me, when I would try to bring down everyone involved in the Brayton mess. But that wasn’t the time, especially with Emmit across the room signaling to me about something.

  “Thanks, Alex. Let me think about this for a while.”

  “OK,” she said. “If you need me, I’ll be out here on the land. We’re not leaving, and we’re not the ones committing the violence, no matter what they say.”

  I got off the phone and walked over to Emmit, who was reading something on his own cell phone. “What’s going on?”

  Emmit looked up. “Richard Carlton is dead. Murdered in his own home.”

  “I guess Gallagher got his justice,” I said.

  Julie shook her head. “No, he didn’t. Carlton was alive when Gallagher left his house. Lou mentioned that he looked in the window and Carlton was holding his arm at a weird angle and yelling at some guy who was there with him.”

  “William,” I said. “He was like Carlton’s assistant or something, but he looked more like a something than an assistant.”

  “Could he have killed him?” Emmit asked.

  “I don’t know, and right now I don’t give a shit. I’d be fine if they dropped a nuclear bomb on Brayton.”

  I looked over at Howie and Sarah, still hovering over their computers; it was hard to believe that we were depending on them to save Bryan, but that’s where we were. Maybe it was to get my mind off that, but I started thinking about Gallagher again. “Carlton must have told Gallagher something. And whatever it was sent him to the drilling site.”

  “And Carlton knew where he’d be going, and sent someone to kill him, so Gallagher couldn’t reveal what Carlton had said,” Julie said.

  I shook my head. “More likely that somebody, maybe William, killed Carlton for talking and then went after Gallagher. My bet would be that the same person killed Carlton, Gallagher, and Rhodes.”

  “It would have to be the protesters,” Julie said. “Carlton and Hanson have gotten what they wanted. So they killed Carlton for revenge, and they killed Gallagher because they thought he was on Carlton’s side.”

  What she was saying didn’t ring true for me, but I shut my credibility bell off entirely, because Robbins was signaling for us to come over. Howie and Sarah were apparently done, and we were about to find out if our last chance was still feasible.

  “OK, we’ve got good news and bad news,” Robbins said.

  “Let’s hear all of it.”

  “Howie?”

  Howie took over. “The short answer is that we can do it. We can tell you who’s watching a particular show at a particular time, in the moment. We can’t do it in exactly the target area you’re talking about, our range is going to be a little wider, but we can do it.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “Two things. One is that a home will be recorded on the list as long as it’s on at any moment within the fifteen-minute time frame. So if they scroll through it, it’ll be there. That will increase the number of homes and the size of the list.”

  “What’s the other thing?” I asked.

  “We have no way of cross-checking the lists by computer; it will have to be manual.”

  “What exactly does that mean?” Julie asked.

  “Well, put it this way. We can print out a list of everyone watching ESPN from eleven to eleven fifteen. Then we can print out a list of everyone watching CNN from eleven fifteen to eleven thirty. But we can’t tell you, or at least our computers can’t tell you, who is on both lists.”

  “Can you separate the lists by area?”

  He nodded. “Yes, by zip code.”

  I nodded. “Good. So we’ll each take different lists, and go over it by hand. We’ll get it done,” I said, though I had no idea if we could, since I had no idea how many lists there would be, what form they would take, or how many names would be on them.

  I asked Robbins, “You have people that can help?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Only those you can trust completely, that you don’t think will be careless and miss anything.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll tell Bryan we’re a go.”

  Bryan,

  At eleven o’clock, turn on channel 318, at eleven fifteen, turn on channel 319. At eleven thirty, move to the next channel in order. If it skips numbers, that’s fine, just make sure it’s the next channel.

  Any problem, let me know immediately.

  * * *

  Lucas,

  Got your e-mail, and I’ll do exactly what you say.

  I’ll let you know if there’s a problem, but please, you do the same. I only have hours left, and I’m not sure how many.

  4% on the computer.

  Hurry.

  Edward Holland was frustrated and angry.

  The District Court had declined to provide a court order removing the protesters, choosing to give them more time to respond to Holland’s motion. That effectively removed the possibility, for the time being, of state or Federal intervention.

  The murder of Richard Carlton was announced after the court issued its ruling, and there was no way they would reconsider before Monday.

  Monday wasn’t good enough.

  It was an uncomfortable position for Holland to be in. He had been the champion of the people he represented, and now he was at least temporarily on the other side. But he was positive that more violence was on the way, and he had to do whatever he could to prevent additional loss of life.

  To that end, he again called Brayton’s police chief, Tony Brus. “What have you got on the Carlton murder?” he asked.

  “He took three bullets in the back from ten feet. No witnesses. Also had a broken arm that happened premortem. Coroner won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but his guess is the arm happened within minutes of the shooting. Different gun killed Rhodes.”

  “Anything that might lead you to the killer?” he asked.

  “Hard to say. We took prints, but no results yet. But this was not an amateur job.”

  “We’ve got to act,” Holland said.

  “I’m acting,” Brus said, annoyed at the implication. “I’ve got every officer working fourteen-hour days. You want more action, get me more people.”

  “I want the protesters removed from the mining site.”

  Brus was tired of dealing with this asshole, especially since he was more and more inclined to run against him in the next election. “Mayor, I was just there. Everybody is calm; they’re barbequing and throwing Frisbees, for Christ sake.”

  “People are getting blown up and shot in the parking lot.”

  “I’ve told you, the violence is being committed by outsiders. I don’t know who, but there’s no way the people camping out on that land are killing people.”

  “I don’t want anyone killed. By anyone. I want them gone before dark tonight,�
�� Holland said.

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  “Your point of view is noted. Now I’m the Mayor, and I want them out. Bring tear gas, hoses, whatever the hell you need, but get them out.”

  Brus was furious, but maintained control. “It will take me a while to put the operation together.”

  “Do it,” Holland said, and hung up.

  Brus hung up the phone with one thought on his mind. He would do his job, but there was no way he was teargassing his friends. And whatever he did, he would make Mayor Holland look bad in the process.

  The day was already a month long, with no sign of ending any time soon.

  At least that’s what it felt like, waiting for Howie and Sarah to set up the machines that would start monitoring TV viewership throughout northwest New Jersey.

  Of course, at the same time, the clock seemed to be moving at a mile a minute, as it literally wound down the time left in Bryan’s life.

  All we could do was watch and wait. Every time Howie frowned, I was afraid that he had just discovered something to make the entire project technologically unfeasible. And he never seemed to smile, so there was nothing to provide an upbeat counterbalance to that worry.

  Robbins brought three people in, two women and a man. None of them were over twenty-five; retirement age in this company had to be thirty. But they seemed sharp when Robbins downloaded them on what was going to happen, and I further impressed the life-and-death seriousness on them.

  I’ve been present when Julie gave closing arguments to a jury in capital cases, but I’ve never seen anything approaching the tenseness in her face and body as I did at that moment. Bryan was her family, and Bryan was her friend, and imagining him suffocating to death was completely and totally unacceptable.

  I was able to spend the time beating myself up over not having thought of this earlier. I had known Bryan had television from almost the beginning; all this could have been accomplished with time to study the data, with more than four percent power on his computer, and a lot more than a few hours of air for him to breathe.