What You See

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  Or—hell no.

  She dug into the tote bag, got out the Quik-Shot, flipped up the screen, hit Video, pushed the green button. She was getting this on camera.

  Focus, focus, focus, she told herself. She tried to concentrate, on breathing, on thinking, on slowing her galloping heart. Crouching behind the row of fake palm trees, she rolled video, forcing her hands to keep steady. Protected, she hoped, by serpented plastic trunks and plumes of spiky leaves.

  Jane had covered enough stories about snipers, shooters, crazies with guns. But all had been aftermath, reaction. She’d read about them, too. Why didn’t she remember what you were supposed to do if you were actually in an attack? Run? And maybe get caught in the line of fire? Or hide? And maybe get caught in the line of fire?

  But she was a reporter. That role she understood. If she’d been assigned to this story—shots fired at the University Inn!— racing here in a news car, leaping out with her photographer, she’d do anything to get this vantage point. Now she had it. She checked the red Record light. Yes. Still rolling.

  She trained the lens on the cops who’d stampeded toward the sound of the gunfire, which seemed to be—upstairs? Not on the lobby level, she was pretty sure. The camera captured the last glimpse of their uniformed backs as they crashed through a metal fire door, setting off a relentless clamor of clanging alarms.

  As the fire door banged shut, Jane panned the Quik-Shot in time to record the concierge huddling underneath his ornate wooden desk. The registration clerk had ducked behind her counter, the top of her curly dark hair still showing. Tourists, a few yelling, one scooping up a wailing toddler, had abandoned their shopping bags and headed for the sheltering wood-and-metal barricade of the broad front desk. No Gracie. No Lewis.

  The whirl of the revolving door came from behind her. She kept low behind the row of plants, cowering, wondering how much of her was visible. Maybe she should have run the heck out of here while she had the chance. Now she was trapped by her own decision.

  What if more bad guys were on the way in? Would they see her? They would. And where was Gracie? Where was Lewis? What if—No. Don’t create an imaginary problem. Reality is bad enough.

  She held her breath, gritted her teeth, and tried to shoot through the spiky green fronds. Tried to be small. Tried to be invisible. She couldn’t turn to look to see who was coming in or she’d be instantly in view.

  “Freeze!” An angry voice, commanding, came from behind her. “Come out from behind that thing!”

  She turned, hidden behind the pot, back against the wall, still looking through the camera lens.

  A gun was pointing straight at her.

  And then she saw the gun leave her viewfinder, as the voice slowly pointed the weapon to the floor. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  She lowered her camera and looked up.

  “Jake,” she said.

  * * *

  “Jane?”

  What the hell was she doing here? She seemed to be okay enough—rattled, he could tell by the way she was blinking so fast, the way her eyes, wide, clung to his, the way her hand clenched and unclenched. Jane in the middle of some kind of shootout—shit. Had she been sent to cover a story? Had she gotten caught in the middle of the child molester case? Had she seen the guy? How had she gotten past the police? How’d she get here—with a camera?—faster than he did?

  “You okay?” He tried, almost failing, to keep his voice calm, while scanning the lobby at the same time. “What the hell—did you hear the shots?”

  “I’m okay. Yeah, I heard two and—”

  “Hang on. Stay down.”

  He scouted ahead of him, scoping out the situation, taking one assessing step at a time, his mind speeding ahead. At least four cops had been dispatched upstairs. No police presence here in the lobby except for him. Backup was on the way. When he’d run inside the hotel, he saw some people sprinting, yelling, piling into the revolving front door, almost clogging the spin in their panic to get out. So, theoretically, those people were safe. A team was tasked to monitor the perimeter, make sure no one was in danger out there.

  But inside. The shots had been fired inside. A guy in a suit huddled under a big desk. Heads, the tops of them, visible behind the registration counter. People were inside, bystanders, and each one of them would be terrified.

  “It’s okay, I’m police,” he called out as he scanned the lobby. Front desk, couch, chairs, palm trees, fountain. Glass-fronted gift shop, empty? Elevators, closed. “Please stay where you are. Stay calm.”

  Abandoned shopping bags littered the lobby floor, a ladder-back chair had toppled on its side, one little white shoe lay by the fountain.

  Who was the shooter? Where was he now? Why? Was he connected to the child molester thing? Was there a child involved? Had they caught that creep? Was the child safe?

  There was no traffic on his radio. Why?

  “We’ve got this under control,” Jake called out, attempting to reassure the heads behind the registration desk. “We’ll have you out of here very soon.”

  He hoped that was true.

  Where were the cops they’d sent in? The damn Muzak seemed incongruous, the sappy synthomusic underscoring an unfolding crime drama. It had been only five minutes, maybe six, since he’d gotten the shots-fired call, raced down the City Hall stairs, across the street, and over to the hotel. DeLuca, on the corner, had given him the finger as he ran by. The black Isuzu, he saw, had not budged.

  He finished his sweep of the room. Nothing. Jane was still behind that plant. And she was a witness.

  “Jane? What happened? Did you see anything? Anyone?” Jake kept an eye on the room as he questioned her again, his voice low. Weapon at the ready. The lobby, with its bubbling fountain and chandeliers and palm trees, looked like the setting for a giant game of hide-and-seek. With everyone still hiding.

  “Why were you here?” he said.

  “I was—they were—” Jane, whispering, had edged to her feet, one hand on that big pot, and started to come toward him. Was she holding a camera?

  “Gracie and Lewis are supposed to be here, and—”

  “Get down,” he ordered.

  She did. Safer for her to hide behind the plants than risk getting out. The others, too. Best if everyone stayed hidden. He hoped. The cops were here, though, so the shooter would be found. He hoped. Their training had instructed them to play it by ear. Each situation is different. Secure the scene. Protect the victims. Get the bad guy. Christ, what if he’d run out the back?

  “Just stay there, Jane, for crap sake, until I tell you it’s okay. So Gracie and Lewis? Where are they?” He scanned the room again. Still nothing on the radios. What the hell was everyone doing? “Where’d the shots come from?”

  48

  Tenley could barely keep up with her mother as she strode down the corridor of City Hall. Her mom could walk really fast, even in those heels. Tenley knew the look on her face, even though she was three steps behind her. Mom was pissed. Why? Something about Brileen, she guessed. But what? How’d she even know her?

  “Come with me, right now, Tenley,” her mother had ordered. She had steered her out of the surveillance room, all fakey-pleasant, Tenley could tell, fluttering a fakey-nice good-bye wave to those now returned to their desks. But once they’d gotten out into the corridor, the two of them alone, Mom had freaked.

  Mom had yanked open the stairway door, almost slung Tenley through. “I’ve got to check the security desk. If there’s something going on across the street … But then we’re going to my office. Then you are going to tell me—how exactly did you meet Brileen Finnerty? And exactly what is your relationship with her?”

  The door slammed behind them, their footsteps clattering down the metal stairway.

  Tenley couldn’t keep up, not with her mother’s pace, not with her mother’s questions. She didn’t understand anything.

  Mom opened the door to the lobby, strode toward the security guy, then stopped.

  “Sta
y right there, Tenley.” Her mother pointed to a tan square on the checkerboard tiles of the hallway floor. “Away from the windows. Do not move. I have to make a call.”

  Mom had picked up the security guy’s desk phone and was pounding the numbers on the keypad. How did Mom know about Brileen? She’d tried to ask on the way down, like about a million times, but her mother had never let her get a word in. Did Brileen have something to do with her father? Or the black car?

  Wait a minute. Tenley stared at the tan square on the floor, thinking. The cop upstairs hadn’t said anything about her father being killed in Curley Park. He’d asked to see just the same place, exactly the same place, but without mentioning Dad.

  She did not understand the world. Not at all. She fiddled with the hem of her T-shirt, stretching it out, letting it snap into place. Her mom was still on the phone, hunched over the desk. Ignoring her.

  Tenley took one little step off her square. Then another. A long padded bench lined the wall across from her. It was vacant now, but Hall employees often sat there waiting for rides, or sipping the last of their take-out coffees before reporting for work. Someone had left the want ads from the morning paper, sections carelessly refolded, askew on one end. Another step. Another.

  And there was the exit. Tenley touched her fingers to the metal handle of the glass door, testing, as if it might be alarmed. Outside was a little alleyway, the covered turn-around the mayor and other big shots used to get into City Hall without getting rained or snowed on. Past that was a strip of decorative cobblestones, then the sidewalk.

  And then the street, she thought. Freedom.

  Where she’d go, she wasn’t quite sure. But if she stayed, wasn’t she in big trouble? Somehow? Her mother was sure acting like it.

  All she had to do was run.

  * * *

  “Get away from that door!” Catherine Siskel felt like yanking her daughter’s fingers from the curved silver handle. “I told you not to move, Tenner. For good reason. If there’s danger out there, we need to stay inside.”

  Tenley looked at her, those dark eyes questioning, her T-shirt all pulled out of shape, just like their lives were. Four flights of stairs had allowed Catherine to mentally regroup. She tried to tamp down her resentment. She wasn’t any less angry, or any less hurt, or any less in mourning. But she didn’t have to take it out on poor Tenley.

  She and Greg had tried to protect their younger daughter from sorrow and grief and loss. Ten long months of bereavement and disbelief. The three of them. Until Greg went off the reservation. Now he was gone. The sorrow welled up in her, so powerfully she almost couldn’t see. What if Tenley was in danger, too?

  “I’m sorry, honey, I know I sounded angry.” Putting her arm across her daughter’s shoulders, Catherine felt the girl’s muscles freeze, rigid and unyielding. Well, she’d be mad, too, or sad, or confused, or all of the above. “But I’m not angry with you.”

  Silence from Tenley.

  “Let’s go to my office.” Catherine had been so angry when she’d heard the name Brileen, her brain had white-flashed into overdrive. Now they had to deal with it. “We need to talk. In private.”

  But Tenley had scooted even farther away on the bench. Scowling, she drew her knees to her chest, yanked her skirt over her legs, and wrapped her arms around them. A brick wall.

  “We can talk here. Who were you calling?” Tenley demanded. “Why were you so mad about Brileen?”

  There it was.

  The question Catherine tried to avoid, hoped to avoid, hoped never to face anywhere but in her own remorseful memories. Now she’d never be able to sort it out with Greg, either. He’d denied everything, but she hadn’t believed him. Why should she? She’d seen too much evidence of his lying. She had always thought, she realized now, she had always thought there would be more time for the truth. And then there wasn’t.

  “Shhh, honey. I had to check with the guard, then call the mayor about the situation across the street, let him know where I am. And Ward Dahlstrom. I told him you were with me.” She stopped as she saw the look on her daughter’s face. “I know, he’s not the most—anyway. Then this happened.” She waved a hand, toward upstairs and outside, encompassing the entire morning. “The mayor says he’s been told it’s almost all clear, trouble’s over. Nothing to fear. But there’s a lot of other stuff going on. City Hall stuff.”

  “Whatever,” Tenley said. “Ward Dahlstrom is an asshole.”

  “Tenley! Language.” It was hard not to smile. She had to agree. It was Dahlstrom who’d kept her out of the surveillance video loop. Dahlstrom who had helped put her in the impossible position of having to lie to the police to protect the mayor. So, indeed yes. Dahlstrom was an asshole.

  “Be that as it may,” Catherine said.

  “What about Brileen?” Tenley said.

  “Brileen.” Catherine looked at her daughter’s narrowed eyes, saw the yearning behind them, and the sorrow, and the disappointment. Saw a future ahead of them that no one could have predicted or planned. Lives that had once seemed so promising, so exciting, even important. Lives now devolved into sadness and lies and cover-ups and death. Here they were. Mother and daughter, face-to-face on a little bench in the lobby of Boston City Hall.

  What they didn’t teach at the Kennedy School was how to spin this one:

  Telling your teenage daughter about her father’s affair.

  49

  “I heard two shots,” Jane told him from behind her barricade of plants. “They sounded muffled, like they came from upstairs.”

  “Anything else?” Jake checked the bank of elevators. Four doors, all closed. Their call buttons lighted. Floor indicators now all on lobby.

  Six minutes since he arrived. Why wasn’t he getting radio transmissions? Jake had clicked to the incident frequency, blocking out all traffic except about what unfolded here at the hotel. Unless they’d totally lost the shooter, impossible, something was going down. And where the hell was his backup? A squad was supposedly en route to wrangle the people stranded in the lobby.

  Christ, they all were probably taking cell phone videos and snapping photos from their hiding places. OMG, I’m a hostage. He could just see it on frigging Twitter. Or TMZ.

  He watched Jane close her eyes for an instant, thinking, then open them.

  “Yeah. The shots came from the rear of the building. The cops all ran that way, through the fire door.” She pointed, starting to stand up. “That’s why those alarms were clanging. There hasn’t been anything since.”

  “Stay down,” he told her.

  He wanted to get her out of here. But he had to get himself upstairs, too, wherever the team was. As soon as his backup arrived.

  “Jake.” A voice behind him. He turned. DeLuca?

  “I told you to stay on Hewlitt, D,” Jake said. “Why the hell are you—?”

  “Supe’s orders.” DeLuca put up a palm, cutting him off. “It’s a code one. Hotel security reported attempted child abduction, then shots fired. You kidding me? The supe’s going nuts, City Hall’s going nuts. The freaking child molester’s on the loose. Apparently the hotel security morons let her go when—”

  “Her?” Jake said.

  * * *

  Oh, no. All she needed. How to explain that she was—or wasn’t—the child molester? There’s a conversation she’d never imagined having with Jake. Jane, still hunkering behind the stupid plants, puffed out a breath.

  “Jake?” she said, standing up a little. “There’s no child molester. That’s what I was trying to tell them.”

  “Huh?” Jake said. He and D exchanged looks.

  “What’s she doing here?” DeLuca said.

  “I was here to get—nothing. Nothing, never mind.” Somehow she’d hoped that whole child molester thing would go away. She should have bolted when she had the chance, although she’d told Tall and Beefy her name—several times, brilliant—so they could easily track her down if they decided to. Now, though, that was hardly the point. There was a guy wit
h a gun somewhere. What if it was Lewis? Where was he? And where was Gracie?

  “All units.” The voice came over Jake’s radio. “All units. Do you read?”

  Jane had heard enough radio calls from cops trying not to sound afraid. They never succeeded. But this was good news, she predicted. If this were a continuing risk, something disastrous, someone dead, a shooter on the loose, their voices would be different. Whatever had happened, it was over.

  Maybe no one was even hurt. She’d see Gracie soon. Lewis, too. All would be explained. All would be safe.

  “Brogan, I copy,” Jake replied.

  Jane checked her camera, still on standby, battery fine. Would it be kosher to roll on Jake? Tape him getting this radio call? It felt wrong, but … Was she a reporter, or a victim? A reporter, or the police officer’s girlfriend?

  Why did all of reality have to be recorded? Life never just happened anymore. Memories had to be indelible, every event captured. And shared. And used.

  “Brogan, I copy,” Jake said again. And to D, “Switch to incident channel.”

  “Shooter apprehended, repeat, all clear, shooter apprehended,” the radio voice began again, calm, solemn, reporting. Unafraid. An alarm, beeps, then an unintelligible voice blared in the background of the transmission, but the sound of that “all clear” filled the lobby.

  “One person in custody,” the radio voice continued. “Floor three. One victim, calling for transport. Third floor. It appears to be a—stand by, all units.”

  Appears to be a what? Jane wondered. She stood, pulling herself up with one hand clamped on the huge clay pot as the transmission paused, her thighs creaking, trying to get her balance. She aimed her camera at the registration desk, where heads began to emerge, now a row of hairlines and wide eyes peering over the counter.

  She watched DeLuca take one wary step closer to the center of the lobby, then another, then another, his eyes darting to every corner. Maybe not convinced the danger had passed. The sun glinted off the facets of the cut-crystal chandelier, shafts of afternoon light spackling him with patches of shadow. So unnerving, Jane thought, that the fountain still burbled. The elevator doors closed and opened and closed again.