Every Second

by Rick Mofina

  Or break it.

  Kate had spent long hours listening to scanners. She smiled at the softened sound of chaos from the torture chamber as she walked through the newsroom, which was bordered by the glass-walled offices of senior editors. On her way to her desk she paid silent respect to those that were still empty, a cruel reminder that staff had been let go in recent years as the business struggled to stem the flow of revenue losses.

  The plain truth was that people were now relying on other online sources for information. While much of it was inaccurate and lacked the quality of a credible, professional news organization, it came free, which seemed to be more important these days.

  As Kate settled into her desk, she took stock of the newsroom with some apprehension. She’d sensed tension in the air. Some reporters and editors were huddled in small groups. A few people appeared concerned.

  Kate did a quick survey of the suspended TVs. Nothing seemed to be breaking. Then a shadow crossed her computer monitor.

  “There you are.” Reeka Beck had approached her from behind, head bowed over her phone as she typed.

  “Good morning. How are you?”

  “Fine.” A message popped up in Kate’s inbox—it was from Reeka. As discussed earlier, we’d like a story out of the security conference at the Grand Hyatt this afternoon. I suggest you get in touch with Professor Randall Rees-Goodman, who’s attending from Georgetown University. Reeka tapped Kate’s screen with her pen. “I just sent you his information. He’s an expert on current threats in the geopolitical context.”

  “I know, but like I said before, I really think Hugh’s better for this. And besides, Chuck cleared me to enterprise. I need to put in some time following up some leads I’m working on.”

  Reeka’s thumbs move furiously over her keyboard as she dispatched another text from her phone, then she lifted her head. She blinked and smiled her perfect smile at Kate.

  “This is the assignment I’ve given you. Are you refusing it?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. Thank you.”

  Kate cursed to herself as Reeka pivoted on her heel and walked away. Reeka was a young, rising star of an editor at Newslead, but she was so curt and officious with reporters that it bordered on rudeness. Every conversation with her was nearly a confrontation.

  Reeka’s boss, Chuck Laneer, the man who’d hired Kate to cover and break crime stories, was a battle-scarred veteran. Chuck was gruff but wise. He could kick your ass while showing you respect. Moreover, where Reeka pathologically adhered to filling a news budget, Chuck believed in the value of letting reporters dig for stories.

  “Hey, Kate, you heard about Chuck?”

  Thane Dolan, an assistant editor, had emerged at her desk.

  “No, I just got in.”

  “He resigned this morning.”

  “No way!”

  “Rumor is he’s gone to head news at Yahoo or Google.”

  “I don’t believe this! That’s terrible.”

  “That means young Reeka likely moves up a notch.”

  Kate shut her eyes for a long moment.

  “Say it ain’t so. Thane, what’re we gonna do?”

  “No idea. It’s a big loss.”

  “Monumental. Chuck hired me, you know.”

  “Everybody loves the guy.”

  Kate and Thane were soon joined by Craig Kryzer, the newsroom intern assigned to monitor the scanners.

  “Excuse me...” He was gripping a notebook. “Um, something’s happening on the scanners, and I’m not sure who to tell. I can’t find Chuck.”

  “Go ahead, Craig,” Kate said.

  “There was a lot of chatter, and I confirmed much of this with 111th Precinct in Queens.”

  “Get to it,” Thane said.

  “They’re sending ESU—you know, the SWAT team—to a bank manager’s home in Queens. They think there’s a hostage situation.”

  “What, like a domestic?” Kate asked.

  “No, there was talk that this guy robbed his own bank this morning, a SkyNational Trust branch.”

  “Holy crap! You got an address?” Kate said.

  “Yep. It’s 3222 Forest Trail Drive in Roseoak Park.”

  “Gabe!” Thane shouted to a news photographer, then pointed to Kate, who was struggling with her bag and jacket and trotting out of the newsroom. “Go with Kate! We’ve got a story breaking in Queens!”

  13

  Queens, New York

  Sergeant Paul Roman put two crumpled dollar bills on the counter at Spiro’s Café, took his take-out coffee outside, lifted the lid and blew gently on the surface.

  Today was his last shift before his vacation. Once he punched out, he and his wife would fly to Miami for a one-week Caribbean cruise. He’d hoped to spend most of his day finishing off paperwork at the office.

  So far, so good, he thought. Then his phone rang.

  “Paulie, its Walsh. We got one in Roseoak Park. Bank manager just robbed his own branch—his family’s being held hostage at their home. We need you to get there.”

  Roman took a second to absorb what his lieutenant had said.

  “Where’re they setting up?”

  “Forest Trail Drive and Maple. I’m sending you details now.”

  “On my way.”

  “One thing you should know—the family’s possibly rigged with explosives.”

  Roman’s eyes widened.

  Explosives.

  A hostage negotiator with the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit, Roman was assigned to ESU Squad 10. It covered the territory known as Queens North, out of the 109th Precinct in Flushing. Squad 10 would be rolling to the scene now, he knew. The bomb squad would be on its way, as well. As Roman cut across the borough he took several hits of coffee and began a mental review of his situation checklist.

  You only get one shot to do things right.

  * * *

  Some forty-five minutes after the call, Squad 10’s big white equipment truck creaked to a halt at a small park at Maple Street and Forest Trail Drive, joining the cluster of other emergency vehicles.

  The location was nine doors down the curved street from the Fultons’ address. Just out of sight of the house, it served as the tactical command post. A dozen ESU SWAT team members, each wearing helmets, armor, headset walkie-talkies, and equipped with rifles and handguns, huddled at the command post, checking and rechecking gear.

  As the commanders developed a strategy, marked units established the outer perimeter. Officers choked off traffic at all access points to Forest Trail Drive. They consulted driver’s license photos of Dan and Lori Fulton, recorded plates and checked vehicles leaving, or attempting to enter the hot zone.

  Other officers began quietly evacuating neighbors, taking them behind the yellow taped lines, ensuring they were clear of the blast radius and line of fire. Everything was done through back doors and side entrances to ensure nothing was visible from the Fultons’ windows.

  Without making a sound, four SWAT team members scouted the area surrounding the house and garage. The stillness held an eerie quiet, conveying a false sense of calm. They deployed an extension mirror to peer into the house and they used a stethoscope device placed carefully against the walls and window to pick up voices or activity.

  They detected no movement.

  They did the same for the garage and detected no activity.

  The scouts were ordered to pull back.

  * * *

  Inside the command post truck, hostage negotiator Paul Roman watched Wilfred Walsh, the tactical commander, study a floor plan of the Fultons’ home, hastily sketched from memory by a shaken next door neighbor.

  “Okay, so here’s what we know,” Walsh said to the other investigators, huddled in the truck. “Dan Fult
on, manager of the SkyNational Trust Branch 487, takes a bag of cash from his bank and drives away after leaving a note that reads, ‘Family held hostage at home! Strapped bombs on us!’

  “That’s all we have, so far. We’ve been unable to locate Dan Fulton. His wife, Lori Fulton, has not shown up for work. Billy Fulton’s not at school. We’ve been unable to contact anyone in the house. We’ve got no movement or visuals of people in the house. But that does not mean we don’t have people inside. Until we clear the property, we will regard it as still hot.”

  “Absolutely,” Mac Hirsch, lieutenant for the bomb squad, said. “We regard everything as an explosive, unless my people confirm otherwise.”

  They reviewed options. Using selective sniper fire was ruled out, for the time being. There were no clear targets. Other options: a blitz assault with flash bangs, or unleashing chemicals into the house.

  SWAT commander Kevin Haggerty objected.

  “I’m not sending my people in there until we know it’s clear of bombs.”

  “All right, there’s one alternative—Kevin, you get your people to breach the door, and we’ll send in the robot to search the house and drop a phone, so Roman, here, can start negotiations with whoever’s in there. We’ve got to try to resolve this peacefully.”

  * * *

  The bomb squad’s robot was controlled remotely and equipped with a camera to transmit live feed to the technician manipulating it. It moved with the speed of a tortoise, its tracks humming and whizzing as it took its position at the front door, waiting like a mechanized alien visitor.

  The SWAT team surrounded the entrance, weapons at the ready, as one member used a crowbar to pry the door open. The cracking of the frame echoed in the deserted neighborhood. The robot hummed over the debris, toddled inside and the SWAT team retreated.

  The video pictures were sharp and clear.

  The detective operating the robot used its speaker system, calling on anyone inside to surrender to the NYPD. Roman watched the video feed over the detective’s shoulder and prepared himself.

  He glanced at his phone and the photos of Lori, Dan and Billy Fulton intel had provided him. Dan was a good-looking suburban dad, Lori had an attractive smile, and Billy, in his ball cap with Dad at Yankee Stadium, was the all-American kid.

  The safety of the hostages was Roman’s chief concern. He’d need to find common ground with the hostage taker—was it Dan, who’d cracked under pressure? Or was someone else involved? Roman would work fast to establish credibility and trust, then find the cause of the problem. He needed to reduce all the risks. He’d never lie, but he wouldn’t be quick to reveal the whole truth. He’d need to keep the hostage taker’s mind off harming the hostages or himself. He’d probe the problem, let the hostage taker vent. Roman would use a tone of concern, not authority, to reduce anxieties. Above all, he’d be careful to address any immediate needs and keep hope alive for everyone.

  He would never forget Pruitt, a negotiator in the Bronx who badly misread his situation when a distraught father took his wife and four kids hostage. After seven hours, Pruitt was convinced the SWAT team didn’t need to go in because he’d resolved it when the father agreed, saying: “There’s only one way outta this.” Pruitt missed the signal and the standoff ended with the dad killing the family before putting a bullet in his head. Pruitt never forgave himself, and six months later ended his own life.

  Roman had been a pallbearer.

  The robot had descended into the basement, searched it but found nothing. Now it was moving through the living room and the kitchen, sending back live images of the table, the fridge and the calendar on the corkboard, marked with game dates and a note: Billy dentist. Then it lumbered up the stairs to slowly inspect the bedrooms and bathrooms, before returning to the main floor, placing a phone there.

  “If you are concealed in this house, the NYPD wants to talk to you. This phone will ring shortly. We advise you to answer.”

  The robot exited.

  The tactical commander nodded to the SWAT commander, who dispatched his team.

  * * *

  They moved silently from behind trees, parked cars, house corners. One sniper was flat on his stomach on the roof of the house next door, a bedroom window filling his rifle scope. Another sharpshooter used the hood of an SUV to take a line on a living room window.

  Team members crept up tight to the Fultons’ house, the utility man, the breacher, the gas team and other shooters. The squad had taken positions. Members were prone at the front and rear. Each officer knew that the robot could easily have missed bombs, or people, hiding in closets, appliances, walls and ceilings.

  The building was still hot.

  The squad leader whispered to the command post.

  “We’re set.”

  The tactical commander nodded to Roman, who dialed the cell phone. In the stillness, the SWAT team could hear it ringing. And ringing. Roman let it ring twenty-five times.

  No one answered.

  He turned to the commanders.

  Haggerty green-lighted his squad.

  “Go!”

  Five seconds later the pop-pop and shattering glass sounds of tear gas canisters echoed down the street. White clouds billowed from the main floor, followed by a deafening crack-crack and lightning flashes of stun grenades as the SWAT team rushed into the house from both entrances.

  Flashlight beams and red-line laser sights pierced the acrid fog. The Darth Vader breathing of the heavily armed and gas-masked squad filled the home as they swept each floor.

  In the basement they found used duct tape, chains, a padlock, a pile of sheets, towels and snow tires heaped oddly next to the washer and dryer. In the kitchen, remnants of pizza in a box and empty soda cans littered the table. Upstairs, the beds were unmade. Bedroom number one: empty. Bedroom number two: empty. Bathroom number one: empty. Bathroom number two: empty. Closets: empty. The ceiling, floors and walls were tapped for body mass.

  Empty.

  No people.

  Nothing.

  “Looks like somebody was tied up down here, but there ain’t nothing here now, sir,” the SWAT squad leader in the basement radioed to the command post.

  “Okay,” Walsh said. “Get the fans in there, clear out the gas. We need Crime Scene working on what they can find for us ASAP.”

  14

  Roseoak Park, New York

  Kate spotted the woman.

  She was hugging her cat in the back of a police car, amid the tangle of emergency vehicles just inside the tape.

  Why have they isolated her? What does she know?

  Kate had noticed her from a vantage point outside the line where she and Gabe Atwater, a Newslead photographer, had watched ESU do its work on the house.

  “Got some dramatic images.” Gabe’s face was clenched behind his camera and he was gently rolling its long lens, shooting the SWAT team in the distance.

  “Get one of her. In the back of the car, see? Look tight between the vans,” Kate said, nodding to the cat lady. “I want to get to her later.” She kept an eye on the woman while talking on her phone to Craig in the newsroom. He’d been monitoring ESU’s play-by-play on the scanners.

  “Sounds like it’s winding down,” he said. “No one’s in the house.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Kate hung up and gave Gabe the update.

  “So the mystery deepens.” He’d resumed shooting the SWAT team after a few shots of the cat lady.

  “Do you see a name on a mailbox or anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  Kate bit her bottom lip.

  Who is this family? Where are they now? And why would a manager rob his own bank?

  Thanks to her years as a crime reporter, Kate knew how to read a scene, knew what to glean from it to give her stories depth an
d accuracy. She’d studied the same textbooks detectives studied to pass their exams. She’d researched and reported on enough homicides, fires, robberies, kidnappings, trials and a spectrum of other crimes to know the anatomy of an investigation.

  Police radios that had been muted began crackling again with dispatches leaking from the emergency crews at the outer perimeter. A few dozen residents and rubberneckers from streets nearby had gathered at the line with about a dozen news types clustered at the row of TV cameras.

  Kate anticipated that at any moment the perimeter tape would come down, police would rope off the house and the crime scene techs would begin to process it. While the NYPD was all over this, she knew that bank robberies also fell to the FBI’s jurisdiction. Investigators would take statements from witnesses, friends and neighbors, getting their accounts here and at the bank, or any other location that was a factor.

  Some of the marked units began moving out to let traffic flow as uniformed officers began pulling down the tape.

  “It’s all over, folks,” an officer said, collecting the tape. “All clear, you’re free to go.”

  “What’s going on?” A TV reporter, face encased in makeup, had thrust a microphone into the officer’s face. “Can you give me a statement?”

  “I don’t have any information right now.”

  “Come on, we need a spokesperson on camera!”

  “They’ll put out a press release later.”

  Kate and Gabe walked quickly down the street toward the house. Kate was determined to stay ahead of their competition. They’d already overheard other reporters interviewing people, but getting nothing substantial.

  “Police just told us to leave.”

  “We had to get out.”

  “We don’t know who lives down there.”

  “Not sure what’s going on.”