Mind Games

by Moore, TJ

  They went to the vault again. Max showed Cameron how to work the suction devices, then he shoved a crow bar into a duffle bag around his shoulder and he jumped up into the vent. Cameron joined him, and the two began the climb. Cameron’s hands slipped only once, but he caught himself and kept moving. They climbed up and up past the security room level and past the main floor of the house. Cameron saw the living room through one of the vents.

  Max and Cameron quieted their suction devices as much as possible, slowing their pace, and Max even held his breath until they reached the second floor of the cottage. Max saw a dim light through the vent opening above them, and he popped it open cautiously.

  Since they climbed past the kitchen vent exit, neither of them knew exactly which room they were about to enter on the second floor. The rest was all improv.

  As Max pulled Cameron into the dark room, they brushed themselves off and looked around.

  Dozens of glass eyes stared at them.

  They were in Sheri’s doll room.

  A foot kicked Max’s ankle.

  The foot belonged to the guard they’d rolled up like a burrito in the rug a few hours before. The supervisors were so busy monitoring the vault that they never looked for the missing guard.

  Max kicked the guard back and pointed towards the door. The dresser was still shoved against it, just where they’d left it.

  “The attic is directly above us now,” Max whispered.

  Cameron jumped on the top of the dresser and Max handed him the crow bar from his duffle bag. Cameron rammed the crow bar into the ceiling and pulled down.

  As the rubble fell, Cameron used his arms to block the dust. He dropped the crowbar and motioned for Max to give him a boost. He squirmed through the hole and pulled himself the rest of the way up, planting his feet on the attic’s wooden floor.

  The attic was cut in two by a giant, wall-length mirror with a ballet bar extending in front of it.

  Cameron pulled Max up through the hole in the floor and they searched the attic. An oscillating fan in the corner sent waves of air through some bed sheets hanging opposite the mirror. Cameron frantically pulled the sheets down, but the action only spread dust throughout the air. Max searched behind an old cast-iron stove and found nothing but cobwebs.

  Then Cameron looked towards the mirror. He slid his hands against the mirror’s surface and knocked. He kept doing this until he felt a hollow portion behind the mirror near the end. “Over here.”

  “Frosty, look.” Max pointed to a gap in the mirror near the end of it where it merged with the attic wall. He pressed his fingers into the gap and pulled out, but the mirror didn’t budge.

  Cameron slammed the mirror with his palms, trying to pop it out of its hinge. And as Max kept pulling and Cameron kept pushing, the thin door built into the mirror turned open a few inches.

  Then they heard a voice.

  “Hello?” The reflective door muffled the eleven-year-old voice.

  “Sarah?” Cameron pressed his face against the door. “Honey?”

  “Daddy?”

  “Sarah! We’re going to get you out of here. Okay?”

  Cameron pushed against the mirror until it warped. The opposing forces of Max’s pulls caused the mirror covering the door to shatter. Then, as they stumbled back to avoid the falling shards of glass, the door closed again and latched. All that remained under the broken mirror was a layer of drywall that made up the locked door.

  Cameron smashed his foot into the wall, and the drywall blasted it away in foot-sized chunks. He could see Sarah’s feet, then her legs.

  “Stand back, honey!”

  He continued to kick, plowing the drywall away until he could he fit through. Cameron ran in and grabbed Sarah, hugging her and spinning her around.

  “Oh, Sarah. My Sarahshine!”

  “Daddy, you’re crying.”

  Her eyes were so blue. So radiant.

  “I’m just so glad to see you, honey. Are you alright?”

  “I’m better now that you’re here. Dad, what’s going on? Why did they lock me in here?”

  Cameron said, “Sarah, there’s something I have to tell you. It’s about your mother.”

  “You just couldn’t stay away, could you?”The Leader’s electronic voice crackled behind them.

  Cameron grabbed Sarah, shielded her and turned around.

  Jennifer stood in the busted door behind Max with a shotgun to his back.“I’m glad you found her. But you don’t get something for nothing. We’re going to make a trade.”She cocked the shotgun and pressed it further into Max’s shoulder blade. “Max, you’re coming with me.”She grabbed him by the collar and yanked him out of the doorway. Then she slammed the broken door and locked it. Seconds later, she covered the gaps in the door with a sheet of metal from the attic.

  Cameron held Sarah tight as Jennifer nailed the metal barrier across the door, sealing them inside.

  THE BRIDGE

  Six cop cars pulled up to the Empire Bank earlier in the night in response to the alarms, but even after the robbery, the majority of police attention shifted to the Golden Gate Bridge.

  As detailed in the note from the“Real San Fran Bomber,” the morning of August 19th held potential for disaster. The note threatened a 4AM detonation of the bridge, so Captain Jones had requested for the city to close it.

  He’d already experienced the power of the explosion at the Italian restaurant with his family. And if the threat note proved true, he wanted to make sure the bridge was clear if it collapsed.

  The bomb squad conducted a thorough search of the bridge a few days before and found nothing. Then the bridge was placed under strict surveillance.

  But at 3AM on the 19th of August, the bomb squad picked up faint radio signals under the bridge. Over the next few minutes, they narrowed the frequency until they isolated one in particular: a cell phone across the north side of the bridge.

  When Jones caught news of this, he called Amy and Vince. The squad cars at the entrance to the bridge opened for Amy’s SUV. With less than an hour until detonation, she drove like hell.

  Amy stayed in contact with the bomb squad as they fed her the location of the bomber’s cell phone. The reported address was 201 Elm Creek St.

  At 3:20AM, Amy pulled up to a tall house with white pillars looming over the entryway. The lawn was well kept, and decorative shrubs surrounded the perimeter of the property in a winding loop. It was definitely the most beautiful home in the neighborhood.

  After receiving confirmation of the signal strength from the bomb squad, Amy and Vince approached the residence, guns at their sides. Amy cautiously stepped towards the front door. She noticed the cracks on the sidewalk were carefully filled in and smoothed over with expert precision. Vince kicked the door in and slowly entered the house. The entryway led directly into a spacious living room.

  With great urgency, they searched every room of the property, but only found clean rooms filled with expensive furniture and wall hangings. The kitchen had a just-cleaned scent to it, and even the grand piano in the living room had been recently polished. Vince checked upstairs and found a laundry basket on a guest room bed. The clothes were neatly folded and stacked according to color and size.

  A side closet revealed two identical vacuum cleaners and four large, orange extension cords hanging above them. They checked the other bedrooms and found no picture frames and hardly any personal belongings. The house was so well kept, it seemed as though no one lived in it. Amy made another pass through the kitchen before finding a drawer full of receipts.

  The listed items started normal, but then turned strange: bleach, laundry detergent, vinegar, iodine – all from the same store. Then gunpowder, rope, duct tape and matches from another store. Ten bottles of lighter fluid, twine, propane tanks, more duct tape, gardening hoses, and a few gallons of orange juice.

  She called Vince into the kitchen and showed him the receipts. As he looked through them, Vince’s eyes grew wider. “Amy, this is it. This is the p
lace. I think Wilson lives here.” He spread the receipts across the kitchen counter and stepped back. “These are some of the ingredients he used to make compact bombs before he purchased the bricks of C4 with Stefani.”

  “Right,” Amy said. “We’re running out of time. I don’t know, Vince. This place seems clean. Maybe Wilson isn’t here. Maybe...”

  “If the signal is coming from here...” Vince looked around the kitchen and saw a door. “Come on. We still haven’t checked the garage.”

  Cameron and Sarah pounded on the inside of the sealed room in the cottage attic. After an especially hard kick, Cameron could hear a portion of the mirror on the other side of the wall crack apart. But the strength of the wall stayed the same. It wasn’t built from sheets of drywall like the side door before Jen nailed a metal sheet over it. Instead, the majority of the room’s wall was reinforced with cement bricks.

  They tried to call out Max’s name, Sheri’s name, even Melanie Garcia’s name, but no one responded. The thickness of the walls blocked in their cries for help.

  Realizing it was useless to waste their voices, Cameron held his daughter and comforted her.

  “We’re going to be okay, Sarah. I promise.”

  At 3:55AM, Vince entered the garage.

  When he opened the door, a new car smell wafted from within. Then he turned on the light.

  The garage was extremely well organized. A variety of woodworking tools hung above a workbench. Amy walked over to the bench and saw a cell phone plugged into a charger.

  And next to it was a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  She picked up the cell phone, unplugged it, and carefully pressed the power button. A digital stopwatch displayed four minutes and thirty seconds steadily ticking down.

  Amy turned over the cell phone and removed the battery. Then she threw it against the garage floor and stomped on it. When nothing but bits of crushed plastic remained, Amy checked her watch.

  4AM came and went.

  The bomb squad called her to report the bridge was still standing.

  Running on no sleep, Amy walked over to a cabinet next to the workbench. She opened the drawers and pulled out hundreds of organized pictures and documents detailing Stefani’s weapon business. “Vince, look. These must be all of the physical copies from the hard drives they took from the first time we saw Wilson working at the computer in Stefani’s basement.”

  “So, where is he? I doubt Wilson would have just left his cell phone like that by choice. Maybe he was interrupted.”

  “Well,” Amy said, “Since there’s no vehicle in the garage, he might have driven over to the bridge to watch it go down. For all we know, this cell phone could have been a diversion.”

  “You think he’s still going to do it?”

  “I don’t know.” Amy looked over the collection of client documents. “If Wilson still plans to flatten the bridge, our only change is to look over these papers. It might help us figure out where he’s hiding.”

  “He might have another cell phone all ready to set off the charge.” Vince walked around the garage. He looked in a few more cabinets and found even more documents. “Shit, this guy has a ton of clients. Just think how many of his weapons are floating through the city.”

  “It’s not just San Francisco,” Amy said. She held up a document with an address to L.A. “Wilson was selling weapons all over the place. Here’s an order shipping out to Las Vegas. And another out to Denver. Look...Portland, New Mexico, Austin, TX. Business is booming.”

  Amy said, “Why would he set off the charge when the bridge has been cleared? For someone who loves chaos, it wouldn’t make much sense.”

  “This house doesn’t make sense. There’s nothing chaotic about it. Wilson’s a total neat freak.” Vince pointed back into the kitchen. “He’s got expensive taste for a weapons dealer.”

  “He’s probably been at it a long time. Didn’t Hansen say Wilson was pretty old?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And,” Amy said. “If he did sell tickets, as you claim, to see the bridge hit the water, he wouldn’t advertise the event.”

  “Because it would be all over the news?”

  “Right. Instead, he’d tell his friends about the time. The timing is what’s important here. And I don’t think it’s tonight. He might just get a kick out of watching us scramble...closing the bridge and all that.” Amy stacked the piles of documents together on the workbench. “Since Wilson seems to be motivated by money, I bet, for a price, he probably told his clients exactly when he’d blow the bridge.”

  “And you think he’s out there right now, waiting for the right time?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He’ll wait for everyone to let their guard down.”

  “When the bridge is open again?”

  “Exactly.” Amy opened the bottom drawer of the large cabinet and added the documents to the stack on the workbench. “And there’s only one way we’re going to find out Wilson’s real planned time to fire the charge. We need to interview one of his clients.”

  Amy called Captain Jones and told him to open the bridge.

  She and Vince returned to the Fourth Precinct.

  When they got to the office, Amy gave Wilson’s client files to the tech department. Then she took a nap for a few hours in the break room.

  Around 10AM, she woke up, drank two cups of coffee, and met with the senior information analyst.

  Amy asked the analyst to take all of the addresses from Wilson’s client files and plot the locations on a map.

  It took a few hours for the tech team to complete this task since there were hundreds of documents and pictures to sort through.

  Amy took the extra time to go on a run downtown. She stopped at a farmer’s market and picked up some fresh fruit.

  As she ran back to the precinct, she reminded herself how close she was to catching Wilson. She decided she wasn’t going to let him slip through her fingers any longer.

  When Amy got back to the office, the senior analyst set up a large map on one of the tables near her desk. It was covered in red pushpins, each one representing an address from Wilson’s clientele.

  As she suspected, Wilson had illegal weapons clients all over the country. Several red pins were grouped at large cities such as Chicago, New York City, and Denver, but there were a few pins spread across smaller cities as well. Most of the pins were placed in and around San Francisco since Wilson did a lot of business locally. Amy was mainly focused on the larger groupings of pins, but as she looked closer at the San Francisco area, she noticed a single red pin placed south of the city. It was just a mile or so from highway 17.

  And even though she’d been spending a lot of time tracking theReal San Fran Bomber, Amy had not forgotten about Cameron. She looked to his picture positioned just next to Jen’s on the evidence board.

  Amy pressed her finger onto the red pin next to highway 17, then she looked back up at Cameron’s picture. She looked again at the photo of the green highway 17 sign she’d seen before in Stefani’s basement. It was the photo that prompted her to start looking in that area with the rest of the search team. In a matter of seconds, Amy made a connection. She never fully believed it was the storm alone that had taken Cameron. She knew there had to be someone who was keeping him hostage. And now, she knew where to look.

  Amy called Vince out of the break room. “Hey, come here. You have to see this.”

  Vince finished chewing a gas station burger, walked over, and examined the U.S. map dotted with red.

  “Holy shit. When we find Wilson...”

  “I know,” Amy said. “These are high crimes. But I think I know where to find Cameron. We’re going to take the helicopter.”

  With Vince next to her,Amy guided the chopper south of the city, following the curve of highway 17.

  When they reached the GPS marker, she flew the chopper over the pine trees. And as they neared the proper coordinates, Vince spotted the high mound of dirt piled around the cottage. “Hey, down there.”r />
  Amy saw it too. She landed the helicopter in a clearing about two hundred yards from the house.

  Vince called the SWAT team.

  Within the next hour, the SWAT team drove their vehicles to the helicopter and prepped for forced entry. Six men approached the front porch of the cottage. Their footsteps creaked on the rotting wood.

  Vince watched them ram down the front door and bolt inside.

  After a few tense moments, A SWAT member’s voice crackled onto Vince’s walkie-talkie.

  “No danger here. Just an old lady making some cookies. We scared her half to death.”

  Vince replied, “If the coast is clear, we’re coming in.”

  Vince and Amy ran over the mound of dirt around the property to the front of the cottage and cautiously entered.

  The sight was almost comical. Six SWAT members stood with their armor and shields in the living room, blocking off the kitchen. Sheri had her apron on with a wild look plastered to her face.

  “What’s going on?” Sheri asked.

  Vince stood over Sheri. “Um, sorry to barge in on you like this. We’re looking for several missing persons. You see, many of them have been missing for quite some time now. We’re just conducting a search of the area.”

  Sheri removed her oven mitts. “Well, I can assure you I don’t have any people shoved in my oven.” She laughed and blushed. “You know, like that Hansel and Gretel story. But I did make some cookies if you’re interested…Mr.”

  “Detective Vince Hogan. Ma’am, you don’t mind if we look around a little do you?”

  “Oh, certainly. My name is Sheri by the way. And be my guest. I wish you didn’t all track your muddy footprints in here though.”