by Ben Miller
Two segments of sidewalk led to the front door: one from the main sidewalk along the street, running parallel to the driveway, and the other coming at a right angle from the driveway right along the front of the house. He walked the twenty yards along the driveway and turned to his left, moving along the front of the house toward the front door. He peeked into the large windows in the front as he passed by. No lights were on. The dismal day outside did not illuminate much inside the home either. As a result he could not see much other than the sheer curtains that curved down either side of each window.
He got to the front door and paused a beat. He looked behind him. The local cavalry had not yet arrived. He had gone too far to turn back at this point. He grabbed the dull brass knocker at eye-level on the large wooden door and rapped three times. He could hear it echo off the hardwood floors inside the foyer just on the other side of the door. But he heard nothing else. No one running to the door—or, perhaps more reassuring, running away from it. After waiting several seconds, he knocked again, first with the knocker and then with his own knuckles. To the left of the door he noticed the small plastic doorbell ringer embedded in the wood siding. He reached over and depressed it, subsequently hearing the melodic chimes from inside. He rang it again. Then again once more.
Having already come from the right, he walked to his left toward the front windows on that side of the house. He cupped his hands and peered inside. He looked into what looked like a formal living room: a fireplace in the center of the wall to the left, a richly upholstered sofa opposite with a thick, intricately designed afghan hung over the back, a matching love seat in front of him, just below the windows. A cherry wood coffee table sat in the center of the room, a few knickknacks on its surface. He couldn’t make out much past this room, but it looked like the kitchen lay beyond. To the right— on the other side of the front door— he could see the first few steps going to the second level.
The lack of movement was the most striking thing on the other side of the glass. At this point Jack had every reason to believe no one was home.
Jack walked back to the front door. Again he looked over his shoulder, and again he did not see anything resembling police presence. He thought at least the local PD would have arrived by now. He made an executive decision. He put his left hand on the front door handle, his thumb settling into the curvature of the thumb piece above the grip. His right hand went to his waistband, resting on the butt of his magnum. He listened carefully one more time, but again only perceived silence. His thumb pressed down and did not meet resistance. The door was unlocked.
He pushed forward slowly at first, moving the door through the threshold. Suddenly he heard a high-pitched beeping from inside. He had set off the alarm system. He threw the door open and drew his gun, all in one reflexive motion. “FBI,” he shouted, gripping his firearm at shoulder level with both hands, arms nearly in full extension. The incessant beeping disoriented him. It greatly impaired his ability to hear footsteps, the inner working of a cocking firearm, or any other sounds. He suddenly felt out of place, at a significant disadvantage.
He moved quickly through the door, leaving it open behind him. The keypad for the security system identified itself by the green LED glow from its display across the foyer on the right. He turned to his right and looked into what appeared to be the TV room. He took a quick step into it, surveyed the room with a sweep of his handgun, and found no one. He turned back and performed the same action in the living room to the left of the foyer, again revealing nothing. He walked across the foyer and took his left hand off his gun, letting it fall down to his right side. He opened up the plastic security keypad, unsure what exactly to do. He knew that most such systems had no way to disable them from inside the home without the proper code. He hoped that this particular system had intercom capabilities. If so, the monitoring company would soon call into the home, and Jack could identify himself and ask the system operator to turn off the alarm. That’s if the BEEP-BEEP-BEEP didn’t drive him mad first.
He moved down the hallway beside the stairs, moving away from the front door. He entered the kitchen, the back door of the home directly opposite him on the other side of a small mud room. He approached it to inspect the back yard. He saw a dilapidated swing set directly behind the house, sitting in the middle of a yard equally as ignored as the front. The detached garage sat off to his right, still without any activity.
A head appeared in the window of the door directly in front of Jack, making him jump back.
“Lake Ridge police!” an officer shouted from behind Jack.
Jack whirled around, putting his back toward a small laundry room so that he could face both the officer that had come through the front door and the one about to come through the back. The officer in the front wore full riot gear and stood with his legs spread wide, his handgun aimed straight at Jack. Jack put his hands in the air, his gun pointed at the ceiling. “I’m FBI!” he shouted. “Jack Byrne!”
Heath Reilly appeared behind the officer and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Stand down. He’s with us,” Reilly instructed. The officer nodded and turned his attention to the TV room on his right.
“Those front rooms are clear!” Jack shouted, trying to be heard over the alarm. The beeping stopped for a split second, allowing Jack a brief moment to feel thankful. A fleeting moment, though, as an ear-piercing, high-pitched constant screech then emanated from the central alarm control in the basement. The previous beeping seemed like pleasant dinner music compared to this.
“Holy shit!” Jack yelled, putting his fingers over his ears. Reilly did the same. Another officer came through the front door, seemingly unaffected by the electronic shriek. Jack turned to face the back door, where the officer stood calmly looking at him from the other side. He pointed down, indicating the door handle. Jack twisted the deadbolt and opened the back door. This officer came in, mouthing “thank you” to Jack as he passed by and entered the laundry room.
Though he felt paralyzed by the squeal of the alarm, Jack knew he needed to keep moving. They had to rip this house apart, looking for any clue where Franklin would go. Just then the telephone rang. Jack surmised that Franklin’s system did not have an intercom; this call would come from the security monitoring center. He found the cordless phone sitting on its base on the kitchen counter. He grabbed the handset and ran outside the house, hoping that he could find enough quietness out there to hear the phone call.
“Hello,” he shouted into the phone.
“This is Adam with Century Home Security. Do you—“
Jack cut him off. He did not have time for Adam to go through his protocol. “This is Jack Byrne of the FBI. We set off the alarm. We have tons of cops here, but you can call more in if you don’t believe me. You need to turn off the alarm.”
“Uh…” Clearly Adam had never encountered such a situation. “We can’t turn off the alarm until we hear the code from the policy owner or the police.”
“Listen, Adam—“ Jack began. One of the police officers, the first one through the front door, approached Jack.
“Is that the security company?” the officer asked. Jack nodded. The officer indicated for Jack to give him the phone, which he did. “This is Sergeant Rick Kensington of the Lake Ridge PD. The code is ‘syphilis.’”
“Syphilis?” Jack repeated.
Sergeant Kensington shrugged.
Suddenly the screeching stopped. The silence seemed like the most beautiful sound in the world. Jack could think straight for the first time in what seemed like hours.
“Thank you,” Sergeant Kensington said into the phone, and then he hung up.
“How did you know the code?” Jack asked loudly, trying to overcome the remaining din in his ears.
“It’s a generic code,” Kensington answered, using a more acceptable volume. “We have one with every local home security agency.” Carrying the phone with him, he went back inside the home. Jack followed.
Reilly stood over a small kitchen table in the
far corner of the kitchen. “Jack, look at this.”
Jack walked over to the table, purposefully opening and closing his jaw, hoping it might get the ringing out of his ears. Reilly pointed to a piece of note paper in the middle of the table. Jack leaned over it, careful not to touch the table as to avoid contaminating it.
See you at the cabin.
---Randall
Jack stood up straight and looked at Reilly.
“What do you think?” Reilly asked.
“I think we’re going to Franklin’s cabin,” Jack replied without missing a beat.
“How do you know it’s not a set-up—a trap or something?”
“I don’t,” Jack answered. “But we’re going to find out.”
74
Randall sat in silence in his idle car, his gloved hands folded in his lap. He realized that he no longer needed the gloves to prevent leaving fingerprints. However, he had become so accustomed to donning gloves before performing his Work that they had become a necessary component of it.
As he looked through his windshield at the street before him, he wondered if Jack and his team had ever alerted the President about Randall’s Work. The song he had chosen—or had it chosen him?—offered a delicious red herring about the President as a target, based on the thinly veiled JFK reference in its lyrics. He had hoped that Jack would waste some time down that path, but not too much time. While flexible in some respects, his Work did not allow much time for deviation. Based on the message Randall received earlier today from that security guard at his office, if Jack had pursued the President-as-potential-victim route, he had since gotten back on track.
From the passenger seat beside him, Randall’s phone rang. Before he looked over, a smile covered his face. The timing fit; he knew who had to be calling. He picked up his phone and looked at the display. His phone showed the digits, which Randall recognized: Century Security, his home security monitoring company, who only called in the event that someone had triggered his home alarm. The FBI had found him.
Right on time.
Even though he knew his Work constituted pure genius, it still could astound him how closely the events that actually transpired matched his plan. His smile broadened and he shook his head, feigning disbelief without any audience to deceive.
He turned his phone off, removed the battery, and placed both in the glove compartment. He had no further need for either one, and he didn’t want the FBI tracking his location from the GPS device embedded in the phone, which remains active as long as the battery is engaged. He laced his fingers together, tightening the gloves over his hands. He grabbed the door handle, took a deep breath, and got out of the car. The wheels of his Work had been set into motion. He just needed to continue along for the ride.
75
Dylan Harringer did not consider himself a list maker. Seldom did he find the need to write out an agenda or a to-do list. He focused more on the big picture, the gestalt. His mind naturally worked better in broad strokes rather than fine detail. It was part of what made him a good leader. However, while on the phone with Jack earlier, he found himself taking copious notes, which, by the end of the phone call, had turned into a list.
By now he had placed a mark to the left of everything on his list, meaning it had been assigned to someone. He had called Amanda Lundquist and Charlie Shaver into his office after hanging up with Jack. Amanda had come back to the CASMIRC headquarters from the call center when Reilly had gone to Lake Ridge. He split the list up among the three of them.
Upon completion of a task on his list, Harringer would strike a line through it. At this point, almost an hour after his call with Jack, only two items, both assigned to Harringer, had hashes through them: contacting Randall Franklin’s mobile carrier to trace all of his calls and track its location, and finding the location of Franklin’s “cabin.” His bank records showed a mortgage on a home on Belmont Bay, just outside of Woodbridge, Virginia.
Harringer had called Jack immediately to give him the address. In the interim since their last conversation, Jack and Reilly had supervised the investigation of Franklin’s home in Lake Ridge. Jack reported finding nothing of obvious significance. Harringer gave them the address of the cabin. Jack and Reilly embarked for the cabin urgently. Harringer then alerted local police in Woodbridge as well as Virginia State Troopers. As before in Lake Ridge, Harringer ordered that no one approach the property until all law enforcement parties had arrived. He hadn’t yet found out that Jack had broken that protocol at the Franklin residence. If he had he may have changed his mind about putting Jack in charge of the cabin investigation.
Harringer now got up from his desk and walked out to Amanda’s cubicle. She reported no luck in getting in touch with Franklin’s wife, Sheila. She had called several family members, but could only get in touch with Sheila’s brother Sheldon, who had not spoken to her in a couple of weeks. Amanda had also called Mary Beth Franklin’s school. Franklin’s daughter had not shown up for her third grade class yesterday or today. The school had also been unsuccessful in getting in touch with the Franklins the last two days.
Harringer and Amanda went into the conference room, where Shaver had taken his laptop and spread his work out on the front table. He had printed Franklin’s last several credit card statements and highlighted any charge outside of Lake Ridge. Many of them had been internet purchases without much description, which they ignored for now. They focused on the charges from gas stations.
Shaver had used the map on the front bulletin board—the one that already had large red thumbtacks planted on the three previous murder sites— to start placing pins near every gas station outside of Lake Ridge where Franklin had made a purchase in the last four months. He had five tacks in place when Amanda and Harringer arrived. Within ten minutes the three of them had completed the task. When they stood back to appreciate their work, an obvious pattern developed: three lines in the shape of a wide, bisected “V,” resembling an overweight bird’s footprint. Moving from left to right, or west to east, each line connected the central point, Lake Ridge, to Front Royal, Virginia; Frederick, Maryland; and York, Pennsylvania respectively.
If Harringer still possessed any doubt about Jack’s suspicion of Franklin, it evaporated in that instant. They had found their Playground Predator.
76
“Are there any questions?” Jack looked around at the faces surrounding him in the back of the SWAT van. All ten officers had donned their riot gear, the visors on their helmets flipped up for this tactical planning session. Most of the men shook their head subtly; all had the seriousness of death upon their countenance. “OK,” Jack summarized. He looked down at his watch— 3:23—and then over at Sergeant Gino Curlew, the officer who identified himself as the SWAT leader shortly after they had all arrived in Woodbridge. Sergeant Curlew nodded. Jack looked over his shoulder at Heath Reilly, who crouched behind him in the crowded van. Reilly offered a single-shouldered acquiescent shrug and nodded as well. Jack finally peered back at the men in front of him.
“Let’s go,” Sergeant Curlew said. With that the men lowered their visors in unison and the back of the van flew open, officers pouring out in tandem, splitting off to their specific assignments.
They had parked the unmarked SWAT van about eighty yards down the street from Franklin’s vacation home, a lovely Cape Cod that sat about twenty yards back from the small street, and about forty yards off the bay on the other side. Because it sat on the outside of a slight bend in the road, and a twenty-to-thirty yard strip of white gravel, bushes, and crab grass separated it from the neighboring house on either side, it seemed relatively isolated. Curlew had obtained a copy of the basic blueprint of the house from the county assessment department, so every officer had an understanding of what to expect once inside.
Only Jack and Reilly remained in the back of the SWAT van, still crouching next to each other. Jack looked at Reilly, hoping to catch a sense of optimism. Instead he saw… disappointment. Or dismay, perhaps? “What?” Jack a
sked.
“What?” Reilly returned serve.
“You all right?” Jack rephrased.
“Yeah. Let’s do this,” Reilly replied. He got off his haunches and walked, bent at the waist, to the end of the van and out. Jack followed him.
They went around the right side of the van, opposite from the house. The driver had picked a perfect spot to view the front of the home clearly yet still keep a safe distance to elude obvious detection. Jack and Reilly would remain in this location until the local police and SWAT teams had secured the home.
The drizzle that covered the morning had stopped and the day had brightened, though the sun still had yet to show itself. Jack would have preferred a nighttime approach, but no one felt safe wasting any more time. As he and Reilly looked upon the scene, they noticed intermittent bursts of tiny movements in the trees and bushes around the home. Finally, like a band of beautifully synchronized swimmers, the eight of the ten SWAT members closed in on the home, positioned at various equidistant points around all four sides. The other two members kept themselves at a distance, the sites of their rifles kept on the front and back doors, respectively.