Colorado Crime Scene

by Cindi Myers

  “You’re right.” Luke turned to his phone, which sounded a trio of descending notes. “It’s a text—from Morgan.”

  He thumbed the text icon. Scott wasn’t looking at the phone, but at Luke, and the FBI agent’s face blanched as white as his shirt.

  Scott sat up straight. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Luke looked like he was about to pass out or have a seizure or something. Did Scott remember the CPR he’d learned the summer he was a lifeguard in high school?

  “It’s Morgan.” The words came out choked. Luke turned the phone toward Scott, who stared at the image of his sister. She was tied up and lying on a dirty concrete floor, her eyes wide with terror.

  “What’s that on her chest?” Scott asked, pointing toward what looked like a radio or a bundle of old highway flares.

  “It’s a bomb.” Luke stared at the picture, some of the color returned to his face now. “The message says, ‘I’ve got a friend of yours. She’s going to celebrate the end of the race with a real bang.’”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Morgan didn’t know how long she lay on the floor in that bus station storage room. With her arms bound behind her back and the vest a heavy weight on her chest, she could find no comfortable position. At first, she could see nothing in the dark room, but as her eyes adjusted, she could make out a thin band of light at the bottom of the door. The muffled, hurrying footsteps of people passing through the transportation hall ebbed and flowed with the arrival and departure of the buses, along with scraps of words she couldn’t assemble into any coherent conversations. “So he said...The report...Anthony, wait up!...Nowhere...Did you see?”

  After a while, she closed her eyes and turned her attention to trying to get out of the ties that bound her wrists. The plastic or wire or whatever Danny had used cut into her flesh, drawing blood when she struggled too much. She inched on her back toward the door. Maybe she could pound on it with her feet and someone would hear her. But the first hard kick at the metal sent such a shock wave through her that she gasped, sure she had set off the bomb. After that, she was too afraid to try again. She’d have to wait until Danny returned and try to get away from him then.

  If he did return. The thought that Danny might not made her choke on the gag, and she had to force herself to calm down. But maybe he had left her here for good. He would set off the bomb when he was ready. The bus station was right under the transportation hall, next to the plaza. If the explosives were powerful enough, he could do a lot of damage by detonating the bomb here.

  But no. He had said he would return. Hadn’t he? She was so terrified she couldn’t be certain what was real and what was fearful imagining.

  Long after the bus station fell silent, the door opened. She startled, not having heard his footsteps. She saw the baggy gray uniform pants first, and a powerful hope made her try to sit up and to cry out from behind the gag. One of the janitors had found her. She was saved.

  But then Danny looked down on her, much of his face hidden by oversize sunglasses and a knit cap pulled down low over his forehead. “It’s time,” he said, and hauled her to her feet.

  He pulled her roughly toward a large garbage cart by the door, then, without warning, he picked her up and stuffed her into it. She tried to fight him, but the bindings around her ankles and wrists, as well as his viselike grip, kept her immobilized. He shoved her down into the trash cart, her knees to her chest, then dumped a trash can full of loose papers over her. “One peep from you and you’re dead,” he ordered, and switched off the light.

  He rolled the cart out of the janitor’s closet. The tinny strains of classical music and the echoing footsteps of passing people told her they were in the bus terminal. One of the wheels of the garbage cart gave off a high-pitched squeak. Through the screen of papers, she could see the arching canopy of the terminal.

  The cart stopped and a fresh load of trash rained down on her—paper coffee cups and food wrappers, old newspapers and soda cans. She ducked her head and closed her eyes against the worst of the onslaught. They continued on, stopping two more times while her captor emptied trash onto her.

  Finally, the cart reversed direction. She could no longer see out of the top of the cart, but she listened for any clues about where he might be taking her. After a few minutes, they stopped, and she heard the familiar ding of elevator doors opening.

  Inside the elevator, Danny leaned over and pushed the trash aside. He grabbed her by the arms and hauled her out of the can and propped her against the metal handrail that encircled the car. The elevator car was glass on all four sides, with chrome supports. Though enclosed on this lower level, at the plaza level it was a striking glass-and-chrome rectangle that provided handicapped access to the facilities below.

  But her captor didn’t order the elevator to ascend. Instead, he produced handcuffs from his pockets—two pairs. He untied Morgan’s wrists and attached one set of handcuffs to each one. Then he attached the other ends of the handcuffs to the railings on adjacent sides of the elevator. She was trapped in the corner of the elevator, facing the door.

  “This elevator is now officially out of order,” he said. “This afternoon, when the time is right, I’ll send a signal via the building’s computer controls to activate the elevator and tell it to ascend. The glass here will give everyone a very good look at you, but before they can do anything, I’ll make the call to detonate the bomb and you’ll go boom.”

  Why are you doing this? Silenced by the gag, she tried to telegraph the question with her eyes.

  “We live in a corrupt world and violence is the only way to force change,” he said. He checked the cuffs to make sure they were securely fastened. “Don’t waste your time struggling. You can’t save yourself now.” He replaced the gag in her mouth and tore off a fresh strip of duct tape. “And neither can your brother or Agent Renfro.”

  * * *

  LUKE AND SCOTT arranged to meet the rest of the team in Union Station’s security offices, deep in the bowels of the historic train terminal. Antique clocks lined the hallway leading to this sanctum, each showing the time in a different part of the country or the world. But the only clock Luke cared about was the one ticking until the race ended later today, and what could be the end of Morgan’s life.

  Outside the door to the security office, he stopped and turned to Scott. “Don’t say anything unless someone asks you a question,” he said. “Some people aren’t going to like that I’m involving a civilian at all. You may be asked to leave for part of the meeting, but don’t go far. We need your help on this.”

  Scott nodded. He looked calmer than Luke felt, something he hadn’t expected. Maybe he was numb to what was really going on. Or maybe he had it together a lot more than people gave him credit for.

  Inside, he found the others crowded into a small conference room to the left of the door. The others scarcely glanced up when Luke and Scott slipped inside. They were too focused on the image of Morgan that Luke had emailed to Blessing, who had it projected onto a screen on the back wall. “Do we know it’s a real photo, not a fake?” Jack asked.

  “That bomb looks real enough to me,” Travis said. “And that’s definitely Morgan.”

  Behind Luke, Scott made a strangled sound in his throat but kept quiet.

  “The big question is, how is he going to sneak a woman wired with a bomb onto the scene?” Cameron asked.

  “Put her in a muumuu, a raincoat, a minivan. There are probably a hundred ways,” Blessing said.

  “He’ll never get her past a metal detector, with all that hardware,” Jack said.

  “He’ll use a disguise,” Luke said. “He’s done it before. First, he was a dishwasher in the hotel kitchen. Then he was an orderly at the hospital. He knows how to blend in.”

  “So what disguise?” Blessing asked.

  “Someone who doesn’t have to go through the metal d
etectors. A cop,” Travis said.

  “A security guard.” Cameron nodded toward the guards in the next room. “There must be a dozen of these guys all over this building,” he said. “It would be easy enough for a skilled operative to knock one out and change clothes with him.”

  The image on the screen switched to a blueprint of the plaza area. “Mr. Westfield.”

  Blessing’s deep, commanding voice made Scott jump. “Y-yes, sir?”

  “You know Danny better than any of us. Where do you think he would put his bomb?”

  “I don’t know him that well,” Scott said. “I just met him.”

  “I’ll amend my statement then. You have spent more time with him than the rest of us, and you’ve spoken to him more. I want to know your thoughts.”

  Scott studied the map of the plaza, his brow furrowed. “He wants to go after the bikers. He has a grudge against the racers. And...I think he wants attention. He asked a lot of questions about when the most people and the most press would be around the finish line.”

  “That fits with his previous pattern,” Blessing said. “And bringing an innocent person into his plan fits with the psychologist’s prediction of escalating violence.”

  Luke stared at the plaza map. “We’re missing something,” he said. “Some flaw in our security that he’s going to take advantage of.”

  “We need to get to Morgan before he brings her to the finish line,” Travis said.

  “The picture he sent doesn’t give us any clues where he’s holding her,” Cameron said.

  “What if he sent the picture to distract us,” Gus said. “He wants us to focus our resources on rescuing her, while he sneaks in behind us and wreaks havoc.”

  “Or what if he has two bombs?” Jack said. “One for Morgan and one for the race?”

  “I forwarded this image to our explosives experts at Quantico,” Blessing said. “They’re going to look at close-ups of the bomb and see if that will tell us anything.”

  “We know he was in the bus station this morning,” Luke said. “Do the surveillance videos show anything?”

  “I’m already on it.” Wade spoke up from the other end of the conference table. “I downloaded the video for the last twenty-four hours. We were able to pick him up leaving about 2:00 p.m., but we can’t spot when he came in. He may have come in on one of the buses that arrived before then. It would be pretty easy to get lost in the crowds.”

  “And you’re sure he hasn’t been back?” Blessing asked.

  “He hasn’t shown up on film,” Wade said. “And he’d be easy to spot this time of night. The last bus departed at 9:00 p.m. The station is closed until tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. for the bike race. The only people in the hall now are a security guard, and the janitor who went through about an hour ago.”

  “You’re sure of the identity of the guards and the janitor?” Blessing asked.

  “I’m one step ahead of you,” Gus said. “I already checked with the head of security. He identified every employee we saw on the screen. And I’d have recognized our guy if he was one of them.”

  Blessing’s phone beeped. He answered the call, listened a moment then disconnected. “That was the explosives tech at Quantico,” he said. “He thinks the bomb Morgan is wearing in the photo would be remotely detonated. The most common way to do that these days is with a cell phone. And he reminded me they think the London bomb was remotely detonated, as well.”

  “Can we block the signal?” Luke asked.

  “Yes,” Blessing said. “At our first security meeting with the UCI, we suggested it. They objected. People don’t like being disconnected—whether we’re talking the racers, the fans or the press. We backed down, but now I’m going to ask for a cell phone signal block within a two-mile radius of this station.”

  “You’re betting on the bomber not having an alternate way to set things off,” Luke said.

  “The explosives tech says the alternatives would require Morgan to manually trigger the bomb, or the bomber would have to get close enough to do it himself.” Blessing clapped him on the shoulder. “We’re doing everything we can to find her and to stop him.”

  Luke nodded. “I want to take a look at the bus terminal again,” he said. “See if I spot anything.” The terminal was the last place they definitely knew Danny had been. If they only had some way to retrace the bomber’s steps.

  “All right,” Blessing said. “Let us know if you spot anything.”

  Luke turned to leave. Scott joined him at the door. “Can I come with you?” he asked.

  Luke had thought he wanted to be alone, to worry and brood over the case. But Scott’s offer gave him a way to avoid what would probably be a pointless exercise. “Yeah. You can show me where you saw Danny last.”

  They headed outside and crossed the plaza, which was lit up like midday by the portable light towers surrounding it. Half a dozen uniformed officers guarded the space, and the streets leading to the station were already blocked off. Bus and light rail service to the area had been halted until after the race.

  “I don’t see how anyone could get past all those guards,” Scott said.

  “We’ve got spotters in the hotel watching the plaza, as well,” Luke said, nodding toward the high-rise hotel that flanked one side of the plaza. “But this Danny guy seems to have a knack for slipping past every trap we set.”

  The escalators leading down into the bus terminal were shut off. Luke flashed his ID to the guard at the top of the stationary steps, then led the way down into the cavernous space. Their footsteps echoed on the concrete, against a background of piped-in classical music. “You think they would at least shut off the music,” Scott said.

  “People don’t like silence,” Luke said.

  “It’s because they don’t like to hear what’s in their own heads.” He gave Luke a half grin. “You don’t have to be schizo to know that.”

  Luke nodded. The more time he spent around Scott, the more he liked him. He’d been dealt a bad hand but was doing his best to cope.

  They walked the length of the terminal, surveying the empty bus bays and benches. Posters advertised an upcoming musical or advised of bus route changes. Midway down the hall, the handicap elevator bore an out-of-service sign; like the escalators, it was shut down in anticipation of events that afternoon.

  Across from the elevator was a door marked Custodial. Luke tried the knob and it opened to reveal a closet that contained a large trash can on wheels, a couple of push brooms and a shelf of toilet paper, soap and other restroom supplies.

  “Guess the janitor’s already gone home,” Scott said.

  They exited the other end of the terminal and headed back toward the train station. “There’s something we’re not seeing,” Luke said. He turned to look back at the silent, floodlighted plaza. Flags popped in the night breeze and the podium and grandstand awaited tomorrow’s celebration. This was how he’d felt when Mark disappeared. He’d returned to the trailhead again and again, certain that he was missing some important clue that could help him find his brother. But no matter how hard he drove himself, he always came up blank. A man who never forgot a face couldn’t remember those two hikers who had been at the trailhead when he dropped Mark off. And now he couldn’t spot the clue that would lead him to Danny and to Morgan. What good was a skill like his if he couldn’t use it to help the people who mattered most to him?

  “Wherever she is, she knows you’re looking for her,” Scott said.

  Luke nodded and turned back toward Union Station. As he and Scott walked back to the security center, the line of clocks taunted him. Only eleven more hours to find a killer. Only eleven more hours to save the woman he loved.

  * * *

  LUKE SNAGGED A few hours of restless sleep on a cot just off the conference room, but at five he was back in front of the computer, staring at dia
grams of Union Station and the plaza, trying to put himself in the mind of a killer.

  Scott slid a cup of coffee in front of him, then sagged into a folding chair at his side. “Did you sleep any?” Luke asked.

  Scott shook his head. “I don’t know whether it’s because I’m worried about Morgan or because it’s a race day. Even though I’m not racing anymore, I still get that rush of anticipation the night before. I never slept well the night before a race. I raced on nerve and adrenaline. By the time the day was over I was completely wiped. I remember one time I collapsed walking off the winner’s podium. My trainer and Morgan hauled me to my feet and sneaked me out by some back elevator so no one would see.”

  “The race was over. Why did you care if anyone saw?”

  “Because when something like that happens, the judges think you must be on something. All I needed was more water, food and rest.” He leaned over and pointed to the handicap elevator behind the winner’s podium. “That would have been convenient that day. Right by the podium.”

  The words struck Luke like a hammer blow. He stared at the X within a cube that marked the elevator on the diagram and had an image of the out-of-service sign on the door in the bus terminal. Why would someone bother to put a sign on the elevator when the whole building was closed?

  The image in his mind shifted to the janitor’s closet across from the elevator. The garbage cart inside the door would be big enough to hold a person.

  “Gus!” He whirled in his chair and shouted to the agent across the room.

  “What?” Blinking, Gus looked up from his computer.

  “Do you still have those security recordings from last night?”

  “Sure. What do you need to see?”

  “The janitor. Let me see that janitor.”

  He and Scott hurried to stand behind Gus, who scanned through the videos, fast-forwarding through the arrival and departure of the last few buses of the night. Finally, he slowed and zoomed in on a figure pushing the garbage cart.

  The janitor, a stooped man in a baggy jumpsuit with a black stocking cap pulled low, exited the custodian’s room with his cart and proceeded through the terminal, pausing now and then to empty a trash can. Finally, he headed back toward his closet. But instead of stowing the trash can there, he crossed the hall and pressed the button to open the elevator. He pulled the cart in after him and the door closed.