by Steven James
He remembered each of those instances all too clearly. You don’t forget something like that. Not ever.
Three doors in the hallway.
Based on the floor plan of most apartments this size, he anticipated that the door at the end of the hall would be to a washroom.
First, though, he entered the room on his right—the master bedroom. Three cardboard boxes, likely from the shelves in the open closet, had been tipped onto the floor. One must have held files before it was dumped upside down because piles of paper were now strewn across the carpet as if they’d been vomited out of the box.
The mattress had been sliced open, suffering the same fate as the pillows in the living room.
Nick checked the closet, found no one, and went to the bedroom across the hall.
A nursery.
The pink-trimmed, eggshell white walls were decorated with painted pairs of animals walking two by two toward an ark. The crib had been destroyed, a mobile smashed into a tangled and distorted mess beside it. A dresser on its side. A stomped music box.
Closet—nothing.
Finally, he entered the bathroom and found the mirror shattered, the shower curtain pulled down, and a clutter of cosmetics and personal hygiene items covering the floor. Other than that it was bare.
No one in the apartment.
All clear.
He returned to the living room to call Kestrel in, but saw a backlit figure standing beside the overturned couch, and he whipped his gun up. “Hands where I can see them!”
“Nick!” she cried out. “It’s me!”
“Kestrel—” He immediately lowered his weapon. “I told you to wait outside.”
“I was worried about you.”
“I’m the one with the gun.”
“I wasn’t really thinking clearly.”
He holstered the 9mm.
She scanned the room. He thought maybe she would be distracted by the broken screen of the digitized wall, but instead, her attention went directly to the floor.
“My books,” she whispered, almost reverently. She bent and began to straighten them, as if the act of putting them in some sort of order would magically heal them of the pages that’d been indiscriminately torn from them. “Why would anyone do this?”
Nick knelt beside her. “Kestrel. Please. Leave them here until we can get photos of everything—whatever we can do to look for clues as to who did this, it’ll help.”
“Yes.” But she was clearly still distracted. “Alright.”
She went to the wall and directed ViRA to adjust to emergency lighting and the pulsing of the overhead lights stopped as faint, reddish lighting took over from bulbs that were hidden in recesses between the walls and the ceiling.
Nick said to her, “Do you have any idea who might have done this?”
“No. None.”
“Can you think of anything they might have been looking for?”
* * *
I shook my head.
“Your ViRA should have video, though,” he said. “Right?”
“Yes.”
However, when I tried to pull up the footage, all I got were error statements. Even the video files of the hallway were corrupt.
“This was more than a burglary, wasn’t it?” I said.
“What are you thinking?”
“Why would they break the digitized screen? Why rip up the books? It’s almost like they came in here with the specific intention of destroying my things.”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “Okay, listen, you’re not staying here tonight. But before we leave, I want you to have a careful look around, see if you can figure out if anything is missing. I’m going to get a team over here to process this place.” He took out his slate to make the call.
“Nick, I’m sure your people have a lot bigger cases to worry about than a mess in my apartment.”
“You arrived at the plant right after the bombing occurred. I’m in charge of the investigation, then when I go to speak with you, someone trashes your apartment? No. The timing points to a connection. It’s not a coincidence.”
Now it was my turn to be silent.
“There are dangerous people involved in this, and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
He called for his team to come search the apartment for trace evidence, then snapped photos and shot video of the rooms as I took inventory to see if anything was missing.
And I found that something was—the violin I’d been keeping in my bedroom closet.
I mentioned it to Nick. “The violin is nostalgic,” I said, “but beyond that it isn’t particularly valuable. It’s not worth nearly as much as my jewelry, for instance, and they left that.”
“Do you play?”
“The violin?”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t picked it up in a long time, but yes. I learned how when I was a girl.”
“Why?”
“Do you mean why did I learn or why did I put it aside?”
“Why bother to learn it when computer programs can play violin music so much more efficiently than humans can—and you could avoid all those long hours of practice.”
“Because making music isn’t about playing notes efficiently.”
A blink. “What’s it about?”
“Leaving some of yourself behind in each song, and then carrying that song with you when you’re done. Playing music affects you in ways that simply listening to music never will.”
He considered that, then said, “I think I’d like to hear you play.”
“Maybe someday you will.”
“And you don’t know why someone would want to take that?”
“I can’t think of any specific reason, no.”
He scanned the room carefully again. “So, besides the violin, is there anything else missing?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“Alright. Do you have anyone you’d like to call? A place you can stay tonight?”
You could stay with your brother, I thought, but quickly dismissed that option.
“Are you sure I can’t stay here?” I said. “I mean, whoever did this is long gone by now.”
“Who knows if they’ll come back? I want you to be safe.”
“I appreciate that, but—”
“Kestrel, I won’t take that chance.”
“Well . . .” I thought about it. “I suppose I could ask someone from church.”
“Alright. That sounds good.”
However, first, since I wasn’t in the mental place where I was ready to have dinner with Trevor as I’d planned, I put a call through to him to cancel.
He picked up. “So, Kestrel, what are you hungry for?”
“Listen, it’s not going to work tonight. Someone ransacked my apartment.”
“What?” he gasped. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I’m fine. I don’t know exactly what happened. We just got back here and the place was a mess.”
“Did they steal anything?”
“Just the violin.”
“The one Grandpa gave you?”
“Yes.”
“What would anyone want with that?”
“I honestly have no idea.”
“Well, can I do anything for you?”
“No, but thanks. Maybe we can find a time to connect tomorrow before you fly back to Seattle. Will you be at the production plant? I’ll need to pick up Jordan at some point. Maybe we could meet there?”
“Yeah. Okay. We’ll make it work.” He sounded somewhat distracted, and I guessed that he was consulting his schedule. “I should be able to cancel my one o’clock. I’ll be there anyway, so if you don’t mind their food, I’ll find a quiet room for us to eat at the facility, catch up.”
“I don’t mind. One o’clock. Alright.”
“You’re sure there isn’t anything I can do for you?”
“I’m sure.”
We ended the call and I contacted a woman from my congregation who I thought might be able to help me.
/> At eighty-four years old, Arabella Meyer was one of the oldest members of our church who still lived on her own. She owned a four-bedroom, folk Victorian-style house on the East Side, and since her husband had passed away and her children and grandchildren rarely visited, she had the place to herself nearly all of the time.
She’d had me over to stay on short retreats a few times: two- or three-day getaways when I needed to do some uninterrupted studying for an upcoming sermon series. We got along well and were able to give each other the space we needed, even when we were together, in the way that only friends do.
Keeping it brief and trying not to lead her to worry about me, I filled her in on what had happened at my apartment, then ended by asking if I could stay with her tonight.
“Oh, yes, of course, dear.” Then she softened her voice. “Kestrel, I was meaning to call you earlier, regarding your precious daughter. I am so very sorry about what happened.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ve been in my prayers.”
“I appreciate that.”
I assured Nick that no one was going to come after me at Arabella’s house, but he insisted that he arrange for a surveillance drone to watch the place throughout the night, just in case.
“The S-drones we use are small and unobtrusive,” he assured me. “No one will even know it’s there. It can alert us if there’s any unusual activity.” He checked the house’s location against the emergency services’ response times and confirmed that he could have law enforcement personnel onsite in less than three minutes, if need be.
That sounded almost unbelievable to me, but I had the sense that he might be pulling some strings to make it possible.
“You’re going above and beyond the call here, trying to help me today,” I said. “Why?”
“Because you’ve suffered a terrible loss and yet you’ve been more concerned for others the whole time.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ethan Bolderson, that boy on the pier, even your Artificial. It tells me a lot about you.”
As he gazed at me, I felt drawn to those deep obsidian eyes in a way that hadn’t happened to me in a long time.
Hastily, I looked away, and before I could figure out how to reply to what he’d said, he went on, “We’ll protect you, Kestrel, and we’ll find out who was here, inside your apartment. I promise.”
I fumbled out a thanks and then, thinking about the unnerving effect he was having on me, I let my car drive me to Arabella’s place.
Don’t trust your feelings right now. You just lost your baby. You’re questioning your faith. You’re going through a lot.
Besides, Agent Vernon is just investigating this case. He’s just being professional. Don’t fall for him.
I was so exhausted when I reached Arabella’s home that, after she greeted me with a hug and offered me dinner—which I declined—she directed me to the guest bedroom upstairs, and I collapsed onto the bed, still in my clothes, and fell, almost immediately, to sleep.
* * *
Nick was seriously ready for some dry clothes, but before leaving Kestrel’s apartment he confirmed that a forensics unit was onsite and that the surveillance drone was en route to Mrs. Meyer’s residence. Then, he called for his car to pick him up and left for his home—a forty-year-old, worn-down place on the Lower West Side that he and Dakota had saved up for and she’d told him he was welcome to keep when she moved out and, for some reason, he’d never gotten around to downsizing from.
Memories of his ex-wife still lurked in the hallways here and, for the most part, he avoided going to the bedroom. So, yes, most evenings he slept on the couch in the living room near the kitchen table where he tended to work anyway, telling himself that it was just because it was more convenient, but all the while hoping to avoid encountering the lingering ghosts of his failed marriage.
When he’d first met Dakota he’d thought that she was quite a catch, and their years together had been good ones. They had their ups and downs, just like any couple does, but he thought she was happy.
He’d been wrong.
She had worked as a close quarters combat trainer for the Bureau and could hold her own in a fight with just about anyone. After she left him she continued on at the NCB for another twenty months or so, and then left—ostensibly to work as a security consultant, but he’d always wondered if maybe she had just moved into working undercover for the Bureau tracking Purists.
In either case, she was out of his life and he was here, back at their place, alone again.
As long as he was already wet and needed to change clothes anyway, he tossed his shirt in the washing machine, threw on some athletic shorts, and lost himself in an old-school workout of push-ups, pull-ups, and crunches in the garage.
He cranked some of his favorite classic rock from two decades ago when he was a teenager, and when he was done, he recorded the number of pull-ups in his digital exercise journal on the Feeds in the column for today’s workout next to the more than two thousand workouts before that.
Then, he showered and changed into sweats and a lounge-around-the-house T-shirt, warmed up some leftover chili, grabbed a lager, and positioned himself in front of his digitized wall. He logged into his federal account to study the information his team had come up with.
The files on Ethan Bolderson’s computer included detailed information about where the shrapnel and vehicle had come from, blueprints of the building that showed the targeted area of the attack, and a timeframe listing when the bombing needed to take place. All laid out there. Encrypted, yes, but retrievable.
However, there were no contact names listed in the files.
Was this really from Ethan, or was it simply planted on his computer to set him up?
To Nick, it seemed all too convenient and not the work of a terrorist mastermind.
Still, he held back from assuming too much.
You have to start with a working hypothesis, without slipping into presuppositions that can lead to unfounded conclusions. It was a delicate dance—theorize and test, but don’t commit until the facts are in. You needed to let evidence and not conjecture be your guide.
The digital forensics unit was analyzing Bolderson’s account on the Feeds to see if they could come up with any information that had been deleted, or coded text buried in the files, but so far they hadn’t discovered any additional data.
A tactical team was already onsite, investigating the old tool and die factory in the manufacturing district that had been identified as the source of the metal shavings and parts used to create the shrapnel. Nick figured he would take a look at the place himself in the morning.
He thought again of the tri-nitrocellulose and added that to the mix.
He tried to set aside thoughts of Kestrel Hathaway, but found it difficult to do.
It reminded him of an old story he’d heard about two monks.
The older one was a holy man, known throughout the land for abstaining from all earthly pleasures and vices. One day, he and his younger friend came upon a beautiful young woman who was standing distraught beside a flooded stream, trying to figure out a way across. The older monk offered to let her climb onto his shoulders.
The young monk was aghast at that, but said nothing as the older man helped the woman cross the stream. Then the two men walked until dusk before arriving at the monastery.
Finally, the young monk couldn’t stand it anymore and he said, “I can’t believe that you carried that woman across that stream!”
And the older monk replied, “I set her down hours ago. Are you still carrying her around?”
Yes, Nick thought. I am.
No, she wasn’t involved in this bombing in any way. She couldn’t be.
He touched base with Ripley and told him about Kestrel’s apartment being ransacked.
“Any idea who might have been in there?” Ripley asked.
“Not yet. Her ViRA was damaged. The team is there checking for trace evidence and trying to recover vi
deo. Other than that, we’ll have to see what forensics pulls up.”
A touch of silence from the other end of the line.
Nick said, “Did you learn anything from talking with Trevor?”
“Nothing specific, but I told him we were working off intel that there might be another attack coming up and that we were prepared to do all we could to cooperate with him and his division to make sure he and his people were safe.”
“What about the timing? Did he have any idea why the attack might’ve gone down this week?”
“Actually, I did ask him about that and he said they had a recent breakthrough in their ASI research. In fact, they’re going to be making a major announcement regarding it at a press conference on Saturday—but the main R & D for that is at their headquarters in Cascade Falls instead of here in Cincinnati. He wondered if this attack might be related to that research in some way. After all, the last thing the Purists want is for true ASI to emerge and come on the scene.”
Nick processed that. “That could explain the timing of the bombing, but not necessarily the location of it. Besides being here in Cincinnati, they went after a corner of the building that had older models, not the newer ones, anyway.”
“True. Maybe it was just more convenient to plow into that wall of the facility.”
That didn’t make sense if they had a floor plan of the plant and were targeting the wing that worked on the latest technological developments. The truck could have just as easily swerved right as left and struck the research and development wing.
“The autopsy on Ethan Bolderson?” Nick said. “Any word?”
“Should be in first thing in the morning.”
“I’ll want to talk to Trevor Hathaway tomorrow, before he flies back.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll let him know.”
End call.
So, for right now, Nick had four things on his plate for the evening.
First, attempt to track down the owner of the vehicle used in the attack.
Second, think through other groups who might have been able to—or been motivated to—pull off this bombing. Kestrel’s observation that there would likely have been more than one attack if the Purists were responsible was spot-on and it was definitely something to consider.
Third, finish reviewing the files that’d been found on Ethan Bolderson’s computer.