Amid the Shadows

by Michael C. Grumley

  Christine gave a painful nod. “Thank you, honey.”

  “I tried to stop her.”

  “I know.”

  Sarah’s face saddened. “But you wouldn’t let me.”

  Christine nodded. “I’m sad, but I guess it was just one of-” She suddenly stopped and looked at Sarah. “Wait, what?”

  Sarah shrugged innocently and looked down at her bare feet.

  “I don’t-” Christine stuttered. “What does that mean? What were you trying to stop, Sarah?”

  “It was happening. Her shadow was black.”

  Christine looked at Sarah with a puzzled expression. “Her shadow was black? You mean Cassie?”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  Christine still wasn’t following. “I don’t understand. Where was her shadow?”

  Sarah looked back at her shyly. “All around.”

  Christine remembered the picture Sarah had drawn the day before at her office. She quickly got up, went to the counter to dig through her purse, and pulled it out. On it were the three figures with circles around them. The circle around the small stick figure cat was colored black.

  “You mean these shadows, Sarah?”

  “Yes.”

  Christine studied the picture for a long moment. “What does a black shadow mean?”

  Sarah looked up from her picture to Christine. “It means you’re gonna die.”

  Christine was speechless. She stared at Sarah trying to decide if she heard her right. “Did you say die?”

  “Uh huh.” Sarah looked at her empty plate and was considering whether to ask for more.

  “Do you see other shadows?”

  “Yes,” Sarah answered. “Everyone’s.”

  Christine felt a tingle run down her spine. “You see everyone’s shadow?”

  “Mmm hmm.” She nodded again.

  “Are other people’s shadows black?” Christine asked.

  “Sometimes, like the people in the elevator.”

  16

  Christine sat frozen at the table, trying to comprehend what she had just heard.

  “What?” she said quietly. “What was that about the elevator?”

  Sarah looked at her innocently. “Their shadows were black. The people inside.”

  Christine thought back to what had happened. “You’re not afraid of elevators?” she asked.

  Sarah shook her head.

  “Not at all?”

  Sarah shook again.

  Christine found herself searching for some other explanation, but couldn’t find one. Was it possible? Could she really see what she claimed? “So you knew something was going to happen to those people?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know what was going to happen to them?”

  “I was just scared something was going to happen to us too.”

  Christine could see the fear in Sarah’s eyes. She reached out and covered Sarah’s tiny hand with her own. “You did good, honey.”

  After breakfast, Christine sat on the couch looking at Sarah’s picture again. She looked curiously at the little girl who sat in front of her playing with an old set of Legos she’d found in one of the closets. She hummed quietly to herself while she pushed the pieces together, then reconsidered and pulled them apart again, searching for another in the box.

  Christine leaned forward with the paper in her hand. “Sarah?”

  “Mmm hmm.” Sarah replied, still sifting through the old cardboard box.

  “Do you see anything else when you look at people?” When Sarah turned and looked at her, she held up the picture. “You and your mommy have different colors in this picture.”

  Sarah looked at it again and then back up at Christine. “I see lots of colors.”

  “Besides black?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “What do the other colors mean?”

  She pointed to the small stick figure which had a light colored circle around it. “Kids are always white. But grown-ups are different colors.”

  “And what do the colors mean?”

  “Yellow means good,” she said. “And orange means a little bad. Red means really bad. A lot of grown-ups are orange.”

  Christine looked back at the picture and at the stick figure that Sarah claimed was her mother. There was a large yellow circle around it. “Your mommy was yellow?”

  Sarah nodded again.

  Christine took a deep breath. “Sarah, what color am I?” She realized she was suddenly afraid to hear the answer.

  “You’re yellow. Like mommy was. Until the bad men came.”

  Christine felt her heart sink. She thought about when she first met Sarah at the police station. “Honey, is that why you came with me, because I was yellow like your mom?”

  Sarah was back to playing with her Legos, but she nodded. “Mommy said I could trust yellows.”

  “Are there a lot of yellow grown-ups?” she asked.

  “No.” Sarah said, adding another block to her Lego house.

  17

  Griffin exited the store and let the glass door close slowly behind him. He walked across the small parking lot where Buckley was leaning against the side of the car, waiting. They had hit the morning commute traffic in Baltimore about three hours into their four-hour drive from New York to Washington D.C. Since they still had a couple hours before their appointment, they decided to stop at a cellular phone store in Baltimore to kill some time and wait out rush hour.

  “You all set?” Buckley asked, taking a sip of his coffee.

  Griffin held up his new phone. “Yep. Guess it takes a little while to move my number over to the new carrier. The good news is that I now have access to over ten thousand applications that I will never have time to use.”

  Buckley laughed. “You can always quit your job.” He put the cup down and folded his arms across his chest. “So listen, I’ve been thinking. Barbara Baxter suddenly took her daughter out of school and time off work…at the same time that someone was trying to find her.”

  Griffin nodded. “She was running. We already talked about this.”

  “Right,” Buckley replied. “She was probably running and came to New York to see someone. Maybe someone who could help her, like that Glen Smith at the FBI.”

  “That’s the most logical explanation,” Griffin agreed.

  “But,” said Buckley, “what if she wasn’t coming to see someone?”

  Griffin paused and thought it through. “Then why come to New York?”

  “Exactly. Just for the sake of argument, let’s assume she wasn’t coming to see someone. Why else would she run and come into the city of all places?”

  He saw where Buckley was going. “Because it was the most densely populated location available to her.”

  “Right.” Buckley nodded. “So either she came to New York to meet Smith, or she came to hide in one of the largest crowds on the planet.”

  “Okay, I’m with you,” Griffin said. “So why all this talk about a plan B?”

  This time Buckley held up his own phone. “Because while you were inside, I called the FBI office in New York. There is no Glen Smith. In fact, they only have two Glen Smiths in the entire bureau. One in Texas and one in California.”

  Griffin’s eyes narrowed.

  “Now I’m really hoping she came here to hide,” Buckley continued. “Because if she didn’t, then she may have ended up walking right into the arms of the very person who was tracking her down.”

  “That could explain her going through the window at the Marriott. She and Sarah show up and Smith, or whoever he is, is waiting for her with a few friends.” Griffin gave Buckley a disturbed look. “Maybe there is a Glen Smith working at the State Department.”

  Buckley stood up and walked to the driver’s side. “Well,” he said, opening the door, “I guess we’ll find out.”

  The US State Department is the federal department responsible for all international relations. It was the first federal department, established in 1789 under the country’s new constitutio
n. The original responsibilities of the State Department included management of the U.S. Mint, being keeper of the Great Seal of the United States, and acting as the depository of more than 200 multilateral treaties.

  In essence, the State Department advances U.S. objectives by implementing the President’s foreign policy, and it also supports the foreign activities of other departments such as the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency. With an annual budget of more than $50 billion, the State Department’s global reach was massive, operating in over 270 locations, 172 countries, and conducting business in 150 currencies.

  Located just a few blocks from the White House, it took Griffin and Buckley almost two hours to drive from Baltimore, through traffic, to reach the Harry S. Truman Building on C street where the Department had been located since 1947.

  Housing over 1.5 million square feet of usable space with a roof over 7 square acres in size and over 4,000 windows, the giant buff-limestone building gave off a look of raw power and influence.

  It was a little after 11 a.m. when the detectives were escorted into the Deputy Secretary’s office. Many claimed the Deputy Secretary actually ran the department, as opposed to the political figurehead appointed as Secretary whose job consisted of little more than photo ops and golfing with other government elites.

  Even the Deputy’s office was massive, decorated in an old turn of the century architectural theme with a view overlooking much of downtown D.C. It was clearly a position of appreciable power that most people knew little about.

  Griffin and Buckley turned away from the giant window as William Zahn walked in with his aide. At six feet three, Zahn was an atypical bureaucrat. He had a muscular build, was exquisitely groomed, and had a focused look on his face that was all business. His aide was similar in size, but with shorter hair, and appeared to be of middle eastern descent.

  Zahn looked at the detectives and crossed the room. “Hello gentlemen, you must be the detectives who wanted to see me.” He reached out and shook their hands. “This is my aide, Kia Sarat.” Sarat nodded and silently extended his hand as well.

  “Thanks for your time. I’m Dan Griffin and this is Mike Buckley. We’re detectives with the 19th in New York.”

  Zahn raised his eyebrows. “New York? That’s quite a long way. What brings you down here?” He glanced at his phone and walked around his large desk.

  The detectives approached from the other side. “We’re investigating a homicide,” Buckley said.

  “I see. And how exactly does this homicide bring you here?” Zahn smoothly sat down in his chair, motioning for them to use the chairs in front of his desk. His aide, Sarat, moved to the side and remained standing.

  “Actually, we were hoping you could tell us,” Griffin said, filling his seat.

  “I’m not sure what I can do, but I should warn you, I have to leave to catch a plane in a few minutes.” Zahn extended his arm and looked at his watch. “So what is it about your investigation that involves the State Department?”

  “Well,” Griffin cleared his throat. “A woman was thrown out of an eighth-story window just days after she suddenly left town with her daughter.”

  Zahn looked at Sarat and then back at the detectives, spreading his arms in a curious gesture. “I’m sorry to hear that. So what does that have to do with us?”

  Griffin leaned forward. “During those few days, it looks like someone was trying to locate her. We spoke to the phone company and someone had instructed them to track the victim’s location through her cell phone. That instruction came from your State Department.”

  Zahn looked confused. He remained quiet, thinking. “Perhaps there is a connection between this woman and some investigation we have underway.”

  “Perhaps,” Buckley said. “It just strikes us as a little odd, since the Department of State is an international organization, not domestic. So why would the department be following, or trying to find, a woman who has never traveled outside the country?”

  Zahn shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t know. Again, perhaps she was involved in something or with someone that -”

  “She didn’t have a criminal record either,” Griffin interrupted. “And while it’s possible that she was involved in something or with someone who did, in our experience that’s pretty uncommon. People who stay out of trouble generally tend to have relationships and friends who also stay out of trouble.”

  Zahn shrugged again. Griffin noted that he was beginning to look a little irritated. “Well then, perhaps she was romantically involved with someone who she didn’t know very well. We do have an office in New York. Maybe she was involved with someone within our employ and things did not end well.” He shook his head and looked at his watch again. “I’m sorry detectives. I cannot even begin to imagine the range of personal or professional issues that my thousands of employees might have. My schedule is extremely busy and I’m afraid I’m just not briefed in the details of everyone’s lives within this department,” he added with sarcasm.

  “We understand,” Buckley said. “And we know that you are very busy. It would be helpful if we could have a look at some of your phone records to see if we might learn who it was that made the call.” Buckley tried to maintain a non-threatening tone. “Of course, this can be a little tedious, so we’re happy to do the grunt work to ensure we don’t waste anyone’s time.”

  Zahn gave a coy smile. “Well, I appreciate the offer Mr. Buckley, but as you can imagine, communications within the department are frequently of a confidential nature. You can understand the challenge it would pose for us, turning over internal information without first reviewing it.”

  Back in New York in the forensics department, Mike Ramirez sat in front of his computer looking through the telephone company’s phone logs. He looked closely at the digital entry that had originally launched the searches for Barbara Baxter’s location.

  There were some special characters included in the record details that he did not recognize. He looked at the byte count, or size of the record, and noticed that it was significantly larger than the rest of the log records. Ramirez thought to himself, tapping his nose with his index finger. It looked like some kind of attachment to the actual record. He looked at the initials of the person who had added the entry. It read KL.

  Ramirez picked up the phone and dialed a number. It only rang once before it was picked up. “Hey Steve, this is Ramirez again. So listen, I’m looking through the logs you sent me, and I see that the person who entered the search instruction has the initials KL. Does that ring a bell?”

  After a pause, Ramirez’s contact at the cellular company replied, “Yeah, that’s Kelvin Lu. He was a manager, but he doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “Hmm…,” Ramirez sat thinking. “It looks like this record has more data to it. Like something appended; like an attachment. Can you open it up?”

  On the other end, Steve started typing quickly and fell silent. After several seconds he came back on the line. “Unfortunately, I can’t get access since he was a manager. You’ll need to send a formal request to his replacement to have a new password applied to Kelvin’s account. And that usually takes a couple weeks.”

  Ramirez grimaced. They didn’t have a couple of weeks. He needed it now. “Any chance we can break into his account?”

  Steve lamented, “You didn’t just say that.”

  Ramirez smiled on the other end of the phone. “Say what?”

  Ramirez suddenly noticed something show up in the chat window on his computer. It was from the same person he was speaking to.

  Can’t say on the phone. Chat is encrypted and safer.

  Ramirez cleared his throat and spoke into the phone again. “Okay, thanks Steve. Hey you want to go to the game next weekend?”

  “Sorry can’t,” Steve replied. “Maybe next time.”

  “Sure, I’ll catch you later then.” Ramirez hung up, put down his phone, and immediately typed a reply.

  What system are these requests accepted from?r />
  After a few moments, a reply appeared on the screen.

  System is called nadcsub01. That’s all the help I can give you. Am now deleting these messages.

  Ramirez smiled. That was more than he needed. He immediately went to work trying to resolve and find the server in their giant network. Once he had it, he closely examined the server and discovered existing security vulnerabilities in the operating system that had not been patched. He was not surprised. Few if any companies kept their network systems perfectly up to date. When a computer team is responsible for maintaining and troubleshooting those servers, the common mantra was “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it”. As a result, almost every system server had patches that were waiting to be applied until the computer team was sure the upgrade would resolve their issue without creating technical problems at the same time.

  Where Ramirez was really lucky was in the particular vulnerabilities this server had. There was a little known cheat to gain control of the operating system by using a command to fool the machine, making it believe Ramirez was the authorized administrator, and then resetting the password for him. It was an old vulnerability and an old hack which made him wonder how many other servers had been neglected.

  Once he was in, it took less than thirty minutes to find the old user account for Kelvin Lu, reactivate it, and then reset the password to something that Ramirez could actually use to log in. Finally, the last step was finding the right record he was looking for. When he did, he opened it up in the system and looked at the attachment. It was a letter from the State Department, and it was signed by the person who had ordered the search for the Baxter woman. Ramirez picked up his phone. Griffin and Buckley were going to owe him big for this.

  Zahn’s time was up; he had to catch his plane. He stood up and straightened his jacket. “I’m sorry detectives. I simply do not have time for this as I must leave. Rest assured, I will submit an inquiry on the matter and see if we can get an answer for you.”