“Sure,” Gannon said, thinking,
Falco opened the door, entered then shut it. In that instant, Gannon thought he saw a camera on a tripod aimed at the street below.
But Gannon also glimpsed a display of photographs taped to a wall; a collection of shots of the flower shop and the shapely woman he’d just seen tending to her flowers.
As Gannon contemplated the question, his BlackBerry vibrated.
The number was blocked. Gannon answered, keeping his voice low.
“Jack, this is Brad. I got your message.”
“What’s up with Ramapo?”
“Buddy, I wish I could help you, but they’ve tightened things up.”
“Can you give me a hypothetical?”
“Afraid not. I had to make this call from a safe phone. I wish I could help, believe me. I have to go.”
“Wait, wait. If you were me, where would you go right now and what would you do?”
A long silent moment passed.
“Hypothetically?”
“Yes.”
“I’d haul myself back to the service center as fast as I could right now.”
“What’s going on, hypothetically?”
“I would just do it. Get there and watch and learn. I have to go.”
Gannon stood outside Falco’s door. Should he go to Ramapo now or wait? He wrestled with the decision amid the sounds of furniture being rearranged in Falco’s apartment. If he didn’t go to the center and missed something, Lisker would nail his balls to the newsroom wall.
“Mr. Falco!” Gannon knocked hard on the door. “Mr. Falco, I have to go!”
Falco’s door opened about six inches.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Falco, I have to go, but I’ll be back.”
“I don’t understand. I only need a few more minutes, then you can come in and I’ll help you find what you’re looking for.”
Gannon held up a crisp twenty, folded around his business card.
“This is for you. I will be back. I really need to do this, but I have to go. Believe me, I want to see your stuff and we have a deal, but I have to go.”
Falco inspected the twenty as Gannon rushed down the stairs, to the street and trotted to his car.
Morrow stopped the car at the main entrance of the Freedom Freeway Service Center.
Dr. Sullivan, in the front passenger seat, turned to Lisa in the back.
“How are you holding up? Are you sure you can you do this?”
Lisa was looking directly ahead, her hands clasped together in her lap as she struggled with the panic rattling through her.
She’d agreed to return to the center this morning after two more difficult and fruitless interviews the previous night. Sullivan had said that research showed that on-the-scene sessions increased the accuracy of memories and the chances of unlocking suppressed details.
But there were risks.
As the engine ticked down and Morrow consulted his phone, Sullivan searched Lisa’s face and touched her hand.
“Remember, we discussed the downside, Lisa.”
Lisa nodded. Reliving the event also increased the potential to intensify the emotional fallout and further traumatize the witness.
“After I do this, my kids and I are going home, okay? That was the deal. I will do everything I can to help you catch these monsters, but my kids and I need our lives back. We’ve got a lot to sort out, you know?”
“I understand,” Sullivan said.
Morrow finished on his phone.
“Let’s go, we’re ready.”
With the exception of a few emergency and service vehicles, the parking lot was deserted. A teenage boy wearing a Freedom Freeway T-shirt and ball cap was trying to corral the discarded ribbons of yellow crime scene tape slithering across the lot. The service center’s big sign out front said SORRY TEMPORARILY CLOSED; so did the one printed in block letters on the sheet of paper taped inside the glass door.
The flutter and clang of the flagpoles underscored the quiet.
Morrow held up his palm, indicating that he, Lisa and Sullivan would wait outside the entrance as Agent Craig Roberts, holding a walkie-talkie, exited to greet them.
“Almost ready now,” he told Morrow. “Heads-up, manager behind me.”
“Got it,” Morrow said.
The FBI’s Evidence Response Team had been poised to clear and release the scene last night when Morrow alerted them to hang on to it. The delay frustrated Mac Foyt, the center’s manager, who had followed Roberts outside to plead to Morrow.
“Agent Morrow, we were told we could open this morning.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Foyt. We’re going to need a little more time.”
A breeze kicked up the pages on Foyt’s clipboard and lifted his tie as he undid the collar button on his white shirt and tried to make a case.
“We’re respectful of what happened, don’t get me wrong,” Foyt said. “We’re cooperating, but I’m getting calls from companies that are planning routes, fuel schedules. I’ve got my staff on hold, a hell of a lot of business on the line.”
“We ask for your patience a little while longer, Mr. Foyt,” Morrow said.
Roberts clipped a small microphone to Lisa’s collar. It was wired to a pack she’d helped him fasten to the side of her waist.
“Good. This will pick up everything you say,” Roberts said as the walkie-talkie he’d set on the ground crackled. Roberts grabbed it, spoke into it, then to Morrow and the others.
“Ready,” he said, then turned to the manager. “Mr. Foyt, you’ll have to excuse us, but we need you and your staff to clear the area now.”
“It’s just me and Aaron.” Foyt grimaced and whistled to the teenager in the lot. As they walked together to a Cadillac Seville parked some distance away, Sullivan acknowledged Morrow’s nod and turned to Lisa.
“We’re going to begin. All set?”
As if cued, the air split with motorcycle engines starting up and Lisa caught her breath. Four of them idled about fifty yards down the roadway beside a white unmarked panel van.
“Now? We’re doing it now? I thought we’d walk in and talk first.”
“No, we have to replicate the event cold, like this. It’s the most effective way.” Sullivan put her hand on Lisa’s shoulder. “We’ve used statements to re-create everything as accurately as possible. The people in the vehicles and inside are all law enforcement—FBI, state, local.”
Roberts held the door open for Lisa.
It was moving too fast. Lisa took a breath, then entered with Sullivan beside her, encouraging her to narrate
