“Great, thank you. Daria’s getting fat with our first.”
“Congratulations.” Jack laughed. “Never heard it put that way. There is nothing better than kids. Keep me posted.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Larry hit a button, and Jack and Mia walked through the security gate and headed to the elevator, the doors open awaiting their arrival.
“Fat with her first?” Mia repeated with a laugh. “Do you know every cop in the city personally?”
Jack smiled. “Hardly. If I could, I would, though.”
Mia rubbed Jack’s back. “Once a cop, always a cop.”
Jack and Mia rode the car down and arrived in a small vestibule. There was a couch and two small chairs, their soft design in sharp contrast to the iron door and adjacent Plexiglas window on the far wall, its three-inch bullet-proof design distorting Charlie Brooks’s round face like a carnival mirror. The small window revealed the head and shoulder of the sixty-year-old man who had been the facility’s gatekeeper for twenty-two years.
“Whoa,” Charlie said with a smile, his voice tinny and hollow through the small speaker. He glanced down with an arched brow at his lap. “If I knew the big cheese was coming down, I would have worn pants.”
Jack smiled as he pulled Mia toward the glass into Charlie’s view. “Charlie, I’d like you to meet my wife, Mia.”
“I beg your pardon.” All sense of mirth fell out of the old guard’s face as he looked at her with contrite eyes. He quickly stood up in a chivalrous greeting while making a point to show his clothed legs. “I always wear pants to work.”
The door lock fell back with a thud as a loud buzzer echoed through the halls.
Jack pulled open the heavy metal door and ushered Mia into a small hall, the door crashing closed behind him sealing them in the confined space. The small room was adorned with a metal desk; in the corner was an ancient cathode-ray TV atop a VHS player, its cable line draped along the ceiling, disappearing into a conduit. And while the room and its accoutrements were of a prior century’s vintage, the computer setup on the desk appeared to come from the future, off of some starship: three flat-screen monitors, images of an elaborate file system on one, a security monitoring configuration on another, and the third displaying a picture of Jack with his fingerprints and statistics below. It all sat before Charlie, who was far larger than Mia expected. At six-two, the older man, in his crisp NYPD blues, looked as if he didn’t need the protection of all the security or the 9mm pistol on his belt to fend off any intruder.
Jack laid the metal box on the table against the wall.
“How can I help you, Mr. Keeler?” Charlie’s voice had taken on a forced formality.
“It’s a lock box, highly sensitive case.”
Charlie looked between the two of them as he began to type it into his computer. The evidence-tracking program came up.
“You need to do me a favor,” Jack said as he laid his hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Don’t log it into the system.”
Charlie slowly turned and looked at Jack, his tone saying far more than the question he uttered. “How are we going to track it?”
Jack stared back, his eyes speaking volumes.
“Suppose something happens to you or me,” Charlie said slowly. “How’s anyone going to know where to look?”
“We’ll just have to make sure nothing happens to you or me.”
Charlie paused a moment, his mind working. “This isn’t some elaborate way to hide Christmas presents or anything, is it?”
Mia smiled. “If the three of us tuck it away, there shouldn’t be any problem.”
Charlie shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “You know I can’t let her beyond the gate-”
“She’s FBI,” Jack said.
Mia reached into her purse and flashed her credentials.
“You know that carries no weight.” He nodded to Mia. “No offense.”
Jack looked at Charlie, the moment dragging on.
Charlie flipped off his computer, reached into his desk, and withdrew a large white sticker with a long bar code on it. He slapped it on the metal case. “I guess being married to you carries some weight.”
Charlie buzzed the door behind them, and the three headed through.
The evidence room was enormous, nearly the size of the building’s footprint. The raw space of concrete floors and walls was filled with thousands of shelves, twelve feet high, their layout creating dozens upon dozens of rows and aisles that formed passages and walkways that ran on for hundreds of feet. The space was lit by harsh, bright fluorescent lights, although the shelves conspired to cast heavy shadows that ran off in every direction.
Boxes of all sizes filled the shelves, their contents varying from dime bags of marijuana to photographs of domestic-violence cases; expensive jewels from the latest store robbery to the two knives taken from the suspect in the slaying of an off-duty cop. Trials were won and lost on the evidence held within this facility.
Jack, Mia, and Charlie walked down the central aisle from which forty rows branched off toward the secondary aisles. One could truly get lost in the labyrinthine space, feeling like Theseus without a thread.
“You forget the scope of the justice system,” Mia said. “And you handle all this yourself?”
“One man per shift,” Charlie said. “It’s really slow most of the time. I’m kind of like the librarian, checking things in and out.”
“Do you ever get lonely?”
“Nah, kind of peaceful. Besides, there’s usually a decent flow of people throughout the day to tell me what’s going on in the world.”
“What do you do if you get hungry?”
“I bring a bag lunch or dinner, but…”
Charlie smiled and tilted his head for them to follow him as he turned down row S. He reached up and pulled down a large cardboard box labeled Evidence 9530273. He lifted the lid to reveal a bag of Oreos, a six of beer, two bottles of water, some chips, magazines, and VHS tapes of The Quiet Man, The Poseidon Adventure, True Grit, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
“I’m prepared for any scenario,” he said in a mock-serious tone.
Jack and Mia laughed, appreciating the humor intended to break Mia’s serious mood.
Charlie put the box away and led them back out to the center aisle. He finally turned and pointed to a vacant section of shelf on row Y. They all looked up.
“Stick it up there in the white-collar-crime section away from all the drugs, jewels, and guns. No one will have any interest in it over here.” Charlie turned and headed back toward his office.
Jack turned to Mia and looked into her eyes. “You’re not going to tell me what’s in the case, are you?”
Mia slowly shook her head.
Jack looked at her as he slid the box onto the deep shelf seven feet up. “You’re sure about this?”
Mia looked up into his eyes. She couldn’t hide her worry. There was an intensity in her face, a focus like Jack had rarely seen. Mia was excellent at hiding her emotions, her thoughts, never betraying her inner feelings to the outside world. But Jack wasn’t the outside world. He could read her as if she were an open book.
“I’ve never been more sure about anything,” Mia softly said.
And finally, Jack realized that what he saw in his wife’s eyes wasn’t worry or concern about her latest case. It was a far more base emotion.
It was fear.
CHAPTER 14
Mia’s eyes opened with a start, her heart already pounding in her ears as she awoke from a nightmare into
