77 Shadow Street

2

The Basement Security Room

Having been shot five times when responding to a domestic-disturbance call, having almost died in the ambulance, having almost died on the operating table, having subsequently contracted a vicious case of viral pneumonia and almost died while recuperating in the hospital, Devon Murphy had quit the police force two years earlier. Although he’d once been a patrol officer, the real deal, he wasn’t in the least embarrassed to spend the rest of his career as a security guard, as what some of his former brothers in blue would call a rent-a-cop or a Barney. Devon didn’t have a macho problem. He didn’t need to prove his toughness. He was only twenty-nine, and he wanted to live, and his chances of living were greatly increased by being a Barney in the Pendleton rather than a target for every thug and crackpot on the city streets.

On the west side of the basement, the security center occupied a room between the superintendent’s apartment and the big heating-cooling plant. The windowless space, eighteen feet by thirty-six feet, felt cozy but not claustrophobic. A microwave, a coffeemaker, a refrigerator, and a sink provided most of the comforts of home.

The khaki uniform was kind of dorky, and all that saved Devon from looking like a janitor was a gun belt, from which were suspended a Mace holder containing a small canister of Sabre pepper spray, a cell-phone holder, work keys, a small LED flashlight, and a swivel holster sheathing a Springfield Armory XDM chambered for .45 ACP. In a luxury condominium like the Pendleton, the likelihood that he’d have to use the pistol was hardly higher than the probability that he’d be abducted by extraterrestrials on his way home from work.

Primarily, he was required to cycle through the twenty-four security cameras in the building. And on a random schedule, twice a shift, he got some fresh air by patrolling the basement, the ground floor, and the courtyard, a beat that took fifteen minutes to cover.

Six wall-mounted plasma screens each presented four security-camera views in a quartered format. With a touch-screen Crestron control, Devon could instantly select any one of the cameras for a full-screen display if he saw something suspicious, which he never did. Seventy-Seven Shadow Street was the most peaceful address in the city.

Both nice people and jerks lived in the Pendleton, but the homeowners’ association treated employees well. Devon was provided with a comfortable Herman Miller office chair. The refrigerator was stocked with bottled water, fresh cream, various flavors of coffee, and all of the fixings for whatever brew might be the favorite of the guard on duty.

He was drinking a Jamaican-Colombian blend with a dash of cinnamon when a breet-breet signal alerted him that someone had opened the lobby door to enter from the street. He looked to the appropriate plasma display, summoned the lobby camera to full screen, and saw Senator Earl Blandon come in from the December night.

Blandon was one of the jerks. He belonged in jail, but he bought his freedom by loading up on attorneys in five-thousand-dollar suits. No doubt he had also threatened to take half his political party down with him if they didn’t put their hands up the backsides of their puppet prosecutors and puppet judges to ensure that the Muppet show called justice would follow the plot he preferred.

Police work had made Devon somewhat cynical.

With Blandon’s thick white hair and Roman-coin face, he still looked like a senator, and he seemed to think that appearance alone should continue to command the respect that he had received before he disgraced his office. He was curt, dismissive, arrogant, and in need of having his ear hair trimmed, a detail that fascinated Devon, who was meticulous about his personal grooming.

Blandon had sopped up so much sauce over the years that he was inoculated against visible displays of inebriation; he no longer revealed his drunkenness with slurred speech or with an unsteady gait. Instead of staggering when he was loaded, he walked taller and threw his shoulders back farther and raised his chin more imperially than when he was sober. The telltales of his intoxication were faultless posture and an almost flamboyant poise.

Norman Fixxer, the night concierge, released the lock on the inner lobby door. A breet-breet signal issued from the security-station door monitor.

Although Blandon belonged in prison instead of in an ultra-luxury condominium, he was nevertheless an apartment owner. Like any resident, he expected to have his privacy even in the public spaces of the Pendleton. Devon Murphy never followed residents, by camera, along hallways and into elevators, except for the ex-senator, who could be singularly entertaining.

Once, having passed through the lobby and reached the ground-floor corridor, he had been too soused to maintain his deceptively regal posture and had dropped to all fours, crawling to the north elevator—and out of it on the third floor. On another post-midnight return, he strode confidently past the elevator, turned the corner into the north wing, seemed suddenly to become disoriented, opened the door to the concierge’s office, evidently mistook it for a bathroom, and urinated on the floor.

That office was now kept locked when not in use.

On this occasion, Blandon found the elevator easily enough, and he boarded it with an air of dignity worthy of a king climbing into his royal carriage. As the doors closed, and after he pressed the button for the third floor, he glanced up once at the security camera in the car, and then he looked around at the bird-and-cloud mural with an expression of pure contempt.

The ex-senator had written two long letters to the homeowners’ association criticizing the mural with what he must have assumed was the erudition of a knowledgeable art connoisseur. The board, on which sat at least one genuine art connoisseur, instead found the letters to be contemptible, confrontational, and alarming. The security staff had not been bluntly told to observe Earl Blandon in the elevator when he returned home inebriated, against the possibility that he might deface the mural, but the suggestion had been made indirectly.

Now, as the elevator passed the second floor, something unprecedented happened. An expression of surprise came over the senator’s face … and swirling currents of blue static, like nothing Devon had seen before, suddenly flushed the image from the screen. The five other screens, quartered into twenty camera shots, also succumbed to the static, and the security system went blind.

Simultaneously, Devon heard low tympanic beats, hollow and strange and barely audible extended notes. Through the soles of his shoes, he felt vibrations in the concrete floor, subtle waves resonating in time with the drumming.

He didn’t become alarmed, because the door and window monitors remained operative, and all the indicator lights were green on the board. No one was forcing entrance at any point. If the sound had grown louder and the accompanying vibrations had accelerated, Devon’s puzzlement and concern might have swelled into apprehension.

The phenomenon continued at a consistent level, however, and after about half a minute, the low drumming faded, the last of the vibrations passed through the floor, and the blue static receded from the plasma screens. The many security-camera points of view returned.

The elevator camera had a wide-angle lens and was mounted near the ceiling at a rear corner of the car, providing coverage of the entire interior, including the doors—which were closed. Earl Blandon was gone. Apparently the car had arrived at the third floor, and the ex-senator had disembarked.

Devon switched to the camera covering the short length of public corridor serving Apartments 3-A and 3-C, and then to the camera that provided a view of the entire long north-wing hallway on the third floor. No Earl Blandon. His was the first apartment in that wing, 3-D, overlooking the courtyard. He must have stepped out of the elevator, turned the corner, and let himself through his front door during the time that the video surveillance failed.

Devon cycled through all twenty-four cameras. Without exception, the public spaces were deserted. The Pendleton remained quiet and still. Evidently, above the basement, the sullen drumming and the vibrations had been so faint that, if anyone had been awakened, no one had been concerned enough to step out of his apartment and have a look around.