Every Second. Rick Mofina

took its position at the front door, waiting like a mechanized alien visitor.

      The SWAT team surrounded the entrance, weapons at the ready, as one member used a crowbar to pry the door open. The cracking of the frame echoed in the deserted neighborhood. The robot hummed over the debris, toddled inside and the SWAT team retreated.

      The video pictures were sharp and clear.

      The detective operating the robot used its speaker system, calling on anyone inside to surrender to the NYPD. Roman watched the video feed over the detective’s shoulder and prepared himself.

      He glanced at his phone and the photos of Lori, Dan and Billy Fulton intel had provided him. Dan was a good-looking suburban dad, Lori had an attractive smile, and Billy, in his ball cap with Dad at Yankee Stadium, was the all-American kid.

      The safety of the hostages was Roman’s chief concern. He’d need to find common ground with the hostage taker—was it Dan, who’d cracked under pressure? Or was someone else involved? Roman would work fast to establish credibility and trust, then find the cause of the problem. He needed to reduce all the risks. He’d never lie, but he wouldn’t be quick to reveal the whole truth. He’d need to keep the hostage taker’s mind off harming the hostages or himself. He’d probe the problem, let the hostage taker vent. Roman would use a tone of concern, not authority, to reduce anxieties. Above all, he’d be careful to address any immediate needs and keep hope alive for everyone.

      He would never forget Pruitt, a negotiator in the Bronx who badly misread his situation when a distraught father took his wife and four kids hostage. After seven hours, Pruitt was convinced the SWAT team didn’t need to go in because he’d resolved it when the father agreed, saying: “There’s only one way outta this.” Pruitt missed the signal and the standoff ended with the dad killing the family before putting a bullet in his head. Pruitt never forgave himself, and six months later ended his own life.

      Roman had been a pallbearer.

      The robot had descended into the basement, searched it but found nothing. Now it was moving through the living room and the kitchen, sending back live images of the table, the fridge and the calendar on the corkboard, marked with game dates and a note: Billy dentist. Then it lumbered up the stairs to slowly inspect the bedrooms and bathrooms, before returning to the main floor, placing a phone there.

      “If you are concealed in this house, the NYPD wants to talk to you. This phone will ring shortly. We advise you to answer.”

      The robot exited.

      The tactical commander nodded to the SWAT commander, who dispatched his team.

      * * *

      They moved silently from behind trees, parked cars, house corners. One sniper was flat on his stomach on the roof of the house next door, a bedroom window filling his rifle scope. Another sharpshooter used the hood of an SUV to take a line on a living room window.

      Team members crept up tight to the Fultons’ house, the utility man, the breacher, the gas team and other shooters. The squad had taken positions. Members were prone at the front and rear. Each officer knew that the robot could easily have missed bombs, or people, hiding in closets, appliances, walls and ceilings.

      The building was still hot.

      The squad leader whispered to the command post.

      “We’re set.”

      The tactical commander nodded to Roman, who dialed the cell phone. In the stillness, the SWAT team could hear it ringing. And ringing. Roman let it ring twenty-five times.

      No one answered.

      He turned to the commanders.

      Haggerty green-lighted his squad.

      “Go!”

      Five seconds later the pop-pop and shattering glass sounds of tear gas canisters echoed down the street. White clouds billowed from the main floor, followed by a deafening crack-crack and lightning flashes of stun grenades as the SWAT team rushed into the house from both entrances.

      Flashlight beams and red-line laser sights pierced the acrid fog. The Darth Vader breathing of the heavily armed and gas-masked squad filled the home as they swept each floor.

      In the basement they found used duct tape, chains, a padlock, a pile of sheets, towels and snow tires heaped oddly next to the washer and dryer. In the kitchen, remnants of pizza in a box and empty soda cans littered the table. Upstairs, the beds were unmade. Bedroom number one: empty. Bedroom number two: empty. Bathroom number one: empty. Bathroom number two: empty. Closets: empty. The ceiling, floors and walls were tapped for body mass.

      Empty.

      No people.

      Nothing.

      “Looks like somebody was tied up down here, but there ain’t nothing here now, sir,” the SWAT squad leader in the basement radioed to the command post.

      “Okay,” Walsh said. “Get the fans in there, clear out the gas. We need Crime Scene working on what they can find for us ASAP.”

       14

      Roseoak Park, New York

      Kate spotted the woman.

      She was hugging her cat in the back of a police car, amid the tangle of emergency vehicles just inside the tape.

      Why have they isolated her? What does she know?

      Kate had noticed her from a vantage point outside the line where she and Gabe Atwater, a Newslead photographer, had watched ESU do its work on the house.

      “Got some dramatic images.” Gabe’s face was clenched behind his camera and he was gently rolling its long lens, shooting the SWAT team in the distance.

      “Get one of her. In the back of the car, see? Look tight between the vans,” Kate said, nodding to the cat lady. “I want to get to her later.” She kept an eye on the woman while talking on her phone to Craig in the newsroom. He’d been monitoring ESU’s play-by-play on the scanners.

      “Sounds like it’s winding down,” he said. “No one’s in the house.”

      “Okay, thanks.”

      Kate hung up and gave Gabe the update.

      “So the mystery deepens.” He’d resumed shooting the SWAT team after a few shots of the cat lady.

      “Do you see a name on a mailbox or anything?”

      “Nothing.”

      Kate bit her bottom lip.

      Who is this family? Where are they now? And why would a manager rob his own bank?

      Thanks to her years as a crime reporter, Kate knew how to read a scene, knew what to glean from it to give her stories depth and accuracy. She’d studied the same textbooks detectives studied to pass their exams. She’d researched and reported on enough homicides, fires, robberies, kidnappings, trials and a spectrum of other crimes to know the anatomy of an investigation.

      Police radios that had been muted began crackling again with dispatches leaking from the emergency crews at the outer perimeter. A few dozen residents and rubberneckers from streets nearby had gathered at the line with about a dozen news types clustered at the row of TV cameras.

      Kate anticipated that at any moment the perimeter tape would come down, police would rope off the house and the crime scene techs would begin to process it. While the NYPD was all over this, she knew that bank robberies also fell to the FBI’s jurisdiction. Investigators would take statements from witnesses, friends and neighbors, getting their accounts here and at the bank, or any other location that was a factor.

      Some of the marked units began moving out to let traffic flow as uniformed officers began pulling down the tape.

      “It’s all over, folks,” an officer said, collecting the tape.