The Count of Carolina, page 18
part #2 of A Clean Up Crew Series
“I wasn’t sure I dialed right.”
“You weren’t sure if you hit the one key?”
“Yeah, I know. Like I said, stupid.”
To his great relief, Clyde heard laughter through the phone. It was a sharp and cutting laughter, but Clyde reasoned it was better than the alternative.
“You said it, not me,” Conrad said. Then just before he hung up, he said, “No news, by the way. Just keep your phone on.”
“Always,” said Clyde Davis, trying now to keep from bursting into tears of relief until he was off the phone. Two tones signaled that Conrad had ended the call.
Clyde set the phone down and picked up the TV remote. Yeah, that’s right. I’m stupid… like a fox! No, wait. That’s not how that goes…
He tried, for approximately seven seconds, to remember the proper wording of his triumphant declaration, but then noticed that the Old West show on HBO with the naked robots was coming on, and he started to forget everything before that moment.
As Dan and J.J. made sure they’d gotten everything from the SUV and were preparing to walk around to the front of the motel, they heard some tire squealing from the parking lot, and they froze in place, still hidden by the side of the building, until the vehicle sped away.
When he peeked around the corner and saw that the area was clear, he waved for J.J. to follow him. As she drew beside her father, J.J. asked, “What the hell was that all about?”
“Kids, probably,” Dan said. “It’s always kids.”
“Oh, okay, Mister ‘Hey, J.J. let’s test drive a Porsche.’”
Dan opened the door and let his daughter in, locking up behind them. “That was a sweet ride, wasn’t it.”
“Oh, it was amazing. I’m just saying there was considerably less rubber on those tires when we brought that car back. It isn’t always the kids.”
“Alright, enough debating. We should probably grab a few hours of sleep before your appointment. I feel bad for your mom, stuck in a broom closet all night.”
“I’m sure she’ll survive the waiting. I’m just nervous about what might happen to her if she has to come help me.”
Dan managed a cavalier chuckle. “You should be far more nervous about what’s going to happen to him if she comes to help you.”
J.J. giggled a little when Dan said that, and she lay down on her bed. Dan was not laughing, as he’d meant that more literally than J.J. could know. To her, it was just a statement conveying her, the cub, being protected by the roaring mama bear. Dan thought of the things he’d seen Nicole do in Romania and realized the truth was too frightening to laugh about.
Nicole, remaining in the trees and then the shadows, pulled a small cylindrical device, looking not-unlike a small but sturdy flashlight from what she called a “utility pouch” (but which Dan and J.J. were adamant was in fact a fanny pack), and gave it a twist. It made an almost inaudible high-pitched electronic ramping-up sound, and Nicole held it to her eye. As she scanned the back of the office block, she thought that turning on the telescope’s night-vision function may not have been necessary, for although the approach to the building was completely unlit, the rear wall itself was painted with light from a series of five, evenly-spaced mercury lamps, protected by cages and extending from the roof on curved arms, which allowed them to be pointed downward on the cinderblock wall.
She quickly spotted three security cams on the wall and noticed a fourth mounted on a pole facing the northwest corner of the office. It was not an ideal setup from her perspective, and she felt a little frustrated as she continued to scan. But suddenly, she saw a possible solution to her dilemma.
At the opposite end of the wall, there was about a six-foot section leading to the corner that was outside the focus of the nearest light. And even better, thanks to the green glow of the night vision that she’d decided to leave on, she could see what appeared to be a basement window, the only one of four not bathed in illumination.
The final piece of providence was that the stand of trees ran right along the building on that end. If she didn’t make any missteps, she might be able to avoid showing up in any security footage at all. With one last sweep of the whole area with the scope, she moved back into the trees and followed them to the far corner of the office.
Once there, Nicole fell back on training and healthy paranoia, and held the scope to her eye a final time. After looking at everything from this new perspective, she was satisfied that she hadn’t overlooked any important, and possibly fatal, details. She shut down the night vision and tucked the viewing tube back in her utility pouch. She frowned, remembering the ribbing Dan and J.J. had given her. Then she smiled wanly, knowing that if the pack had been on the other fanny, she’d have done the same thing.
Refocusing her mind quickly, she slid from the cover of the trees at a point that was actually around the corner of the building, coming out against the shorter side wall of the block. Her reasoning was that although she would probably avoid the camera’s detection, even a minor movement of tree branches might be noticed by someone skilled at security footage analysis, especially if it was the only tree moving. The complete absence of a breeze convinced her this was the best idea. She paused for a moment and pulled a second object from the pouch, a black ski mask. She pulled it on, making sure all of her hair was tucked inside. Even though she was confident that she wouldn’t be spotted by any external cameras, she could very well get in through the window and plop down in front of a dozen cameras and a film crew inside the building.
When she did round the corner, she was a crouching, all-black ball, and she moved quickly to the window. It was not unlike basement windows she’d seen all her life, with the exception being the frame, which was metal rather than wood and the glass itself. Most basement windows are comprised of three panes of glass, making them smaller and making unauthorized entry more difficult. In what Nicole considered a serious error in design, this window was made up of only two panes, meaning each one was nearly eighteen inches wide, giving more than ample clearance for someone, especially someone as trim and agile as she was, to slither through once there was no glass in the way.
She reached into the pouch yet again. Obviously, the quickest way to remove the transparent barricade would be to give it a quick, hard tap with the metal scope. But Cole knew that there were alarms activated by sound as well as by motion, and the shattering of a window would surely trigger one, should such a device be installed. Far better to assume it was. Therefore, it was not the scope she brought out, but two other items: a small, three-inch diameter suction cup, and a Home Depot glass cutter.
Working quickly, Nicole scored the tool along the top and left side of one of the two panes. The glass cutter made an audible sound as it passed over the window, but after the first stroke, Nicole paused. When no alarms sounded after fifteen seconds, which she knew to be the most often selected delay on the sound-triggered systems, she continued. Once she was confident of her first two cuts, she attached the suction cup in the middle of the glass. Holding the cup’s grip with her left hand, she made her final two cuts, then dragged the tool over all four sides a final time for good measure. She used her left to give the back of her right, into which she’d transferred the suction cup, a single, firm smack, and with the tiniest of grating sound, and, thankfully, a complete absence of any shattering, the cut pane moved forward. Tilting it just so, she pulled it carefully back out of the frame, and with a minimum of motion, set it gently on the grass by the edge of the tree line.
Moving so that she could look through the window and survey the area to which it led, Nicole tapped the forehead area of the ski mask, causing a pair of twin, high-intensity LEDs to fire up. The tiny lamps threw much more illumination than their size would indicate possible. To her delight, she saw that the basement at this end of the building appeared to be filled with random stored and forgotten junk, most of which had clearly been there a while, based on the thick dust and cobwebs. She saw no evidence of surveillance devices, so she tucked the glass cutter and suction cup back into her fanny… utility pouch and slithered through the open window. Once inside, the first thing she did was check to see if the cut edges of glass that remained in the window frame had done any damage, but it didn’t appear to have even left any scratches on the black leather that made up her pants and the sleeveless vest she wore. Nor were there any slits on the arms of the long-sleeved black cotton shirt that protruded from the vest. The second thing was to examine the window from the inside to determine why she had been unable to find a latch. Finally, she realized that the only nod to security this section of the building had received was the fact that the window was not designed to be open at all. It was strictly for letting in some natural light, though why that would be needed in this dusty corner, she could not imagine.
Nicole had obsessively studied the floorplan of the building that Darlene had somehow found and emailed to her. By memorizing the size and layout of the office block, as well as all indicated doorways and stairwells, she was able to successfully navigate to a set of stairs, that by her calculations would bring her out into a little el in the main hallway of the building. As she reached the top of the stairs, she tapped the switch in the mask again, extinguishing the lights. Slowly, she opened the door and peered out. The main floor was dimly lit, but it was enough for her to not have to worry about having to use her head-lamps for now. She saw that the alcove housed this doorway, as well as two restrooms and a water fountain on the opposite wall. Looking up, she saw there were no cameras. She stepped fully out of the stairway and quietly eased the door shut. As she expected, it was locked from this side, but that didn’t concern her. She had no plans to return to the basement.
From her memory of the layout, the office used by Dr. Lewis should be a right turn out of her current location, then the first door on the right side of the hallway.
Before stepping from the comfort of the small patch of safety that the access hallway was providing, she pulled out yet another toy from the pouch, a small, rectangular mirror on a telescoping wand. Extending it slowly and carefully into the main hall, she quickly determined that she was about to encounter the first interior camera with which she would have to deal. Located almost exactly at the center point of the hallway, she was relieved to see that the office building had not updated it security recently, as the type of camera mounted on the wall was not the more popular sort that was hidden behind a semi-orb of tinted glass, making it impossible to determine where the camera was pointed at any given time. She saw this was the larger, exposed model that did scan back and forth to see the entire hallway, but actually moved with a slight motor whine, from one extremity to the other. After observing it for a couple of minutes, she determined that the area she needed to reach would be invisible to the camera for about twenty seconds at a time. All she had to do was to move to the door, pick the lock, and hurry inside the office… within twenty seconds. Piece of cake.
Nicole put the mirror away. She had studied the camera enough to be able to tell by the sound of the motor when her twenty seconds began. As it turned to the extreme right, placing her goal totally within its view, she heard the whine stop for a second then return as the camera scanned in the opposite direction. She counted to five, knowing that was how long it would take for her position to pass out of frame. Then she moved to the door.
She’d extracted a lock pick from the seemingly bottomless pouch before moving into the main hallway and began working on the door’s lock at once. It was a standard commercial door lock, similar in every regard to the hundreds of different locks she’d successfully beaten, first under Darlene’s tutelage, then later in the field. But as is the case every now and then, this one seemed a little stubborn. Comfortable that only about seven seconds had passed since she risked exposure, she attacked the job with renewed concentration, but after another six seconds, she still had not managed to open it. Now she had to decide whether to scoot back into the alcove or hope she could beat the lock in the next few seconds. With a tiny growl of frustration, she gave the pick a final twist, as much to extract it as anything. She heard a click. Pushing for all she was worth, she slipped into the office, simultaneously removing the lock pick just as her mental timer told her the twenty seconds of safety had evaporated.
A quick look around the reception area showed there were no cameras inside the office, so after a brief pause to make sure the eye in the sky wasn’t watching, she twisted the inside lock, turning the nob between her thumb and forefinger. She was a little concerned that the camera might have caught the last inch or so of the door closing, but there was nothing she could do about that now. If her luck held and she didn’t screw up, there should be no reason to look at any security video anyway. At least not before she did what she needed to do.
Finding the supply closet took far less time than any step in the process up till now. Following the path she’d already laid out in her mind, she turned into another alcove, this one with the closet door at its end the only feature, aside from a cleaning cart the custodian had left a few feet from it, which was actually protruding out into the office itself, and she wondered why the cleaner hadn’t pushed it back into the closet. As she quietly opened the door to the space and tapped the head lamp switch to light the pitch-black space, she got her answer. The drawing had indicated a fairly large area behind the door, but in fact, the closet was a tiny cubby with shelf-lined walls on three sides and very little room for anything else. Not only would the cart never fit, but Nicole found herself very uncomfortable in the minute square-footage. With a sigh, she made sure the door was fully closed, then she carefully settled to the floor, just able to sit with her legs crossed.
She turned off the lamps and removed the hot ski mask. Her face immediately felt clammy as the office’s air-conditioned cool touched the sweat. A few moments later, she began to miss the sensation, for the closet didn’t have an a/c duct itself. It had been cool because it was at the ambient temperature of the office. But her exhaled CO2 was quickly making the close space stifling. She realized that the wait, the worst damn part of any job, was going to be especially lousy this time. At the risk of heating the place up further, she let out another sigh, this one equal parts frustration and resignation.
Pulling her phone from the inside pocket of her vest, she sent a text to Dan that said merely “In,” as in “that’s where I am.”
After a few minutes, the phone lit the tomb-like darkness as he responded with “Soon,” as in “that’s when I’ll see you.”
Just prior to darkening the screen again, she noted the time. It was two a.m. She knew that “Britney’s” appointment was still several hours away, and, at least when Darlene made it, it was the first of the day. She reasoned Dr. Lewis would come into the office before that, as would any support staff he might have, if he had any. Nicole felt the presence of staff would make it less likely that he’d try anything, but that was not a sure thing. Still if there were no other people at all, he’d have no one to answer to, no one to take into his confidence.
The hours passed so slowly that she wished she could tap the celestial clockwork like she would a cheap watch, to see if it had stopped running. Then, just before eight, she heard movement in the office. For several minutes, she strained her ears to give her the best chance at determining whether more than one person had come in. After listening for several minutes with an intensity that was almost painful, Nicole believed she heard only one person.
The sound became louder as the person she assumed was Nathan Lewis approached the closet area.
Nathan Lewis walked toward his exam rooms. There were two to choose from, but he’d seen a picture of the young softball player he’d be “helping” today. She was perfect. Young and lean and blonde… his favorite. Being a college player, she was older than his usual patient, but as he had looked at her picture, he could see her body was not too mature for him. Her breasts were still small, and he thought he would enjoy the exam very much.
And so, he’d chosen exam room two. The one with the hidden cameras. Now as he checked his watch, he saw that the girl would not be arriving for nearly a half hour, so he headed toward the room to turn the cameras on.
As he passed the utility closet, he saw than Hank, the half-wit janitor, had left his cleaning cart sticking out into the area through which the patients passed to enter the exam room. Since the consulting work had picked up, Nathan had hired a cleaner to keep the office looking good. A tidy office helped patients relax. But the man always left the unsightly cart, with its heavy collection of cleaning chemicals, protruding so that it made the passage unsightly. Nathan pushed it until it was flush against the door. Then, for good measure, he used his foot to lock the wheels so the cart couldn’t move. He smiled at the thought of Hank coming in that night to clean and giving the beefy cart a good yank. It was hard enough to move when the wheels weren’t locked. Hank would likely pull his arm right out of the socket!
He moved on to the exam room, where the toggling of a switch at the head of the examining table sent power to the cameras and instructed a laptop in his private office to begin recording. The feel of the switch actually began to give him an erection, as he thought not only of what was about to happen, but of the hours of enjoyment the video would give him later.
Nicole had tensed up as the doctor had drawn closer to her hiding space, but after some brief scuffling sounds outside the door, she was able to relax as the scuffling feet moved away once more.
What she could not know was the cart she’d passed to enter the closet was now essentially a boulder placed against that door, and that she was trapped like a bear that wandered too close to the city. But unlike the bear, who would instantly know that it shouldn’t have followed the scent that lured it in, she had no idea there was even an issue.
18
