James Swain - Shadow People

“You want me to go back and see Sierra, don’t you?”

“He was trying to help us. Why can’t you see that?”

“It didn’t feel like help. It felt like torture.”

“Just give it a shot. That’s all I’m asking.”

“How many times is a shot?”

“Just one more.”

Peter could deal with that, and said okay. Liza said she would contact Sierra’s office and schedule another session. They stopped and kissed and things were good again. He felt like a regular human being whenever he was with her, and wondered if the trick to having a normal life was to never let her out of his sight. Not a bad solution.

They decided to walk home. It was a long hike, and would let them clear their heads. They headed up Lex with the city’s thrum in their ears. Buses rumbled, horns honked, and a car alarm wailed like a colicky baby. A racket to some, they were the noises Peter had known his entire life, and sounded like music. It was not hard for him to imagine Gershwin in the sound of garbage cans being thrown, or a symphony in the roar of a subway. By the time they reached the brownstone, the morning’s bad events had faded into the past.

Walking up the front steps, Peter had his keys out when he heard a car door slam. The sound was not friendly, and he spun around to see Garrison climb out of his parked SUV. The look on the FBI agent’s face was nothing but trouble.

“Just the man I was looking for,” Garrison said.

Special Agent Garrison was a man of simple tastes. His wardrobe ran from blazers and dark trousers to sweatshirts and blue jeans. Today, he wore faded denims and a charcoal gray cardigan.

“You need to start keeping your cell phone on,” the FBI agent said. “I’ve been looking for you all morning.”

Not on Mondays. On Mondays, Peter’s cell phone was turned off while he and Liza roamed the city’s neighborhoods.

“Peter put out a fire at a restaurant in Kips Bay this morning,” Liza jumped in. “He was a hero.”

Peter squeezed Liza’s hand. She hadn’t told Garrison the whole story of how he’d lost his temper and accidentally set the restaurant’s kitchen fire, and it made him love her that much more. Garrison acted impressed and slapped him on the shoulder. “Nice going. I realize this is your day off, but I’ve got a situation on my hands and I need your help. Do you mind coming downtown with me for a little while?”

Peter tried to help the law whenever possible. He also tried to have a life with Liza. Right now, the two were colliding. “Where to?”

“Grand Central Station. The police caught a shadow person running through the terminal on a surveillance camera. I want you to have a look, see what you think.”

Peter instinctively touched his shirt, and felt the five-pointed star around his neck. Liza did the same. Their recent encounter with the shadow person was still fresh in their minds.

“What do you think?” he asked Liza.

“By all means, go. Maybe you can catch this thing.”

“You’re welcome to come along.”

She shook her head. They got only one day a week off. Liza used some of that time to talk with her family, whom she regularly stayed in touch with. “I need to talk to CiCi. She’s been having difficulty with one of the routines in the act.”

Liza’s younger sister CiCi had replaced Liza in the family troupe, and Liza continued to coach her whenever possible.

“Tell her I said hi,” Peter said.

“I will. Please be careful. Don’t let that thing kidnap you again.”

They kissed and Liza went inside the brownstone. Garrison tapped his shoulder, and Peter climbed into the passenger seat of the SUV without a word. As he was strapping himself in, the vehicle lurched away from the curb like a wild animal jumping out of a cage.

The fluid human dance of Grand Central was best viewed from the main concourse. A mammoth space framed by high windows, glittering constellations in the ceiling, and a double staircase at either end, it was here that a person could observe the complex patterns made by arriving and departing passengers on the Connecticut and Westchester railroads. During rush hour, it was one of the busiest areas of the city, and one of the loudest. That changed once rush hour ended and the commuters cleared out. Then it became a tourist site, with group tours and lots of pictures being snapped of the famous architecture. Garrison hurried up the staircase on the west side with Peter glued to his side.

“I analyzed the film of the shadow person your smart-mouthed assistant shot,” Garrison said. “You’re not going to believe what I found.”

“His name is Snoop, and he’s my best friend,” Peter said.

“He’s got a bad attitude and is a threat to national security.”

“Just because he can hack your computers doesn’t make him a threat.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

They hurried down a marble hallway. With multiple exits and doors leading to multiple train platforms, it was easy to get lost, and Peter realized he didn’t know where he was.

“I examined the video of the shadow person frame by frame like you suggested,” Garrison went on. “I was able to make out a face.”

“Man or woman?”

“It looks like a woman, but that’s just a guess.”

They stopped at a door marked NYPD-NO ENTRANCE at the hallway’s end, and Garrison rapped loudly.

“I told you-no cops,” Peter said in alarm.

“There aren’t any cops here right now. You’re safe.”

“Then what are we doing here?”

“I sent the video to the NYPD, and asked them to run it against their database of collected images from the past thirty days. The cops have thousands of surveillance cameras in the city, and I figured one of them might have spotted your ghost. Sure enough, I was right. The Grand Central team found the shadow person on a tape, and alerted me.”

“You gave the police the video?” Peter asked. “I’m on it, for Christ’s sake. And so is Liza.”

“I didn’t tell them anything about your involvement, and neither did anyone on my team.”

“The police aren’t stupid. They’ll make the connection.”

“Which is what? That you were visited by a ghost? If they contact you, play dumb.”

There were times when Peter wished he’d never struck a deal with Garrison. The FBI agent didn’t know how to keep a secret, and might someday blow Peter’s cover, and mistakenly tell the world who the young magician really was.

The door swung in, and Special Agent Nan Perry ushered them into a windowless room lined with video screens monitoring the ebb and flow of the terminal concourse. The lighting was muted, and the images popped off the screens. As promised, there were no cops.

Garrison’s team sat at desks facing the screens. Each agent was at a keyboard with an odd-looking joystick. Peter had seen those joysticks before. Back when he was breaking in his act, he’d worked at one of Trump’s lavish casinos in Atlantic City, and had been given a private tour of the casino’s surveillance room, where he’d been shown how cheaters were caught trying to scam the games. The cheaters’ moves were invisible to the naked eye, but they weren’t invisible to the cameras, and they all got caught.

“This looks like a Pelco DX system,” Peter said.

“Who told you about Pelco?” Garrison asked.

“A casino I once worked at. Pelco can search thirty days of video images in a minute. When it comes to catching bad guys, this system is state-of-the-art.”

“I’m impressed,” Garrison said.

“Thanks. So, what did you find?”

Garrison got onto a keyboard and typed in a command.