Chris Mooney - The Dead Room

'Can you look into it for me?'

'I wouldn't pass up such an exciting opportunity.' Garcia chuckled. 'Don't pin your hopes on finding anything. I've been down this road before.'

Darby was walking down the corridor to talk to Coop when her mobile rang. Ted Castonguay, the head of the photography unit, had finished reviewing the tapes and digital pictures and wanted to speak with her inside his office.

She found the former college wrestler seated at a desk in a quiet but cluttered corner. His shoulder and back muscles looked like rocks moving underneath cloth as he worked the mouse.

She grabbed a chair and wheeled it over to him, looking at the flat-screen monitor holding a black-and-white video still of the hospital's elevator. The time-stamp recorded on the videotape read 'August 15, 2009. 1.03 a.m.'.

Castonguay knew she was harried and frantic. He didn't waste time with pleasantries.

'This is the time you entered the hospital,' he said, clicking the mouse.

The security video started. The camera was pointed down at the white corridor. She could see part of the nurses' station.

The elevator doors opened and she saw herself and Pine walk out and move down the corridor until they disappeared. A moment later they reappeared with Patrolman White, and the three huddled around the corner from the nurses' station and began talking.

Click and the video started fast-forwarding.

'Eighteen minutes elapsed from the time you stepped off the elevator to the time you went to talk to the Hallcox boy,' Castonguay said. 'The Fed appears just under twenty-two minutes later.'

Twenty-two minutes. He must have followed me from Belham. She watched the images fast-forwarding across the monitor and thought about the TV cameraman she'd seen watching the house this morning. If he had been there last night, mixed among the other reporters, he would have seen her getting inside Pine's Lincoln Town Car.

Castonguay started playing the video at its normal speed. She looked at the digital timestamp on the bottom-right-hand corner: 1.23 a.m.

'Here's where it gets interesting,' Castonguay said. 'Watch the elevator.'

She did. When it opened, the video started to fill with static. She couldn't see the person who got out of the elevator – she couldn't see anything.

The static grew stronger and then images disappeared.

The screen went dark.

'That's it,' Castonguay said, and swivelled around in his chair to face her. 'I checked the tapes for the other cameras. There's nothing else, just static and then they all go dark.'

'Any idea what caused it?'

'For all the cameras to shut down like that, you're talking some sort of HERF – a High Energy Radio Frequency weapon – or maybe a directed magnetic pulse. Could even be a microwave pulse. The two people talking to you in the video, they were standing in the corridor while you were talking to the vic. Did they say anything about being burned?'

'They didn't say anything to me.'

'I doubt it's microwave anyway. Those devices aren't easy to conceal. Let me ask you this, then: did they report feeling nauseous or dizzy? Any vision problems?'

'Not that I know of, but when I saw them standing in the doorway of the room, they were both struggling to catch their breath – like they had just finished running a marathon.'

'Breathing difficulties are one of the symptoms of close exposure to electromagnetic or HERF exposure.'

'My understanding is that to use a HERF weapon, you have to have a parabolic reflector and aim it at a target.'

'Yes, you're correct. And I should mention that to build one of those devices, you can find the materials you need in any electronics store. They're somewhat big and bulky. Not easy to conceal. I was thinking along the lines of the smaller devices I've seen over the past year – the ones the size of, say, a paperback book or a pack of cigarettes that use a high-energy radio frequency. These smaller devices act more like a grenade – they have a certain blast radius. The smaller the device, the smaller the blast radius. You hit a button, flood an area with HERF and cook the electronic circuits in the area. That's the only thing I can think of that would have caused this kind of damage so quickly. I'd be interested to see if the security cameras or any other nearby equipment was damaged last night.'

'I'll call and ask,' Darby said. 'These HERF grenades – can you build them?'

'Not to my knowledge. I know the army uses them. They're part of their non-lethal weapons tactics programme.'

'What about the CIA or the FBI?'

'I don't see why not.' Castonguay turned to the keyboard. 'Now I want you to look at the pictures you took.'

'I just need a moment to tinker with the file,' Castonguay said.

Darby went to her office to use the phone. She called St Joseph's and asked to be connected to the nurses' station on the fourth floor. A new rotation had started. After identifying herself to three different people she finally found one left over from the day shift.

When she came out of her office, Castonguay had a top-down picture of the cameraman loaded on the screen. The TV camera was mounted on his shoulder. Sunglasses covered his eyes and he wore headphones and a baseball cap. She could see blond hair covering the tip of an ear. The man posing as Special Agent Phillips had had black hair and darker skin.

'It looks like your HERF theory was correct,' Darby said, sitting down. 'I just got off the phone with one of the day nurses at the hospital. When she came in this morning, they were replacing the security cameras on her floor, and the computers and phones at the nurses' station were down. Some of the medical equipment in the rooms near the elevator had stopped working. They thought it was an electrical surge.'

Castonguay nodded, his attention focused on the monitor. He typed with one finger while the other hand worked the mouse, shifting the picture until the TV camera came into a sharper focus.

'What do you know about televisions cameras?' he asked.

'Not much. I try to avoid them whenever possible.'

'Lucky for you I know a lot about them. What we have here is called an ENG camera – an Electronic News Gathering video-recording camera. It looks like the real deal except for this.'

Using the mouse, he drew a circle around the handle mounted on top of the camera. Then he moved the chair away from his desk and said, 'Take a look.'

Darby stood up and moved closer to the screen. Next to the handle and mounted on top of the camera was a small device that resembled a black laser pointer. The end pointed at the house had a small but noticeably bright red light. She saw wires running from the end of the device that fed directly into the camera.

She turned her head to Castonguay. 'Is this a laser mike?'

'That's exactly what it is. You direct the laser to a surface that can vibrate – like glass. The laser picks up pressure waves caused by noises in the room.'

'I used one during a SWAT surveillance exercise.'

'And that's what your cameraman was doing. He was conducting surveillance on the house, trying to listen in on your conversations. The camera looks genuine – has a Sony camera head and a Betacam SP dock. It blended in perfectly with the other TV cameras.'

'How complicated is it to install a laser mike in a camera?'

'It's extremely complicated. I'm even willing to say it can't be done. This ENG camera was custom-built to conduct surveillance. Whoever you're dealing with has access to some very high-tech toys.'

He loaded another picture on to the monitor, a shot she had taken of the bald man opening the driver's door. The cameraman was running around to the back of the van.

Castonguay cropped the front windscreen, then went to work on enhancing it. A moment later she saw someone sitting in the passenger seat. She could see only his hands resting on dark-coloured trousers, a blue tie worn with a white shirt.