Rick Mofina - Every Second

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.”

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. “All clear, you’re free to go.”

“What’s going on?” A TV reporter, face encased in makeup, had thrust a microphone into the officer’s face. “Can you give me a statement?”

“I don’t have any information right now.”

“Come on, we need a spokesperson on camera!”

“They’ll put out a press release later.”

Kate and Gabe walked quickly down the street toward the house. Kate was determined to stay ahead of their competition. They’d already overheard other reporters interviewing people, but getting nothing substantial.

“Police just told us to leave.”

“We had to get out.”

“We don’t know who lives down there.”

“Not sure what’s going on.”

“You know more than us.”

Kate needed someone who could give her a sense of the family, an idea of what the real story was. She couldn’t get to the cat lady in the back of the squad car, which had now moved to a distant stretch of the street.

Something’s going on with her.

Kate noticed two uniformed officers were talking to the woman. She’d have to hold off approaching her. Besides, Kate was certain no other press people had seen her so far.

Kate’s phone rang and she answered.

“Who told you to go to Queens?” Reeka asked.

“This story was breaking. Didn’t Thane tell you?”

“Thane Dolan’s not your supervisor. What you have is a local bank robbery, not a national story. I want you to do what I assigned you to do.”

“Reeka, the elements here are significant. A bank manager has robbed his own bank and there’re indications his family was taken hostage.”

A tense silence passed.

“Do you have it confirmed on the record? Is this just another case of someone passing an exaggerated note at a run-of-the-mill robbery?”

“No, I don’t have it confirmed yet, but I have a gut feeling-”

“A gut feeling?”

“Reeka, this one’s different. Why don’t you let me check this out? Unless you want AP or Reuters to break the story?”

Reeka let another few seconds pass.

“All right, you’ve got a few hours to nail this down. Otherwise you’ll be at the Hyatt covering the conference. Is that clear, Kate?”

“Crystalline.”

After hanging up, Kate nudged Gabe.

A man and woman had emerged from the curved end of the street, far down where the command post had been. They looked as though they were in their late sixties or early seventies. They went to the driveway of the house directly across from the one the SWAT team had stormed.

“Excuse me,” Kate said before anyone else saw them. “Kate Page and Gabe Atwater, we’re with Newslead.” Kate held up her press ID. “Will you talk to us a minute about what’s happened?”

The two people exchanged looks before the woman, bothered by the faint ammonia-like traces of tear gas lingering in the air, fanned her face and said: “Yes, but let’s go in the back.”

Their backyard had a glorious flower garden with mature oak trees that shaded the lush manicured lawn. A dog emerged to give Kate and Gabe a friendly greeting.

“May I get your names?” Kate asked, starting her recorder and holding her pen over a clean page in her notebook.

The man looked at the notebook and rubbed his chin, adding to the worry etched deeply in his face. Kate couldn’t tell if it was the gas, emotion or both, but the woman was fighting tears.

“Do you really need our names?” he asked. “Things are a little unsettling.”

“I understand, but in situations like this, people often accuse reporters of making things up. They don’t believe we actually talk to real people, like you.”

The man looked at the woman. “I don’t suppose giving our names could be any worse than what’s going on?”