The Gilded Sanctum Page 4

  Walker nodded again. “That sounds wonderful. Thank you, Dr. Ellis.” Arcuri had told Walker he would be staying on campus for the several days, which made sense to Walker as it would allow him more time to be close to the case. He had packed a small suitcase with a change of clothes and some toiletries and was somewhat looking forward to the slight reprieve from his lonely, dark apartment for a few days.

  Ellis stood, and Walker and Castillo quickly followed. Ellis extended his hand to Walker. “Whatever you need, Mr. Walker, please don’t hesitate to ask. We desperately want to find Amanda and put an end to this nightmare that has overshadowed our school. We truly hope you can help us.”

  They shook hands. “I’ll do what I can, sir. Thank you.”

  Walker turned and suddenly noticed that Castillo had already walked to the back of the room and was holding the office door open for him. Walker made his way to the exit, and as he passed Castillo, the security chief finally spoke with a slight smile, “Now you’re entering my world.”

  Chapter 5

  Just across the lobby from the Dean’s office was an elevator. Both Castillo and Walker entered, and Castillo pushed the button for the basement. A subterranean level security center? Walker thought sarcastically. Perfect.

  No words were exchanged between the two former law enforcement officers on the brief elevator ride to the lower level of the administrative building. The doors hadn’t opened yet, but Walker imagined this was going to be quite an operation. He had heard the rumors, knew the reputation, but now that he had met Castillo, the architect behind this security apparatus, he understood. Former military police. Made perfect sense.

  The elevator doors swung open to a long hallway with nineteenth-century paneling on the walls and a decorative carpet lining the walkway, remnants of the original building. However, at the end of the hallway was a bright pane of translucent glass, clearly a twenty-first century addition to the historic structure. It covered the entire end of the hallway with a barely visible outline of a door in the center, almost as if it had been precisely cut out of the cloudy glass. Next to the outline of the door was a single black keypad.

  As the two made their way toward the glowing light, Castillo removed a keycard from his pocket. Walker glanced from side to side, noticing several doors along the way. They were the traditional wooden doors like he had seen in the rest of the building, but these handles had been replaced with black keypads, similar to the one up ahead on the gray glass. He figured only Castillo’s keycard worked for these doors as well.

  Having reached the pane of translucent glass at the end of the hallway, Castillo waved his keycard in front of the keypad, and the door slid open with a whoosh. Cold air rushed from behind the glass, nudging Walker back slightly. Castillo stretched out his arm, welcoming Walker to enter the enclosure. Walker stepped across the threshold and was amazed at what he saw.

  Three successive counters, cluttered with computers and monitors, formed a semicircle toward the front of the room, which was dominated by four large screens, projecting the Washington Academy campus in real-time and living color. With this vast collection of surveillance equipment, this room could easily be mistaken for the security center of a small city. Although there was space for more, only two men and one woman worked at the monitors, clicking at their keyboards, and did not make eye contact with Walker or even acknowledge his presence. Well-trained soldiers, he thought.

  According to the monitors and screens, the campus was alive with activity. Walker was so preoccupied with the colorful screens, he did not even notice Castillo enter the room behind him and the door automatically close. “You may want to wear a coat down here from now on.” Castillo said with a chuckle as he moved past Walker. “We have to keep the temperature low for all of this equipment.” Walker noticed Castillo, in his collared polo, was not even bothered by the cold.

  Walker suddenly felt the chill, penetrating between his button-down and undershirt. The sweat from the dean’s office started to freeze on his skin, and he shivered. He quickly snapped out of the trance, rubbed his arms through the long sleeves, and turned to follow his tour guide. Castillo went to the back of the room and sat in an executive leather chair located in a small cubicle in the far right corner of the space. There was a smaller seat nearby, so Walker rolled it over and sat, now having a complete view of the entire room and all its visual candy.

  “Quite an operation,” Walker stated, obviously impressed.

  “Yes, it is,” Castillo responded, smiling. “Cutting edge. Completely digital. Motion sensors. Face-recognition software. We see everything.”

  Castillo pulled a drawer from a filing cabinet built into the cubicle and removed a file. He flipped it open in front of Walker and pushed it toward him. Inside was a stack of papers, stapled together, with what appeared to be a small rectangular keycard on top. Castillo removed the access card, revealing Amanda Bryson’s senior portrait, which was paper clipped to the first page of the file. She was an attractive young woman. Her milky white skin, outlined by her shoulder length dark hair, was flawless, and her high cheekbones resembled those of her father’s. Amanda’s piercing green eyes stared back at Walker, as if beckoning him to find her.

  “Here is our case file for Amanda Bryson,” Castillo said. “Everything we have from our investigation. Schedules, demographics, personal information.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “Confidential personal information.”

  Walker looked inquisitively at the file and started to flip through its pages.

  “We can gather a lot of personal data about our students through our surveillance, keycard, and computer systems, Mr. Walker, but under no circumstances is this information to be shared with anyone. Is that understood?” Castillo said.

  Walker nodded in agreement, not looking at Castillo, still engrossed in the content of the file. “This information is only used for situations like these,” Castillo said flatly. “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t. If it helps us find Amanda, you’ll be glad we had it.”

  Walker nodded again. He understood that most of this information was probably collected illegally and would not have been agreed to as part of any application or security form. But Castillo was right, it might be the only thing that enabled Walker to find Amanda, and he was no longer with law enforcement, so for now, he was just fine with it.

  As Walker acquiesced to the benefits of his surveillance system, Castillo smiled, settled back in his chair, and twisted the keycard in his hand. “So, based on our video feeds, the last known location of Miss Bryson was just outside of Mavis Hall, the girls’ dormitory, at approximately 7:13 PM, just over sixty hours ago.”

  Walker looked up from the file and refocused on a digital monitor in the cubicle, where Castillo projected the last known images of Amanda. The video image was captured from in front of the girl’s dorm by a camera that appeared to be about twenty feet from the entrance. Everything appeared to be normal — girls entering and leaving the building — business as usual. Then, from the left corner of the screen, Amanda Bryson entered the frame.

  “There.” Castillo gestured.

  Walker stared at the screen as Amanda came into full view. He easily recognized her from the picture. She was moving at a leisurely pace, wearing a long pink sweater over tight black pants. On her shoulder was a backpack with red and gray stripes, and she was texting on her iPhone as she walked. Making her way across the walkway, she used her keycard to open the main doors, and entered Mavis Hall. Castillo paused the feed, and the time stamp on the still image of Amanda entering the dorm read 19:13. Military time.

  He stared at the young girl entering the dormitory as nonchalantly as any student returning home after a day of classes. She appeared calm and everything around her seemed perfectly normal. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Castillo let the video run for a few more seconds to drive home the point that nothing suspicious was happening at the time. It was obvious that Amanda was not in distress — she was not moving in a hurried fashion, s
he was not being chased, she was not looking around nervously. Her entrance into the dormitory was normal in every way.

  “So that’s the last we see of her? There’s no footage of her leaving the dorm?” Walker asked.

  “No,” Castillo said quickly, still staring at the screen.

  “Could she have avoided the cameras?”

  “Possibly”

  “How possible?”

  “Not likely.”

  “Did anyone see her?”

  “Yes. Her roommate, Heather Yates, says she left the dorm around 9 PM, but we have no footage of her exiting the building at that time or any other time.”

  “Where was she going?”

  “Roommate says she was going to see her boyfriend, but he claims he never saw her that night. He wasn’t supposed to either.”

  “Who’s the boyfriend?”

  “Josh Easterly. We’ll talk with him later.”

  “Both their stories check out?”

  “As far as we can tell, everything checks out.”

  Castillo tapped on the keyboard in front of him and a map of the campus projected on the monitor screen. It was not an aerial photo, but rather a white and gray map of small blocks, surrounded by large areas of green, obviously created by the marketing department as a user-friendly map of the campus, which probably appeared on signs throughout the campus.

  He pointed to a quad area, surrounded on three sides by a building, on the northern edge of the map. “This is Mavis Hall — her dorm,” he said and then moved his finger about two hundred yards to the south, according to the map’s key, to a similar quad, “and this is the boys’ dorm. Ninety percent of the students who attend Washington Academy board on campus, so these two residence halls house most of our students. We’ve checked the video footage for this entire route multiple times, but again, nothing.”

  Walker gave an incredulous look at Castillo. “That’s it? That’s all you have? Two million dollars in security cameras, and that’s all you have? A girl walking into her dorm in broad daylight. I thought you said you see everything.” Walker said, sarcastically.

  Castillo looked perturbed. “Two and a half million dollars actually. And you’re right, we do see everything. But just having the cameras doesn’t guarantee it's catching everything. Anyone that has spent a few hours on campus knows where we have our cameras and knows what they can see. Avoiding our camera system, Mr. Walker, although difficult, isn’t impossible.”

  “You think someone knew what the cameras wouldn’t be able to see?”

  “That’s one theory.”

  Walker sighed and looked back at the monitor, still paused on the entrance to the residence hall.

  “And you checked all of your footage after this?”

  “Indeed. Everything. We used our face recognition software first, and when that didn't turn up anything, we went through all of it by hand. Painstaking. Thorough. But still nothing.”

  Walker wished there was more. Something to go on. He was ready to ask more questions when his phone vibrated, indicating a voicemail had been left. It probably hadn't rung because he was below ground, but the notification had somehow gotten through. He pulled the phone from his pocket and immediately recognized the contact. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to listen to the voicemail until he was above ground, but it was obviously important.

  Walker replaced the phone in his pocket, closed the case file, and lied. “I’d like to review the case file before we tour the campus and talk to any witnesses if that’s okay?”

  Castillo stared back at Walker as though he doubted the excuse for the delay, but agreed anyway. “Of course. How’s 1 PM?”

  Walker glanced at his watch. “Perfect.”

  “Good. I’ll meet you outside the administration building at one o’clock and escort you to the girls’ residence hall. I’ll also arrange for you to interview both the roommate and boyfriend.”

  “Great. I’ll see you then.”

  “Wait. Don’t forget this.” Castillo reached out and handed Walker the keycard. “Gives you access to the entire campus. Please don’t abuse it.”

  Walker hesitated for a moment and then grabbed the card. “Thank you.”

  He was escorted out of the security center and back to the first floor by a security officer. As soon as he exited the building, he played the voicemail and immediately recognized the voice.

  “Ryan, it’s Mark. Something has come up. It’s urgent. I need to see you right away. Please meet me at the waterfront in Leesburg in one hour. Thanks.”

  Walker looked at his watch again. Leesburg was about thirty minutes away. Plenty of time to get to the city, but it sounded urgent. Knowing his former partner from the FBI, Mark Lewis, would be there early, Walker hurried to his car.

  Chapter 6

  “Why are you choosing to take these risks?” Nicole shouted at her husband.

  Walker responded. “The SWAT team is no more dangerous than what I’ve already been doing. My life is at risk every day. Just because we know we’re walking into a high-risk environment doesn’t make it any more dangerous. It’s the ones you don’t know are high risk that turn out to be the dangerous ones.”

  Nicole stepped back into the kitchen counter and slapped the dish rag on the counter. She lowered her head and rubbed her forehead, frustrated by her husband’s decision to join the field office SWAT team. “I can’t believe you did this behind my back,” she said, still looking down, tears falling from her face.

  “Behind your back? We talked about this!” he retorted.

  She glared at him with scorn. “Talked about this? Yes, we’ve talked about this, but that’s all we’ve done. Actually, all we’ve done is argue about it ever since you first mentioned it.”

  “I thought we agreed.”

  “Agreed? Agreed on what? That you were going to join the SWAT team and put yourself in more danger every day? For what?”

  Walker sighed and leaned on a kitchen chair. He let out a long breath. “You knew this about me when you signed up for this. You knew I was in law enforcement. You knew I was in the FBI. We chase down the worst criminals out there. The worst. You don’t think I could be killed at any time?”

  “Damn you!” she shouted, then immediately lowered her voice, realizing their daughter’s bedroom was just above the kitchen, and hopefully Elise was sleeping soundly. “Yes, I knew you were in law enforcement, but that doesn’t mean you have the right to invite even more uncertainty into our lives. Being an agent is stressful enough. Do you know that my heart stops every time the phone rings? Every time!” Nicole paused and then pointed to Elise’s bedroom. “We have a little girl up there. She worships you. What would she do without you?”

  “Stop it!”

  Nicole recoiled, embarrassed by what she had just said. She lowered her head and rephrased, “What would I do without you?”

  Her sobbing continued as Walker walked over to his wife and put his arms around her. At first she resisted, did not look up, did not return the embrace, but eventually, she relented and accepted his gesture half-heartedly. She wanted to return the embrace, put her arms around him and squeeze tightly, but she wasn’t ready yet. Perhaps soon, but not yet.

  “I need to do this,” he whispered.

  Silence.

  “You know I need to do this,” he repeated.

  “I know.” Nicole finally answered under her breath.

  A long pause lingered between them before Walker finally spoke. “I’ll never leave you and Elise. I won’t get hurt. I swear.”

  Nicole did not respond, just pulled a little tighter into the embrace, not wanting to let go.

  Chapter 7

  Like most of Loudoun County during the latter half of the twentieth century, Leesburg, Virginia had grown as well. Located just thirty miles from Washington, D.C., bordered by the Catoctin Mountains to the north and the Potomac River to the east, the historic town had experienced a boon in tourism. To cater to this new influx of visitors, Leesburg decided to take advan
tage of its Potomac River real estate by revitalizing its historic waterfront and built a large community park along its shoreline. Buffeted by appealing restaurants and boutique shopping, the park soon became a mecca for visitors as well as the locals, who appreciated the refurbished look and enjoyed the frequent occurrence of festivals and special events.

  As Walker approached the riverfront, making his way through the park on the neatly-designed paver walkways, he noticed several metal benches positioned on the edge of the water. Mark Lewis was seated alone, staring forward, on one of those benches. Walker took notice of the three other FBI agents trying to blend into the surroundings but without much success. He smiled, surmising that Mark had brought the cavalry with him just in case he did something stupid. Too late.

  He had known Mark Lewis since the FBI Academy, where they were recruits together. Walker had joined the FBI right after completing his Juris Doctorate degree from Penn Law in Philadelphia at the age of twenty-three. Lewis was already thirty, having worked in a county prosecutor’s office in Ohio for several years before applying to the FBI. Only acquaintances during their time at the academy, both much more focused on passing the rigorous training program, they became friends when they were both assigned to the same field office in the crime division. Lewis also worked in the missing persons section, so he and Walker had frequently worked cases together.

  The two had become friends outside of the office as well, both buying houses in Arlington, Virginia, and entertaining each other’s families on a regular basis. Lewis and his wife, Amy, had three kids, their youngest the same age as Elise, so playdates were common between the two young families. Nicole had even reached out to Mark to talk her husband out of joining the SWAT team, and although he argued on her behalf unsuccessfully, he understood and respected the decision. They were closer then.

  They didn’t talk much anymore. Everything had changed after the accident. The divorce, the selling of the house, the drinking — it all happened so fast. Mark had tried to help his friend through the worst of it, but Walker just pushed him away. The few times they did see each other, Walker could feel the judgment in his eyes, the pity for what he had sacrificed. And of course, there was Walker’s jealousy.