Want It Back

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Chapter 2

The third shift supervisor in the communications center of Wacom Security woke from his fitful doze at an annoying sound, muttering imprecations under his breath. Though there was no one else around to hear him swear loudly, he knew better than to get into the habit of doing so. If he let loose the full extent of his irritation at the need to work three part-time jobs just to get ends within sight of each other, never mind meeting, he’d probably lose at least one of them.

What the fuck had disturbed the few hours of sleep he usually managed to get on the overnight shift? Ah – the beeping was associated with a red display on the remote systems control panel – movement alarm #2 at site 2345 had been triggered.

Cursing again that the old control system programming couldn’t do something as seemingly simple as tell him WHERE site 2345 was located, he turned to another keyboard and display to look up the customer associated with the site.

“Gondwala Realty Trust, 417 Cedar Street, Malden,” he read. “Three stories, 5 alarm zones… after hours non-fire alerts: notify roving unit to visit and visually inspect front door for anomalies.” Moving to the radio base station, he switched on the microphone and hit the call button.

Somewhere out in the darkened city an older white Honda Civic with “security” stenciled on its somewhat dented door sat parked with a lone occupant. Tom also depended on his third shift job to catch up on sleep before heading home in the early morning for a quick shower and then out again to a morning class at the conservatory. He was glad enough to sacrifice Sunday to Wednesday nights for the steady, albeit meager, check to supplement the wildly variable amounts he received from gigging Thursday through Saturday nights at local clubs or the occasional (and better-paying) private events as a drummer for hire.

The repeated buzzing of the Civic’s dashboard-mounted radio failed to rouse Tom from his heavier than usual slumber – it had been a long, busy weekend. But when the communications center supervisor switched to a verbal call – “Unit 4, come in… Unit 4… HEY RANCOWSKI!” – he stirred, uttered a quite distinct curse, and picked up the radio’s hand mike.

“Yeah, yeah… why aren’t you asleep? What’s up?”

“Don’t give me any attitude – I’d like to be snoozing too! But I need you to go over to 417 Cedar. The console is showing motion detected in zone 2 – that’s the top of the stairs inside the front door according to the site documentation.”

“Jeez, Marty – that’s the old Knights of Raphael building, isn’t it? I bet it’s just another piece of ceiling tile that fell, like last time – how is it they can afford to have us monitor that old hulk but can’t be bothered doing basic maintenance?”

“Whatever, Rancowski – just pop over and confirm that a careless tenant didn’t leave the door unlocked and let some bum in to trash the place.”

“Okay Marty – what’s the key code for that place?”

“Oh, right – hang on…. M217 is the front door, and 3579 to reset the alarm system. Don’t forget to call me when you’re done – the boss gave us crap last week about leaving the call log incidents open.”

“Yeah, yeah… I’ll ping you back so we can both return to our beauty rest!”

Tom scribbled the key and alarm codes on a note pad attached to the dashboard, then pumped the Civic’s gas pedal a couple of times, let in the clutch and started the small car with a roar – Wacom Security didn’t take much better care of its property than that building owner did. He remembered the building’s location from the ceiling panel incident last time and cruised though the post midnight streets without passing another soul. Pulling up across the street he quickly scanned the exterior of the building for signs of anything amiss. It looked as dead as the surrounding streets: storefronts at street level all locked and silent, no lights in any of the upper story windows.

With no sign of any immediate problem, he reached into the back seat, pulled up the large ring of assorted keys and shuffled through them until he found the one marked M217. He grabbed a flashlight that was sitting on the front passenger seat and checked that the battery was working – barely! Damn it, he should have checked it at the beginning of his shift but they didn’t pay him enough to waste brain cells being proactive. Fortunately he had a flashlight app on his smartphone that turned on the camera flash steadily – that would have to do.

Tom exited the car and walked across the street toward the glass-fronted entrance to the building’s upper floors, sandwiched between storefronts for a hair salon and a “recycled treasures” shop. A dim overhead light in the small vestibule was on as always, revealing a panel of door buzzers on the wall along with the keyhole for the electronic inner door lock, plus an orange traffic cone that seemed to live in the vestibule permanently for no apparent reason. The interior staircase past the second set of glass doors was dark, though it looked as though something had been left on the stairs.

Entering the vestibule past the first set of doors, Tom could see that a bag of some sort was leaning against the inside of the inner glass doors. He wondered whether this was what had caused the motion alarm – perhaps someone had left the bag behind sitting precariously on the steps, and then the rumble of a passing truck or something else caused the bag to roll down the stairs and set off the alarm. That seemed rather a stretch, but possible. He used the key to release the inner door, pulled it open just enough to clear the locking mechanism, then turned the key back to the locked position so that the door would lock after he entered. The last thing he needed was to let a stranger wander into the building behind him.

With the inner door open and its reflective glass out of the way, he shined the makeshift flashlight up the stairs. It was actually pretty bright for such a small lens – and tough enough to withstand being dropped in surprise when he saw the woman’s body sprawled further up the long staircase, blood dripping from her head.