Full Tilt

65

New York City

No, this can’t be real!

Kate was rooted in shock.

The woman’s face-Vanessa’s face-was creased with terror. Her lips were moving, like she’s praying. Her upper body filled Kate’s monitor. At the bottom of the frame graphics of meters flashed while measuring her blood and heart rates; the level of carbon dioxide; the remaining amount of oxygen. A digital clock counted down the hours, minutes and seconds, left on Vanessa’s life.

Kate’s hands were trembling when she called 911.

“Police operator, what’s your emergency?”

“I need to report a woman buried alive in a coffin! She doesn’t have much time-”

“What is your name and location, ma’am?”

“Kate Page, 470 West 33rd Street, Newslead.”

“Where’s the woman buried, what’s the location?”

“I don’t know! It’s online with a live feed!”

“Online? Do you have a web address?”

“It’s-hang on-it’s ‘ScenesFromTheKillJar,’ all one word.”

The operator repeated it twice as Kate heard the rapid clicking of a keyboard.

“You’ve got to track it, find her!” Kate said. “She’s running out of time! I’m a reporter with Newslead. This is the Sorin Zurrn case. Someone called me two minutes ago, telling me about the live video. I think it’s Zurrn. Alert Detective Ed Brennan, with the Rampart police department, the FBI, the task force!”

“Stay on the line.”

“Hurry, she’s got three hours and fifty-five minutes left!”

Two night editors were drawn to Kate’s desk.

“What the hell? Is this real?” Brad Davis stared at her screen.

Kate nodded big nods, knowing that Davis, who handled copy from reporters in crisis spots around the world, had one of the quickest minds at Newslead. He turned to Phil Keelor, the junior editor.

“Call our twenty-four-hour IT people. We’re going to need all the help we can get,” Davis said. “I’ll call Chuck to alert the honchos. We’ve got to move fast.”

“Okay, Kate?” the operator said.

“Yes!”

“We’ve got people on the way to you.”

Within the first hour the newsroom had filled with uniformed NYPD officers, detectives, FBI agents and investigators from several other federal agencies. They’d set up quickly in the newsroom. They were monitoring Kate’s phone in case Zurrn called again. Someone had a trauma doctor on speakerphone. He was studying the meters that appeared to be connected to Vanessa. Kate could hear him.

“If those meters are genuine, her signs are way up. Her stress is causing her to use more oxygen, which could reduce her time. Her carbon dioxide level is three percent, if it climbs to four or higher, we’re in trouble. And you’ve got to hope that the box doesn’t collapse under the weight and pressure of all the dirt.”

Chuck, Reeka, along with executive editors Rhett Lerner and Dianne Watson arrived. Newslead’s chief legal counsel, Tischa Goldman, was on the line to advise them on releasing any information police may need to help locate Vanessa.

As word spread, other news staff arrived to offer help, but most everyone huddled in small groups at terminals transfixed by what was playing out before their eyes. Kate couldn’t stop trembling, or praying, as she watched the seconds blazing by.

Glimpsing at her framed photo of Grace, Kate called Nancy and told her what was happening.

“I know,” Nancy said, “it’s been on TV with a breaking news bulletin.”

Kate needed to know Grace was okay.

“I’ll go down and check on her,” Nancy said. Ten minutes later, she called back to say that Grace was fine.

As a precaution, Kate pulled one of the NYPD officers aside and requested that, given the fact Zurrn had called her, they send someone to her building to check on her daughter’s welfare.

When Kate returned to her desk, her line rang. She looked at an FBI agent wearing headphones and waited for him to nod before she answered.

“You’re seeing what’s happening online, Kate?” the caller asked.

It was Erich. Kate indicated to the agent that the caller was a friend.

“Yes, Zurrn called me.”

“He called?”

“We’re sure it was him. He wants the world to see him kill Vanessa.”

“He’s getting attention.”

“We’ve got the NYPD, the FBI and I don’t know how many others, trying to locate her. Tell me the truth, Erich, can we find her?”

He didn’t answer.

“Erich, will we find her?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“How good he really is at hiding his tracks.”

“That’s not what I need to hear right now.”

“You got people working on it. I’ll work on it and I’ll get my friends to work on it. Everyone’s trying to pinpoint the source of the feed and Vanessa’s location.”

“Hurry!”

As the first hour became the second, the press picked up the situation via social media. The New York Times, Reuters, NBC, CNN, the Associated Press and several other news organizations called Newslead for interviews.

“All our efforts are concentrated on the safety of Vanessa Page, whom we consider a member of the Newslead family,” Dianne Watson said in an issued statement.

Strained calm permeated the newsroom as the second hour passed with investigators working with other experts across the city and across the country. Several blocks south in Manhattan, near the Brooklyn Bridge, a team of analysts had been put on Vanessa’s case at the NYPD’s Real Time Crime Center, which was located in a windowless room on a midlevel floor of One Police Plaza. The team used every high-tech resource in trying to trace the live stream to Vanessa’s location.

The FBI, with experts in combating cyber-based terrorism, had activated cyber squads at the New York Field Office in FBI headquarters. They were also working with other federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and Homeland Security. They soon determined that the person who’d called Kate had used a disposable phone. The call had been made in the greater New York City area, but that was all they had so far.

In the urgent life-and-death effort to track the video feed to Vanessa, analysts had made emergency requests for data to several dozen service providers. The companies had twenty-four-hour hotlines with lawyers on duty. All cooperated immediately without requiring subpoenas or warrants.

“The challenge is,” an FBI agent explained, “our suspect has masked and encrypted the signal. It’s bouncing off satellites and towers all over Canada, Mexico and everywhere in the US. He’s even using Russian and Chinese-based IP addresses. It’s complex and it’s a fast-moving target.”

“So what do you do?” Lerner asked.

“We keep working, exercising different strategies.”

“We’ve got a little over two hours left.”

In a far corner, Reeka was lobbying Dianne and Chuck for Newslead to put out its own story.

“I don’t know,” Watson said, “there’s some ambiguity here.”

“The case is already public,” Reeka said. “We’ve already issued a statement. It’s news. We owe it to subscribers to cover it.”

Watson turned to Chuck. “What do you think?”

“All valid points. We’ll get someone other than Kate to do a straight-up news piece.”

At her desk, Kate stared at Vanessa’s image, her heart breaking again and again with each second that passed.

This can’t be real. It can’t be happening all over again.

First underwater, now underground, Vanessa was slipping away before her eyes.

Please, don’t let this happen again.

Kate pressed her hand tenderly to her monitor, aching to hold her little sister one last time.

Where are you?

A commotion rose across the newsroom among several FBI agents.

“New Jersey! Central New Jersey, north of Trenton!” someone shouted.

Kate stood and searched the crowd for meaning, her heart rising.

“They’ve isolated it to a location just outside of Hopewell, New Jersey!” someone else shouted to cheers.

Ellie Ridder, a Newslead reporter and Sal Perez, a photographer, rushed to Kate.

“That’s a ninety-minute drive, Kate,” Sal said. “Let’s go!”