With the exception of a few emergency and service vehicles, the parking lot was deserted. A teenage boy wearing a Freedom Freeway T-shirt and ball cap was trying to corral the discarded ribbons of yellow crime scene tape slithering across the lot. The service center’s big sign out front said SORRY TEMPORARILY CLOSED; so did the one printed in block letters on the sheet of paper taped inside the glass door.
The flutter and clang of the flagpoles underscored the quiet.
Morrow held up his palm, indicating that he, Lisa and Sullivan would wait outside the entrance as Agent Craig Roberts, holding a walkie-talkie, exited to greet them.
“Almost ready now,” he told Morrow. “Heads-up, manager behind me.”
“Got it,” Morrow said.
The FBI’s Evidence Response Team had been poised to clear and release the scene last night when Morrow alerted them to hang on to it. The delay frustrated Mac Foyt, the center’s manager, who had followed Roberts outside to plead to Morrow.
“Agent Morrow, we were told we could open this morning.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Foyt. We’re going to need a little more time.”
A breeze kicked up the pages on Foyt’s clipboard and lifted his tie as he undid the collar button on his white shirt and tried to make a case.
“We’re respectful of what happened, don’t get me wrong,” Foyt said. “We’re cooperating, but I’m getting calls from companies that are planning routes, fuel schedules. I’ve got my staff on hold, a hell of a lot of business on the line.”
“We ask for your patience a little while longer, Mr. Foyt,” Morrow said.
Roberts clipped a small microphone to Lisa’s collar. It was wired to a pack she’d helped him fasten to the side of her waist.
“Good. This will pick up everything you say,” Roberts said as the walkie-talkie he’d set on the ground crackled. Roberts grabbed it, spoke into it, then to Morrow and the others.
“Ready,” he said, then turned to the manager. “Mr. Foyt, you’ll have to excuse us, but we need you and your staff to clear the area now.”
“It’s just me and Aaron.” Foyt grimaced and whistled to the teenager in the lot. As they walked together to a Cadillac Seville parked some distance away, Sullivan acknowledged Morrow’s nod and turned to Lisa.
“We’re going to begin. All set?”
As if cued, the air split with motorcycle engines starting up and Lisa caught her breath. Four of them idled about fifty yards down the roadway beside a white unmarked panel van.
“Now? We’re doing it now? I thought we’d walk in and talk first.”
“No, we have to replicate the event cold, like this. It’s the most effective way.” Sullivan put her hand on Lisa’s shoulder. “We’ve used statements to re-create everything as accurately as possible. The people in the vehicles and inside are all law enforcement—FBI, state, local.”
Roberts held the door open for Lisa.
It was moving too fast. Lisa took a breath, then entered with Sullivan beside her, encouraging her to narrate every memory, sensation and detail.
Upon stepping into the lobby, Lisa’s skin tingled and the small hairs at the back of her neck prickled. The scene was otherworldly. Nearly two dozen casually dressed men and women were at the ATMs, or looking at the big map, or in the store, or the lobby. She recognized Detective Percy Quinn and Anita Rowan with the Ramapo P.D.
Oh, God, just like before, yet different.
There was an eerie, deceiving quiet; a funereal air. There was activity, yet it was as if the service center were a mausoleum, empty of life.
As if she were watching ghosts.
Sullivan was beside her, gently urging her to report details.
“Don’t hold back, Lisa,” she whispered.
Lisa swallowed.
“I remember I needed to pee then get some magazines and a snack … The air-conditioning felt good, people were at the ATMs…people were in the store… I went to the store, picked up snacks and magazines. I got in line to pay and remember it was taking a long time…”
As she went through the chronology of events, recalling how the lights went off then on again, how she paid for her items, how she started back across the lobby, she glimpsed Roberts talk into his walkie-talkie and soon two men entered with a cart and bags.
The guards.
Lisa froze.
Through the window she saw the white van doubling as American Centurion’s armored car. Then she heard the motorcycles, saw men in racing suits and helmets with dark visors enter, extend their arms, shape their hands, their forefingers, as if holding a gun.
Pop! Pop!
Lisa flinched as the ghost killers shouted the firing sounds. Her heart beat faster as she detailed events, moment by moment.
Even the scene outside was replayed.
Inside, the killers barked commands. Lisa went numb. Her legs crumpled and she was on the floor—in the very same spot—it was absent of blood, absent of death, but reeked of industrial bleach.
Oh, God, no!
A man was on the floor beside her, facing her, about the same age as the agent, and he started saying, “I’m a cop…my gun’s on my hip under my shirt…slide closer, lift it out…tuck it under me…I can get off shots…”
Lisa’s thought process spun into a whirlwind of what was remembered, what was re-created and what was real.
Everything went blue.
She can’t breathe as her trembling hand reaches for his weapon…she can’t feel it because she knows what’s coming…she drops it and the gunman rushes to them with such fury, seizing the weapon, the man’s wallet, extending his arm, his hand, his gun finger…
Lisa recounts every detail, when she is overcome.
“NO. GOD, NO! DON’T KILL HIM!”
But the gunman shouted.
BANG!
Lisa spasmed as her memory replayed the hot splatter of blood—the explosion.
The killer moved to her.
No, wait.
In that instant, as the killer’s finger pushed violently against Lisa’s skull, it happened. In the terrifying moment between one death and her life, it happened. Her heart skipped.
Time stopped.
With the unbearable pressure mounting on her skull, the horrifying images rewound to the shooter placing his gun against Agent Gregory Scott Dutton’s head. His last words—“Jennifer, I love you”—roared in Lisa’s ears and memory rewound a bit more to that sickening instant when the killer extended his arm and the cuff of his racing suit slipped back and in a searing telltale flash Lisa sees…
SHE SEES IT!
Lisa grabbed the shooter’s arm, clamped it in a viselike grip.
“A tattoo!” she shouts from the floor. “He’s got a tattoo!”
Morrow’s eyes widen. Jerked into action, he pulled out his notepad.
“Help her up! Quick!” Morrow said. “Lisa, please, can you sketch it now!”
Lisa was sobbing convulsively as Sullivan helped her to a sitting position, passed her the pad and sat on the floor with her.
“It was like a snake caught in ropes,” Lisa managed to say through her tears, struggling to steady her hand as she drew. “The snake’s head was up like it was going to bite, its mouth open, showing fangs, and the ropes and things were kind of braided.”
After several moments, Lisa passed her sketch to Morrow.
“Please, don’t ask me to do any more today. Please.”
“No, Lisa. We’re done for today. You did very well. Everyone did very well,” Morrow said, then huddled around her drawing with other investigators.
Sullivan comforted Lisa, praising her amid her quiet sniffles. They sat that way for a long time. Someone brought Lisa a Coke while Morrow and the others absorbed the break, quietly sending emails and making calls. Morrow approached Lisa, apologetic. There was one more thing. He asked Lisa to allow an NYPD sketch artist to work with her at fine-tuning the tattoo image when she returned to the hotel.