Mark Taylor Omnibus (The Mark Taylor Series) Page 22

  “I have the camera right here.” Jessie dug into her purse and handed the young man Mark’s camera. She noted his name tag. Gary.

  Gary’s eyes lit up. “Cool. I’m not sure of the make, but it’s old. Very old.” He turned the camera this way and that, skimming his fingers over the textured body. “It’s in good condition too. It was probably one of the first thirty-five millimeter still cameras.” Beaming, he opened the back. “Yep, there’s a tiny flaw in one of the teeth on the wheel. See the sliver of metal sticking out?” The young man laid the strips of film out on the counter in order. “Right here.” He tapped the edges of the strips as he kept a silent count. “The notch is on every fifth negative and this negative falls exactly in sequence. These photos definitely came off the end of this roll of film.”

  Jessie and Dan leaned across the counter. There was no doubt. Jessie straightened and caught Dan’s eye. Now what? He shrugged.

  “Where’d you get the camera anyway?” Gary asked, and then bent to get something beneath the counter.

  “It’s not mine. It belongs to a...friend of mine.” Jessie ignored Dan, knowing that if she looked at him now, he would be grinning at her.

  “Oh. Well, I can’t tell you how those bizarre photos got on your film, but I have another roll of film here. You could try it out and see what happens. In all likelihood, it was just some crazy glitch.”

  Nodding, Jessie pulled some cash from her wallet. “I think I’ll do that. Meanwhile, would it be possible to get those two photos blown up to eight by tens?”

  Gary made a face. “Sure, that’s no problem, but what in the world for?”

  Dan leaned an elbow on the counter and smiled. “It’s police business. You understand.”

  Gary’s eyes rounded. “Oh.” He rang up the film, his demeanor more subdued. “I’ll get right to work on those enlargements. Should be ready by tomorrow.”

  Jessie smiled. “That would be great, Gary.”

  * * *

  Jessie picked up the enlargements the next day on her lunch hour. She waited until she was back in the office to open the envelope. Bracing herself, she sat and pulled the pictures out. The larger pictures showed more detail. Mark’s face was bathed in sweat, and his hands looked swollen in the cuffs. In the second picture, she saw the muscles in his arms bunched. He appeared thinner than she remembered, and his orange t-shirt was plastered to his body. Across the back, was a stenciled number? It was prison issue. That much was obvious. But which prison? Booted feet in the corner had camouflage pants tucked into the top. That meant military.

  Dan entered, a bag in his hands. “Want a burger? I figured you wouldn’t have time to get one, so I got an extra.”

  She tried to smile, but didn’t quite manage one. “Sure. That sounds good. Thanks.”

  He handed her the burger and wordlessly took the pictures from her. After a long moment, he sighed. “It’s not any easier looking at them like this, is it?” Dropping the pictures on her desk, he returned to his own and began eating his lunch.

  She took a deep breath. “No. Harder in fact.” As difficult as it was to look at the pictures, it was time to think logically. The pictures looked real, but where had they come from? How had they ended up in the camera? She had just happened upon Mark’s stuff tossed onto the lawn of his building. Then had happened to use the camera for the recital and happened to use the photo store near her work. How could anyone have planned an elaborate scheme to plant the photos with the prior set of chance circumstances?

  Jessie unwrapped the burger. The photos of Mark had been on the end of the roll. How had a man who had been gone for months wind up on the end of a roll of pictures that should have been faces of giggling little girls wearing tutus? If it was a con, it was insanely complex. Who would go to that much trouble and why?

  Dan didn’t know what Mark had told her about dreams and pictures predicting the attacks on nine-eleven. It had been hard enough telling anyone that Mark had been arrested as a terrorist; there had been no need to add lunatic to the list, but what if pictures like these were what Mark had experienced?

  “When I went to see Mark that last time, he told me something.”

  His mouth full, Dan raised his eyebrows and took a gulp of his soft drink. “Yeah?”

  She tucked her hair behind her ear and leaned an elbow on her desk as she turned to Dan. “He told me that he had a camera that took pictures of the future and that after developing the photos, he'd dreamed about what was in the pictures.” She stopped as she tried to recall exactly what Mark had told her. “Or maybe he had dreams first and then the pictures show up. I’m not sure.”

  Swallowing a bite, Dan wiped his lips with a napkin, and Jessie couldn’t help noticing that the corners of his mouth twitched.

  “Really? That’s...interesting.” He tilted his head to the side with a half-shrug. “So? Taylor was always a bit odd. It sounds like something he’d say.” He dipped a fry into a pile of ketchup and pointed it at her. “Does that have something to do with why he was arrested?”

  “It had almost everything to do with it. He said that he had photos of the Towers and a dream. I guess he called a bunch of government agencies the morning of the attacks to try to warn someone.” Jessie picked up her burger and took a bite. She wasn’t hungry, but it smelled good. Her coffee was cold, but she took a drink anyway to wash down the food. “What if he was telling the truth?”

  Dan balled up his wrapper and tossed it in the wastebasket. “Aw, come on, Jess. I know you liked the guy, but I think you’re grasping at straws.”

  Jessie snatched the photos and waved them. “Then where in creation did these come from?” With a snap of her wrist, she let the pictures slide onto the desk then stood and paced to the window. Of course he didn’t believe it. Why should he? It was crazy. Drawing a deep breath, she turned, arms crossed. “Look, I know it sounds...improbable. But what if it’s true? I didn’t believe it until these pictures showed up.” She flung an arm out, gesturing at the photos. “You got a better explanation?”

  Dan slouched in his chair, but he had lost the sarcastic look, and instead, bit his thumb as he contemplated the pictures covering Jessie’s burger. “Well, you could test it.”

  “How?”

  “Take some more pictures.” He grinned. “See what develops.”

  She couldn’t help smiling at his bad pun, then sat down in her chair as she thought about his suggestion. “I guess I could do that.” What if another horrible scene turned up? She shivered and hoped she was wrong about this.

  “Did you dream?”

  Jessie pushed the awful mental pictures of what might show up out of her mind. “Did I dream?”

  “Yeah. You said Taylor told you he had dreams that went along with the photos. You have pictures, but did you dream?” He pointed his chin towards the photos, “Did those scenes turn up in your dreams?”

  Jessie moved the pictures off her lunch and shook her head. “No. At least, if I did, I don’t recall any.” With a shudder, she continued, “These would have been nightmares. I would have remembered.” Without looking at the them again, she put them in the envelope. She pushed the photos back into their envelope.

  “Well, I have to go interview some witnesses from that incident yesterday.” He burped and pushed out of his chair with a groan. “I guess it’s back to work. Are you going to finish that initial report?”

  Jessie took a last bite and swept the crumbs off her desk with the side of her hand. “Yeah. And thanks for lunch.”

  Ten

  A friend, when questioned, said, “Mark’s a great guy. We used to go have a few beers, shoot pool, or go biking. Then, a few years ago, he got super busy. Guess his business picked up. I gave up calling him.”

  It was the same story with other friends, but, if Jim’s memory was accurate, Taylor’s business, while growing and successful, hadn’t taken a huge jump that would explain the sudden inability to see old friends. Was he too busy because he had other duties?

  Jim
tapped a pen on the yellow legal pad at his elbow. Notes in his precise hand filled the top half of the paper. Taylor’s file lay open, individual reports spread out over his desk. He re-read the transcript of Mohommad Aziz’s interrogations. The guy had really done a number on Mark Taylor. The man had told his team of interrogators that Taylor had volunteered to take photos of Chicago skyscrapers and the Chicago Board of Trade as possible targets. Details were sketchier than Jim would have liked. When asked why Taylor would do something like that, as there was no documentation that Taylor had ever been a sympathizer, Aziz had said it was greed and that Taylor had demanded fifty-thousand dollars for his photos.

  Jim set aside the transcript and pulled out Taylor’s financial records. His debt had been moderate, a car loan and a small business loan, both in good standing with regular payments. The photographer had paid the appropriate taxes on his business, and his spending matched his reported income, with a modest amount set aside in stocks and savings.

  There were no big purchases, no large deposits, and no transfers of money. In short, no red flags. If he had been paid fifty thousand dollars, he hadn’t spent any of it. Jim scratched his neck. Maybe Taylor buried it all in a trunk in his backyard.

  Buried beneath the financial records was the very odd file that the Chicago police had on Taylor. It contained six reports of Taylor being caught in dangerous situations, but what was strange was he had been cleared of any wrong doing in every instance. In fact, he had played a key factor in most of the situations coming out better than they could have. Better than they should have.

  In one case, a car with two children inside had begun rolling down an embankment and ended up in a pond. Luckily for the kids, Taylor had been able to open the door and reach in and pull both kids out, tossing them onto a grassy embankment. The car had gone twenty feet into the pond and sank in deep, murky water. The kids would surely have drowned. Taylor had been mildly injured when his jacket caught on the door latch and he had been dragged. The car hit a bump, according to Taylor’s statement in the report, and his jacket had ripped free.

  Jim set the report down. Four others had similar outcomes, but the fifth one was different. It’s the one that intrigued him. In that case, Taylor had been shot while attacking an undercover police officer. Oddly, it wasn’t the officer who shot him, but instead, a member of the street gang the officer had been trying obtain evidence on. Taylor’s attack had saved the officer from being hit. Taylor hadn’t been so lucky and had been shot in the left thigh.

  So, why was a clean-cut guy like Taylor hanging out on street corners in a drug-infested neighborhood? Jim wondered if he had been there trying to make a buy, but no reports listed him as a drug user and his drug screen upon arrest had come back negative. None of Taylor’s friends or acquaintances mentioned drugs when they had been interviewed. Besides, he’d come across many addicts in his career and nothing in Taylor’s behavior even hinted that the man was a user.

  Tossing his pen down, Jim sat back, his hands clasped behind his head. It just didn’t add up. What would make this guy join up with a terrorist group? His parents were middle America and raised their son in a loving and supportive home. They were practically a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. Neighbors remembered Taylor as the kid who was first to knock on their door to shovel after a snowstorm, or playing baseball in the corner lot with the other boys. The most trouble he had been in was when he had been caught smoking a joint behind a neighbor’s garage when he was fifteen.

  He skimmed the transcript from the half dozen phone calls Taylor had made to various government agencies on the day of the attacks. At the bottom of the page was a reference number for the audio recordings. They hadn’t listened to the actual calls that Taylor had made as they had read the transcripts, but now Jim was curious. He called his secretary and requested that she get a copy of the tapes.

  It would take awhile before the tapes would arrive, so he took a quick break to get some fresh coffee. Taking a sip, he settled at his desk once again. According to the file, Taylor had a girlfriend...a detective with the Chicago PD. That was an interesting tidbit. The notation said that they appeared to have only been together a short while. Most of his friends had drifted away in the last few years. Jim rifled through the papers to find a brief interview he recalled reading.

  He sat forward and sorted through the file. Damn. There wasn’t much. Just the few sketchy police reports he’d already gone over. He checked to see who had filed them. He recognized one. Where had he seen that name recently? Detective Jessica Bishop. He snapped his fingers. Wasn’t that the name of the woman Taylor was dating at the time of his arrest? Interesting. He rubbed his chin, trying to remember the approximate date Taylor had begun dating her. He was sure it had been shortly before Taylor’s arrest.

  Jim noted the names and details on a legal pad. He intended to investigate the Bishop angle more closely. He sorted the papers and found the interview he was looking for. It had been filed under the personal contacts since Bishop had been the girlfriend. He skimmed the transcript, and scowled. The officer, Sean Daly, who’d done the interview, was either having a bad day or was lazy beyond belief. He should have pushed harder on the fact that a police detective had a relationship with someone giving tips on crimes. Daly should have pounced with follow-up questions.

  The reports needed fleshing out and he decided that he needed to do it himself. He glanced out the window and pulled his shirt away from his body. It would be nice to get out of the humidity. The air barely moved outside his window, and even in the air conditioned building, his shirt stuck to him. He grinned. Chicago shouldn’t be too brutal in September.

  His mind still entertaining the idea of Chicago, he shuffled the documents back into the stiff expandable file and moved to the row of tall cabinets lining one wall of his office. There was a short knock on his door, and his secretary stepped in.

  “Here are the tapes you requested.”

  “Wow, that was fast.”

  She held out a bundle of tapes held in a stack by rubber bands. “I have connections.”

  Jim took the tapes from her and smiled. “Thanks.” After she left, he took the tapes back to his desk, he found his cassette player and slid in the first tape. He had read the transcripts from these tapes several times before, but that wasn’t why he had requested them. He wanted to hear how Taylor sounded.

  An hour later, Jim scrubbed his hands down his face and scratched his head with both hands. He was no closer to deciding what to do with his prisoner. It would have been so much easier if Taylor had sounded calm, but Jim had detected a note of restrained panic in the first calls. In later tapes, he’d been not just panicked, but frustrated and angry. The last tape was different. Recorded at 0743 Central time, Taylor sounded defeated, his voice thick. Was he crying? Either the man was a hell of an actor, or he had truly been distraught. Jim replayed that last tape. Taylor’s voice filled the office.

  “Please, you have to put me through to someone in charge. There’s not much time left. Oh, God. Please.”

  “I’m sorry sir, I need to ask a few questions first.”

  “Goddamn it, there’s no time for questions...time...oh, shit...what time is it?”

  There was a short silence and then a sharp thump. Jim leaned in, his ear turned towards the machine. What had he done? Dropped the phone? There was a muffled scrape Jim closed his eyes, picturing the scene in his mind. Fear was etched on Taylor’s face and tension in his movements. Jim shook his head and snapped his eyes open. He was probably just superimposing the familiar expressions he’d inspired when questioning Taylor. That’s all it was.

  Taylor choked out, “Never mind. It’s too late.”

  The tape ended at 0745. One minute before the first plane had hit.

  Jim stabbed a finger down on the eject button. The evidence was impossible to ignore. Even if Taylor knew the exact timetable of the plan, there was no way he’d have known exactly when the first plane would hit. There were too many variables.
The terrorist pilots could have made their move sooner or later, there could have been a delay due to fighting, as happened on Flight 93 that went down in Pennsylvania. Even the wind could have been a factor. So, how had he known that by 0744, it was too late? Unless he knew that only a minute later, the first plane would hit.

  How had he missed that the first ten times through the transcripts? Jim picked the phone up and called to his administrative assistant. “Jill, could you book me on a flight to Chicago?” Glancing at his calendar, he nodded. “Next Wednesday would be fine.”

  * * *

  He sat as straight as the shackles allowed. Across the table, Jim sorted through Mark’s file. At least, Mark assumed it was his file. What was the guy up to? And where were the others? As horrible as interrogations were, at least he knew what to expect. This change in procedure smacked of some kind trickery. The guards were ever present, but stood by the door instead of right beside Mark. For the first ten minutes, Jim had ignored him, looking at him briefly when he had first arrived, and then checked his watch every few minutes. Mark shifted in the chair. What was he waiting for? Were the others late? But why were there no other chairs?

  Mark jumped when there was a knock on the door, and right on cue, his heart began pounding. He knew better than to turn to see who had entered. He couldn’t help himself, he prayed it wasn’t a doctor.

  Jim smiled and motioned for someone to enter. “Bring it in. Thanks.”