15. Dane #2
“They added the corridor on after the framing of the hall. The connection at the hall end is a steel column embedded in a non-load-bearing partition, which itself ties into the hall’s primary post-and-beam frame at a single fastener point.
The fastener is rated for the corridor’s static load, but it was specified for the corridor only.
It was not specified for additional loading. ”
“What kind of additional loading?” Wiley asked.
“The kind you get from a directional shaped charge placed against the post-and-beam frame on the corridor side of the partition. The charge wouldn’t need to be large because the frame at that joint is doing most of the eastern roof load for the hall.
It’s a clear-span design with no interior columns, which is the reason the hall is beautiful and the reason it’s vulnerable.
Take out the joint, and you take the eastern third of the roof inside of four seconds.
The rest of the structure follows along the long axis as the load redistributes through unsupported spans. ”
Eamon’s hand, which had been flat on the table, closed slowly into a loose fist and stayed there.
“You mean a bomb,” whispered Cabot.
The consultant continued. “The device would be placed inside the corridor partition, behind the cedar paneling on the hall side. It’s decorative paneling.
It’s quarter-inch tongue-and-groove over a stud cavity.
A maintenance worker with a screw gun could open it in three minutes and close it in five.
There would be no visible disturbance. The device would be invisible to a visual sweep of the corridor or the hall.
You would need a trained dog or a backscatter unit to find it. ”
“And what would they use for a trigger?” I asked.
Farrow spoke for the first time since he’d come to the table. “Cellular.”
The consultant looked at him. “Almost certainly. It would be timed to the moment of maximum density. The ceremony is that moment: guests seated, attention forward, the bride and groom at the head of the room, and complete silence. No one moving.”
“Casualty estimate?” Eamon asked.
“At a hundred and twenty seated guests, room at capacity, attention focused on the head of the room during a toast—fifty to ninety. Higher than a smaller venue would produce, because the clear-span roof failure mode generates more lethal debris than a partial collapse in a compartmentalized building. Lower than the worst-case scenario only because the glass curtain wall on the ocean side provides a partial escape route for guests near the perimeter who survive the initial collapse.”
Everyone was silent. Cabot had gone pale. He was looking at the aerial photograph, not the diagram.
I was running the numbers in my head. It was a December off-season Vineyard event with eighty guests at a private wedding on a private road off Katama.
Reduced security at Eleanor’s request. It would be held in a clear-span event hall with a glass corridor that linked it to the main house, and a single fastener point holding the eastern roof load.
There was only one way in for the guests: through the main house, down the corridor, and into the hall. Two ways out under stress: back the way they came, through ninety feet of glass tube while the hall came down behind them, or through the closed terrace doors if they could be opened in time.
The corridor was the kill zone. I hated every part of it.
Farrow was watching me. He knew I was mapping the hall in my head, and he knew I was three steps into an evacuation plan.
“Detection on the Vineyard?” I asked.
“Harder than on the mainland. The closest backscatter unit accessible to civilian-side resources is in Boston. Trained dogs are easier. There’s a federal asset in Providence that could be on the Vineyard inside four hours if Eamon can get him there without flagging the operation.”
“Can you?” I asked Eamon.
“I can get him there,” Eamon said. “Whether I can get him onto the property before the wedding is the harder question. The family hasn’t authorized a sweep. They don’t know they need one.”
“And we don’t tell them?” I asked.
“We don’t tell them.”
The consultant nodded once and closed the folder. She had nothing more to add.
Cabot spoke. “Eleanor will sit in the front row, smiling.”
The room was silent.
He’d cracked the abstraction. Eighty guests was a number. Eleanor, smiling in the front row, was a woman I could see.
The Harcourts were real people to Cabot. He wrote about them with the careful precision of a man trained to see.
Now he was seeing them as bodies in a hall after the room collapsed on them.
I shifted my chair toward him. It wasn’t close enough to touch, but close enough to feel the change.
“If this is the direction they’re moving,” Eamon said, “Patterson was never the objective.”
Wiley’s voice was flat. “They were warning Patterson to stay away.”
Nobody disagreed.
The consultant stood. She left the three pages on the table. Eamon walked her to the side door.
I picked up the structural diagram and held it under the kitchen’s pendant light.
“Eamon.”
“Yes.”
“I need to be on that property this weekend,” I said.
“I’m working on it.”
“Work faster. I’m not running a protective detail at a wedding venue I haven’t walked.”
“Understood.”
Eamon walked Cabot through the café staging in the next ten minutes. I would ride with Collins. Cabot would arrive separately with Reed. There would be fifteen minutes between our arrivals.
Eamon left by the side door.
The rain that had been threatening all afternoon finally arrived. It was steady and fine, the kind that turned Brookline’s streetlights into halos and made the pavement shine.
I went upstairs.
The office at the end of the hall was empty. Wiley had gathered and stacked his printouts. The desk lamp was on low, and the laptops were docked.
I pulled the venue schematics from the folder I’d been building since the consultant left and spread them across the desk.
I had her materials plus a satellite image Eamon had sent from Michael’s work in Seattle.
It showed the property from above, with the main house and the event hall set perpendicular to each other, and the slate terrace stepping down to dune grass and then to the beach.
I’d marked the event hall in red and the glass corridor in orange. The catering vestibule and the terrace doors in blue and green.
The marks were clinical on the page. They were more personal in my head. Maria would be somewhere in the orange corridor with a tray. Eleanor would be in the front row, the way Cabot had said she’d be, smiling at the bride.
I was building an evacuation plan with timing. I was also building casualty maps.
I heard Farrow on the stairs before I saw him.
He stopped in the doorway, leaning his shoulder against the frame.
“You’ve been up here for forty minutes. Reed thinks you’re sleeping.”
“Reed thinks what I told him to think.”
Farrow pushed off the frame and crossed to the desk. He looked over the colored markings but didn’t touch the pages.
“You still think Henry’s usable,” I said.
Farrow looked at me.
“I think he’s the only person who can tell us how soon that device goes in and who walks it through the catering vestibule. Whether he tells Cabot any of that on Thursday is a different question.”
“You don’t sound confident.”
“I’m not in the business of building your confidence. You’d see through it.”
I looked at Farrow. He placed one hand on the desk, leaning slightly forward. I reached over and placed my hand on his.
He didn’t move. “Dane,” he said. “This won’t solve itself right now. Get some sleep tonight if you can.”
“Are you planning to?”
He didn’t answer. I pulled my hand back, and he stood upright.
Farrow squeezed my right shoulder before he headed back down the stairs.
I stood at the desk for another minute. Then I gathered the schematics, squared the pages, put them in the folder, and turned off the lamp.