CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
They had agreed, while still moving through the precinct parking structure, that staggering the arrival made sense.
A single car pulling up quickly to the theater without warning was less likely to raise suspicion.
Two additional police vehicles arriving in a cluster announced something, and if Owen Gallagher was indeed there and keeping an eye out, such an announcement would cost them whatever advantage they had left.
Kowalski had agreed to the decision without argument, telling his units to hold two blocks back and wait for instruction, while Miles and Vic went direct on Sixth.
Miles drove while Vic navigated, with the Paramount's address pulled up on her phone and the building's website open in a second tab.
"How many people does it hold?" Miles asked.
She scrolled a bit until she found her answer. "Thirteen hundred seats. And it says only three hundred seats or so were left for this event…so we’re talking nearly a thousand people.”
Miles kept his eyes on the street. One thousand people in the audience, and Laurence on stage with them. He didn’t say what he was thinking yet because he hadn't finished thinking it. He let it sit while he drove, trying to think of any and every possible outcome.
Vic closed one tab and opened another. "The Resonance Experience," she said, reading the event listing. "It’s a two-hour group consciousness seminar. Spiritual attunement, guided energy work." She looked over at him, looking almost disgusted. "Whatever that means."
Vic set the phone in her lap and looked ahead at the street. "If Gallagher has been planning this one the same way he planned the others, he had access to this building before tonight."
"That's what I'm thinking. And depending on security…I mean, with a large theater like this, would it even be that difficult?"
"The sign alone would have required an installation crew at some point. Restoration work, maintenance. He would have had the knowledge base and the professional contacts to position himself for that kind of access."
Miles took the turn onto Congress, and the Paramount came into view.
Even from half a block away, it announced itself with a confidence that most buildings couldn't manage.
The facade was a layered wall of cream-colored terra cotta and dark masonry that ran up to an elaborate cornice.
The neon was integrated into it from the marquee upward in a way that made clear the light had not been added to the building but had been designed with it.
The marquee itself ran the full width of the entrance and framed the current billing in individual letters: THE RESONANCE EXPERIENCE / TIMOTHY LAURENCE.
Above the marquee, rising the full height of the building's front face, a vertical sign spelled out PARAMOUNT in enormous block letters, each one outlined and filled with neon tubing that ran in concentric layers of red and white.
In the evening dark it was visible from several blocks in either direction, a tower of light that drew the eye before the building itself fully registered.
Miles had seen large neon installations before, and more than a few of them in the past two weeks.
This one was in a different category. The tubing for a single letter of that sign would have been longer than most storefront pieces he'd encountered.
The transformers required to run the whole assembly would not be small units.
He parked at the curb in front of the theater and they got out.
Right away, he spotted a security guard positioned near the front entrance—a broad man in a dark jacket with a radio clipped to his lapel.
He was in conversation with another man, and the conversation had reached a stage that was plainly past civil.
The second man was slim, in his early forties, wearing a headset pushed down around his neck and carrying a tablet in one hand.
He had been shaking his head repeatedly; a man clearly settled into refusal and not planning to move from it.
Miles had his badge out before they reached the two men. "I'm Agent Sterling, this is Agent Stone. We called ahead."
The security guard looked relieved. "They did call, sir," he said to the man with the headset. "That's who I've been trying to explain to you."
"I understand that." The man with the headset turned to Miles with the clipped focus of a person who managed a great many moving pieces at once and considered this conversation an interruption of several of them.
"I'm Jordan Hess. I'm Mr. Laurence's event coordinator.
The issue is not whether you called or not.
The issue is that Mr. Laurence took the stage twenty minutes ago in front of one thousand people and removing him mid-program is not something I can authorize. "
"We're not asking you to authorize it," Vic said. "We're asking you to get a message to him."
"I've already sent someone backstage to do exactly that, and he has declined.
He does not leave a program once it's begun.
" Hess glanced toward the theater doors as if the conversation inside was his primary concern and this was a secondary nuisance.
"I understand there's a concern, but Mr. Laurence's security team is inside that building right now and they are fully briefed.
He receives threats of one kind or another several times a month.
The protocol is to maintain the event and—"
"What kind of event is it?" Miles said.
Hess stopped, looking puzzled. The question seemed to throw him slightly off the rhythm he'd been working in.
"It's called The Resonance Experience," he said.
"It's a group consciousness seminar that lasts two hours.
Mr. Laurence guides the audience through a series of energy attunement exercises designed to help people access their own spiritual frequency.
Breathwork, group resonance meditation, guided intention-setting.
" He said it all in the same pace and register in which he might describe a logistics schedule.
"It culminates in a collective attunement sequence.
The entire audience joins hands with the people beside them while Mr. Laurence leads the closing from the stage.
It's the signature of the program. People come specifically for it. "
"He joins hands?" Miles said.
Hess paused, looking at Miles as if he was stupid. "Yes. He extends the attunement circuit. He holds the hand of the person at the end of the front row, yes, creating a complete connection across the room."
"Is there any metal on that stage? Lighting rigs, a microphone stand, anything that runs to the building's electrical system?"
Hess looked at him differently now, and the rotation of concerns behind his eyes was visible.
He then looked to the security guard for an answer.
"This is a fully rigged theatrical venue,” the guard said.
“The stage has a full lighting grid, a PA system, a monitor board.
Microphone stands, wiring, the full complement. So…yes."
Miles looked up at the vertical sign above the marquee.
The PARAMOUNT letters burned white and red against the night sky, the top of the sign level with the fourth floor of the buildings on either side.
He thought about the transformers required to run that assembly.
He thought about a master electrician who had spent three years learning custom neon installations and had already modified three separate transformer systems without leaving a visible trace on any of them.
And then there was Timothy Laurence completing the loop at the front of the room with his hand in someone else's hand and a microphone stand made of metal within reach of the stage.
In his mind, Miles conjured up what he knew about Owen Gallagher's sister, Rachel, who had grabbed the terminals of a two-hundred-amp neon cabinet at two in the morning and died before she hit the ground.
Miles didn't have proof for what was going through his head.
He had a theory built on a pattern, and the pattern was coherent and the timing was right, and that was what he had.
He looked at Hess, trying to reason with him.
"If current reached Laurence through a contact point on that stage during the handholding sequence," Miles said, "it would travel through every person in that chain. You understand that?"
Hess's face went still. But he still didn’t speak.
Miles looked the guard and said, "I need you to think about whatever's different tonight," Miles said. "Any maintenance work done to the building recently, any contractors who've been on the property in the last week or two. Anyone who's had access to the electrical systems."
"There…um, there was work done on the sign," he said slowly. "The vertical sign. One of the neon sections on the upper face went dark about ten days ago, and a crew came in to assess it. They were here for two days."
"What company?"
"Shit, I don't know. That's not on my pay grade, you know?"
It was unfortunate, but in the end, Miles wasn’t sure it even mattered.
"Where is the main power for this building?” he asked. “The primary electrical panel, the transformer room, whatever feeds the sign systems and the stage."
The guard blinked. "It’s in the basement. There's a utility level below the main floor."
"Who has access to it?"
"Building staff. Maintenance. Our crew would know, but most of them are inside right now for the—"
"I need someone who knows where it is and can get me there right now," Miles said.
“I mean, I can do that in a minute, but—”
"Not in a minute. Now."
The guard nodded, asking no more questions, and started to dig in his pocket for his keys.