Page 32 of Wrong Door

“We could get local media to cover it.” Miles watched Pruitt's expression, noting that she was actually excited about this crazy idea, too. “Holy shit, this might be easier than you think. Looking for all of those names, I came across at least ten small, private art groups dedicated to up-and-coming artists in the area. I could reach out to them and have one of them pretend to put it on. They could send out announcements on social media…something like a sporadic, guerilla-style art exhibit along the riverfront. With a local art group claiming it as their own, I don’t think Cord would think it would be suspicious. Spontaneous things like this are put on all the time…art, music, whatever.”

“Perfect,” Miles said. "It would have to be the kind of event that would be extremely difficult for a man with Russell Cord's relationship to color and chromatic theory to stay away from."

Pruitt had started pacing as she pulled her phone from her pocket. "I need to call my captain. If we're doing this, I need resources and I need them fast." She was moving toward the door and talking as she went. "It's a good idea. It's a genuinely good idea and being so early in the morning, we’d have the entire day.”

“Do you think local PD resources would be able to pull it off?” Vic asked.

“No way to know without trying,” Pruitt said, placing the call and stepping out of the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The mayor's office had taken just two hours to confirm and another two to commit resources. It happened faster than Miles had expected but it also ate away at a good deal of the planning time. Pruitt had run the approval process herself, moving through her Captain first and then being directed to the higher-ups at City Hall. By 12:15, they had a green light, a budget that covered the equipment and the plainclothes detail, and a commitment from the city's events coordinator to facilitate use of the riverfront space without filing the kind of public permit that would show up in searchable records. They’d had to let the planner in on the real reason for the event but that was a risk they’d had to take.

Pruitt had emphasized that it needed to come off as a small-time yet elegant affair that would seem grassroots in nature. And with the help of three different online groups she’d contacted just as she’d said she would, she had plenty of help in that regard, too. They were all groups of local artists whose social media reach covered a significant portion of Savannah's arts community. They had all jumped at the chance to not only help the police, but to put together a last-minute guerrilla science and art installation. It would be posted as a one-night event timed for dusk along the riverfront, and that the goal was to make it feel discovered rather than announced. They posted about it as if they had accidentally stumbled onto something worth sharing: vague and enthusiastic, short on specifics, heavy on the suggestion that this was not something you wanted to miss. Two local radio stations had also agreed to help, picking up the thread within three hours. They were framing it as a free public science event, a spontaneous chromatic demonstration along the riverfront that would be both fun and beautiful.

Before Miles had left the precinct to head down to the riverfront to help with the more technical components, he and Vic had also seen that a local news station ran a brief segment during their noon-one news program.

Now, three hours later and deep into his own work, Miles saw a reporter standing at the riverfront with the water behind her and described to the camera what was being set up. It was brief, fun, and to the point, just a thirty second snippet on the afternoon news, Miles assumed.

He had been working on the current display for the better part of two hours. It was fun and dreadful at the same time; he had never thought he’d be working on something like this as a field agent on the heels of a serial killer-led cult. The technical components required sourcing from three separate vendors, one in Atlanta who had driven a van down that morning with UV lamps. Miles had worked with the equipment as it came in, organizing the display with a forensic logic that was not entirely different from the logic of a crime scene. The UV lamps were arranged in a semicircular bank at the back of the installation, their output calibrated to activate the fluorescent compounds at the distances he needed without washing out the chromatic filters in front of them. The filters were layered, a system of colored polycarbonate panels on adjustable frames that could be positioned to redirect and combine the light passing through them, producing a cascade effect as the output moved through each successive layer and changed register.

It made him think of a documentary he’d once watched on how the Disney parks did their light shows. This was nowhere near that same level of perfection and gloss, but it was still going to be quite a sight. And he enjoyed every moment of working on it.

He had worked this out on paper first, in the conference room before they left the precinct. He had a set of rough diagrams of the light paths and the expected output at each stage. He had revised the diagrams twice when the actual equipment didn’t behave precisely as the specifications had suggested. The third revision produced something he had not planned for, a secondary emission in the violet range that appeared at the interface between two of the compound layers and was not achievable by any of the other configurations he had tried.

He kept it, thinking it might look quite striking. By the time the display was operational and he stepped back from it in the late afternoon light, with the sun still above the tree line and the UV lamps not yet dominant, it looked like a modest art installation: colored panels and some equipment, the kind of thing that warranted a glance and a question. He knew what it would look like at dusk, when the UV output overcame the ambient light and the fluorescent compounds activated fully and the filter cascade produced the color progression he had built into it. He had done the calculations, and he was confident in them.

He was also aware, standing fifty feet back from it and looking at the framing of the riverfront behind it, that the water going gold in the late afternoon light would add to the effect. The riverfront at this hour had a quality Cord would have documented in his ledger with specific pigment notations, and the display was positioned to amplify rather than compete with it. Sadly, he wondered what sort of amazing painting Cord may have produced from such a sight four years ago.

As he worked, he saw Pruitt approaching. She was looking at the setup from the operations position they had established at a food vendor's cart that would not be operating that evening. Its awning providing cover for the surveillance equipment and a clear line of sight to the installation and the surrounding crowd space.

"The plainclothes team is in position," Pruitt told him. She stood beside him and looked at the display. "Six officers distributed through the expected crowd area, two at the perimeter on either end of the riverfront walk, two more on the upper level of the parking structure with a sight line down the full length." She looked at the display for another moment. "You built that yourself?"

"Most of it."

"An interest of yours?" she said.

“Yes. Up until about a year ago, I spent most of my time with the bureau in a lab and working with tech. Hey, do you have any idea where Agent Stone is?”

“Yeah, she’s about a block down, going over details with the plainclothes. She shouldn’t be too long.”

This turned out to be true, as Vic came around the side of the vendor cart at 6:35. It was currently forty minutes before dusk… forty minutes before the UV lamps would be worth anything in the ambient light.

"There's already a crowd," Vic told him. She had walked the full perimeter of the riverfront space before coming to him, and her assessment was direct. "More than I expected for this hour, honestly. The radio spots and the news segment did the work." She looked at the display and smiled. "The news reporter is back with a camera operator. They want to do a live segment when it gets going."

"Pruitt approved that?"

"Pruitt suggested it…just in case Cord’s not already sucked in."

Miles looked at the display and then at the riverfront walk filling with people in the early evening light. There were families and couples among students and artists, all waiting for the unexpected show to begin. He found himself scanning the crowd for anyone that might fit Cord’s description but saw nothing.

The water was still gold behind them. The sky above the far bank was going amber at the horizon. Had they not been looking for a killer, it may have been quite the magical evening.

Vic looked at him for a moment. "How are you feeling about this?"

"I won’t lie…the set-up was sort of fun. But ask me again in two hours.”

She accepted that without pressing it. "I'm going to walk the perimeter again before the light changes. I’ll also check in with the team at the parking structure." She adjusted her jacket and looked at the crowd and then back at him. "You got your earpiece?”