Sunday, February 26, 2006

Falling For It - A mini mystery

Hannibal Jones knew that John and Alana Graham intended to move into his neighborhood. He had met the young professional African American couple twice. The first time was when they first came to look at the rundown building two blocks from his own place. He spoke with them again three weeks later after they had bought the house and they were exploring their new acquisition. As he remembered it, they had found the place in worse condition than it appeared during their original exploration, and they were a bit disheartened by the amount of work it would take to make the place livable. They had talked about how an urban renovation property can look like more of a bargain than it really is.

With only those two meetings behind them, Hannibal was surprised to be the first person John called when tragedy struck on a sunny Saturday afternoon. But Hannibal was used to being called whenever trouble arose, so he grabbed Cindy’s hand and they jogged to the Graham house.

“This damned place absorbed every penny we had,” John said, sitting near the base of the stairs when they walked in, “and now it has taken her as well.”

“Where’s Alana?” Cindy asked. John pointed up the stairs.

Hannibal remembered the three rooms at the top of the stairs. Two were usable, but in the third the floor had been so rotted that it had fallen away completely from the door to half way across the room.

Hannibal trudged up the narrow stairs, with Cindy and John close behind. At the top he was greeted by a note pinned to the door of the floorless room. It appeared to be written in haste, and simply said, “I’m sorry, it’s all just too much for me.” He turned to John.

“How long has this been here?”

“I don’t know,” John said, his lower lip quivering. “Alana came out early this morning, supposedly to work on the house. I came later to join her. She didn’t answer my shouts so I started looking around. When I got up here I found that note hanging there. I opened the door, and looked down and…”

Grief seemed to have choked off John’s words, so Hannibal nodded and opened the door. The smell of wet, rotted wood burst forward. Staring down into the darkness he thought he saw a form two stories below in the cellar. Knowing there was no electricity in the house he had brought a flashlight. Directing the beam down into the cavernous space, he stared until a female form came into focus. Behind him Cindy whispered, “Madre de Dios.”

“I knew she was depressed,” John said. “We were on the verge of bankruptcy because of this house. But I can’t believe she would kill herself.”

“Nor can I,” Hannibal said. “But then, I can barely believe that you would kill her.”

“Hannibal!” Cindy said as John shrank back against the opposite wall.

Hannibal turned to face John. “Is this the story you intend to give to the police? You came up the stairs, read this note, opened the door and found your wife dead at the bottom of a fall into the basement?”

“It’s the truth,” John stammered. “Why won’t you believe me?”

Hannibal had met so many cold blooded men in his life that he thought they shouldn’t surprise him anymore, but they still did. Clenching his teeth, he gathered John’s shirt in both hands and spun him around so that his back was to the space two stories above his wife’s body. John’s breathing pushed toward hyperventilation as Hannibal leaned him back over the empty space and one of his feet dangled in the air.

“Hannibal, what are you doing?” Cindy asked. Her man kept his eyes on John’s, and John’s eyes were pleading.

“Please.” John’s words were frantic. “Please don’t drop me.”

“I’ll pull you back into the hall after you answer one question, stupid,” Hannibal said through his clenched teeth. “Just where was Alana standing when she turned around to close this door?”

Monday, February 13, 2006

Protecting our Nation - The Human Touch

There’s been a lot of talk about protecting our infrastructure in this country from terrorist attack, and this is one subject I feel qualified to talk about. When I was a special agent for the U.S. Secret Service I had the privilege of being posted to the protective service division. My teammates and I protected the safety of senior government officials. We used the latest technology of course, but the primary way we kept those people safe was with well-trained, alert, dedicated human beings.

Now I support the massive effort the President has put into chasing terrorists all over the world, and despite the protests, a terrorist-surveillance program to catch the international communications of suspected al-Qaeda operatives is a great idea. Trust me, the guys doing wire taps don’t have time to listen to your petty private chatter. But we also need a plan for fighting them here, because here is where they want to hurt us. We need to take action right away, especially to protect our trains and ports.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, just anybody who knows about personal protection. Every day, millions of us go through train stations like our Metro here in the District. Not to mention the rail tankers full of chlorine gas that roll through neighborhoods, unguarded. Take one of those out in a city, and you could kill a hundred thousand people in one shot. It’s not hard to upgrade rail and transit security. You need more patrol cops, maybe some bomb-sniffing dogs, and the same things you do to make your home secure: good fences, better lighting and a few security cameras. We’ll need higher tech measures to protect other obvious targets of choice - chemical plants, the electricity grid and important computer networks. But any big company knows how to do that.

We could solve some other serious shortcomings with a little planning and focus. For example, local emergency personnel - fire departments, police and rescue units - still can’t communicate with each other or with federal organizations. First responders have to be able to talk to each other and to their higher headquarters if things suddenly get hot. Terrorist watch lists need to be consolidated. And while we check people getting on planes, nobody is checking their baggage for explosives. This is a case of overlooking the obvious.

And like I said about Secret Service work, the best protection is to have lots of well-trained and alert people in place. That means lots more police. Of course that will cost money, but the truth is, an armored care didn’t save the Vice President’s life when I was on duty, it was a careful man pushing him to the ground. By the same token, it won’t be security cameras or facial recognition software that stops the next terrorist attack; it will be some local cop who happens to be in the right place at the right time, paying attention. That’s the kind of protection we give the President. Doesn’t every citizen deserve the same level of safety?