Chapter Three
Seconds before Shawn vanished into the thin air, a phone call was made from downtown to unknown location in Long Island. An unidentified person made the call with a burner phone.
“Hello, boss?”
An unknown person answered the call with a secured flipped phone.
“How did the business meeting go?”
“It was concluded. All the papers were fully executed and signed boss.”
”Fantastic, that’s a great news. You come straight to the office right away!”
”Yes, Sir!”
That call only took less than a minute before it went battery dead. Meanwhile, an emergency call was in progress.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” said the call receiver.
”Hello, there was a shooting outside. “
“Are you okay, did anybody get hurt?”
The operator with a calm and soothing voice tried easing down the frantic young girl in her early twenties, who was screaming on the other side of the phone.
“I am fine, but I think someone might be really hurt. I heard lots of shots being fired, and I saw a black limousine crashing badly into a building.”
“I am glad that you’re okay young lady” - says the operator, as she crunches the voice data into the logging system from the keyboard with the speed of light. Then, she continued her lines of questions.
”May I have your name, please?”
”My name is Kerry Davis, with a K.”
”Okay, Kerry. Do you know the location of the crime?” asks the operator, trying to locate the coordinates from the NY state map displayed on her big screen.
“It was by the back entrance of the new courthouse, the intersection of Wall St. and Water St.”
”Alright, Kerry. Now, do you mind staying online? I need to put you on a brief hold so that I can send this information to the authorities.”
“Sure, I can wait. “
The operator pressed the hot emergency button from the main switchboard and radioed for assistance.
“All available units, this is the dispatch. We have a possible homicide by Wall St. and Water St. Any units in the vicinity, please respond?”
”Dispatch, this is 989. We’re in the close proximity,” said one of night patrol officers monitoring the area.
Once the operator is done radioing, she returned to the phone call.
“Okay Kerry, did you see how many people got hurt?”
″I am not sure, but maybe two or more?”
“Did you look at the person who fired the shots? Can you describe the individual?”
”It was kind of dark to make out the whole thing, but I think it was a man. He was like six-feet tall, wore dark clothes and hoody. He drove away with an SUV car.”
The call went on for a while until the operator logged in all information into the clouds. After the operator was done with her last data entry, she returned.
“Thank you for your civic duties Kerry. I am glad you’re not hurt. Police should be there momentarily.” The operator said, ending the conversation.
”Please hurry up,” said Kerry and hung up the phone.
The calls quickly went silent like the cold weather in winter time.
A few minutes later, the two miles radius of the new courthouse was flooded with authorities and streets were completely shut down, sirens and flashing lights buzzed like a war zone.
Few minutes after that, Detectives Jane Parker and Dana Reisse arrived at the crime scene. Jane wore tight black jeans with black flat shoes; her 9MM strapped on her side left waist and showed throw her brown blazer coat. Dana put on a business suit with white blouse, high heels, and thin red tie, and dark shades, her 9MM strapped on her back.
They both flashed their badges as they entered and began eyeing every corner of the area of the barricaded crime scene.
“What we’ve got here,” Jane asked.
“It’s Mr. Walter Scott and his son, ma’am,” says one of the officers holding the evidence bins, shaking his head in disbelief and anger.
”The Walter Scott of Meridian IT?” Jane asked. The officer nodded and moved into another area of the crime scene.
“Holy crap,” says Jane to her partner. “This is very bad and tragic. It is going to be very bad news for the mayor and the city.” Her partner that she had been working with for the past ten years nodded in agreement.
Walter Scott was the owner and CEO of Meridian IT. He was the most visionary person in the cutting-edge industry. He owned many IT companies, but most of his talents were invested into developing one of state of the art first ever fully automated computerized judicial court system in history. He created what most ordinary people envision and call a “true blind justice system.”
He developed unbiased computer algorithm that can detect and be used effectively and efficiently to scrutinize true criminals and innocent people. The algorithms were vetted and tested for almost ten years and proven to be a prime success of the future. He proved that once the Cobra Gravity System goes online, it could save lives and generate revenues when it gets sold to other states and countries. To compensate the human factors that were removed in the process, he used the revenue directly to their wages.
The implementation of the Cobra Gravity System was installed and officially went live in the new courthouse.
When he was in public service, Walter saw and witnessed many injustices due to human feelings. To reduce people who are wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for crimes they might have or never committed, the system must be fully unbiased; that can only be achieved by computer algorithms. So, in order to take emotions out of the courtroom, he lobbed and was finally granted unlimited resource allocations to build state of the art computerized court system.
When Mallory regained consciousness, she called her driver to take her downtown. As soon as she stepped outside, she met up with two NYPD officers, waiting for her.
“We’re sorry for your loss ma’am,” says one of the officers, taking off his hat and holding it under his armpit. “The chief ordered us to take you to the scene and downtown, ma’am.”
She nods and hops in the back of flashing police car. The officers turn the sirens on and cruise back to the station.