From the Eyes of a Juror

  Chapter 61 – Surveillance Systems Converging

  Saturday morning June 14, 2008 – 10:35 AM

  As Marianne Plante lounged in the Medford Mall Food Court enjoying a cup of coffee in the company of her dear old friend and lover, Frank Newlan, she steadfastly assured him that there was no way her husband could ever possibly find out about their hastily arranged meeting…but alas, Marianne Plante could not have been more wrong; for while she and Newlan were busily preoccupied with other pressing matters, a palm-sized camera was being trained upon them, snapping up pictures, almost non-stop.

  In fact, from the moment the unsuspecting Plante left her home, all the way up to the time she pulled into the mall parking lot, a telescopic eye attached to a nondescript black automobile had been following her every move.

  Of course, as the dear old friends departed arm-in-arm from the mall for a private tour of Newlan’s luxury apartment, they had absolutely no way of knowing that a trained professional was tailing them right up to the front doorstep of his condo complex. And as the high school sweethearts cruised on down the road, they had no way in the world of knowing that a licensed investigator was calmly documenting the details of their whereabouts into a mini tape-recorder, as well as dictating every scintilla of information he could think of regarding a 6 foot tall, middle-aged man who was sporting an unfashionably head of long, stringy hair, and driving a beat-up, red Mercury sedan.

  Dear reader, as you may have guessed by now, Marianne Plante and Frank Newlan were being followed by none other than Brent Blain of the Boston Intelligence Group, and unfortunately for the “clueless” Newlan, as he had self-deprecatingly dubbed himself so long ago, it could only mean one thing; it could only mean trouble; it could only mean trouble with a capital “T”.

  Compounding Newlan’s troubles was the fact that someone else would soon become privy to Blain’s information; for no sooner had his car disappeared into the underground garage of his condo complex when the grim detective stopped his pursuit, and instead he pulled over by the side of the road so that he could put in an immediate call to Tom Willis’s cell phone.

  “Hey Tommy, its Brent…I know you’re hooking up with some bitch for the weekend, but gimme a call as soon as you get a chance. I got some news about your wife and it doesn’t look good. I tracked her down to Medford where she met up with this grungy-looking dude at the mall…and after about a half an hour they took off to a condo complex just down the road. But don’t worry, I got his description…I got his car make and model…I got his license plate…and I got pictures too…plenty of frickin’ pictures. I’ll send a few to your cell phone right now…maybe you might recognize the asshole. But either way, I got some contacts down at the RMV, and for a few bucks they’ll run his plate through their computer system for me…so it’s only a matter of time until we know who this bastard is…and then…and then, well, then we can decide how you want to handle this fuckin’ jerk,” elaborated Blain. And remarkably enough, this private conversation, this confidential alert, this untraceable phone call, comingled amongst thousands of other phone calls, was all it took to flip a mysterious mental switch in Newlan’s head.

  Improbable though it might seem, at the very same moment that Brent Bain was in the process of relaying a nuanced accounting of the suspicious situation which he had just encountered to his client, Tom Willis, Frank Newlan became aware of a sudden ringing in his ears.

  And while in some respects Newlan may truly have been clueless, in other respects he was as wily as the roadrunner with the coyote in hot pursuit; for before Brent Blain had even finished filing his report, Newlan’s legendary radar was signaling a silent alarm to his brain just as he pulled into the lower level garage of the Medford River Park Condominiums.

  However, despite Newlan’s psychic ravings, despite his dark forebodings, despite his pessimistic proclivity, not even he suspected that a hired hound might be watching his every step. But nevertheless, somehow he sensed the presence of an unknown foe stalking him like a villainous stranger in the night. Somehow he sensed the presence of a powerful force aiming its spyglass his way. Somehow he sensed the presence of a malignant master-plan plotting his demise.

  On the other hand, buried deep within the cognitive portion of Newlan’s naive mind, a contradictory theory which stated that run-of-the-mill people don’t hire private detectives to play big brother, coexisted with his paranoid leanings. Only people on trial for murder, only people such as the cagey John Breslin, would resort to such a tactic. And yet as he pulled into his garage parking spot accompanied by the woman of his dreams, he sensed that something was amiss, just as the head security guard at the Louvre would sense a change in the Mona Lisa if she were to be left dangling ever so slightly on a crooked frame. And yet, as he pulled the key out of the ignition, he sensed that a Cyclops-like beam of light was bearing down on him, just like the sun through a magnifying glass in the hands of a child, frying up an ant hill. And yet as he absentmindedly pulled on his chin in a dumbfounded state of confusion, he sensed that someone or something was watching him, just like a hungry eagle eying its prey from atop of a lofty perch.

  And when you come to think of it, maybe, just maybe, there really was something to this ESP-like trait which Newlan had been boasting about for all these many years. Maybe somehow he did subconsciously sense that Brent Blain was hot on his trail. Or maybe, just maybe, he was once again being bombarded by a prolonged radio-wave of static which was distorting his extra-sensory vision by a few degrees.

  Maybe, just maybe, what Newlan was actually sensing was the hotel-like surveillance system in his condo complex which was magnifying his image at that very moment.

  Maybe, just maybe, what Newlan was really sensing were the subatomic packets of data that contained a facsimile of his face as they traveled through a fiber-optic cable and landed on a computer screen which was being monitored ever so closely under the watchful eyes of the complex’s trusty concierge, none other than the abominable Saeed Kahn.

  But then again, maybe, just maybe, what Newlan was truly sensing were the converging forces of a combined evil which was conspiring to snuff out his very existence and wipe him off the face of the Earth once and for all…like a relentless bloodhound…hunting down vermin…in a cornfield.