She had so looked forward to knocking on his door with uniformed Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in tow and holding the search warrant in his face.
In her fantasy, she envisioned herself sticking her index finger an inch from his nose and telling Burgess:
“Lesbian and loving it, you hypocritical son of a bitch!”
When Connors did fly to Los Angeles with two paralegals from the San Francisco DA’s office and arrived at SOCM’s headquarters with a Mayflower truck and extra packers, she fought hard to control her attitude.
They were waiting for her.
Burgess in a business suit.
His lawyer, similarly dressed with gray hair and tapping his foot with impatience.
And, a 50ish woman, presumably the office manager, carrying a green spiral notepad.
It was the woman whose jaw dropped steadily as Connors walked from room to room sticking round yellow stickers on everything that was to be loaded into the truck outside.
She tagged every file cabinet, every computer – including personal laptops – and the contents of every desk drawer she examined that had anything resembling a file in it.
“Detective Connors,” said the lawyer as the movers came in with their hand trucks.
“This seems unduly burdensome.
How can the ministry continue to operate without their records…without their computers?
You’ll be leaving with pens and paper clips.
Surely we can reach some reasonable accommodation.”
Connors did her best to rein in the snarl that kept trying to ripple across her upper lip.
“Were you joking when you said you were giving us
full
cooperation, counselor?” she said.
“I can still go back and get a warrant and put on the record exactly why we feel we’re entitled to what I’m requesting.”
This wasn’t nearly as satisfying as raiding the place unannounced with a search warrant.
But Connors was damned if she was going to let this be easy for them.
No.
It was not going to be business as usual here.
“Whoa,” said Burgess.
“Just a minute.
I know we can manage our way around this little problem.
I am sure the San Francisco authorities will do their best to get these things back to us as soon as they can.”
He nodded at the office manager.
“Eileen,” he said.
“We’ll manage just fine.
Just break down everything we need to do piece by piece and we’ll work it out.
It’s a challenge we can meet.
We might get some valuable lessons about how we’re doing things here.”
The lights were out in the last SOCM office Connors inspected.
The sign told her it had belonged to Brent Daggart, SOCM’s vice president.
The ministry had already informed the DA’s office that Daggart had been fired when Burgess and the church realized he had gone rogue and involved himself in illegal activities.
In retrospect, they wondered now if he had been mentally unstable for some time.
To Connors, this meant they were throwing Daggart overboard, a sacrifice to the gods of law enforcement in the hope it would appease them and allow Burgess and SOCM to escape to calmer waters.
She wasn’t surprised to see that some of Daggart’s files appeared to have been removed and that his office was the only one with no computer.
She rode with the truck back to San Francisco and got the DA’s office to start the indexing and document review immediately and even throw in some weekend overtime.
Two days into it, she got a call from the DA’s chief computer geek.
He usually wanted to brag about unlocking passwords, cracking encryption or uncovering computer files that suspects thought, incorrectly, that they had thoroughly erased.
What he showed her instead were strings of emails in the backup files for Brent Daggart’s computer.
It was clear that some emails were missing from the threads and all were at least two weeks old.
The DA’s tech speculated that the backup system missed the emails Daggart sent and received from a home computer.
Also, his laptop might have been switched off or been disconnected from the SOCM network during the most recent backup sessions.
Daggart had signed them “Deacon” and the exchanges read to Connors like the combined ramblings of Adolph Hitler, the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and the Son of Sam.
But one thread in particular seemed cogent, reasonably literate and absolutely chilling.
It was from someone using the initials “S.W.”
The author seemed bitter, depressed and perhaps even suicidal.
Over a period of months, the rants and self-pity had gradually cooled and coalesced around a succession of plans.
First, it had been to blow up part of an army base.
Then, it shifted to storming something – an abortion clinic, a government office or someplace filled with gays and minorities – and killing everyone there.
In the final distillation he had moved from the mass murder fantasy to settle on a single target.
It was Andrew Harper, candidate for California governor.
In the last email available that was more than three weeks old, the author said he was leaving something or somewhere he called ‘Bliss’ and was on his way to
San Francisco.
Chapter 41
ENZO LEE SET the glass of orange juice carefully on the nightstand and slid into the bed as carefully as he could so he wouldn’t wake Carr.
From the look of her, it didn’t really matter.
She was sprawled face down on the other side of the bed, arms flung out with the bottom of one leg sticking out from the sheet.
The previous night had been their third together since they’d had dinner at Caffe Ravioli the previous weekend.
It had been as incredible as the first two.
Frantic sex followed by trips to the refrigerator where he’d had the foresight to stock a picnic dinner, followed by joking and teasing, leading eventually to less frantic but equally intense lovemaking.
Repeat all of the above with some tiramisu from the café down the street and an eight-year-old bottle of Caymus cabernet he’d been saving for a special occasion.
He should have slept for another two hours.
How long had it been since he had slept the way Carr was – dead to the world until the sun was up in the sky?
He’d felt the lousy sleep patterns of middle age creeping up on him for some time now.
Added to that were these damn stories.
It felt like all hell was breaking loose.
He was up to his neck in it now and he was trying to anticipate where it was going, what the other players would be doing, and what he should do next.
“A dollar for your thoughts,” said Carr.
Her head was still on the pillow but her left eye was open, looking at him.
“Come back to me.”
“Sorry,” he grabbed her hand.
“I was thinking about these stories.”
She rolled on her side, rubbed her face and yawned.
“The city editor is happy about that,” she said.
“The woman in your bed is a little offended.
It is Sunday morning, you know.
Is that juice for me?”
Lee nodded and Carr reached across him, bringing their unclothed bodies in full contact as she slid over and then back.
She grinned at him as she propped herself up on an elbow, glass in hand, breasts exposed.
Lee rolled his eyes to the ceiling and took a deep controlling breath. She drank half the glass.
“I should take you for a bike ride,” she said.
“I know this route over near Berkeley.
It’s just beautiful.
It will be sunny but not too hot this afternoon.
Maybe a two-hour ride.
It’s a bit of a climb but not too bad.
It will take your mind off the stories, at least for the day.”
She drained the glass and stretched back over him to put it back on the night stand.
This time, she continued rolling across him until she was straddling Lee.
She gave him a little pout and then smiled slyly as she slowly rubbed herself against him.
He could feel her excitement and his own reaction to it was immediate.
“But first, I’ve got…umm…another activity in mind,” she said.
She gyrated against him a little harder.
Lee threw the sheet out of the way and put his hands on Carr’s waist.
He held her and helped with the slow, sensual movements.
Then he slowly slid his hands up until he was rubbing her breasts as she continued to move.
“I’m all in with that plan,” he said softly.
Carr bit her lower lip and glanced down as her hand slid past his stomach.
“Well…almost,” she said.
* * *
By the time he made the turn up Tunnel Road, Enzo Lee knew he was in trouble.
The run up Broadway hadn’t been too bad, a good warm-up that left him feeling pretty comfortable about his general state of fitness.
His running regimen was paying off.
But when the grade increased going past Temescal Park up to the bridge across Highway 13, it was clear this was going to be a long, difficult slog.
Lorraine had started behind him at first until he waved her up.
She zoomed past and pulled ahead 60 yards before she realized he was lagging far behind and dropped back to him.
It was lovely to watch her from behind.
He realized now why her wonderful ass felt so firm in his hands.
It seemed so effortless for her, dancing lightly on her pedals, then sitting back, then dancing again.
Meanwhile, he was holding tightly onto his handlebars while his legs churned steadily and his breathing became more and more ragged.
The grade at the beginning of Tunnel was steeper yet.
Lee shifted down two more gears and stood up on his pedals just to give his groin muscles a quick stretch before settling down once again for the inexorable climb.
As he watched her climb – easily moving ahead, dropping back, moving ahead, dropping back – he thought about how her bike probably cost ten times more than his and weighed 20 pounds less.
He was probably carrying 80 pounds more than she was.
And, how much did it help to have those clip-on shoes compared to the running shoes he wore?
Jeez, this was a long…steep…never…ending…climb.
They stopped at a turnout that had a stunning view of the valley below with the highway running into the Caldecott Tunnel.
Lee dismounted gingerly from the bike and felt intense pain in the right side of his groin.
He had to walk with tiny steps at first as he gradually felt the pain lessen.
Just a cramp, thank God.
Carr was straddling her bike, watching him, perhaps with less sympathy than she might have shown given the circumstances.
“Poor baby,” she cooed, tossing him an energy bar.