Known Dead (23 page)

‘‘You know,’’ said Melissa a few minutes later, ‘‘I’m just sorry the law won’t let me testify against Bill.’’

‘‘That’s no problem,’’ said Hester.

‘‘But I thought . . .’’

‘‘You can’t be compelled to testify against him. But you sure can, if it’s of your own free will. That’s how abused women can testify against their husbands.’’

‘‘No shit?’’ You could almost see the lightbulb come on.

‘‘Hey, there’s lots to learn here,’’ I said.

‘‘I guess so,’’ said Melissa.

‘‘For us too.’’ I leaned forward, pen in hand. ‘‘Let’s get back to that mission, or whatever they called it.’’ I adjusted my reading glasses and looked at her over the top. ‘‘Any idea whatever what they were talking about doing? Or when?’’

‘‘Honest, Mr. Houseman, I don’t think I do.’’

‘‘Mmmmm . . .’’

‘‘Really, I don’t. Only that it struck me that it would be sometime not too far off.’’

‘‘Any idea why?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Why it was soon?’’

‘‘Why you think it is.’’

‘‘Well, Herman was saying things like ‘We have to be ready,’ and ‘any day and they could come,’ and stuff like that.’’

‘‘Oh.’’ Hester looked at me questioningly. Do I keep up this line, or what?

When you interview, it’s always best to avoid having the interviewee speculate regarding areas where they have no knowledge or experience. The danger is that you stop doing questions and answers, and cross the line into conversation. We were really close to that line with Melissa.

‘‘Did Herman make any specific preparations for the mission?’’ I asked. My last shot.

‘‘Oh, yeah, he did that all right. That’s when he bought the ski masks and the cammo clothes for him and Bill. They were the ‘blockers,’ or the ‘linemen,’ or something like that. Reminded me of football.’’

‘‘Blocking force?’’ asked George, looking up from the documents Melissa had brought.

‘‘That sounds right.’’

Melissa looked back at me, proud of herself. George looked at me and made a time-out sign.

‘‘Well, Melissa, thanks a lot. You’ve been a really big help . . .’’ And after about two or three minutes Melissa was leaving, with a promise to return with more documents, as soon as she could round them up.

George, Hester, and I had a discussion. Much about what George had discovered in the documents, and a little about the mission. The possible link to Herman and company raising the marijuana for cash. That came first, in fact, and just about thirty seconds after Melissa had left the building.

‘‘I’m worried about that mission business,’’ I said. ‘‘Whatever it is, it doesn’t sound like harvesting marijuana.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ said Hester.

We both looked at George, half expecting a ‘‘pish tosh’’ official FBI disclaimer.

‘‘Yeah, it scares me half to death,’’ he said. Earnestly.

‘‘Oh, swell,’’ said Hester. ‘‘You were supposed to say that there was nothing to fear, or something like that.’’

‘‘Yeah, I know,’’ said George, sitting back down and picking up the stack of Melissa’s papers. ‘‘However . . . A ‘blocking force,’ of course, is a military term for force that blocks.’’ He looked up, pleased.

‘‘Boy,’’ I said, ‘‘am I glad you’re here.’’

‘‘No, no, no,’’ he said. ‘‘Let me finish. That dude you and Hester saw making his getaway from the farm, I think I’ve found him in here. Or his tracks anyway.’’ He pushed a single-page document toward us.

It was a letter, obviously mimeographed, with the recipient’s name newer and darker than the rest. ‘‘Armed Forces of the Reoccupation Government’’ was in a curved letterhead, with a little guy in a tricornered hat, with a musket and a flag. Very similar to the National Guard symbol, except the man was standing in front of a capitol-shaped building with a cracked dome. There was one of those little wavy banners below that, which said ‘‘White Freedom.’’ The body seemed to be a notification of a meeting of some sort, and exhorted everyone from the ‘‘unit’’ to be there. The date was about three months ago, April 14th, and the location was a town in Minnesota I never heard of. The signature was Edward Killgore, Col., AFRG. But it was actually signed with a scrawl that looked kind of like a
G
with a couple of circles after it.

‘‘So?’’ I asked.

‘‘The signature,’’ said George. ‘‘Look at the signature.’’

I squinted, then put on my reading glasses. ‘‘God?’’ I asked.

‘‘No, no, no!’’ he said, exasperated. ‘‘Not God, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that’s Gabe. That’s an
e
that he trails off, and it looks like . . .’’

‘‘Gabe.’’

‘‘Gabe.’’

We all needed coffee after that. Sally came back to copy the papers, and we got her some coffee too.

It turned out that what Melissa had provided us with was a fairly complete paper trail for a theoretical hoard of gold, kept in Belize and manipulated from San José, Costa Rica. The manipulating organization was known as the P.M. Corporation, with offices in San José; Portland, OR; Corpus Christi, TX; and St. Paul, MN. Well, box numbers. They listed suites only in San José and Portland. P.M., it seemed, stood for Precious Metals. So . . .

What they did was this: You bought a share in the P.M. gold, for $500. This got you an ounce. They kept the gold marked with your name, and it would be instantly available to you when and if the government of the United States collapsed and there was a ‘‘World Upheaval followed by a World Crash.’’ This, by the way, seemed to be pretty inevitable, if you listened to P.M. If, on the off chance, the United States hadn’t collapsed by 2015, you would receive $5,000 per invested share. Right. Wanna buy a bridge?

Interestingly enough, although P.M. stoutly claimed that there was no money of value except gold (the rest were all ‘‘false creations of credit’’), they would accept your personal check.

And it was in this bunch that Herman had invested his and his son’s net worth. So had many, many others, if you could believe that part of the P.M. spiel. This wasn’t the first group that did this that I’d had information about, but P.M. was the first one I’d seen with glossy, slick brochures.

‘‘People can’t really be this dumb, can they?’’

‘‘Carl,’’ said George, ‘‘they get a lot dumber than that.’’

I’d worked fraud cases before, but it had been my experience that the average Iowa farmer would read a spiel like that one and spit on the shiny shoes that tried to sell it to him. Politely, of course. Maybe even apologetically. But he’d spit accurately, nonetheless. Herman must have been a little short of saliva one day. Not to mention brains. Yet he was known to be a little short on assets as well. He’d been convinced enough to borrow and beg to get the funds to buy into the P.M. hoard. The ‘‘pot of gold,’’ as I began to think of it.

‘‘God,’’ said Hester. ‘‘He borrowed money to buy into that?’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ I said.

‘‘Well,’’ said George, ‘‘that’s not half of it. We’ve dealt with P.M. and its right-wing connections before this. There actually is some gold, you know.’’

No, I hadn’t known. As it turned out, P.M. was just one of several names used by a small group of Nazi types in South America who were supporting the neo-Nazis in the United States. The money that they gathered in was shipped back into the United States and ended up in the coffers of some militant groups, who used it mostly to buy equipment and for publicity and recruitment propaganda. Well, a lot of it went into the pockets of certain individuals too.

‘‘You know,’’ said George, ‘‘that’s one of the stranger aspects of all this business. Most of the individuals who prosper here have followers. Most of them exhort those followers not to pay their federal taxes, and many don’t. But most of those making the big profits do report to the IRS, and pay their taxes up front. They just claim that they don’t. Neat, isn’t it?’’

‘‘That it is.’’ I got up to go get more coffee. ‘‘Anybody else want more?’’

‘‘Me,’’ said Sally.

‘‘Okay.’’

‘‘Can I ask a question?’’ said Sally.

All three of us officers had worked with Sally enough to know that she could be trusted completely and that she frequently contributed quite a bit to investigations.

‘‘Sure,’’ I said.

‘‘What do you think Herman’s wife thinks about all this? I mean, don’t you think she’d be furious about the money?’’

‘‘I don’t think Nola probably gave him too much crap about it,’’ I said, sort of absently. I hadn’t really thought about it.

‘‘I sure would,’’ she said earnestly.

‘‘Yeah,’’ I said, ‘‘but think about this situation. They’ve been married, what, about thirty years by now? Experienced the same ups and downs. Know the same people. They were probably quite a bit alike when they got married, for that matter.’’

‘‘So,’’ said Sally, ‘‘you think she agrees with him?’’

‘‘I think so,’’ I answered. ‘‘Either that or she could be behind it and he’s just following her. It sure wouldn’t be the first time.’’

‘‘But that big an investment?’’ Sally seemed truly perplexed.

‘‘Actually,’’ said George of the Bureau, ‘‘it’s not so much an investment as . . . as a commitment, I guess you’d say.’’

‘‘Commitment?’’ said Sally. ‘‘Like, in a promise?’’

‘‘Sort of,’’ said Hester. ‘‘I think George’s right. It would be like a couple investing heavily in their church or their mutual religion. That happens a lot, for a lot less of a promise of a good return on the investment.’’

‘‘Oh.’’

‘‘On the other hand,’’ said George.

‘‘No!’’ came from me and Hester at about the same time. George is an attorney by education, and an agent only by trade. He can argue endlessly on either side of a question.

‘‘Sorry I asked.’’ Sally grinned. ‘‘But I still say I’d be bent about that . . . even if’’—and the grin broadened— ‘‘it was my fault in the first place. I mean, if he’s dumb enough to do what I told him to do?’’ She smiled coyly. ‘‘What’s a girl to do?’’

The point? How well did we know Nola Stritch? Obviously not well enough to know if she was like Sally, so not well enough at all.

‘‘I’ll do her,’’ sighed Hester. ‘‘Thanks, Sally.’’

‘‘No problem. Just too bad the smartest cop got stuck with it.’’ With that, she stuck out her tongue at George and me and went back to copying papers.

In the meantime, George told us about the computers.

The combined DCI/FBI evidence team, working the Stritch residence, had apparently seized three computers, along with numerous disks. Neat. They were coming into the office with them before going to the lab.

‘‘We think,’’ said George, ‘‘that Herman and company probably did a lot of their correspondence on the machines, along with, maybe, a database of addresses . . .’’

‘‘Great,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We get to go over it?’’

‘‘That could be a problem,’’ said George. ‘‘The lab folks want their experts to do it, in case there’s any crypto stuff, and messages might be destroyed if we pry . . .’’

‘‘I don’t think,’’ I said, ‘‘that Herman’s able to cope with anything complex . . .’’

‘‘But do we want to take the chance?’’

Normally, I wouldn’t want to take a chance on destroying evidence. But George told us that it would be about three weeks before the information would be back from the lab.

‘‘Your lab, the FBI lab, right?’’ I asked.

‘‘Sure.’’

‘‘And they won’t give us shit,’’ I said. ‘‘If there’s anything concerning the P.M. organization, for instance . . . it’ll be classified because it’s part of an ongoing investigation, and we’ll never hear about it. Right?’’

George didn’t say anything.

‘‘And no matter what’s there, it just might as well be destroyed as far as our little investigation is concerned. Right?’’ I asked again.

George had kind of a pained look on his face. ‘‘Probably.’’

‘‘And even if your people,’’ I said, turning to Hester, ‘‘had rights to the stuff, they’d just hand it over to Eff Bee One.’’ I used the derogatory term for the FBI. Well, one of them.

‘‘Sure,’’ said Hester. ‘‘No administrator can take the hard decision. Even if it kills the investigation. He’s still ‘done the right thing.’ ’’ She shrugged. ‘‘That’s a lot better than trying to explain why you permanently screwed up the evidence.’’

It was quiet in our little room.

‘‘Well,’’ said Sally, ‘‘that’s terrible.’’

It was quiet again, for what seemed like a minute.

‘‘Are we agreed,’’ I asked, ‘‘that there’s likely to be stuff on those machines we need to see?’’

‘‘Oh, sure,’’ said George. ‘‘No doubt.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Probably quite a bit. For all the good it’ll do us.’’

‘‘Well,’’ I said, ‘‘do we agree that Herman is probably not a computer genius?’’

We did.

‘‘And even if his wife is ten times brighter, he’s still going to have to be able to run it without screwing it up too bad if he makes a mistake?’’

We agreed about that too.

‘‘So just how heavily encrypted can this be? Just a simple password, probably?’’

Probably would be. We agreed on that too. In fact, we also agreed that it wouldn’t be too complex, and would be something that Herman couldn’t possibly mess up.

‘‘Like,’’ said Sally, ‘‘his name?’’

I’d almost forgotten she was there. But she was probably right.

It was silent for a few seconds more.

‘‘Is it time to eat supper yet?’’ I asked.

‘‘That all you think of?’’ asked George.

Eighteen

THE PLAN WAS THIS: When the two agents from the lab crew got in, they’d have several priorities. First of all, they’d be thinking both about supper and about their motel room. Fine. George, as the resident agent, would offer to take them to a good restaurant. Actually, the only restaurant. But, given the press being all over the place, they surely couldn’t leave their evidence in their car. Nor, given the sensitivity, could they very well leave it at their motel. Especially after George would explain that we thought we’d seen some known extremists in the area. Where would they store the evidence until they could get it to the lab? Why, at the Sheriff’s Department, that’s where. Where else?

George was really funny, saying things like ‘‘I can’t believe you’re actually going to go through with this,’’ and ‘‘I can’t believe I’m going to be a party to this,’’ and things like that. His own curiosity, however, was the deciding factor. He was totally suave with the lab guys.

I didn’t do too bad myself, writing out a receipt for each separate component of the computers they’d brought in: a tower, a desktop, and a laptop. Two monitors, one printer, and one external modem. And one external 5¼-inch disk drive.

‘‘Must have been running old software,’’ I said, writing the serial number of the drive on my sheet.

The youngest of the lab agents glanced at me when I said that. Suspicious of people, he wasn’t too happy leaving the equipment with someone who knew what it was. Like I’d do anything . . .

Anticipating that they’d be polite and ask Hester and me to go with them, we decided we had already eaten. We were also busy. But ‘‘thanks anyway.’’

After the computers were in our padlocked evidence room, the absent Lamar and I being the only two officers with a key to the heavy padlock, and while the agents were eating and then sleeping, what would the local homicide unit be doing? Slick, no? I doff my hat . . .

About an hour later, Hester and I were sitting in the tiny evidence room, with almost no ventilation, locked in by Sally, who had been entrusted with my key to the padlock, and whom I would contact via walkie-talkie to let us out. Having finished taking three Polaroid shots of the computers just the way the FBI agents had placed them in the room, and then struggling with the extension cords we’d had to scrounge up to even get power to the computers, not to mention having to sit on the floor with the machines, as there were no tables in the room, only shelves, I was having second thoughts about the whole business.

We had finally completely assembled and wired up two of the machines, leaving the laptop aside. It appeared to have a dead battery, and we sort of thought that it would likely just have copies of the stuff in the desktop anyway. The lab crew had seized the printer, thank God. And now we were into the machines at last.

‘‘Well,’’ I said, turning on the tower, ‘‘let’s see what he’s been running . . .’’

A mouse click on ‘‘Start . . . Documents’’ showed us the last fifteen documents that had been opened. Most of them started with ‘‘ltr’’ and had a date. All we had to do was click on one of them, and the word processor of choice automatically loaded from the hard drive. Click on ‘‘save as’’ and we had a complete list of documents. We printed them all.

Next, on to ‘‘the Net.’’ Click on ‘‘Properties . . . Navigation . . . View History’’ and we got the ‘‘www’’ addresses of every site the machine had accessed in the last twenty days. Almost six hundred of them. Print ’em, Dano.

Next, I went to the e-mail section. That was where we hit the dread ‘‘Crypto’’ device. It said ‘‘Enter Password for Access.’’ There were two boxes. I typed in ‘‘Herman’’ on the top, and ‘‘Nola’’ on the bottom. That’s all there was to it. Got every message they’d sent or received since, apparently, April 11, 1995. I started the printer, a neat little ink-jet. Quiet too. I began with the ‘‘Messages Sent’’ list. I had to print them out individually, so it took a while. Had to reload the paper twice.

‘‘Well, damn,’’ said Hester.

I chuckled. ‘‘Easy as pie . . .’’

‘‘Now for the hard part,’’ she said. ‘‘Will the lab team be able to figure out we were in?’’

‘‘Oh,’’ I said, ‘‘probably.’’ I got busy bringing up the ‘‘Messages Received’’ section. ‘‘ ’Cause if we erase the record of our entry, we erase all of ’em. To do that, we have to go one layer further down than the ‘clear entry’ boxes, and that gets easy to grunge up.’’

‘‘Grunge up? Is this, like, a computer term?’’

‘‘Well, kind of. What I mean is, if we do that, and it hasn’t been done on anything else, it looks like somebody did something really different on the box . . . and this setup is so simple, it would look funny if somebody cleaned it up.’’

‘‘Oh.’’

‘‘So,’’ I said, inordinately pleased with myself, ‘‘shall we try the next one?’’

Since it was so easy, and neither of us really had to do anything, we started reading the received messages. They started with the most recent, and progressed in reverse order to the first received. It was about the third one down. It looked like this:

FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: YOUR GUEST
DATE: WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 1996 2:31 PM

DON’T LET HIM IN. HE’S GOT A BOMB.
BE SAFE.
KILL HIM.

We looked at each other. I spoke first. ‘‘Son of a bitch.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ said Hester, with a long breath. ‘‘Son of a bitch.’’

‘‘We should get a long sheet . . .’’ I said.

‘‘We don’t need one,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Wednesday. Two-thirty. Two thirty-one. Adjusting for the time . . .’’

‘‘God . . .’’

‘‘Right when they shot Philip Rumsford.’’

‘‘Remember,’’ I said, ‘‘remember when Nola spoke to somebody inside and then they shot him?’’

‘‘Oh, yeah . . .’’

‘‘Somebody who got that message . . .’’

‘‘We gotta see more of these,’’ breathed Hester.

We did. Just as easy. Just as productive. All that remained to do was to wait for the printer to finish with the first one. That’s when we heard voices in the outer office. Cops. Now how in the hell could we come out to get more paper, or to do anything else, with cops sitting right outside the door. Granted, not only were they our cops but we outranked anybody who could possibly be there. But, in the first place, it would look like Hester and I were fooling around in the evidence room. I was absolutely certain that there was no way we could come out of that room without looking guilty. And a little excited, for that matter. In the second place, as soon as that rumor got going, sure as hell somebody who knew the lab agents would pick up on it, and then the shit would really hit the fan. Stuck. I reached up and turned off the light.

‘‘Shit,’’ hissed Hester. But she obviously understood. She reached over and turned off the computer monitor.

‘‘Yeah,’’ I whispered, ‘‘but they can see the light under the door.’’ I knew that for a fact since that was frequently the way dispatchers and officers could tell that I’d left the light on.

Just to make matters worse, there was a little static on my walkie-talkie, and then Sally’s voice . . .

‘‘Don’t y’all do anything I wouldn’t.’’

Well, by the time the night-shift people had had their coffee, discussed everything from ball scores to murders, and finished a couple of accident reports, we had spent the better part of two unproductive hours in the evidence room, in the dark. Hester was asleep in the corner. It could have been the dark. It might also have been the lack of air.

When I was sure that the night troops had left the building, I called Sally on the walkie-talkie. No answer. I tried again. Nothing. Hester woke up when I turned the lights on.

‘‘What’s the problem?’’

‘‘I can’t get Sally,’’ I said.

She looked at her watch. ‘‘Holy shit.’’

‘‘Yeah. Four hours, give or take.’’

‘‘How long was I asleep?’’

No matter how uninvolved the relationship, you never want to tell a woman that you didn’t know when she nodded off. ‘‘Oh, only about thirty minutes or so.’’ I had no idea.

‘‘Sorry.’’

‘‘Not as sorry as Sally’s gonna be if she went home . . .’’

‘‘You suppose,’’ asked Hester, ‘‘that burglars feel tired like this?’’

I grinned. ‘‘Well, I know at least one who does. Have to start callin’ you the Sleepin’ Bandit.’’

I called on the walkie-talkie again.

‘‘Go ahead . . .’’

‘‘Three’s no longer ten-six,’’ I said. Ten-six being the code for ‘‘busy.’’

There was no answer, but about ten seconds later there was the soft ratchety sound of a key in the padlock, and the door opened.

‘‘You guys okay?’’

‘‘Where you been? I called two times . . .’’

‘‘We’re fine.’’

‘‘I was in the john when you called. I’m sorry, but I don’t correspond from the john . . .’’

‘‘We’re fine,’’ said Hester for the second time.

‘‘Well, you get done?’’

‘‘With the first one,’’ I said.

‘‘Did you know,’’ asked Sally, ‘‘that George and the lab agents were back after you went in the room?’’

‘‘What!’’

‘‘Oh, yeah. God, I thought I was gonna die,’’ she said.

‘‘When?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Not more than thirty minutes after you’d gotten in there. It was all George could do to keep ’em out in the kitchen.’’ She held her hand to her chest. ‘‘I thought I was gonna have an anxiety attack. I didn’t know whether or not to try to tell you or what!’’

‘‘I am so glad,’’ said Hester, ‘‘that you didn’t tell us.’’ She started to move past me. ‘‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think a rest-room call would be in order . . .’’

‘‘Is George still around?’’ I asked Sally.

‘‘He should be in his car, on the way home.’’

‘‘Get him, and see if you can get the number for his cell phone . . .’’

‘‘Over the radio?’’ she asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘‘Wouldn’t it be better if I had him call here?’’

Well, that’s why she was the one we always called on.

Hester and I both talked to George. He just about fell out of the car when we told him about the message.

‘‘This is good,’’ he said. ‘‘This is oh my God good. Who sent it?’’

I read him the e-mail address.

‘‘Let me handle this one,’’ he said. ‘‘I do this really well.’’

‘‘Fine with us,’’ said Hester.

‘‘I’ll know as soon as I can get to the office,’’ he said.

‘‘Kind of makes you feel a little better about treason, doesn’t it?’’ Hester asked.

He paused a beat. ‘‘I never want to do that again, thank you.’’

‘‘Well, look on the bright side, George,’’ I said. ‘‘If word about this ever gets out, you’ll never have to.’’

Hester and I spent the remainder of the evening attempting to sort and print everything we could, with help from Sally, who made two copies of the documents we considered important, interesting, or just plain neat. We also wondered.

‘‘Who in the devil could this Bravo6 be anyway?’’

‘‘Anybody,’’ answered Hester as she picked up a stack of sorted papers.

‘‘Well, yeah,’’ I said. ‘‘Sure. But somebody who knew Herman, who knew generally what was going on, who could communicate with him, and who knew that Rumsford was going to go in at about two thirty-one.’’

‘‘Just a second,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Not ‘who knew he was
going
to go in.’ Nobody knew that except us folks. And Nancy, but she was with us all the time, wasn’t she?’’

‘‘As far as I remember.’’

‘‘Yes. What you need to say is that they ‘knew he was going in.’ Not future tense. Present tense.’’ Hester paused, and idly straightened a stack of paper. ‘‘In fact, since he didn’t
go
in,’’ she said, ‘‘but was killed as he stood outside on the driveway, somebody not only could see him but knew what the plan was . . .’’

The tower was back up, and I was printing out whatever I could, as fast as I could get them on the screen. There were several messages on the 24th from Bravo6. Two on the 23rd. No outgoing messages. This is what we had, in chronological order.

The first was at 1255 hours on the 23rd. Just after we had gotten Lamar and Bud out of there. It read:

MESSAGE RECEIVED. WILL LET HIM KNOW.

The second was at 1419 on the 23rd.

HE’LL CONTACT YOU HERE ON THE WEB IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. I’LL BE IN TRANSIT. WILL CALL YOU HERE AS SOON AS I GET NEAR YOU.

The third at 1950.

I SEE HE’S THERE. I’M IN POSITION. I COUNT 24 COPS IN UNIFORM, EIGHT IN PLAIN CLOTHES. I DON’T RECOGNIZE ANY OF OUR FRIENDS. NO BIRDS AS FAR AS I CAN TELL.

The fourth at 0228 on the 24th. About the time Melissa had come out.

WHAT’S GOING ON IN THERE?

The fifth at 0241:

CAN YOU ANSWER ME?????

The sixth at 0309:

SHE’S IN A TENT WITH THE TOP COPS. I CAN’T HEAR THEM BUT SHE’S BEEN IN THERE FOR A WHILE.

The seventh at 1220:

THE BOYS FROM THE ZOG ARE HERE. ONE BIRD. LOOKS ALMOST WHITE FROM HERE. YOU THINK UN???????

And, of course, the one telling them to kill Rumsford.

The one about Melissa being in a tent with us kind of bothered me. I said as much.