AFTER A CUP OF COFFEE AND A GLANCE AT the paper the next morning, I threw on a shirt and jogging shorts, laced up my shoes, and lumbered down the street to Schiller Park, where I dodged real runners, cyclists unaware of city biking laws, and dog walkers—including the two Kevins and their pugs—as I circled the park for forty-five minutes, give or take a knee pain or two.
The evening before had given me a lot to think about, and that wasn’t even counting the way it ended under the romantic glow of a sodium-vapor lamp in the restaurant parking lot. Reviewing the twists and turns of Abdi and Barbara’s situation over beers with Helene had brought to bear the similarities in the cases I’d somehow become entangled in. Namely, Ohio’s very own white supremacists and the extremists of Islamic fundamentalism. Similarities, but—as with the story of Ronald McQuillen at Maple Ridge High—any connection?
I was walking the last two blocks up Mohawk to my house when Abukar Abdulkadir called, panic in his voice.
“I need help. Someone is outside my apartment.”
“Someone like who?” I thought of the mask-wearing kidnappers.
“People in big black cars. They are watching my window.”
“Stay inside,” I said immediately. “If they knock on your door, cooperate but keep your mouth shut.”
“But—”
“I’ll be right there.”
I skipped a shower, dressed, and got into my van. I called Freddy Cohen on the way. I made it to Abdulkadir’s parking lot in less than twenty minutes. I walked straight to his door without looking left or right. On cue, I heard a car door open and slam shut and my name called before I put fist to door.
“Hayes,” Cindy Morris said, striding toward me with fire in her eyes. Hell hath no fury like a government agent scorned. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m in the market for a north-side chalet. There a law against that?”
“There is now.” She turned and waved in the direction of a pride of black Ford Explorers. Several more doors opened and shut. She turned back to me.
“You need to step aside.”
“Right of free assembly.”
“On public property,” she snapped. “As you well know.”
“I—”
“Spofforth,” Morris said in a voice just shy of drill sergeant with a gut ache. “Assist Mr. Hayes in getting out of my way. If he resists, arrest him.”
“On what charge?” I demanded.
“First-degree dumbass,” she said, but something in her voice had changed, and I could tell she was seriously angry.
Spofforth approached—we’d met before, on a side street in a subdivision, where he waited like a linebacker ready to upend me—but push never came to shove. The apartment door opened a moment later and Abukar Abdulkadir stood before us, arms by his side.
Morris addressed him by name.
He nodded, misery clouding his eyes.
“I need to ask you to come with me.”
“You’ve got this all wrong,” I said.
“Stay out of it,” Morris said.
“You’re making a big mistake.”
“And you’re making an even bigger one if you don’t get out of my face in the next three seconds.”
I did as I was told. Abdulkadir looked at me sadly.
“Nabadeey, Andy,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“Goodbye.”
IT TOOK A CALL from Cohen to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and some high-stakes negotiating with Cindy Morris, but eventually I was allowed to retreat from the field of battle with most of my civil liberties intact. I was driving back down Agler Road when I was interrupted by a call from Bonnie.
“It’s what I was afraid of,” she said. “You’ve got a serious virus problem.”
“I do?”
“You get all that information about phishing I send you, right? The ways to protect yourself?”
“I’m very careful,” I protested. “I learned my lesson after a Nigerian prince offered me two million pounds.”
“Don’t even joke about that. My friend’s aunt lost $4,000 in one of those scams. You’re sure you haven’t communicated with Barbara Mendoza electronically?”
“Positive. Until recently, talking to her in person was hard enough.”
“No clicks on suspicious links?”
“None. Promise.”
“Opened any files from people you didn’t know?”
“Files?”
“Word documents. PDFs. Spreadsheets. Anything like that.”
I thought about it. Anything fitting that category came from either Burke Cunningham, or more recently Freddy Cohen, or Kym and Crystal. I was about to answer in the negative once again when I thought back to the parking lot escapade.
I said, “Ronald McQuillen? The militia hunter I told you about?”
“What about him?”
“He sent me a PDF about an outfit called the 1776 Sentries. But it was just a simple document. A history of the movement.”
“When?”
“Couple weeks ago.”
“OK. I’m going to check that out.”
She called back twenty minutes later, just as I arrived at Cunningham’s office, ready to brief him and Cohen on Abdulkadir’s arrest.
“You might want to give that guy a call.”
“Why?”
“That document had an.exe file attached to it. That’s where your virus came from.”
“Really?”
“Do you trust him? Because that’s a little sophisticated.”
“I suppose.” Maybe. Possibly? “He’s been helping me with the two guys I chased away in the parking lot.”
“How’d you find him?”
“I didn’t. He found me. He called, after it happened, told me his suspicions.”
“How’d he know about you?”
I was getting a bad feeling about this. “The way the rest of the world did, I guess. Saw me on the news.”
“You may want to check him out a little further. Something’s not right here.”
I thought of Helene’s story of McQuillen’s visit to Maple Ridge High. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m starting to get that impression.”
I hung up and walked to Cunningham’s door and waited for LaTasha to buzz me in. Could things get any stranger? Ronald McQuillen hacking my computer as I recovered from challenging two guys who may have been connected to Abdi Mohamed’s disappearance? Highly unusual coincidence indeed. And not one I needed to deal with right at the moment. Because if we’d been running out of time before, Abdulkadir’s arrest had pushed the clock hands about as close to midnight as they could get.