While Val drove, Jan called Veronica Carlton to request a private interview with Nora, preferably in a secure meeting room at the VeroniCare facility.
Jan put her on speaker, and Veronica’s voice crackled with distrust. “Are you saying,” she said, “my receptionist was in on the burglary?”
“We can’t say for sure,” Jan said. “We can’t track down the security specialist she recommended, and your IT staff haven’t been able to locate him either. Nora’s our best hope for finding out if that firm is involved—or at least, point us in the right direction.”
“We’re going on two weeks since the break-in, and you’re just now investigating our security holes?”
Val rolled her eyes. “Nine days,” she mouthed to Jan.
Jan shrugged. Val understood. Long before nine days, much less fourteen, the trail went cold. Val hadn’t focused on it much because of the shootings.
Carlton’s voice rose along with her apparent frustration. “What kind of two-bit operation are you running down there? Do I need to have a come-to-Jesus conversation with my good friend Kevin?”
Val’s throat tightened. Rumors were circulating that Chief McMahon planned to target the WAVE Squad for cuts, even elimination, to balance the budget. As the least senior member of the squad, Val would be the first one out the door. Her fast track to detective would dead-end in the space of a phone call.
“I’m sure Chief McMahon is as concerned as you and we are about this situation,” Jan said. “We keep him apprised—”
“I’m damn sure you aren’t as concerned as I am,” Carlton said. “However, if talking to my receptionist will help find the perpetrator, I’ll see to it. Then you need to arrest those thieves, and I mean yesterday.” She broke the connection.
“I guess we ought to prepare some questions for Nora about the break-in,” Val said with a sigh.
Jan chuckled. “If you’re right about these cases being linked, everything we ask will help break their case and the shooting. Let’s brainstorm some ideas as we drive.”
Val already had questions ready in her head, but waited until the “brainstorming” session to mention them.
Sanjit greeted them in the lobby, next to the vacant receptionist’s desk, and walked them down the hall to the same meeting room they’d used twice before. “Please don’t tell anyone I told you this,” he said in a low voice outside the door. “Ms. Carlton ordered us to tape your meeting. She intends to view the recording as soon as you leave.”
“Can we get a copy of that, too?” Jan asked.
Sanjit’s expression grew troubled. “Officially, not without a warrant.” He wiggled his brows at Val. “I’m sure your staff can figure out a way to, er, expedite that process…”
Val smiled. He meant Shelby, of course. “Thanks. We’ll pursue that option.” She glanced through the glass wall, partially obscured by half-drawn Venetian blinds, into the meeting room. Nora waited, leaning against the opposite wall, her thumbs flying over her phone. Her face showed irritation, or worry. Hard to tell. Nora seemed to exist in a constant state of irritation.
They knocked and entered, leaving Sanjit in the hallway. Closing the door behind them, Jan nodded to Val, then at the blinds. Val took the hint: close them.
“Nora, I’m Detective Morgenstern. You’ve met my partner, Officer Dawes.”
Nora held her phone tight against her body and scowled. “Charmed, I’m sure. What’s this about?”
“We have some questions for you about RS Security. Sanjit Patwari said you recommended them?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Val and Jan exchanged glances. “We can bring Mr. Patwari in to make sure we heard him right,” Jan said. “Val, would you—”
“That’s okay,” Nora said. “I might’ve done some research and helped find them. Like, Google searches. I wouldn’t say I recommended them, though.”
“You handled correspondence with them, isn’t that right?” Jan asked.
After a few seconds of blank staring, Nora shrugged. “So?”
“We’re having trouble locating them,” Jan said. “Could you help us out?”
Another moment’s pause, with Nora holding still as a rock. “Their info’s at my desk. If you could give me a moment?” She strode out the door, her long legs spanning the distance in two or three steps.
“Follow her,” Jan said. “Make sure she stays in the building.”
Val rushed into the hall. Already, Nora had disappeared from view. Val hurried toward the reception area. Empty. She called back to Jan: “She ran!”
Jan shouted back: “Find her! I’ll search back here.”
Val ran outside, glanced around, didn’t see her. She re-entered, blocking the door just in case, and tried to locate Sanjit’s number. Before she dialed, though, Nora reappeared, striding toward Val, her head locked in concentration on her phone, thumbs tapping away at high speed.
“There you are.” Val closed the distance between them. “I thought I’d lost you.”
Nora looked up, flustered. “Oh, sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry. “I needed to use the ladies’ room. I’ll get that number for you.” She slid in behind her desk and typed a flurry of keystrokes into her keyboard. A moment later, the printer whirred. Nora snatched the page from the printer and handed it to Val. “Here you go.”
Val scanned the page. “This is the same information we already had that led nowhere. Perhaps you have another number, or an address? An email?”
Nora thought for a moment. “I’ll check.” She returned to her phone, tapping and flicking through screens at a rapid pace.
“You keep this information on your personal cell?” Val asked, suspicion growing.
Nora paused a moment, impatience written all over her face. “I often access my work email from my phone, yes.” She tapped some more. Seconds passed.
“Having trouble?” Val asked.
“Just a sec.” Nora searched her phone some more, then tapped a few times and returned to her keyboard. The printer whirred again. “Here’s an alternate contact. He should be able to help you.”
Val glanced at the name. Richard Scott. Another RS, probably another pseudonym with a non-working phone number and email address. Richard Steiger? RS Security? “Could you please return to the meeting room while I call?” Val said. “We have more questions.”
“I need to get back to work,” Nora said. “I used my break time to meet with you, so—”
“Okay, then, stay here,” Val said. “By that I mean, don’t go anywhere.” She dialed the number for Richard Scott, reached a voice mailbox with a robotic greeting and no identifying information. “No dice,” she said. “Perhaps you could obtain a copy of the contract your company signed with them?”
“I’ll have to clear that with our lawyers.”
Val’s temper flared. “Nora,” she said, her voice laced with venom, “quit the runaround. Veronica is cracking our asses to get this case solved, and you’re the only person who knows anything about the firm that was supposed to prevent break-ins like this one. So you either get us the information or explain to Ms. Carlton why you’re obstructing our investigation. You have five seconds.”
Nora made a face like she’d smelled something long-since dead, staring down her nose at Val. She held the gaze while Val counted to herself: three, four—
“I don’t know who performed the actual analysis.” Nora sniffed and glanced away. “However, the man who signed the contract is Mr. RS himself.” She flashed a catlike smile. “The founder of RS Security—Mr. Richard ‘Tank’ Steiger.”
Stafford changed back into his delivery uniform and returned to the company warehouse, about a mile from the safe house along Water Avenue on the east bank of the Torrington River. This next load would finish the workday for him—from the looks of things, might even bring well-paid overtime. Lots of trips into the suburbs, stocking up various retailers for their big weekend sales.
Loading the truck helped him in so many ways: Exercise for the body. Distraction to keep his mind off his troubles. And doing it himself meant he got to stack it his way, for maximum efficiency at each stop.
He’d driven less than a mile from the warehouse when his phone played “When a Man Loves a Woman.”
The cops are back! Asking about RS. What should I tell them?
Stafford answered while driving: Nothing.
Nora’s reply came seconds later.
That won’t do. Sanjit told them something.
He drummed the wheel, stopped at a light. Made a quick decision:
Give them Cap. Fucker tried to oust me today!
His mood improved the moment he sent the message. Even started humming to himself. “On top of the world…” Some dumb oldies song, but it matched how he felt.
Will do. You’re the best!
That made him even happier.
Stafford drove on, made his first delivery, then his second, a large one that half-emptied the truck. He spent a few minutes re-securing the remaining cargo, as the next drive would take him over bumpy, pothole-laced streets in the industrial district. Almost an hour had passed since he’d last heard from Nora. He pinged her: How’s it going?
Nora responded a minute or two later:
Good. They’re gone. I think they bought it.
…
Cap’s jealous of you.
He nodded. She knew exactly what was going on. He typed:
He says I’m “drawing attention to myself.” So stupid. Nobody knows it’s me.
Nora’s reply came too fast for her to have read his reply:
He’s too afraid to act. Soft. Like you-know-who was.
Stafford nodded. Nora hated her father, blamed him for her parents’ divorce, for not “standing up like a man” to her mother. She continued on:
You threaten Cap by taking leadership.
Yes. He would stand up to Cap. Definitely. She sent again:
Too bad the event was…unsuccessful.
That caught his attention. As in, took over his entire focus. He pulled over to the side of the road and flicked on his hazard lights.
You mean the misses?
Three dots on his display signaled an impending reply. For the longest time, no words appeared. Only the three dots. Time ticked by…
Finally:
And…it wasn’t as “major.” Only 3, and all 3 will survive, acc to NewsMax.
Stafford sank into his seat, deflated. Nora considered him a failure. His chances with her diminished by the second.
More dots for a long minute, then:
Cap is trying to purge you bc he knows you’re a better leader. If you don’t do something fast, he’ll win. The movement will lose the better man.
That sat him upright. Nora viewed him as the better man!
A warm feeling flowed through him. He reread the message, let it buck him up again.
Then the true meaning of her words hit him. She was not bucking him up. Not really. She was issuing a challenge: Show her that he’s a better man. Show the world.
He typed:
I need a success. Right?
Her reply:
Yes. A big one. ASAP.
Yes. A “big” one. A successful strike. And it could not wait. He needed to step up his game, and do it now, before Cap shut him out. Before he threw Stafford to the wolves, and the cops closed in, shutting down his bold initiative, and denying him the success he needed.
And taking him away from Nora.
This time, he had to be smarter about it. Which meant no more warnings. They didn’t work, anyway. None of the clinics shut down after the last threats.
It also meant, not in Clayton this time. For one thing, the only remaining target—the Women’s Health Center—carried logistical risks, unacceptable ones. They’d spotted him on his recon mission, and they’d be on alert. Plus, Cap would try to block him.
However, Cap wouldn’t expect him to operate in another theater of operations. The new territory, the one that needed a new Cell Captain. One with a similar clinic that wouldn’t be on high alert.
He needed to strike tomorrow. In Fairview.
Val regrouped with Jan back in the cruiser. “You were right all along, Jan,” she said. “The man behind it all is Tank.”
“We can’t rule out collusion with Stevie Ray yet, either,” Jan said. “But we can find out. Sanjit agreed to email us the so-called security analysis of VeroniCare’s facilities, including its IT operations. We’ll see if it identified any of the paths later used by the burglars and hackers and if any of it cross-walks to the clinics.”
“Can we question Tank again?” Val asked. “Does this rise to the level of probable cause?”
Jan waved her hand this way and that. “Maybe regarding the break-in at VeroniCare, at least as a material witness. But the shootings? Not at all. He’s already lawyered up, so he’s not likely to give us anything anyway.”
Once at their desks at WAVE Headquarters, they hit a new snag.
“Tasha Koval vetoed Sanjit’s promise of providing RS Security’s analysis,” Jan said, slamming down her phone. “She wants it screened by the lawyers first—which could take days and would probably end up with all the good stuff redacted.”
“Can Veronica override that veto?” Val said.
“It’s worth asking. Hopefully that won’t affect his promise to deliver that tape of our meeting with Nora.”
“What’s the point? We only had her in the room for a few minutes, and she didn’t give us anything during that time.”
“Ah, but the tape was rolling before we arrived,” Jan said with a devilish grin. “I want to see who she was texting before we got in there.”
Val’s phone beeped. A text message from Shelby:
A little birdie said to dig a little deeper into a certain anti-choice group hailing out of Eastern Europe.
PS, you didn’t hear this from me.
Val jumped into her desk chair and fired up her dark web search engine. She reread the website for LifeAdvocates.hr, paying particular attention to the English-language About Us page and another page labeled “Why We Fight.” She copied the text of both pages into her word processor and ran a grammar check program on the copy.
“You’re checking their spelling and punctuation?” Jan said, reading over her shoulder. “How does that help?”
“This program also counts keywords and their synonyms,” Val said. “I’ve used it to help identify themes—a study trick I used a lot in college.”
“Clever. Here I thought you just depended on that high-powered brain of yours.”
The program displayed a list of keywords and phrases, as well as a list of names, places, and organizations, each sorted by frequency of use.
“They sure must hate birth control pills,” Jan said. “Or do they like them? The word ‘pill’ comes up a dozen times.”
“We’ll have to read the text again to get the context,” Val said. “Anyway, you’d think they’d prefer a birth control pill over an abortion.”
“Unless it’s the morning-after pill, or the abortion pill, mifepristone. Hey, what’s this ‘Men Going Their Own Way’ thing mean?” Jan pointed down the list near the bottom of the screen. Again, reading twice as fast as Val could.
“That’s interesting. It’s a phrase used by incels to bash feminism. It’s also the title of one of their Reddit pages.”
“And SJW?” Jan pointed farther down while Val scrolled.
“Social Justice Warrior. A pejorative term for liberals.”
“Anti-abortion people use the term?”
Val shrugged. “A lot of people use it. Even some lefties wear it like an ironic badge of honor.”
“Weird. What about ‘WIG’?”
Val laughed. “That’s ordinary slang. ‘Wigging’ is going all-out. Again, a lot of millennials and Gen Z-ers use it.”
Jan sighed. “I’m so out of it. Okay, what’s TPTB?”
Val scanned some more until she found it. “Let’s Google it.” She searched and found a definition. “The Powers That Be. Another incel term. From the movie The Matrix—” She smacked her forehead. “I’m so dumb! The ‘pill’ reference is to the pills in the Matrix. Red pill, blue pill, black pill. All incel buzzwords. Jan, this group is a Croatian front for another incel group!”
“Okay…what does that tell us? How does it help?”
Val opened a new private browser window, using the search engine Shelby had set up for her to enable searches of the dark web. She entered the name that stuck out to her from the Life Advocates website: Roko Stefan Koval. Although he’d founded the group, his image appeared nowhere on the site. She opened a Google search window and clicked through a handful of links until she found a photo of the man, taken over a decade before. A haggard face, whose shaggy beard hid most of his identifying features, who could have been anywhere from twenty to forty—except for his eyes. Eyes unspoiled by lines of worry or mirth, but which reflected a deep resentment. A man who’d seen the ugliness of war: guns, tanks, and death. Roko Koval looked familiar, and Val knew why. His face bore a familial resemblance to someone they all knew.
Val turned to face Jan. “I’ll tell you how it helps,” she said. “It means there may be a darker reason Tasha Koval, our friendly Croatian-born VeroniCare IT Manager, is denying us access to their security analysis.”