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Tuesday, October 21, 2014, Seattle, Washington
Mac couldn’t say that driving three cars from the safe house to the Examiner building was energy efficient or security cautious. But being a reporter without a car wasn’t practical either.
To start with, Angie was frustrated. What was she supposed to photograph, she demanded to know. She wanted to go back out to the Sand Point neighborhood. Rand said she could give him a ride out there. He was still talking to neighbors. Mac shot him a grateful look. The idea of Angie being out there by herself made him sick to his stomach. Angie looked at the two of them suspiciously, but agreed that was a good plan.
Janet just nodded, and grabbed some toast and headed out the door. She was out the gate before Mac could even work out a reason why she should wait and go with him. And then he remembered he didn’t have to go in at 6 a.m. and so why the fuck was he even up?
Disgruntled, he went into the kitchen and made himself an omelet. Paulina watched him. “You don’t like what I cook?” she asked finally.
He looked up at her startled. “I love what you cook,” he assured her. “I’ve never eaten this well, ever. But I’m not used to having someone cook for me. Or clean. Who is cleaning anyway?”
Paulina smiled at that. “I am,” she said. “But the guard says a cleaning service comes in once a week. Do we want to keep them?”
“We do,” Mac assured her. “With this many people? Yes, we need a service. Can you get the name, though? We’ll need to run a security check on them.”
Paulina nodded. “You’ve been alone a long time?” she asked him. He smiled at her.
“Yes,” he said simply. “A very long time.”
She patted him on his cheek as she went out of the kitchen. “It’s hard to change,” she said. “But it’s good you’re not alone anymore.”
Mac looked after her. He wasn’t alone anymore? He tried that on for size, and realized it was true. When had that happened? Well there had been Lindy, of course, and he and Shorty had renewed their friendship, and then Janet Andrews went to bat for him and that led to Stan Warren. It was as if people came into his life, and they stuck.
So, it was true, he acknowledged. Was it to his liking? Well, he’d spent the better part of a year trying to fit into the lifestyle Kate Fairchild wanted because he wanted a home and to belong to someone or something. And look, he had that all along. Bemused, he finished his omelet and then cleaned up and put things in the dishwasher.
But thinking of Kate Fairchild made him think more seriously about what had happened a year ago. Janet was kidnapped by the Army of God who then firebombed Planned Parenthood clinics. Only three successfully, mostly due to Nick Rodriguez, Mac, and Janet’s husband, a homeless man named Eli Andrews. It could have been worse. A lot worse.
Shorty came through the kitchen, grabbed some coffee to go. “I’ll work on that database more tonight,” he said. “By the way, our cover startup, Homecoming, is getting some nice buzz. I’ve actually gotten some inquiries from investors. But Mac? I want to bring in the two phone freaks I know. I’m not good enough to keep you all safe, apparently, much less do the backtracking the case needs.”
Mac considered that. “I suppose they aren’t going to cough up bona fides,” he said. He started to laugh. “You know, references, work history, that kind of thing.”
Shorty rolled his eyes. “They aren’t even going to provide you their names, Mac.”
Mac sobered. “Do you trust them?”
He thought about that. “Smartest women I know,” he said slowly. “Trust? Don’t know that I trust anyone completely.” He shrugged. “But I trust them enough to at least talk to them about this.”
“How much money do we have to offer them to come here, and live on site until the job is done?”
“I’ll ask them that,” Shorty said with a nod. “Since this is like a top of the line resort, they might go for it.” And he was out the door.
Mac thought if he sat here by the coffee pot long enough, he could get all of his questions answered. If coffee just didn’t smell like coffee, he thought sourly, he’d be in business.
Stan Warren came through next. He was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and a tie. Mac looked at him astounded. “Where are you going, that you’re dressed like that? Court?” Mac asked.
Stan looked puzzled. “Work? I’m going into the office. Some things I want to check out.”
Mac shook his head. “Stan? While you’re there? Look around at what your co-workers are wearing,” he said. “That’s the best-looking suit in the city. Even the newspaper’s attorney doesn’t compete. You stick out. You might as well wear a sign that says I’m not from here, and I don’t want to be here.”
Mac paused. “Do you want to be here?”
Stan jerked. “What?” he demanded. Then he stopped to think about that last question. “Yeah, I want to be here,” he said. “But it’s harder than I thought it would be, you know? I thought, a big city like Seattle, would be just like the big city I left. But with fewer politicians.”
“And that’s true,” Mac said. “But I grew up here, and I have a hard time fitting in.” Well, that was true of most placed he’d lived, he guessed, outside of a Marine barracks.
Stan nodded. “It’s different,” he conceded. “And I’m having a hard time reading the cues. And don’t take this wrong, but especially with White people. Are they uncomfortable because I’m Black, or because they just killed someone and I interrupted them while they were hiding the body?”
Mac started laughing. “Well, even among Black people that suit’s a bit too uptown,” he managed. “But maybe we need to go out and hit a couple of bars I know when this blows over.”
Stan smiled briefly. “Yeah, and those dudes can smell a cop a mile away,” he observed. “I’m fine, Mac. I don’t need a lot of people. I came out here to be close to Janet, and to get away from the implosion I see coming in the D.C. bureau. But I’ll check out my co-workers today — and start rumors of a different kind.”
Which reminded Mac, he wanted to do a few backgrounders on some key players. He glanced at the clock. Good, Joe Conte would be off deadline and done with the blotter. He couldn’t push any of it back on him.
When Mac paused at the gate, Kevin Winters was there. He came out to talk to Mac.
“You pulling shifts yourself?” Mac asked.
“Wanted to talk to you,” he replied. “You gave Brian some phones to dispose of?”
Mac set aside the light-hearted mood he’d been in. “Yes,” he said. “What happened?”
“He did exactly what you said,” Kevin assured him. “Dropped them in a garbage can near the motel not far from our office. But he was freaked out this morning. Seems like the cops raided that motel last night.”
Mac considered that. “He know any more than that?”
Kevin shook his head. “He heard it on the radio, I guess. He lives above the office — you know that, right? So, he had the radio on this morning, and they said it was a drug bust.”
Mac nodded. “I’ll check it out when I get to the office,” he promised. “Glad he did what I told him.”
Kevin snorted. “So is he.”
Mac started to roll up his window, and then he paused. “Including wiping them down?” he asked. “No fingerprints?”
“First thing he said,” Kevin said. “I did it exactly like Mac said. I wiped them down and everything!”
Mac nodded, and then the two men looked at each other. Kevin started laughing. “He’s young,” he said. “But he’s smart enough to follow orders.”
“All you can ask for,” Mac said, laughing himself. “Tell him good job.”
Kevin nodded and waved him on through the gate.
It felt weird not to have a phone, Mac admitted as he drove into the city. He wondered if the newspaper had one he could use? He pondered the ramifications of that as he parked his car in its usual spot. The parking attendant flagged him down. “Someone shot up the place last night,” he said. “You see anything?”
Mac shook his head. “Didn’t see a thing,” he said, not mentioning that he’d heard it. “What time, do you know?”
The attendant shrugged. “No telling. Now that the Examiner isn’t operating 24/7, we’ve cut back on a human attendant here at night. Maybe that’s good. There’s a couple of bullet holes in the guard station there. Wouldn’t have wanted to be trapped in there when bullets flew.”
Mac frowned. “That doesn’t sound good,” he said. “You call it in?”
“Called the boss,” he said. “I doubt they’ll do anything. Repair the glass maybe.”
Mac nodded and headed into the building. He turned back toward the small man who had always been friendly to him. “Hank? Be careful,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but something. And it might be a good time to be extra careful, you hear me?”
“I hear you, Mac,” he said. He bent over and picked up something, and stuck it in his pocket. “I don’t think I’ll be pulling any night shifts here anyway. But I’m always careful.”
Mac laughed a bit at that, and went inside to the newsroom. He found an empty desk, leaving his usual desk to Joe Conte. He just needed a computer, and a phone. Which reminded him. “Joe, you hear anything out of Bellevue about cops raiding a hotel on some tip about drugs?”
Joe called up a file on his computer, and looked through his notes. Mac preferred to take his notes on paper. Whatever worked. “Yeah,” he said, still scrolling down. “Turned out to be nothing, the Bellevue desk sergeant said. But...,” he trailed off until he found the place in his notes. “He said it was weird, because SPD busted the place, rather than calling them. Didn’t call them until it was over, as a matter of fact. Bellevue cops are a bit pissed about it. And they wanted to see the information SPD was acting on. SPD told them that was confidential, and now Bellevue is doubly pissed.”
“Anyone get hurt?” Mac asked, not looking at Joe, but focusing on his own computer.
“No,” Joe said. “Scared the bejesus out of an old woman just passing through town, though.”
Mac looked up and met Janet’s eyes. She didn’t say anything either.
He flipped through his notebook until he found the list he’d been compiling of people he wanted more information about. He started with Stan’s boss. If they were trusting the man, they’d better know more about him than Rand’s gut feeling that he was OK.
He’d moved on down the list, doing the basic research he’d do for any backgrounder. A search of their own databases, a search for police records, an internet search. And for this, he would use a computer file so he could copy and paste. When Janet interrupted him three hours later with a suggestion of lunch, he knew FBI Special Agent in Charge William Noble was not their problem. But there was a whole long list of people who were.
Starting with Sgt. Scott McBride. No wonder Lorde had been interested when the three stooges claimed he had sent them.
“Mike’s got something he wants to talk about,” Janet said quietly. “Across the street?”
He closed down his computer, emptying the browser’s history, printing out the file of his research and deleting the file. “You talk to the court reporter?” Mac asked as he went to the printer to get the pages.
“She’s meeting us there, too,” Janet replied. When Mac asked her about a phone, she nodded, and rummaged around on a shelf behind her desk. That shelf terrified him, in the same way large purses did. Who knew what women kept in there? Janet pulled out a cell phone that might have been one of the first ones made and detached it from the charger. He looked at it skeptically. “We used to give cop reporters ‘mobile phones’ so they could call in from the scene,” she said trying not to laugh. “I keep one for grins mostly. But it still works.”
Mac took it, and shook his head. “We’ve got phreaks coming to the house this afternoon,” he said. “Maybe I’ll pass it on.”
“Hey,” Janet protested. “Someday we’ll have a museum of antique technology here, and this will be in it.”
“Janet, we are antique technology,” Mac said sourly. “We’re a newspaper.”
She laughed and followed him out a side door. “We’ve got to get better at taking precautions,” Mac said, when she looked at him, questioning it. “Act as if there is someone out there watching, waiting.”
“Because there is,” Janet said.
He nodded. “There is.”
Mac ordered a turkey sandwich and iced tea and staked out a spot in the booth where he could see the front door. Mike Brewster came in, grabbed a cup of coffee, and joined the two of them. And then a woman came in that Mac didn’t know well, but recognized as the courts reporter, Yesenia Vilchis. She was a quiet woman in her 40s. He doubted he had said more than a dozen words to her. And wasn’t that weird? Shouldn’t cops and courts work closer than that?
He said as much to Janet while they waited for Yesenia to get her drink.
Janet considered that. “Years ago, the Oregonian organized their reporters into teams — safety or education for instance — rather than institutional beats,” she said as if she were thinking out loud. “Made their reporters connect with each other, and to think about how their readers wanted information rather than what was easiest for the reporter to gather. Had some pitfalls early on. You need both, or city council meetings don’t get covered, for instance. I’ll have to think about that.”
All of them had lists of names they’d been developing, it turned out. Mac was startled to find out how many on his list weren’t locked up.
“Bail,” Yesinia said. “Only the poor sit in jail waiting for a trial date — which can be months, even a year. Most of your list were middle-class people who owned their own homes and could use those with a bondsman. Or had connections and could get out on a PR bond — Personal Recognizance bond — the court thought their word was good enough.”
The last sounded a bit sour, and Mac thought that was generous of her. He was outraged. He set it aside for another day, but he was going to start following the crime he covered through the system. Some guy busted for petty shit sits in jail, and the men who kidnapped Janet were out on bail?
He closed his eyes. He hadn’t felt rage like this in a while. Hot rage. Usually his rage came in cold. And he couldn’t afford the hot kind, not right now. Too many people were counting on him. He tamped it down, and when he was sure he wasn’t going to explode, he ran down his list with Yesinia.
Nick Rodriguez had said Army of God. Mac didn’t think Army of God was back — but their local sympathizers, maybe? He didn’t know who to ask about Army of God. Maybe Janet did? Wait. He did know. Timothy Brandt.
Mike Brewster had some interesting info. “I looked at the cases that had one of those three officers attached to it,” he said. “Went back three years. I can go back farther. They have a high dismissal rate — their work doesn’t hold up in court. But I noticed something, and I followed it down a rabbit hole.”
They all grinned at him, because they liked his rabbit hole stories. Mike had shaken his head the first time Janet had praised him for one. Apparently, initiative hadn’t been rewarded in Steve Whitman’s special projects team. No wonder that team never produced much, Mac thought.
“Anyway, all three of those men have been involved in a police shooting. They were exonerated — cops almost always are. But one — Hightower — actually got the city sued for wrongful death, and they settled out of court.”
Mac felt something settle inside him. “So not the three stooges, but a hit squad,” he said.
“That’s a bit harsh don’t you think?” Yesinia asked.
Mac smiled at her. “We need to take you out to see the Rodriguez house,” he said. “They — and I don’t know who ‘they’ are yet — sent a hit squad after Lt. Rodriguez. That’s exactly what it looked like. Any veteran who saw service in the Middle East — or Central America for that matter — would recognize it. Not just death, but terror.”
He thought of Paulina Moore, who recognized it from her childhood, and shook his head.
“You think these men might have been the ones who fired on the houses?” Janet asked, consideringly.
Mac frowned. He’d met them briefly. “Maybe,” he said. “We’re looking for AR-15 owners. Any cross matches? I definitely could see one of them luring Joe off and shooting at him, though.”
Mike had pulled purchase records. “I’m somewhat relieved to report they didn’t buy the guns with city money,” he said. Everyone laughed. “Although that would have been quite the story.”
Mac grinned. There was a reporter attitude, if there was one.
“But I looked at the gun freaks from your story last spring, Mac,” Mike said. “Andy Malloy? He owns that gun range? That gun range bought a hell of a lot of guns recently. Especially since Malloy is supposed to be weapon-free because he has a PR bond.”
Mac frowned at that. “And Craig Anderson’s store?”
“An uptick there. I’m trying to cross-check the sales there to see if they were to police officers, but it’s slow going.” Mike frowned. “I might have to go to licensing and look things up.”
“So walk me through a gun sale,” Janet said. “I buy a gun. Is it registered?”
“Fine line in the language,” Mac said. “The gun is not registered, the sale is. And it has to be recorded in the dealer’s log book. Then that record is sent to the sheriff of the county the buyer resides in, and another copy to the director of licensing.”
“And it’s not computerized?” she asked.
“Good question,” Mac said. “Not at the gun shop. The law specifies it’s logged into a book. Sheriff department? Depends on the sheriff, I’d guess. Sheriff Norton probably used them for toilet paper. But the director of licensing? He has to have the staff to input them into the system.”
“And near as I can tell, only police can access it anyway,” Mike said sourly.
“I did a story on that,” Yesinia said, squinting as she tried to recall the specifics. “They’re backlogged, and no one wants to give them the funds it will take to catch up. And Mac? You might know, but I think it’s handguns only.”
Mac tried to think about that. Were rifles exempt? And were AR-15s — that seemed to be the weapon of choice lately? “I think you’re right,” he said slowly. And damn it, the person he’d usually call and ask was in the ICU. Joe Dunbar might know. Not that he could call him and ask either. This phone shit was a bitch.
“That seems to be a major hole,” Mike observed.
Mac snorted. Not a flaw, but a feature. The gun rights advocates didn’t want to make it easy to track weapon ownership — Second Amendment rights, they screamed. Mac thought they were nuts — gun nuts. He wanted to grin at that. He owned guns. A lot of them. He liked guns. But they were all legal. He had no problem with gun laws. He’d happily pass whatever test the government devised. It was amateurs with guns that scared the shit out of him. And amateurs who were stockpiling guns for SHTF? Or thinking they were a man because they swaggered downtown with a pistol on their hip? He’d seen a man with an AR-15 in a backpack harness in line at Safeway one night. What the fuck?
They batted ideas and information around for a bit longer — until Janet finished her coffee, the signal it was time to go back to work. Mac didn’t let them leave through the front door of the cafe. They all trooped out through the kitchen door, and only because Janet was the one who asked. Sometimes he wondered if she owned stock in the place.
Or maybe she just tipped better than he did.
He went back into the newsroom to make more calls. He started by checking in with Lindy and making sure she hadn’t gone back to the house. She assured him she hadn’t. “We’re actually getting along,” she said with a laugh. Mac grinned.
That piece of personal business done, Mac thought about what Nick had said. Army of God and Sensei followers joining forces. He wondered what that even meant. Army of God? The man he knew as Adam was behind bars — federal prison. But there had been others, true Army of God brought in from outside, as well as locals who were fellow travelers. He tapped his fingers, and looked at the clock. Timothy Brandt had been one of them. But when he heard they were going to firebomb Janet’s house, it was a bridge too far.
Probably saved her life. Saved it again in Jehovah’s Valley, when he shot the man who was going to kill her.
And Tim learned that Janet Brandt Andrews was his mother, not his wayward older sister. He came back to school at the University of Washington. Still lived at the Fairchild boarding house that Kate, and her mother, Naomi, ran. And he was gradually making his peace with Janet.
He’d have to wait until 5 p.m., Mac thought. In the meantime, he wanted to know more about his three stooges. He’d thought them too stupid to breathe without a direct order when he met them. He still did. So who was giving them orders? Sgt. McBride? Captain Rourke? And what about the tech side? None of those men.
Military experience, he thought suddenly. We’re looking for someone who got trained by Uncle Sam and who knows what a hit-squad attack looks like for the same reason I do — he’s seen it. He sent off an email to Mike asking him to look up the military background of their list. And then he felt like he’d hit a dead end. Maybe he’d drive by Sand Point and look around himself. See what could be seen during daylight hours.
Janet was gone, and the newsroom was emptying rapidly. He made another mental note to talk to Janet about that. He’d forgotten to tell her last night with the uproar over phones.
And then he headed out to Sand Point. He drove slowly through the neighborhood, not just the cul-de-sac that Rodriguez lived on, but around the area. Just getting a feel for it. He didn’t know much about suburbs, really. He’d never lived in one. Well, not for long enough to recall it. His mother had moved around a lot when he was young. Suburbs kind of gave him the creeps. Like that movie, Stepford Wives? The position of the garage was really all that changed. A few of the ranch houses had brick facades. Some were painted a different color, but mostly it was brown, gray, and some butt-ugly color that was in between the two. He shook his head.
At least the bungalow he lived in was painted white. Who knew that was a daring choice?
So, the Rodriguez house with its two-car garage to the left and the dark brown paint above the brick lower half fit right in. The Moore house had the garage to the right, and there was no brick. Both had small porches. Tidy lawns. Mac rolled his eyes. He wondered what this house represented to Paulina Moore who had grown up in Central America? Safety? Anonymity? He shook his head. It couldn’t be a nostalgia for home, that was for sure.
There was crime scene tape out now, Mac saw. Days too late. Lorde’s doing? Or Rourke? Be interesting to find that out.
But what he really wanted to find was where had Craig Anderson been watching from. He parked down the street, near the intersection where the cul-de-sac joined 65th and walked up. He stopped to gawk at the two houses, like anyone would, but damn, he felt conspicuous out here. He didn’t think anyone actually walked on these sidewalks. Probably drove to the gym to get their exercise.
So how did Craig stay hidden? He was a big man, and quite frankly, a big, scary dude. People would notice him. Wouldn’t they?
And then he spotted it. A small RV parked beside the garage of the house across the street. Had to be, he thought. He studied the house itself. Is it vacant? Craig pulls in the RV, and he’s set. Mac turned back toward his car and got the hell out of there. He needed to know if that house was for sale or not. He’d bet it was. Convenient? Yes. Too convenient? Maybe. But the chances were good some house on that street was for sale. He thought Dunbar was looking for a house to buy. Maybe he would have an insight.
And then he drove toward the U District and the Fairchild house.