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Janet Andrews was at the hospital, sitting with Stan Warren in the small waiting area outside the ICU that the FBI had made their own. She wasn’t sure what had pulled her here when she left the office. Really, she had no reason to be here. Nick still wasn’t able to talk to anyone; doctors were what she usually wrote as ‘guardedly optimistic’ — a euphemism for he hasn’t died yet. Stan hadn’t questioned her appearance when she showed up. He just smiled at her and patted the chair next to him. She took it.
“Is there an end game to this?” she asked him finally.
He took the time to think about it. “Yes,” he said. “But unfortunately, it’s not our end game. At least not yet. It’s theirs. We are playing defense. Defending our quarterback.” He nodded toward the double doors that led to Nick’s room. “Defending our goal posts. Defending those who can’t defend themselves.”
“You do know sports is the one department I never wrote for, right?” Janet muttered. Then she sighed. “I don’t like defense.”
“And if you think you don’t? Think what Mac is feeling,” Stan said with an unamused laugh. “He must be crawling up the walls.”
Janet looked at him suspiciously. “You’re waiting for him to break loose, aren’t you?” she said. “You’ve done that before. It’s like you let the dog off leash and say ‘get ‘em boy’ and once he’s got your permission, he’s off on the hunt. And, as my managing editor points out, then he blows shit up.”
Stan snorted.
“You understand my ME was admiring Mac’s destructive nature at the time,” she added, shaking her head. “We usually end up with a nomination for a Pulitzer out of it.”
That did make Stan laugh. “And you?” he asked. “Where do you see this going?”
Janet thought about it. She’d learned the hard way a year ago how escalation worked. She grew up in a separatist Christian community. She knew them to be wonderful caring people — mostly. She avoided thinking about the exceptions to the rule. But it didn’t feel like that anymore. Last year she had watched those caring Christian people psych themselves into picketing her house over a story. Then to leaving death threats on her answering machine and in her email. And then kidnapping her and blowing up her house. And finally blowing up Planned Parenthood clinics. By then she hadn’t recognized them any longer.
She wondered if they had recognized themselves after all of that.
So escalation. It was as if they had to talk themselves into things. Although given the barrage of bullets fired at the Rodriguez and Moore homes, they’d already talked themselves into things well beyond where they’d been a year ago.
“Escalation,” she said flatly. “They had that first attack planned out, and they didn’t consider that it might not succeed. So now they’re having to work themselves back up to the next step. Keep us terrified — at least they hope they are. Stray shots. Taking out our phones. Coming here after Nick. So they’ve got two things to do. Figure out where the safe house is. Then psych themselves into going after us, knowing that there are children involved.”
Stan had been staring at the floor in front of him, his arms resting on his knees, as he listened to her. But at the last, he glanced at her. “The children,” he said slowly. “But they had to know that first night there were children in the Moore house.”
“One thing to tell yourself that they were unintended deaths, so sad,” she countered. “Another thing to come after people committed to killing children as a part of it.”
Stan nodded. She thought he probably understood those nuances all too well.
Janet’s phone rang, and she pulled it out of her bag, surprised it rang through up here. Well, it was one of the super-duper phones. She shrugged. It was Angie’s number. She closed her eyes briefly, and straightened her shoulders. Then she answered the call, keeping her voice even and professional. Her staff depended upon her to stay at an even keel. So she gave them that. And with that reassurance, they did wonderful things. She knew about the running gag about her hair, and it made her grin. They were right, she admitted. It was her tell. But she thought the predictability of it was also a reassurance.
People outside the business didn’t realize how high-pressured the job was. The deadlines, the unpredictability, the constant change. She thrived on it. Mac did. All of her staff did, more or less. But it was still stressful. It still took its toll. People burned out. There was a lot of alcoholism and divorce. Not unlike cops. And nurses. Their whole household, in other words.
But more than the pressure of deadlines, every day you put your work out for 200,000 people to see and criticize. That took guts. And then you did it again the next day. Until one day you couldn’t do it any longer. And then you got yourself a PR job that paid three times as much and you drank a bit more and told stories about your journalism days. And how you’d go back if you could afford the pay cut. But it wasn’t that, not really. You’d lost your nerve.
What she did was create a safe space for all those talented people who still had the nerve to be reporters and photographers and put out a paper every day.
“What do you need?” she asked Angie now.
“Mac says we need you to come in so we can discuss the latest findings from Misaki,” Angie said somewhat obliquely. It took Janet a moment to place the name. The phreak from Manga, she thought with amusement.
“On my way,” she said crisply. “Do we need anyone else? I’m here with Stan.”
“I don’t know,” she said, sounding troubled. “Joe Dunbar got some bad news. Maybe?”
Janet frowned. She understood why Angie was being so vague — who knew who was listening. But it was frustrating. “OK,” she said. “I’m going to head home, then. May take the time to do an errand or two, but I’ll get there. And I’ll have Stan free himself up to join us for supper?”
“Good,” Angie said. Janet could hear the relief in her voice.
Janet ended the call, and looked at Stan. She smiled wistfully. “We’re needed,” she said. “I’m going to go. You need to find someone to take over this shift and follow. She said something is up with Joe Dunbar. And they got somewhere with the computer data.”
Stan looked at her amused. “Is that what all that meant?” He looked at his watch. “It’s almost 4 p.m. My relief will be here then, and I’ll head home. You do know every time someone leaves or comes back, we increase the chance of being spotted.”
She nodded. “I’ve thought about working from the house,” she admitted. “Or I could take a leave of absence. But I haven’t filled the second assistant editor position yet, so I don’t really have anyone to turn things over to.”
“Go,” he said. “We can talk about it later. Shorty’s start-up rumor covers the increased activity around the house as long as no one recognizes someone. But it isn’t going to hold up if they see you. Or me.”
She nodded, and kissed him lightly on the lips. He looked surprised, and then pleased. They weren’t much into ‘public displays of affection.’ Their relationship was still so new — they’d been seeing each other as their schedules — and air travel — permitted over the last two years. And there had been a lot of phone conversations in between visits, which had been good for both of them. Neither of them had jobs where they could have confidantes. Although an FBI agent made an odd confidante for a journalist — and the reverse was probably even more true. So they talked, first about work, then slowly about themselves. Now they were able to build something more permanent, and it made her nervous. Probably made him nervous, although he didn’t show it. It was hard to read him, she admitted to herself. But, his move across country said a lot.
Didn’t it? Maybe she should just ask him.
Instead, she assured herself that the move did mean something as she walked briskly out of the hospital. She was trying to practice being more aware of her surroundings, but it was hard. She usually was absorbed with her thoughts about work, and lately, about her never-ending rebuilding project. She wondered if Stan would join her there when the house was built? Should she involve him more in the decisions? She should, she decided. She would show him the architectural drawings.
“Janet! Drop!”
Janet obeyed, even as she struggled to place the voice. Rand Nickerson?
She heard the gunshot. And closed her eyes.
Escalation, she thought. They’re escalating. Shooting at someone in the hospital parking lot? That practically defined escalation.
Rand helped her up off the ground, and she tried to brush off her slacks. Bad day to wear black, she thought morosely. “How did you know?” she asked.
“Saw you, then saw Andy Malloy,” he said. “I didn’t think he had anything good in mind.”
“No, I guess he didn’t,” Janet said. “I’ve got to go to the house. We’re pulling everyone in. There’s been a breakthrough.”
Rand nodded. “Stan upstairs? I’m supposed to spell him.”
“Call someone else to stand guard, would you?” she asked. “I think we need everyone.”
Rand walked her to the rental car. She needed to think about car shopping someday soon too. He pulled out a wand and ran it around the edges and underneath the car. “You’re good to go,” he said.
“I want one of those,” she said, eyeing the wand.
He laughed. “Go,” he ordered. “We’ll be there in a bit.”
Janet forced herself to pay attention. She got onto Montlake, then the 520 bridge which was a nightmare. Note to self — stay off the bridge during rush hour. And apparently rush hour started at 4 p.m., maybe earlier. She wondered when it ended? Likely as late as 7 p.m. Ugh. She liked her place in Ballard. It was different enough from downtown so she didn’t feel like she lived at work, but she had an easy commute — such as it got in Seattle. She had plenty of space to garden. She grimaced. When they firebombed her house, they’d had destroyed the garden too. The garden and her books were the things she mourned the most.
Pay attention! She told herself. But speaking of the garden, maybe she’d go to the Wells-Medina nursery. She wouldn’t go in, but in case someone was following her? It worked as an alternative destination. She routinely hit plant nurseries.
Plant therapy, she called it. Nothing better for stress release.
So she pulled into the parking lot and watched to see if anyone followed her. Nothing that set off her alarms. Moms in their vans with kids. Teens in Mercedes convertibles. She shook her head. She’d gotten her driver’s license at 16 so she could drive the community’s pickup truck to the farm supply store for the ranch. A convertible for your 16th birthday?
But overindulged teenagers was normal for Medina. Reassured, she drove the six blocks farther to the house. The guard nodded to her. She rolled down her windows so he could see she was alone — no one was hiding in the backseat forcing her to take them inside. The guard opened the gate and she drove through.
Of course, if someone did try to come in that way, they would be faced with a dozen people who had access to Mac’s arsenal and knew how to use it. Most of them did anyway. She shook her head at the amount of guns Mac had pulled out of his truck last night. She and Mac were due a talk about that.
She parked. Took a deep breath and let it out. Straightened her shoulders. Got the professional confident ‘I can handle whatever it is’ persona in place, and then she marched into the house to find out what was going on now.
And wasn’t it telling, that she almost forgot to tell Mac she’d been shot at? No biggie. Just Andy Malloy shooting at them again. Turned out he had been downtown and shot at Mac too. She heard the story from Angie, because like her, Mac just shrugged it off. And Angie was more amused by Mac’s bare-chested entrance into the Examiner than worried about her own safety.
They would be permanently changed by this, Janet thought soberly. She wondered what that would mean. Paulina came into the computer room with a plate of sandwiches. Janet looked at her consideringly. Paulina knew what it meant to have lived with this kind of fear. Maybe she needed to get Paulina to talk about it, because she was going to have a bunch of shell-shocked people on her hands. And that wasn’t good.
The computer team’s news wasn’t good either. She grimaced. She knew the name Win Whalen. She knew now why Sgt. McBride had told Mac make sure the newspaper’s pockets were deep enough to cover what he wrote. She wanted to run her hand through her hair, she thought with amusement. She didn’t. This was a piece of information she needed to think about before letting anyone know what it meant.
She wondered how Sgt. Scott McBride knew. The president of the union? That was interesting. And troubling. They needed a profile on Mr. McBride.
“OK,” she said. “From the top. Mike? Make a big printout of Mac’s rogues’ gallery. Paste that up on the wall. Then we add to it. Who do we know? What do we know about them? What do we need to know about them?”
Mike nodded and turned to his computer to get that done.
“Misaki? Ruri? Work with Shorty to be able to brief us about what you’ve learned,” she said. “And where are Mac and Joe, anyway?”
“They went up on the roof,” Angie said, then told her what Joe had said about the perceived suicides.
Janet closed her eyes in pain. She blew out air through pursed lips. “OK, that moves to the top of the story list.”
“Is that what we’re working toward?” Misaki asked. “Not a police investigation but journalism?”
Janet couldn’t read how the younger woman felt about that. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who guards the guardians? It’s the fundamental question the Romans first posed about self-governance. And that’s our job as journalists. To hold those in power accountable. The police are failing to hold their own accountable. And so that becomes our job. A constitutional right and privilege, as a matter of fact,” Janet said, and smiled. “Sorry. You hit the button that says lecture on the role of the press.”
Misaki smiled back. “Well, I, for one, would rather be working for the press than for the cops,” she said. “But, who polices the press?”
“The press,” Janet said promptly. “Unfortunately, I don’t know that we do any better of a job of policing our own than the cops do.”
“Fox News, as a case in point,” Mike Brewster muttered. He was taping the pieces of Mac’s rogue gallery together on the wall. Janet watched it go up. She glanced at her son. It felt good to even think of him as that.
“Tim? How many of those people are in the church directory?” she asked.
“Most of them,” he answered. “I was surprised, actually. I didn’t expect to find some of them there. Like Andy Malloy.”
“He’s in the directory?” Janet asked. “That surprises me too. How recent is the directory?”
“It’s online,” Tim said. “Password protected for members only, but that wasn’t hard to get around. I know people out there. Anyway, it looks like they update it regularly. No telling when he joined though.”
Janet nodded.
Mac and Joe came back into the room. Janet looked at Joe who appeared both defeated and fired up. Well, that would be a story worth listening to.
“OK,” she said. “Who goes first? Mac, did you hear Tim? Most of the names are in the church directory — including Andy Malloy.”
Mac grimaced. “Did I tell you what Naomi Fairchild said? Her childhood friend goes there. And at their last lunch together, she was going on about how they needed to ‘take back law enforcement in this area like they had in Mount Vernon. The police needed to clean house of those who would interfere with the Lord’s work.’ That’s a direct quote from Naomi, by the way.”
“Start there,” Janet said. She sat down at the conference table in the center of the room, and got out a notepad from her bag. “What else did Naomi have to say?”
An hour later, she had roughed out the series of stories and photos that they had, and she’d identified the missing pieces.
And Win Whalen was a big missing piece. She frowned. “OK, who builds a profile of Whalen? Mike?”
He looked alarmed. “You don’t want me to actually interview him, do you?”
She tilted her head and looked at him. “You don’t do interviews, do you?” she said slowly. “We need to fix that. But no, we’re not going to start with Win Whalen as your first interview. Do a backgrounder minus the interview. Mac can do the interview. Angie can go along for photos.”
“You think he’ll agree to an interview?” Misaki said doubtfully. “He’s a notorious recluse.”
Janet tapped her pen on the table as she thought about it. “He won’t be able to resist meeting Mac,” she predicted. “He’s too egotistical. If he’s truly doing the tech work, or bankrolling it, he’ll agree to it. Mac’s good at setting off the ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ reaction.”
People blinked at the phrase, but Janet shrugged. What else would you call it? Mac just snorted.
“Tim? We need a handle on the roll the church is playing, if any,” she continued. “Is it just the source for all these people to find each other? Or is there more to it?”
Tim scowled. “More to it like what?”
Janet chewed on her lip. She needed to stop that, she thought. One tell was plenty. “Someone bought a lot of weaponry and ammunition,” she pointed out. “Expensive weapons and ammo. And that church has a lot of money. Did the church buy them?”
“Jesus, Janet, you’re accusing a church of money laundering?” Mac asked.
She shrugged. “Untraceable money,” she pointed out. “They don’t have to tell anyone where their money comes from or where it goes. They don’t pay taxes. They don’t have to file non-profit reports. They’re a church.”
Misaki and Ruri looked at each other. “Well...,” Ruri began.
“No,” Shorty said firmly.
“You don’t even know what I was going to suggest!” Ruri said indignantly.
“And I don’t want to,” he said. “It’s best if data just shows up, Ruri. Don’t ask permission. Don’t talk about how you did it. But if you end up with information you think would be useful, then you share it.”
She looked at him, and a smile spread across her face. “And how would Mr. Straight Shooter know about that?” she asked. “Sounds like the voice of experience to me.”
Mac answered for him. “Usually he doesn’t bother to ask permission or explain later because he knows I wouldn’t understand any of it,” he said. Everyone laughed.
Janet looked at the two friends who were staring at each other. Shorty met his eyes and didn’t blink. Janet made a mental note to ask Shorty about his methods. And then she thought about it. No, she acknowledged. She didn’t want to know either. Legally, that gave the newspaper deniability: Sorry, your honor. The information was given to us and when we verified it, we found it to be true. A different standard than the police.
“Shorty, was Whalen one of the people who inquired about the start up?” Mac asked suddenly.
Shorty took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I ignored him, because I want nothing to do with that asshole. But yes, he was interested. I don’t know that it means much. A veteran’s resource program would be something he could put some money into just for the do-gooder bragging rights.”
Janet studied him. “You don’t like him. Do you know him? Personally?”
“Not personally,” Shorty said. “But I know of him. And he funds a lot of conspiracy websites. Sandy Hook deniers. Rush Limbaugh wannabes. He’s an investor, so a lot of what he does is because he sees potential for profit. But he uses a portion of that profit for these other whacko things. And I don’t want our start-up linked with the whackos.”
Janet didn’t point out that the start-up wasn’t real. She suspected that as soon as this was wrapped up, it would be real. She wondered if she could invest?
Mike Brewster spoke up. “It’s true. Andrew Whalen is Win’s son. So he really is connected.”
Janet glanced at Stan and Rand who had slipped into the room. At Joe, who was still focused inward, and barely aware of what was going on around him. She started to say something to him, but Mac shook his head. Later, he mouthed. She nodded. At which point, Paulina came into the room and announced dinner was ready, and they all filed out of the room obediently.
“You OK?” Stan asked, pulling her back into the room, and holding her. She relaxed into his arms.
“Sure.” Then she remembered. She’d gotten shot at. “I’m OK,” she reassured him. Although she rather thought that being this nonchalant about getting shot at was an indication that she was not OK.