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(Friday, May 9, 2014)
Mac was in a foul mood by the time he got into the Examiner offices for morning calls on Friday. He’d gone home, checked in to Facebook, made his presence known. There was a leadership email from Sensei, talking about the importance of having been tested in battle. That it wasn’t enough to know how to shoot a gun, you also needed to know when, and that you could. All soldiers had had experiences where someone had frozen when faced with an enemy fighting back, often leading to disastrous results. That’s why the wilderness survival weekends were so vital for the development of strong men who would lead in the coming civic unrests. Make no mistake, he said, it’s coming. He talked about taking the survival weekends to the next level, and that there would be more on that soon.
Mac emailed him back: Wouldn’t it make more sense to train the men to be civic leaders, to run for public office, to coach Little League baseball for God’s sake, than to sit in their homes, cleaning their guns hoping for the breakdown of society so that they could go play in some real-life video game? Or hell, they could enlist!
There had been no response, and Mac worried about that. Had Sensei decided he wasn’t buying in and written him off?
But there’d been a message this morning: We’ll see how your ideals hold up on the battlefield, Mac. What will you do when what you hold dear is under attack?”
Mac frowned. He thought that was a reference to the upcoming weekend, but just in case, he suggested to his aunt that she go spend the weekend at her lover’s place.
“Mac,” Lindy had said, pouring herself coffee. She was teaching an early class this term. “What are you into this time?”
“I’m not sure,” he said honestly. “A bunch of gun nuts. But this last email? I’m not sure if he meant it as a threat or not. But just in case, be elsewhere?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Sure,” she said. “I can do that.”
He kissed the top of her head. “I broke up with Kate last night,” he said.
She reached up and patted his cheek. She didn’t attempt to say anything, and he was grateful.
He put his duffel and the carry case for the Remington in the lockbox in the back of his rig. The Glock was still in his backpack with his computer and camera. He added the Ruger for Angie to his backpack. He considered if he wanted anything else, and rummaged through his hidden lockbox for his arsenal, he thought with a grin, and found a tactical knife. He slid it inside his duffel. If he thought of something else, he could always transfer it to his kit.
And then he headed into work. He hesitated and then left a message on Shorty’s phone, about the latest email, and that he should be wary. Sensei didn’t even know he exists, Mac reassured himself. But just in case, it wouldn’t hurt for a heads up.
He made his calls, then called Rodriguez and updated him. Rodriguez grunted. He still thought Mac going off on “this survivalist weekend thing was a damn fool idea.” Mac couldn’t disagree.
When he got off the phone, Mike Brewster was standing by his desk, looking a bit uncomfortable. “Show you what I got?” Mike asked.
Mac nodded. “Pull up a chair.” He looked over at Janet. “Janet, you got a moment?”
Having Janet looming over his shoulder made Mike increasingly uneasy, but he pulled up his account in the system and opened up his data files, and a graphic. He walked them both through the research and the data.
“So, bottom line? In the last 18 months the number of divorce and child support cases that mention concerns about guns, arsenals, or collections has risen from 10 in 2008 to nearly 1,500 in 2013. And it’s still escalating. In Washington, the hot spots are not in rural areas as one might expect, but in suburbs around Seattle and stretching north to Bellingham. And I did a gut check by going back to 2008 and doing the same geographic analysis, and those hot spots didn’t exist. They appear to have started in 2010, and have been snowballing ever since.”
Mike Brewster paused, and called up a different file. “So, I ran the same content analysis on criminal cases, both overall, and domestic violence. Your cop source is right, 15 in six months is a lot. The first such case was in 2009, and they’ve slowly been growing. Same clusters as the civil cases.”
“Why 2008 as your start year?” Janet asked.
“I gave it to him,” Mac answered. “The Sensei keeps using Obama’s election as a trigger point. Figured it would be as good a starting point as any.”
She nodded and studied the numbers and the graphics. “Good job, Mike,” she said, with obvious approval. “Get it polished up. We’ll probably need it early next week. Do you need me to clear it with Steve?”
Mike looked relieved. “That would help,” he admitted. “I didn’t have anything pressing in my queue to work on, but a request from you two would cover me.”
She laughed. “I’ll backdate it, even,” she promised.
“What made you go after these numbers, Mac?” she asked. Mike lingered to listen.
“One of Rodriguez’s cops ran the DV numbers after those two calls last week,” Mac said. “And I remembered one of the articles you sent me talked about how almost all mass shooters have a history of DV in their past. But our society doesn’t take domestic violence seriously, and we don’t see it as the warning sign of danger ahead. So, the bastards escalate and then when they kill someone — sometimes lots of someone’s — we go, oh, look, he was arrested for domestic violence five years ago. Isn’t that a coincidence?”
Both Janet and Mike looked at him with startled expressions.
“Sorry for the rant,” he muttered. “I’m on edge today.”
“No,” Mike said slowly. “That gives me an idea for another data dive. Let me play around with that idea, and I’ll tell you two about it later today.”
Mac nodded. “Leaving early, though,” he warned. “Angie and I are headed up to Skagit Valley to do that wilderness survival weekend.”
“By noon, then,” Mike promised, and walked away, hands shoved into his pockets.
“He seems to be a good guy,” Mac said. “But he doesn’t know sh— anything about daily journalism.”
“Looks like he’s learning,” Janet said, returning to her desk. “Give me a bit to finish up, and then let’s go over the details for your trip.”
Mac was restless. Rather than wait in the newsroom for Janet, he headed toward the photo department. He wasn’t surprised that Angie was there. “Do you ever go home?” he asked, with a half-smile. He leaned against the door frame, and watched her.
“Sure,” she said, smiling at him. “And then I come back in again.”
He laughed. “I’m headed to the coffee shop across the street. Janet will be joining me to talk about the trip. Wanna come along?”
She nodded, finished what she was doing to a photo, and closed things down. She stuck her head into her boss’s office. He looked up at Mac, and came out to talk to him. “I approved this,” he said, “but I have to tell you, I have had second thoughts. I might be on the tenth set of thoughts. You sure you don’t want to take a more experienced photog?”
Mac thought he probably meant a male photog. “Too late,” he said easily. “They approved Angie. Can’t change now.”
The photo editor nodded. “I worry this is dangerous,” he said. “Your stories are.”
Mac grinned. “Can’t argue there,” he said. “But I come home.”
“Will she though?”
“If I come home? She comes home,” Mac said somberly. “My word on it.”
“Holding you to it,” the man said. He met Mac’s eyes. Mac nodded.
The editor looked at Angie. “Go,” he said. “Be careful. Don’t take risks. Let him take the risks. You just take pictures, you hear?”
Angie nodded. She grabbed up all of her stuff. Mac took her backpack from her. “See you Monday, Carl,” she said.
He nodded.
“Let’s take this to my truck before we go drink coffee,” Mac said.
“Sorry about the ‘Dad grilling a boyfriend on the first date’ bit,” she said with an eyeroll.
“I knew I recognized the tone from somewhere,” Mac teased. “It’s fine. I’ll get a similar lecture from Janet. And I’ve already gotten one from a cop I know.”
She laughed and relaxed. “Not from your girlfriend?” she asked as he opened up the back of his 4-Runner and added her backpack.
“We broke up,” he said, not turning around. He locked the back of the SUV. “Last night. It was overdue. I can’t be what she wants, you know? A man in church every Sunday, raising a family to worship a God they say disapproves of my aunt because she’s gay?”
“Well you could be,” Angie said slowly. “But you wouldn’t be you any longer. So, I’m glad you’re not going to try.”
“Yeah,” Mac said, turning around finally. “That’s the scary part. I did try. I almost did it. And that’s been a sobering experience. I better understand why these men are getting sucked into this gun cult. I wouldn’t have understood a year ago. I would have said, ‘I never would buy into something so stupid. They’re weak fools!’”
“And they may be,” Angie said as they crossed the street. “But anyone can be tempted by the desire to belong. These Rambo-wannabes? This makes them feel important, gives them meaning. They belong to something bigger than themselves. And yes, I can see why you think there are similarities to the church.”
“You’re a smart woman, Angie Wilson,” he said, opening the door.
“Glad you recognize it,” she said laughing at him. “Makes up for my boss who thinks I’m a kid barely out of high school.”
He laughed.
Janet was already at the café, drinking her coffee, when they walked in. She was reading something, but she looked up and smiled at them.
The waitstaff approached them, and Mac ordered iced tea, unsweetened, and enjoyed the look of shock. Janet laughed. Angie frowned slightly at the joke she wasn’t privy to, and ordered iced tea as well.
“What was that?” she asked after the waitstaff left.
“Every time we come in here, he orders Mountain Dew,” Janet said. “They keep some just for him, I think. And they’re always disdainful about serving it to him. It’s a ritual now. And he just broke it.”
Angie laughed and relaxed.
“I ordered a sandwich last time,” Mac added. “Messing with their minds might become my favorite thing.”
“Just don’t piss them off, Mac,” Janet warned. “I like their coffee.”
She looked at the two of them. “So, what do you know about the logistics of this? Rodriguez called me. He’s concerned.”
Mac raised an eyebrow. That was unusual.
“We meet at Anderson’s gun shop in Marysville and caravan to Wilderness Adventures,” Mac said. “We then will go on a fairly posh expedition into the mountains. When I pictured all these idiots with guns, the only thing I could think of that would make it worse, was having drunk idiots with guns. Anderson laughed when I mentioned it. Said for the money the men were paying, of course, there would be alcohol. And catered meals as well. So that means there’s support vehicles going in with us.”
Mac paused to drink some of his iced tea. It was good tea, he acknowledged.
“There will be 10 men from their gun club setup. Angie and me, Anderson, and the guy who runs the expedition, Ken Bryson. Maybe some of his crew. And the sheriff, of course. Anderson said he brings along a variety of weapons for the men to try out.”
Janet nodded as she listened. “And you’ll be armed?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t trust anyone’s weapons but my own. And Angie will have one of my small handguns just in case.”
“Good,” Janet said. Angie looked surprised.
Janet laughed. “Mac’s investigative reporting seems to end in gun fire,” she said. “Prepare yourself.”
Angie snickered, but she nodded. “I made him take me to a gun range,” she admitted. “I liked it.”
Janet was silent for a moment. Thinking about last fall, Mac thought.
“He did the same for me,” she said at last. “But don’t get complacent. I still got kidnapped. Because in the end, a lesson at the gun range didn’t outweigh the three men who grabbed me.”
Angie nodded slowly. “Good point.”
Mac looked at her. “When it comes down to it? If it’s flight or fight? You run like a rabbit,” he said. “I’ll find you. But I can’t in good conscience not give you a weapon. If it comes down to it? Shoot it in the air, so I can hear it. Then throw it at them and run.”
Angie grinned at him. “Maybe I should have had you teach me to throw something instead, then.”
Janet laughed. “How certain are you that Norton is going on this trip?”
Mac frowned. “He’s the one that OK’d it with Anderson for me to go,” he said slowly. “Why?”
“Bad feeling, mostly,” she admitted. “But something Rodriguez said. He figures if something bad is coming down, Norton won’t want to be near it. Just like Malloy has the sense to stay home. And you know he’s got to want to be there, if they’ve got something bad planned for you.”
Mac was silent, thinking that over. “You both seem to think this is a set up,” he pointed out. “But the Sensei seems to want to recruit me, not shoot me.” He grinned at the rhyme undeterred by the matching eyerolls from the other two.
“I think that there might be competing agendas,” Janet said. “The reason that the Skinheads never got anywhere is they fought among themselves more often than not. Same with the militias — Hayden Lake, Branch Davidians. If you look at Bundy in Nevada, however, you start to see a movement developing, not just a small clan of white men suspicious of outsiders who like guns. So, what do we have? Branch Davidians or the next Bundy?”
“Or both?” Mac asked.
Janet nodded.
“Sensei is building a movement,” Mac said slowly. “He says he’s winnowing out the weak to make white men strong and proud again. Anderson and Malloy? They just like making money, I think. But Norton? Especially if he’s mlk4whites on Facebook? He’s Branch Davidian — he’s a doomsday cult.”
Janet looked at Angie. “Mac values your insight into people. You’ve met Norton. What’s your read?”
Angie glanced at Mac, but he couldn’t read her expression.
“He’s a believer, down deep,” she said. “Religion? White supremacy? Constitutional sheriff? Whatever the flavor is, he believes in it. Passionately. And he sees himself as the man on top. If he’s following this Sensei, it bugs him to do it. And eventually he’ll challenge the man.”
“And that’s exactly the dynamic that has brought down these other white supremacy groups in the past,” Janet said. “But Bundy is different. He’s more calculating. His ‘lieutenants’, if you will, are his sons — and that’s a well-established pecking order. He may have failed in his stand-off with BLM last month, but it won’t be the last time we hear from him either.”
“So, what’s your read?” Mac asked. “How much danger are we really in?”
Janet hesitated. “If I thought you were in danger, I’d pull the story,” she said. “If I thought you’d listen,” she amended dryly. Mac grinned.
“I think the danger is that Norton may decide this is the moment to move on Sensei,” she continued thoughtfully. “You may not be the target. Doesn’t mean that you couldn’t get caught in the crossfire.”
“Sensei worries me,” he agreed. “Shorty is pretty sure Norton is mlk4whites on Facebook. And when I get back, I’m getting that foul pseudonym booted off Facebook, no matter what it takes. But Shorty hasn’t spotted who Sensei is, other than to say he’s pretty sure it isn’t Norton or Malloy, and that he knows me.”
“Worries me too,” Janet agreed. “So, go up there, get the story, and don’t get dead. OK?”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Mac said.
The three of them batted questions around for a while, and Mac wrote them down in his notebook. He had a lot of unanswered questions, he thought. He wasn’t sure he had a story though. He said as much to Janet.
She shrugged. “You’ve got a profile about a constitutional sheriff,” she pointed out. “You’ve got a story about wilderness survival training that unites these men, and that two of them have recently gone off the deep end. You got that backgrounder that says this is a growing phenomenon and that matters. That it correlates with domestic violence. And that domestic violence almost always figures in the background of mass shooters and spree killers. So, you may not have the piece that exposes the players behind all of this. You may not get it either. But you’ve got a lot of stories that will help people understand that this is a threat we need to face. White supremacy is going mainstream.”
Mac nodded slowly. He wanted that exposé, he admitted. He didn’t just want to inform and educate. He wanted to take the bad guys down. You’re a reporter, not a vigilante, he reminded himself. But he’d been both last fall and with the Parker story as well. And it was much more satisfying than just an explainer.
“I hear you,” he said.
Janet’s eyes narrowed as she looked at him. He snorted. She knew him too well. He glanced at Angie, who was studying him carefully.
“So?” he asked her, with a half-grin. “Do I have a tell?”
She chewed her lip. “No,” she said. “And that’s scary. Because you just lied. And I couldn’t tell, even though I know you won’t be satisfied unless you expose the bad guys, and they go down for it. Only sociopaths are that good at lying.”
Janet started to laugh, and then couldn’t stop. She looked at Mac, and laughed some more.
“Whatever,” Mac said, resigned. It wasn’t the first time someone had called him a sociopath. Hell, he wasn’t sure they were wrong. The Marine Corps hadn’t been sure either. He’d been sent to a therapist more than once. Inconclusive, the last report had said. But well-adjusted within the confines of military discipline.
He knew what it said because he’d broken into the therapist’s office one night to read it.
“We done?” Mac asked sourly.
“Yes,” Janet said. She looked at her watch. “Take the rest of the day off. Go to the gym. Eat some lunch. Take a nap. You two have got a long, tense weekend ahead.”