Unsolved Page 10

  If you saw Sexton on the street, you’d assume she was a member of a commune, not an FBI employee, but she’s held this job for nearly thirty years. She’s always said that she stays for the benefits and the health insurance, because her older son has lupus. Yeah, that might be part of it, but her son is twenty-seven now and has his own insurance, and preexisting conditions are—for the moment, anyway—a thing of the past, and yet I don’t see her going anywhere. No, for Bonita Sexton, it’s about right and wrong, fair and unfair, and there is nothing she’d rather do than chase white-collar rip-off artists through webs of offshore bank accounts or track cargo shipments searching for human traffickers.

  “The boss lady’s here!” says Eric Pullman. He’s the third part of our three-person team on Citizen David, the youngest of the trio. Pully is a computer geek’s computer geek. He has the pallor of someone who spends more time in front of electronic devices than outdoors. The hair on his head could best be compared to a mop. He has a long, skinny neck and oversize ears. Put him in a roomful of people, and he’ll stand in a corner and stare at the wall or pretend to be on his cell phone. Put him in front of a computer with a load of data, and he will make sense of it before you can say, By the way, I have a brush if you need it.

  We are the analysts. If the special agents are the movie stars, wearing pancake makeup, moving authoritatively around the stage, and talking about search warrants and high-risk apprehensions, then we are the stage crew behind the curtain, quirky and unsightly, a band of talented misfits who use terms like anomaly detection, logistic regression, and inductively generated sequential patterns.

  “We figured you were in hot water after the New Orleans article,” says Pully, leaning over the cubicle opposite mine, his chin perched on the divider.

  “You think I’m not?” I say. “This is what we call a last chance.”

  “So Dwit spared you, huh?” says Rabbit. She is no fan of Dwight Ross, whom she has dubbed “Dwit the Twit.”

  “Anyway, I’m back in here full-time,” I say, “so you’ll have to get used to me again.”

  “Shit,” says Pully, “what cubicle am I gonna use to surf porn now?”

  I drop my head. “No sex jokes until I’ve had my coffee, Pully.”

  “Who’s joking?”

  Rabbit, who seems annoyed, says, “Did anyone remind Dwit that the last time you supposedly went rogue, you found a serial killer nobody else even knew existed?”

  My crew is protective of me. We are protective of one another.

  “Anyway,” I say, shifting the topic. “Give me a status on our favorite domestic terrorist, cherished team members.”

  “Ladies first,” says Pully, nodding to Rabbit, amusement in his eyes.

  “Since when do you have manners?”

  “I’m going to start being deferential to my elders.”

  Rabbit puts a hand over her face. “Eric, honey, never remind a woman of her age.” She looks up and addresses my question. “Tollway cameras, so far, are a dead end.”

  Rabbit has been working the data captured from tollway cameras on the routes taken between the bombing sites, hoping for matches on license plates. If she finds any, she will cross-reference them through criminal history and countless other filters. It’s a needle in a haystack. In fact, it’s worse than a needle in a haystack, since there probably isn’t a needle to find—Citizen David presumably stayed off the highways to avoid this very issue.

  But that’s what we do. We run down every lead.

  Pullman comes around to my cubicle. “Social media hasn’t produced anything good,” he says. “Overwhelmingly positive. That’s the problem. Everybody likes this guy.”

  That is the problem. Usually, with a terrorist act, the vast majority of social media reaction is negative, and we look primarily for those few responses that are positive or at least vaguely supportive. But Citizen David has been targeting businesses that people love to hate, like banks and fast-food companies that mistreat animals, and he’s done it without killing anyone. The ratio of positive to negative reaction on social media is exponentially higher in this case.

  “Let me take a look at your algorithms,” I say.

  “Ooh, I love it when you look at my algorithms,” he says.

  I glance at Sexton, who forces a smile that seems to say, This is what I’ve had to deal with while you’ve been gone. But we both know Pullman is a top-notch analyst. He just needs to get laid occasionally.

  “Still thinking Manhattan is the next target?” she asks me.

  “Don’t you think so? I thought you agreed.”

  “I do,” she says. “But just as a hunch. You told the team that’s where he was headed next.”

  I shrug. “I give them my best guess. If I’m wrong, I look dumb.”

  Her eyebrows rise. “You’ll look more than just dumb,” she says. “You’ll take the blame.”

  I wave her off, but she’s right. If Citizen David strikes somewhere other than Manhattan, people won’t have to look very far for the person who made the wrong call.

  34

  ROBERTA, Dwight Ross’s secretary, lights up. “Books!” she says. She removes her glasses, comes around her desk, and wraps Books in a big hug.

  “Good to see you, my lady.”

  “Well, you are a sight for sore eyes. Coming back to us?”

  Books shakes his head. “A special assignment. Temporary.”

  She pulls back from him. “Well, they’re waiting for you in there,” she says. “You don’t want to be late.”

  “They?” He thought he was meeting only with Dwight.

  “They,” she says, curling her lips with displeasure.

  He knocks on the door and walks in. Dwight Ross is at his desk. Sitting on his desk, a bit more casually than Books would expect, is a blond woman in a sharp gray suit with muted yellow pinstripes.

  “Good morning,” Books says.

  Dwight Ross gestures to the woman, who’s now climbing off his desk. “Harrison Bookman, this is Special Assistant Director Elizabeth Ashland.”

  She crosses the room with her hand out. “Pleased to meet you,” she says. She has a strong handshake.

  “Call me Books,” he says, though she didn’t call him anything. “And I should call you…”

  She looks him over, blinks. “You can call me Special Assistant Director Ashland.”

  “Lizzie’s running the leak investigation,” says Ross, standing up.

  Ah, okay. You call her Lizzie. I address her formally. The hierarchy is now established. You’re pushing me down the chain, aren’t you, Dwight?

  “So this is awkward,” Ashland says.

  “How so?” asks Books.

  “Well, with your being engaged to the target of our investigation.”

  Books pops a quick grin, a reflexive response. It disappears quickly. “Am I supposed to say something to that?”

  “If you’d like.”

  He wouldn’t like.

  “The obvious concern is your impartiality,” she says.

  Books looks at Dwight, who seems content to let Ashland continue this attack.

  “The director brought me in,” Books says, “presumably because I was close to Emmy, figuring I might have a better view of things. Do you outrank the director?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Obviously not,” Books agrees. “So what brings you to this case, Elizabeth? I’m sorry—Special Assistant Director Ashland?”

  Her eyes light up, but she doesn’t smile. “I volunteered,” she says.

  “You volunteered for what? This is an internal investigation. It’s supposed to be secret. How would you even know to volunteer?”

  “She’s my top deputy now,” says Dwight. “I asked her if she’d be a part of this and she was happy to do it.”

  Ashland nods and eyes Books. “I need to know I can trust you.”

  “You do?” Books returns her stare. “And what if you feel that you can’t? Do you have the power to remove me from this investiga
tion?” He scratches his cheek. “See, there, again, we have that thing about the director outranking you.” Books knows he’s being difficult, but he doesn’t like sharp elbows, and he doesn’t like being toyed with. He adds, “If the evidence establishes that Emmy is the leaker, then I will be the first one to say that she needs to be brought to justice. But yes, I’m going to insist that we prove it first.”

  Ashland takes a step toward him, raises an eyebrow. “You’re not happy with the proof we have already? Information funneled to one of her only friends, Shaindy Eckstein? The photo of them at the bar last Friday night chatting, just two days before the Post story breaks about Citizen David targeting New York next?”

  “It’s circumstantial,” says Books. “You haven’t turned up anything on her computers, have you?”

  “She wouldn’t be dumb enough to send an e-mail to the reporter from her computer. But don’t worry, Books. We’ll get her soon. And when we do, you know who’s going to put the handcuffs on her?”

  Books smiles. “Let me guess. Me?”

  She gives a slow nod. “Good guess.”

  “Or maybe, with Emmy’s assistance,” says Books, “you’ll catch Citizen David even sooner and none of this will matter.”

  She makes a face. “The leaks don’t help. You think David will go to New York now that we’ve telegraphed to the whole world that it’s where we expect him to go?”

  Books feels something move within him, adrenaline quickening his pulse.

  She’s right. He spent so much time wondering about Emmy, he couldn’t see the forest for the trees. The leaks aren’t revealing just the progress of the investigation. They’re revealing the Bureau’s investigative strategy.

  They are aiding and abetting the bomber.

  Maybe the leaker inside the Bureau isn’t merely an informant for the Washington Post, irresponsibly disclosing sensitive information.

  Maybe whoever’s leaking this information is Citizen David’s accomplice.

  35

  COCOONED IN his room, flanked by computers, Charlie has everything he needs. Emmy isn’t the only one with a command central.

  He’s got the clones of Emmy’s computers, allowing him to monitor Emmy’s internet activity in real time, no different than if he were looking over her shoulder. He watches every click on every link as Emmy pores over data and mines for anomalies in the reported natural or accidental deaths across the country. Amazing. Emmy has managed to distill news and information from around the nation using some algorithm that sorts them by key words, no different than a supercharged version of a Google search.

  He watches as she clicks on a story about a drowning outside Minneapolis, an electrocution in Utah, a choking death in upstate New York.

  “Sorry, my lady,” he whispers, “none of those are mine. But knock yourself out. Chase your own tail. Your endurance is inspiring.”

  On a laptop, he has the downloaded contents of Emmy’s computers, including all her notes on Citizen David. Emmy has described, in great detail, how Citizen David carried out the bombings, choosing low-value targets, using rudimentary materials, gaining access in the simplest of ways.

  Charlie devours all the particulars of David’s work. He reads about fire exits, metallic tape over door locks, splintered gas lines.

  He reads about acetone and hydrogen peroxide and shaped charges and delayed initiation.

  He reads about cotton balls and aluminum catering trays and cartoon cats.

  Impressive. There are things that Charlie admires about Citizen David, to be sure. His discipline. His methodology. But his good work has gone to waste. The damage he’s inflicted is minimal, intentionally so, enough to be disruptive, to make a political statement, but not enough to injure or maim.

  Symbolic protest. What pointless drivel.

  On his personal laptop, he conducts a search of his own using a string of anonymous proxies so as not to compromise his IP address; this allows him to access whatever information he wants with maximum secrecy. Compared to Emmy Dockery’s sophisticated algorithm, his online search is downright prehistoric: SRO payday uptown 606.

  Not surprisingly, the hits number in the thousands and cover all sorts of topics, most of them completely irrelevant. But not all of them. He pulls up articles that bring back memories. He feels a tightness in his neck, a constriction in his brain as he fights them away. Images, not full scenes.

  Images of Fergie, the guy behind the desk of the State Park Hotel, the unshaven face, the cigar stub, the clutter everywhere, reminding Mama about the “visitor fee.”

  Mama telling him to stay with Fergie, telling him she’d be right back, although he knew it might be hours before she returned, then leaving him in a corner of Fergie’s office, sitting on an overturned milk crate with a small pile of comic books that she’d dug out of a dumpster and a Walkman on which he listened to the local radio stations or, when the reception was bad, the cassette tape of American Fool by John Cougar. Preferring to hear “Hurts So Good” and “Jack and Diane” over Fergie’s comments (“Your ma, she’s a popular lady, know what I mean?”) and recycled jokes (“Know why they call this the State Park Hotel? Because the state parks all its nutcases here”).

  Mama, returning, looking different, something gone from her eyes, handing some cash to Fergie, stuffing the rest in her purse, scooping him up, asking him if he was hungry. He was. He was always hungry.

  Breathe in, breathe out. Focus on your project.

  Three hours pass. A glance at the clone computer shows that Emmy’s still up, still searching through her articles. His own search has narrowed. He has found many candidates, but it must be perfect, it must thread the needle.

  He keeps going back to Google Earth, checking street-level views, satellite views, angles and alleys and dimensions and escape routes.

  It’s not exciting or sexy work—it never is—but the feeling of homing in on a target brings a rush better than anything else he’s ever felt.

  “Yes,” he says, touching the computer screen, petting it. “There you are. I’ve found you.”

  This counts as sex for him. And the foreplay—the search and execution and thrill of anticipation—is over. It’s time for the climax. He’ll map out the route tonight and start gathering supplies.

  Before the weekend, he’ll be in Chicago.

  36

  MICHELLE FONTAINE sits on the soft waiting-room couch, three minutes early for her first day. The door pops open and a man rushes in, startling her. He’s wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans and torn leather moccasins, no socks.

  “So you’re the newbie,” he says. He takes a clipboard off a cluttered desk and reviews something, then puts it down and fixes his eyes on her. “Michelle?” He extends a hand. “I’m Tom Miller, your co-therapist, I guess you’d say. We’ll share the same patients.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she says, shaking his hand.

  Tom checks his watch, then claps his hands together once. “We have just a few minutes before our first adventure.”

  “Our first adventure?”

  “Every patient’s an adventure. You know this is mostly a private-pay facility, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  He raises a shoulder. “Private payers tend to be more demanding. It’s their own money, so they feel like they’re the boss.”

  Tom takes her through the first morning at the rehab facility.

  There’s Mrs. Persoon, the forty-eight-year-old stroke victim who moves with difficulty, using the walker while Tom braces her, gently prodding her and reminding her about her annual Christmas trip to California to see her children—it’s a good six months away, but that’s her motivation to regain full mobility.

  And Mr. Oakley, age seventy-eight, who’s bedridden and struggling to do leg lifts. Tom jokes with him about his sex life. All locker-room, politically incorrect humor.

  And Mrs. Coxley, age eighty-two, who broke her hip and is in the early stages of dementia. She doesn’t respond to humor. Tom keeps her animated by ask
ing about her children. “She’ll talk all day about her kids or gardening,” Tom tells Michelle afterward.

  Michelle scribbles notes on each patient.

  “The older women will be the hardest for you,” Tom tells her between sessions. “They tend to respond better to older men than young women. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is. You just have to be gentle but forceful.” He looks her over. “What are you, twenty-five?”

  “Twenty-four,” she says.

  “I’m forty,” he says. “I know, it’s hard to believe.” He does a mock GQ-model pose. Tom isn’t bad-looking. He has receding hair that he keeps short on the sides and he doesn’t have much of a chin, but he’s in good physical condition, and his most prominent wrinkles are smile lines at his eyes and mouth—he has a warm, pleasant face.

  “Where you from?” he asks.

  The question catches her off guard. “The, uh…Mid—Midwest,” she says.

  “Yeah? Whereabouts?”

  How to handle…“Do you mind if I run to the bathroom quick before our next patient?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine. It’s just over there,” says Tom.

  At lunchtime, they step outside onto a patio surrounded by shrubbery, the warm sun shining down. “Staff eats out here. So do some of the patients,” says Tom. “It’s kinda nice to interact on a less formal level. Not that any of this is formal.”

  In the corner, a half a dozen men sit at a long table. Like the patients at A New Day, they range in age from mid-twenties to geriatric.

  They are all listening to one man at the end of the table who’s holding court, gesturing with his hands and speaking with authority. Michelle can’t quite make out what he’s saying but she doesn’t need to. With his short, crisp sentences, his curt confidence, he oozes authority. Military, she thinks. He talks like her grandfather did.

  “I wanted you to meet the lieutenant,” Tom says to her quietly, and she instantly knows he’s referring to that man. She notes a different tone to Tom’s voice, the casual whimsy replaced by a hint of caution. “Everyone calls him Lew. He’s fine, but he’s sort of a tough nut to crack. You see all his disciples over there.”