Evidence

CHAPTER 19

Ricki Flatt filled out the search authorization.

Milo asked her where she was staying.

“I came straight from the airport.”

“Did you rent a car?”

“I took the shuttle to Westwood, then a cab.”

“I’ll get you a place. There’s a victim compensation fund, but it’ll mean more forms and take a while to get compensated.”

“I don’t care about that.” Her hands waved restlessly.

Milo called Sean Binchy over from the big D-room. Binchy was still poring over lists of construction workers with nothing to report.

“Find Ms. Flatt a clean, safe place to bunk down.”

Binchy lifted her luggage. “The Star Inn on Sawtelle has the Triple A rating, cable, and wireless and there’s an IHOP right up the block.”

“Whatever,” said Ricki Flatt.

After the two of them left, I said, “Political, as in baby brother might be an eco-terrorist. It would take more than Backer spouting off for her to worry about that.”

“Yeah, she knows more,” said Milo, “but pushing her right now didn’t feel right. I’ll have Sean keep an eye on her, make sure she sticks around.”

“Backer’s lost decade preceded his parents’ death, but their being crushed by logs could’ve kicked up his motivation.”

“Fifty grand to blow something up. Like a big house, but he never got to it. On the other hand, the money could be from dope or a blackmail payoff. Or he won big at the tables and gave it to Ricki to avoid the taxman.”

We returned to his office where Milo called Officer Chris Kammen. The Port Angeles cop agreed to watch the Flatt residence “as much as we can” and to handle the search of the storage unit as soon as the paperwork came in. “Two suitcases? What color?”

“Look for the ones behind the piano, stuffed with cash.”

“Fifty grand,” said Kammen. His whistle pierced the room. “So the husband’s out of the loop, huh?”

“Flatt doesn’t know his wife held on to the money. She’s playing nice and I want to stay on her good side.”

“Domestic issues,” said Kammen. “Fun.”

A fourth try at Federal Hal’s office left Milo red-faced. “Disconnected number? This is starting to feel personal.”

I said, “Sure, but maybe it’s not you. It’s Doreen Fredd.”

“What the hell was this girl into?”

“She knew Backer years ago. If he was into bad stuff, she’d be a good choice to gather info.”

“Problem child becomes an undercover Fed?”

“Or her problems got her into a situation where she needed to trade favors. I’d look into major eco-vandalism in the Pacific Northwest during Backer’s years on the road.”

“She’s finking on Backer and screwing him? Gives a whole new meaning to undercover.”

“That part could still be chemistry,” I said. “Good technique on her part, too, given Backer’s proclivities.”

“Guy’s into blowing stuff up then becomes an architect and learns to build stuff. Don’t tell me Freud didn’t have a word for that.”

Moe Reed stuck his head in. “Someone to see you, Loo.”

“Better be important.”

“FBI important?”

“Depends what they have to say,” said Milo. But he was up in a flash.

A short, solidly built, dark-haired woman arrived moments later. “Lieutenant? Gayle Lindstrom. I was referred by a mutual friend.”

Gray pantsuit, black flats, molasses accent with an edge. Maybe northern Kentucky or southern Missouri. Fair skin and blue eyes were clear, her chin was prominent and square.

“Nice to meet you, Special Agent Lindstrom.”

Lindstrom grinned. “My mom always told me I was special. Reality’s a little different.” Her bag was as large as Ricki Flatt’s. Black leather, authoritative straps and buckles.

“Mutual friend,” said Milo. “Now who might that be?”

“Yesterday, he was Hal. Today?” She shrugged.

“You guys love that, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Top-secret clandestine hooh-hah.”

“Only when it gets the job done.” She studied me. “We need to talk in private, Lieutenant.”

“This is Dr. Delaware, our psychological consultant.”

“You have your own profiler now?”

“Better,” said Milo. “We’ve got someone who knows what he’s doing.”

“Looks like I caught you on a bad day,” said Lindstrom.

“Not hard to do.”

She offered me a cool, firm palm. “Nice to meet you, Doctor. No offense but I need to speak to Lieutenant Sturgis in private.”

Milo said, “That’s not how it’s gonna be.”

A long, whispered phone call later, and I was authorized.

Gayle Lindstrom peered into Milo’s office. “Kind of cozy for three.”

Milo said, “I’ll find us space.”

“I like Indian food, Lieutenant.”

He glared at her.

Lindstrom said, “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

“Not hungry.” He marched up the corridor.

Lindstrom said, “Oh, well,” and followed.

Back to the same interview room. I wondered if it ever got used for suspects.

Gayle Lindstrom sniffed the air.

Milo said, “This is as fresh as it’s gonna get. I’m busy. Talk.”

Lindstrom said, “Enough icebreaking, guys. Don’t coddle me ’cause I’m a girl.”

Coaxing a smile out of Milo. He hid it with the back of his hand. Yawned.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “What do you know about eco-terrorism?”

Milo said, “Uh-uh, this isn’t going to be some theoretical discussion. You want what we know, you better fill in the blanks. Desmond Backer’s lost decade smells real bad. Doreen Fredd was a naughty girl who ended up as either a confederate or your informant. Go.”

Lindstrom nudged her bag with one foot. “I’m here because the Bureau figured it was only a matter of time before you figured out some of what’s going on.”

“Some? Don’t swell my head.”

“If you knew all of it you wouldn’t be trying to reach Hal. Who, by the way, can’t help you. He’s Homeland Security, so he’s concentrating on people with dark skin and funny names. So is the Bureau, for that matter, which is part of the problem. Before 9/11, we were geared up to spend serious time and money on locally grown lunatics who, in my humble opinion, pose just as serious a danger to public safety as some guy named Ahmed.”

“Everything stopped to look for Ahmed.”

“We’re just like you, Lieutenant. Chronically underfunded with our hands out to politicians who have the attention span of gnats on crack. The hot topic of the moment gets the appropriation and everything else gets shoved to the bottom shelf. Eco-terrorists have committed hundreds of violent acts, with plenty of fatalities. We’re talking nasties who believe humanity’s a plague and have no problem spiking trees to mutilate loggers. Fanatics who burn down other people’s houses because they don’t approve of the square footage. Nothing’s happened on a grand scale yet, and they’ve got the secret sympathy of some mainstream environmental groups who condemn violence but continue to wink and nod. But my judgment is, it’s only a matter of time before the country regrets not dealing with the problem.”

“Desmond Backer was a serious eco-terrorist?”

Lindstrom toed her bag again. “It’s a delicate situation. Not for me personally, We’re talking events that precede my tenure with the Bureau.”

She unclasped the bag, pulled out lip balm, twisted her mouth into a disapproving little bud and lubricated. Basic delay tactic. I’d learned a whole bunch of them, working as a psychologist.

Milo said, “Lost my script, what’s my next line?”

“The overview I’m about to give you, Lieutenant, is based on summaries of files transferred to me by predecessors who’ve been transferred.”

“They get transferred to Ahmed. But you’re dealing with homegrown naughties no one cares about.”

Gayle Lindstrom’s half smile would have intrigued da Vinci.

Milo said, “You don’t play well with others, so you’re on timeout.”

She laughed. “Let’s just say I’ve been assigned to look into years of eco-crimes and write reports unlikely to be read. My instructions are to concentrate on the Pacific Northwest, because that’s where fuzzies and trees tend to inspire the most passion. That led me to your homicide victims. Desmond Backer and Doreen Fredd met in Seattle. He grew up there, and she’d been sent to a group home for problem girls. She utilized legitimate passes from the home as well as illicit exits to associate with Backer and his friends.”

“Climbing out the window,” said Milo.

“Or just sneaking out the back door, the place wasn’t exactly super-max lockdown. Like many teenagers, Fredd and Backer and their friends appear to have filled some of their free time with various vegetative hallucinogens, alternative music, video games. They also spent time engaged in apparently wholesome activities such as hiking, camping, environmental cleanups, volunteer wildlife rescue. Unfortunately, some of that may have been a cover for arson and other acts of vandalism.”

“Were they ever arrested?”

“Insufficient evidence,” said Lindstrom. “But their proximity to several trashed homesites is revealing.”

“What exactly do you have on them?”

“What the local police had on them was word-of-mouth. Then, a dead boy.”

“They killed someone?”

“Not directly, but they have moral culpability.” Out came his pad. “Name of the victim?”

“Vincent Edward Burghout, known as Van. Seventeen when he burned to death inside an unfinished mansion in Bellevue, Washington. By now, you’ve probably heard of Bellevue because it’s where high-tech zillionaires are building castles. Back then, that had just started and it was basically a nice, low-crime suburb of Seattle. One of the first techie-monarchs to see the potential of lakeside living bought ten acres and started building a twenty-thousand-square-foot monstrosity. It had gotten as far as the framing the night Van Burghout sneaked in and set several fires. He destroyed a good part of it but also immolated himself. We-my predecessors-found his technique especially interesting. Have you ever heard of vegan Jell-O?”

“Sounds disgustingly healthy.”

“Not if you’re made of wood,” said Lindstrom. “Or flesh and bones. It’s basically homemade napalm-soap and petroleum triggered by a delayed ignition device. Any idiot can get the recipe off the Internet or in one of those treasonous loony-tracts put out by the paranoid press. Fortunately, few idiots actually go as far as to whip the stuff up, but over the years we have had incidents and the mortality rate is high, often to the perpetrators. You’re talking a highly incendiary concoction and if your timer’s off, you’re toast. Or in Van Burgh-out’s case, crumbs. There was nothing left of the kid, they I.D.’d him because he’d gotten teeth knocked out playing basketball and part of an upper bridge survived the blast.”

She fooled with the tube of lip balm. “Mr. High-Tech collected insurance, donated the land to the city for a park, moved to Oregon, and built an even bigger monstrosity on a thousand acres.”

“Everyone walks away happy,” said Milo. “Except Van’s parents.”

“Who pointed fingers at Van’s friends. Maybe because they couldn’t accept their son being a solo pyromaniac. But that doesn’t make them wrong.”

I said, “Van was the victim of bad influences?”

“Exactly, but like I said, there was logic to that. Van’s grades were barely passing and the local law got a clear picture of him as impressionable. But they got nowhere and called the Bureau in. That’s how the Bureau came to acquaint itself with Desmond Backer and Doreen Fredd and their pals.”

“How many pals?”

“The Burghouts gave the locals four names in addition to Van: Backer, Fredd, a boy named Dwayne Parris, a girl named Kathy Vanderveldt. We tried to talk to them, as well as to their teachers and friends.”

“Tried?”

“These were middle-class kids with oodles of parental and community support, so we got no direct access, everything was filtered through lawyers. We’re talking upstanding folk, well respected in their community, claiming their kids were angels.”

I said, “Doreen’s parents stepped forward?”

“No, she was the exception. Her parents were drunks, living out of state, seemed barely in touch with what Doreen had been doing. Also, Doreen was gone by the time we began investigating.”

“Yet another rabbit,” said Milo.

Lindstrom said, “Sure, we got suspicious about the timing, but splitting was her habitual pattern and everyone we talked to said they couldn’t imagine Doreen involved in anything violent. Just the opposite, she was passive, gentle, into poetry, blue skies, green trees, little cutie-pie mammals. The folks at Hope Lodge-the home-had nothing bad to say about her, either. Poor Doreen was a victim of family dysfunction, not a wild girl.”

I said, “Did they change their minds when they found out she’d been sneaking out to meet up with the others?”

“Not according to what I’ve read, Doctor. My predecessor described the people running the place as ‘idealists.’ Which is Bureau code for stupid, naïve do-gooder. We were able to get a warrant for Doreen’s room because a lot of Hope Lodge’s funding came through government grants. Unfortunately, nothing funny showed up there. And we brought in dogs, the works.”

Milo said, “No warrants for the others?”

“Not even close. We went judge-shopping but the one we thought might work with us said he wouldn’t authorize a ‘witch hunt.’ We put out a nationwide alert for Doreen, placed the other kids under surveillance for a couple of months. It came to nothing, there were no more fires in Bellevue, or anywhere else in the Greater Seattle area. We moved on.”

“But at some point you found Doreen and managed to turn her.”

Lindstrom pinched her upper lip. Balanced the lip balm tube between two index fingers. “Is this the point where I say, ‘Oh, Sherlock!’ and go all wide-eyed?”

Milo said, “Why else would you be here, Gayle?”

Lindstrom removed her gray suit jacket. Underneath was a red tank top. Square shoulders, thick but firm arms. “It’s kind of dry in here, don’t you think? Must be your A.C. Could I trouble you for some coffee?”