Known Dead

Eighteen

The plan was this: When the two agents from the lab crew got in, they’d have several priorities. First of all, they’d be thinking both about supper and about their motel room. Fine. George, as the resident agent, would offer to take them to a good restaurant. Actually, the only restaurant. But, given the press being all over the place, they surely couldn’t leave their evidence in their car. Nor, given the sensitivity, could they very well leave it at their motel. Especially after George would explain that we thought we’d seen some known extremists in the area. Where would they store the evidence until they could get it to the lab? Why, at the Sheriff’s Department, that’s where. Where else?

George was really funny, saying things like ‘‘I can’t believe you’re actually going to go through with this,’’ and ‘‘I can’t believe I’m going to be a party to this,’’ and things like that. His own curiosity, however, was the deciding factor. He was totally suave with the lab guys.

I didn’t do too bad myself, writing out a receipt for each separate component of the computers they’d brought in: a tower, a desktop, and a laptop. Two monitors, one printer, and one external modem. And one external 5?-inch disk drive.

‘‘Must have been running old software,’’ I said, writing the serial number of the drive on my sheet.

The youngest of the lab agents glanced at me when I said that. Suspicious of people, he wasn’t too happy leaving the equipment with someone who knew what it was. Like I’d do anything…

Anticipating that they’d be polite and ask Hester and me to go with them, we decided we had already eaten. We were also busy. But ‘‘thanks anyway.’’

After the computers were in our padlocked evidence room, the absent Lamar and I being the only two officers with a key to the heavy padlock, and while the agents were eating and then sleeping, what would the local homicide unit be doing? Slick, no? I doff my hat…

About an hour later, Hester and I were sitting in the tiny evidence room, with almost no ventilation, locked in by Sally, who had been entrusted with my key to the padlock, and whom I would contact via walkie-talkie to let us out. Having finished taking three Polaroid shots of the computers just the way the FBI agents had placed them in the room, and then struggling with the extension cords we’d had to scrounge up to even get power to the computers, not to mention having to sit on the floor with the machines, as there were no tables in the room, only shelves, I was having second thoughts about the whole business.

We had finally completely assembled and wired up two of the machines, leaving the laptop aside. It appeared to have a dead battery, and we sort of thought that it would likely just have copies of the stuff in the desktop anyway. The lab crew had seized the printer, thank God. And now we were into the machines at last.

‘‘Well,’’ I said, turning on the tower, ‘‘let’s see what he’s been running…’’

A mouse click on ‘‘Start… Documents’’ showed us the last fifteen documents that had been opened. Most of them started with ‘‘ltr’’ and had a date. All we had to do was click on one of them, and the word processor of choice automatically loaded from the hard drive. Click on ‘‘save as’’ and we had a complete list of documents. We printed them all.

Next, on to ‘‘the Net.’’ Click on ‘‘Properties… Navigation. .. View History’’ and we got the ‘‘www’’ addresses of every site the machine had accessed in the last twenty days. Almost six hundred of them. Print ’em, Dano.

Next, I went to the e-mail section. That was where we hit the dread ‘‘Crypto’’ device. It said ‘‘Enter Password for Access.’’ There were two boxes. I typed in ‘‘Herman’’ on the top, and ‘‘Nola’’ on the bottom. That’s all there was to it. Got every message they’d sent or received since, apparently, April 11, 1995. I started the printer, a neat little ink-jet. Quiet too. I began with the ‘‘Messages Sent’’ list. I had to print them out individually, so it took a while. Had to reload the paper twice.

‘‘Well, damn,’’ said Hester.

I chuckled. ‘‘Easy as pie…’’

‘‘Now for the hard part,’’ she said. ‘‘Will the lab team be able to figure out we were in?’’

‘‘Oh,’’ I said, ‘‘probably.’’ I got busy bringing up the ‘‘Messages Received’’ section. ‘‘ ’Cause if we erase the record of our entry, we erase all of ’em. To do that, we have to go one layer further down than the ‘clear entry’ boxes, and that gets easy to grunge up.’’

‘‘Grunge up? Is this, like, a computer term?’’

‘‘Well, kind of. What I mean is, if we do that, and it hasn’t been done on anything else, it looks like somebody did something really different on the box… and this setup is so simple, it would look funny if somebody cleaned it up.’’

‘‘Oh.’’

‘‘So,’’ I said, inordinately pleased with myself, ‘‘shall we try the next one?’’

Since it was so easy, and neither of us really had to do anything, we started reading the received messages. They started with the most recent, and progressed in reverse order to the first received. It was about the third one down. It looked like this:

FROM: BRAVO6@XII. COMONCOMON. COM

TO: STRITCHHERMN@WIDETALK. COM

SUBJECT: YOUR GUEST

DATE: WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 1996 2:31 PM

DON’T LET HIM IN. HE’S GOT A BOMB. BE SAFE. KILL HIM.

We looked at each other. I spoke first. ‘‘Son of a bitch.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ said Hester, with a long breath. ‘‘Son of a bitch.’’

‘‘We should get a long sheet…’’ I said.

‘‘We don’t need one,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Wednesday. Two-thirty. Two thirty-one. Adjusting for the time…’’

‘‘God…’’

‘‘Right when they shot Philip Rumsford.’’

‘‘Remember,’’ I said, ‘‘remember when Nola spoke to somebody inside and then they shot him?’’

‘‘Oh, yeah…’’

‘‘Somebody who got that message…’’

‘‘We gotta see more of these,’’ breathed Hester.

We did. Just as easy. Just as productive. All that remained to do was to wait for the printer to finish with the first one. That’s when we heard voices in the outer office. Cops. Now how in the hell could we come out to get more paper, or to do anything else, with cops sitting right outside the door. Granted, not only were they our cops but we outranked anybody who could possibly be there. But, in the first place, it would look like Hester and I were fooling around in the evidence room. I was absolutely certain that there was no way we could come out of that room without looking guilty. And a little excited, for that matter. In the second place, as soon as that rumor got going, sure as hell somebody who knew the lab agents would pick up on it, and then the shit would really hit the fan. Stuck. I reached up and turned off the light.

‘‘Shit,’’ hissed Hester. But she obviously understood. She reached over and turned off the computer monitor.

‘‘Yeah,’’ I whispered, ‘‘but they can see the light under the door.’’ I knew that for a fact since that was frequently the way dispatchers and officers could tell that I’d left the light on.

Just to make matters worse, there was a little static on my walkie-talkie, and then Sally’s voice…

‘‘Don’t y’all do anything I wouldn’t.’’

Well, by the time the night-shift people had had their coffee, discussed everything from ball scores to murders, and finished a couple of accident reports, we had spent the better part of two unproductive hours in the evidence room, in the dark. Hester was asleep in the corner. It could have been the dark. It might also have been the lack of air.

When I was sure that the night troops had left the building, I called Sally on the walkie-talkie. No answer. I tried again. Nothing. Hester woke up when I turned the lights on.

‘‘What’s the problem?’’

‘‘I can’t get Sally,’’ I said.

She looked at her watch. ‘‘Holy shit.’’

‘‘Yeah. Four hours, give or take.’’

‘‘How long was I asleep?’’

No matter how uninvolved the relationship, you never want to tell a woman that you didn’t know when she nodded off. ‘‘Oh, only about thirty minutes or so.’’ I had no idea.

‘‘Sorry.’’

‘‘Not as sorry as Sally’s gonna be if she went home…’’

‘‘You suppose,’’ asked Hester, ‘‘that burglars feel tired like this?’’

I grinned. ‘‘Well, I know at least one who does. Have to start callin’ you the Sleepin’ Bandit.’’

I called on the walkie-talkie again.

‘‘Go ahead…’’

‘‘Three’s no longer ten-six,’’ I said. Ten-six being the code for ‘‘busy.’’

There was no answer, but about ten seconds later there was the soft ratchety sound of a key in the padlock, and the door opened.

‘‘You guys okay?’’

‘‘Where you been? I called two times…’’

‘‘We’re fine.’’

‘‘I was in the john when you called. I’m sorry, but I don’t correspond from the john…’’

‘‘We’re fine,’’ said Hester for the second time.

‘‘Well, you get done?’’

‘‘With the first one,’’ I said.

‘‘Did you know,’’ asked Sally, ‘‘that George and the lab agents were back after you went in the room?’’

‘‘What!’’

‘‘Oh, yeah. God, I thought I was gonna die,’’ she said.

‘‘When?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Not more than thirty minutes after you’d gotten in there. It was all George could do to keep ’em out in the kitchen.’’ She held her hand to her chest. ‘‘I thought I was gonna have an anxiety attack. I didn’t know whether or not to try to tell you or what!’’

‘‘I am so glad,’’ said Hester, ‘‘that you didn’t tell us.’’ She started to move past me. ‘‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think a rest-room call would be in order…’’

‘‘Is George still around?’’ I asked Sally.

‘‘He should be in his car, on the way home.’’

‘‘Get him, and see if you can get the number for his cell phone. ..’’

‘‘Over the radio?’’ she asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘‘Wouldn’t it be better if I had him call here?’’

Well, that’s why she was the one we always called on.

Hester and I both talked to George. He just about fell out of the car when we told him about the message.

‘‘This is good,’’ he said. ‘‘This is oh my God good. Who sent it?’’

I read him the e-mail address.

‘‘Let me handle this one,’’ he said. ‘‘I do this really well.’’

‘‘Fine with us,’’ said Hester.

‘‘I’ll know as soon as I can get to the office,’’ he said.

‘‘Kind of makes you feel a little better about treason, doesn’t it?’’ Hester asked.

He paused a beat. ‘‘I never want to do that again, thank you.’’

‘‘Well, look on the bright side, George,’’ I said. ‘‘If word about this ever gets out, you’ll never have to.’’

Hester and I spent the remainder of the evening attempting to sort and print everything we could, with help from Sally, who made two copies of the documents we considered important, interesting, or just plain neat. We also wondered.

‘‘Who in the devil could this Bravo6 be anyway?’’

‘‘Anybody,’’ answered Hester as she picked up a stack of sorted papers.

‘‘Well, yeah,’’ I said. ‘‘Sure. But somebody who knew Herman, who knew generally what was going on, who could communicate with him, and who knew that Rumsford was going to go in at about two thirty-one.’’

‘‘Just a second,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Not ‘who knew he was going to go in.’ Nobody knew that except us folks. And Nancy, but she was with us all the time, wasn’t she?’’

‘‘As far as I remember.’’

‘‘Yes. What you need to say is that they ‘knew he was going in.’ Not future tense. Present tense.’’ Hester paused, and idly straightened a stack of paper. ‘‘In fact, since he didn’t go in,’’ she said, ‘‘but was killed as he stood outside on the driveway, somebody not only could see him but knew what the plan was…’’

The tower was back up, and I was printing out whatever I could, as fast as I could get them on the screen. There were several messages on the 24th from Bravo6. Two on the 23rd. No outgoing messages. This is what we had, in chronological order.

The first was at 1255 hours on the 23rd. Just after we had gotten Lamar and Bud out of there. It read:

MESSAGE RECEIVED. WILL LET HIM KNOW.

The second was at 1419 on the 23rd.

HE’LL CONTACT YOU HERE ON THE WEB IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. I’LL BE IN TRANSIT. WILL CALL YOU HERE AS SOON AS I GET NEAR YOU.

The third at 1950.

I SEE HE’S THERE. I’M IN POSITION. I COUNT 24 COPS IN UNIFORM, EIGHT IN PLAIN CLOTHES. I DON’T RECOGNIZE ANY OF OUR FRIENDS. NO BIRDS AS FAR AS I CAN TELL.

The fourth at 0228 on the 24th. About the time Melissa had come out.

WHAT’S GOING ON IN THERE?

The fifth at 0241:

CAN YOU ANSWER ME?????

The sixth at 0309:

SHE’S IN A TENT WITH THE TOP COPS. I CAN’T HEAR THEM BUT SHE’S BEEN IN THERE FOR A WHILE.

The seventh at 1220:

THE BOYS FROM THE ZOG ARE HERE. ONE BIRD. LOOKS ALMOST WHITE FROM HERE. YOU THINK UN???????

And, of course, the one telling them to kill Rumsford.

The one about Melissa being in a tent with us kind of bothered me. I said as much.

‘‘You should feel flattered, you ‘top cop,’ ’’ said Sally.

‘‘Yeah.’’ I put the messages down. ‘‘Was this guy there, or was he watching on TV? Were there any live feeds going on, especially when Rumsford was killed?’’

‘‘No,’’ said Sally, ‘‘I don’t think so. Everybody here was watching for you all on TV all the time. They had clips on the regular news, but no special or live broadcasts.’’

‘‘Well, ‘the boys from the ZOG are here’ sounds to me like he’s on-site,’’ said Hester.

‘‘What’s ZOG?’’ asked Sally.

‘‘Zionist Occupation Government,’’ I said. ‘‘Extremeright-wing term for the U.S. government.’’

‘‘Zionist?’’

‘‘They like to say that the United States is run by Jews,’’ I said. ‘‘It seems to appeal to the bogeyman crowd.’’

Hester leaned over and put her hand on my shoulder. ‘‘They should really worry when it’s run by Norwegians.’’

‘‘What about the UN?’’

‘‘That,’’ said Hester, ‘‘is another favorite scare story. They think the UN is somehow going to take over the United States. White helicopters are UN birds, while black helicopters are ZOG birds.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘The News Channel 6 chopper up at the scene was white with light blue trim.’’

‘‘It doesn’t take much,’’ I said to Sally. ‘‘All the black choppers they see are usually U.S. Army stuff, dark green, at a distance and against the light background of the sky. They just look black.’’

‘‘Well, if you wanted to sneak around, why would you paint your chopper black?’’ asked Sally.

‘‘You got it,’’ I said.

We had one more message, one that we weren’t able to figure out.

YOU BETTER GET UP HERE.

Nothing more than that. But it was sent at 1239, after the reinforcements were in the house. ‘‘Calling for some more company?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Maybe.’’ I looked at the sheet. ‘‘All we have to do is find out who ‘creeper@kitbag. com’ is.’’ I suspected it was pretty close to us, and a ‘‘friend of the family.’’

It was early in the morning before we got all the data. We put everything back the way it had been, and I locked the considerable stack of our paper in my own evidence locker. It was after 0100, and it was time to go home.

Friday, July 26th, I got up about 0700, and made coffee. Then I called the office and asked about Lamar. It looked like they had been able to save that leg. I was impressed. I had one slice of toast, and I was at the office at 0800 sharp. So were George, Hester, and the two lab agents. The lab guys were very nice, and thanked us for letting them store their evidence in our room. No problem. They were on their way to the Cedar Rapids airport by 0820. By 0825, George, Hester, and I had cups of coffee in the investigator’s office, and a huge stack of paper to go through.

‘‘Shouldn’t we,’’ said George, ‘‘be a little more ordered about this?’’

‘‘No,’’ I said. ‘‘I want the stuff that got Rumsford killed first

… all of it.’’

So that’s where we began.

‘‘Who’s the e-mail address to, George?’’ asked Hester.

He came through with last night’s promise. In a way. ‘‘It’s to a fellow who calls himself Adam A. Freeman, with an address that’s a P.O. Box in Harmony, MN.’’ George looked smug. ‘‘Obviously not his real name.’’

‘‘Obviously,’’ said Hester. ‘‘So who is he?’’

‘‘Just a bit harder,’’ said George. He grinned. ‘‘But I have friends. All you have to do is dial up that e-mail address, and my friends can tell you where the call is routed in about two seconds.’’

We were pleased for George too.

‘‘So?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Gregory Francis Borcherding, RR, Preston, MN.’’ He grinned and pulled out a little slip of paper. ‘‘I’ve got an SSN, a DOB, the whole nine yards…’’

‘‘I think,’’ said Hester, ‘‘that that’s pronounced ‘bork her ding.’ Just in case you two ever meet.’’

‘‘Not ‘borsher ding’?’’ asked George.

‘‘Nope.’’

He made a note on the slip of paper.

‘‘So,’’ said Hester, ‘‘what’s he do, and what’s he got to do with all this?’’

George didn’t know. That was all right with us, because the FBI hardly ever ‘‘knows’’ anybody until they’re ‘‘introduced’’ by the locals. Hester and I both knew a really sharp deputy in Preston. We placed a call.

‘‘Whoever he is,’’ said George as we waited, ‘‘he had to know Rumsford was going into the house.’’ He thought for a second. ‘‘Did any of the networks have a live feed going when it happened?’’

‘‘No,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We sort of took them by surprise. Remember?’’

‘‘And we had the phone line locked up,’’ I said. ‘‘By the phone company, no less.’’

‘‘You know,’’ said Hester, ‘‘as much as they use the Net, I’ll bet they have a dedicated line for that.’’

‘‘I don’t suppose we could call the lab agents?’’ I asked facetiously.

That got a dirty look from both Hester and George. It looked like that could develop into a sore point.

The intercom buzzed. It was for me, Jack Kline, a deputy sheriff for Fillmore County, MN.

‘‘Hey, Houseman, how the hell you been?’’

‘‘Shitty, thanks.’’

‘‘Yeah, I hear all about you guys down there. Busy.’’

‘‘Too busy. Hey, you know a dude up there name of Gregory Francis Borcherding?’’

‘‘Oh, that asshole… yeah, what, he bothering you people down there?’’

‘‘Kind of. What’s he do for a living?’’

‘‘Damned if I know. He runs a little right-wing rag for a hobby, though. Real idiot.’’

I talked with Kline for a few more seconds. After I hung up, I looked at George and Hester. We’d been on the speaker phone.

‘‘Wasn’t he the one Nancy Mitchell pointed out to us up at the farm?’’ asked George.

‘‘And he was at Kellerman’s funeral too,’’ I said.

‘‘Didn’t he have a laptop up at the farm?’’

‘‘Sure did,’’ I said. ‘‘I can almost see it.’’

‘‘So, with a cell phone and a modem…’’

‘‘That’s right, George. He could communicate directly over the computer, without us knowing there was anybody on the telephone.’’ I shook my head. ‘‘Technology triumphs again.’’

‘‘Only if Stritch has a dedicated line,’’ said Hester.

We put in the call that would tell us.

‘‘But why,’’ I asked, ‘‘would Herman do what Borcherding told him to do? Especially when it came to killing a man. And why would he say something stupid, like ‘he’s got a bomb,’ for Christ’s sake?’’

‘‘Well,’’ said George, with unusual enthusiasm. ‘‘Well. If he’s got a dedicated line to a modem, I say we just go up and pick up Borcherding’s ass and ask him!’’

‘‘It might be easier than that,’’ said Hester, staring out the window. ‘‘I think that’s him out there with the press right now.’’

Sure enough. He was at the far end of the parking lot, in a little cluster of, maybe, six reporters who were having coffee and doughnuts. Damn. It was Friday, and we were going to be moving Herman, Bill, and Nola to the courthouse for their preliminary hearings. Normally we wouldn’t have had to do that, but they had seen a magistrate on the day they were brought in, and he’d arranged for a District Court judge to review his bail amounts. The hearing was set for 1000.

‘‘Why aren’t they all waiting at the courthouse?’’ I asked.

‘‘Better photo ops as they come down the jail steps,’’ said Hester, taking a swallow of coffee and continuing to look out the window. ‘‘Our man has a camera around his neck. With,’’ she continued slowly, ‘‘a pretty long lens.’’

George, naturally, rethought his position.

‘‘Well,’’ he said hesitantly, ‘‘we might want to be a bit more circumspect here.’’

‘‘Maybe for more reasons than you’d think,’’ said Hester. ‘‘If we go out and just scarf him up right now, your bosses are gonna wonder just how on God’s green earth we knew it was him.’’

‘‘Good point,’’ said George. Quickly.

‘‘Well,’’ I said, gently mocking George, ‘‘we might just come up with a reason to suspect him of something without having to use the e-mail stuff.’’

‘‘Not likely,’’ said George.

‘‘I didn’t say it’d be quick,’’ I answered. ‘‘Anyway, I want to see whom he reports to.’’

‘‘He owns his own paper,’’ said George.

‘‘I said ‘to,’ not ‘for.’ He was relaying a message to Herman at one point. For my money that was a message from the ‘masked man’ Hester and I saw running away…’’

‘‘We could watch him forever,’’ said Hester, still not turning toward us, ‘‘and we’d never know that.’’

‘‘Not us,’’ I said. ‘‘Can you see if Nancy Mitchell’s out there?’’

‘‘She’s not,’’ said Hester. ‘‘She’d be at the courthouse anyway. She does words, not pictures.’’

‘‘Ah.’’

The phone call to the clerk’s office took only a few seconds. Then Nancy was on the line, and curious as to why we wanted to see her, to say the least. I told her to say it was in regards to Rumsford, in her capacity as a witness.

‘‘It’ll be later this afternoon, after the hearings and all that,’’ she said.

It was time for another favor. Which she knew, of course.

‘‘Look, make it in the next five minutes, and I’ll see to it that you get to talk with one of them as they go through the building.’’ She agreed, readily, but without noticeable surprise. She was getting used to the preferential treatment.

George, as usual, was a bit nervous. ‘‘I don’t know that we should be dealing with this woman…’’

‘‘Oh, George,’’ said Hester, sounding exasperated, ‘‘the FBI probably wouldn’t. Those of us without resources, however, have to punt once in a while.’’

‘‘Once in a while?’’

‘‘Frequently,’’ I said. ‘‘Very frequently.’’

As it turned out, George was sufficiently bothered by the whole business that he decided to be taken off the kicking team. While Hester and I met with Nancy in the booking office, George stayed in the back room, poring over the papers from last night.

Nancy was wearing olive slacks, a white blouse with short sleeves, and a gray vest. She looked a little warm already, and it was supposed to be in the middle nineties until Sunday.

‘‘So,’’ she said, bustling into the room, and smiling at both of us, ‘‘when do I get to see ’em?’’

‘‘One of them,’’ I said. ‘‘And not for at least an hour.’’ I indicated an old wooden office chair. ‘‘Just have a seat. They have to walk right by you.’’

She sat, and Hester and I did the same. All three of us in the same heavy old wooden chairs. We’d gotten them from the courthouse when they remodeled the courtroom. We liked to say we had a matched set of thirty-seven. We were clustered around a heavy old wooden table. Guess from where. Only two of those, one for the prosecution, one for the defense.

‘‘So what can I do for you?’’ she asked.

‘‘We’ve got a problem,’’ said Hester. ‘‘You’re going to have to be our scout for a little while, with a guy…’’

‘‘Who is probably not my type,’’ said Nancy.

‘‘Probably not,’’ said Hester. ‘‘At least, I hope not.’’

‘‘I think you know him,’’ I said. ‘‘The man who runs the right-wing paper up north?’’

‘‘Borcherding? Oh, not Borcherding! No way!’’

‘‘Jesus, dear,’’ said Hester. ‘‘You don’t have to sleep with him.’’

‘‘The hell,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘That son of a bitch thinks he’s God’s gift to women… always tries to talk his way into your pants, grabs a feel whenever he thinks nobody’ll notice… and he’s a creepy asshole to boot.’’

We didn’t say anything.

‘‘He’s a real nutzoid, always trying to come on to you with some bullshit about taking over the country, about killing the Zionists.. .’’ She began to slow. ‘‘Wouldn’t put it past him to get somebody.. . killed…’’

Silence. We just looked at her.

‘‘You’re kidding,’’ she whispered.

I shook my head.

‘‘How could he be involved?’’

‘‘That’s where it begins to get a little more than Confidential,’’ I said. ‘‘Up past Restricted, and all the way to Secret.’’

‘‘Is there a story in this?’’ she asked.

‘‘Oh, absolutely,’’ I said. ‘‘Probably one of the bigger ones.’’

‘‘Exclusively?’’

‘‘That,’’ said Hester, ‘‘remains to be seen.’’

‘‘Right. But if I do what I have to do with Borcherding? Other than screw him?’’

‘‘Probably.’’ Hester grinned.

Nancy unbuttoned her vest. ‘‘It’s getting a little warm in here,’’ she said. She pulled out a small tape recorder from the pocket, and showed it to us, making sure we could see it wasn’t turned on. ‘‘Can I tape this?’’

‘‘We’ll just give you access to ours later,’’ I said.

She gave me a questioning look.

‘‘The alarm clock radio on the cabinet,’’ said Hester, who knew all about it. ‘‘Picks up everything in the room.’’

‘‘And the video camera,’’ I said, gesturing at the little box in the corner of the ceiling that was smaller than half a cigarette pack, ‘‘catches most of the action.’’

‘‘Oh.’’

‘‘You could take notes,’’ said Hester, ‘‘but we don’t want them leaving the room.’’

‘‘Right.’’ She eased back in her chair. ‘‘If you want me to get close to this geekhead, I assume you have a good reason.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ I said.

‘‘Well, fill me in…’’

‘‘What we want,’’ I said, ‘‘is to know who he hangs around with. Who he talks to. That sort of thing.’’

‘‘Oh, no,’’ she said. ‘‘That’s a Freedom of the Press issue, I’m sorry.’’

I glanced at Hester; she nodded.

I reached into a drawer under the desk and took out a black marker. I unfolded a copy of the crucial Bravo6 e-mail, and crossed off the FROM line. I pushed it over to Nancy. ‘‘Look at this…’’

She did, and her eyes narrowed, and her face got noticeably pale for a second.

‘‘Your basic kill order, in the flesh,’’ said Hester.

‘‘Who sent this?’’ asked Nancy.

Neither Hester nor I said a word.

‘‘You crossed that off…’’ She hesitated. ‘‘You’re sure?’’

We still said nothing.

‘‘You are, aren’t you?’’ She stared at the sheet. ‘‘You know, and that’s why you want…’’

She looked at the sheet again. ‘‘But,’’ she said, her voice getting louder, ‘‘that motherfucker is just outside in the parking lot!’’

‘‘Slow down,’’ I said. ‘‘We know he is.’’

‘‘Then go get his ass!’’

‘‘Not yet,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Calm down. That’s where you come in.’’

Nancy took a deep breath, then another. ‘‘Okay, so why not? Why’s he still loose? Why not get him now?’’

‘‘The way we got the message,’’ I said, ‘‘might give us a little admissibility problem.’’ Not true, of course. At least, not in the strict sense of criminal procedures. The admissibility came from not wanting to admit what we’d done to the FBI. But Nancy sure didn’t have to know that. At least, not to help us get the information from another source.

Nancy looked at both of us in turn. ‘‘You’re kidding…’’

‘‘Had to be done,’’ said Hester. ‘‘No other way to get timely data.’’

‘‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’’ said Nancy, ‘‘because they got Phil. I don’t want anybody getting off here.’’

I thought it was pretty clearly implied that, if whoever shot Phil got off, Nancy’s paper would kill us. That was fair enough.

‘‘Now,’’ I said, ‘‘we have less than an hour here, so let’s get down to it…’’

After refreshing her memory a little, which certainly didn’t take much, we asked Nancy what Phil could have said or done that would give the impression that he had a bomb. At first she couldn’t think of anything, but then she remembered Phil’s bottled mineral water. He always drank it, when he could get it, and liked it cold. He had a habit of wrapping it in two of those beer can insulators, and just sticking the neck of the bottle through the little hole in the ‘‘bottom’’ of the upper insulator. He had obtained his insulators from an implement dealer during a photo session, so the two insulators were black, with a yellow rectangle with black printing on the side. In effect, a black cylinder about ten inches long, as big around as a beer can, with a small, white cap on one end.

‘‘He left it at my car,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘When we were going to go in together, he realized he didn’t have it. One of your reserve guys went to the car and got it for him.’’

No shit.

‘‘Borcherding was set up near the car,’’ said Nancy.

‘‘I know,’’ I said. ‘‘You pointed him out, sort of.’’

‘‘He could have seen that. When the cop brought it to him. Phil probably just stuck it in his bag. He wouldn’t have tried to hide it or anything.’’ She thought a second. ‘‘He had a cell phone modem thingy on his laptop.’’

‘‘Borcherding? Are you sure?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Yeah. I told Phil that I’d have to get one like that.’’

‘‘So Borcherding probably wasn’t really inventing the part about the ‘bomb,’ then, was he?’’

‘‘Probably not, Carl.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘Probably not.’’ She looked up. ‘‘That fucker.’’ She thought again for a few seconds. ‘‘You’re absolutely sure it was him?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ I said, looking her straight in the eye. ‘‘We know the message came straight from his e-mail address, and could have been sent only by somebody at the scene.’’ I hesitated for a second. ‘‘None of the networks had a live feed going.’’

‘‘No,’’ she said. ‘‘No, they never went live until after Phil was shot. I know that.’’

Hmm. Well, by that time our dispatch center would have been so busy they probably turned the TV off.

‘‘We don’t have any reason to believe he gave his laptop to anybody else,’’ said Hester. ‘‘His password had to be used to log on to the server. If he’d loaned it to somebody else, they’d have used their password, most likely. And his seems to be one of those little local companies…’’

‘‘He runs his own server,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘He brags about it.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘He’s one of those people who think they can get in your pants by telling you all the techno drivel they have in their entire head. Supposed to make us horny, or something.’’ She snorted. ‘‘Likely.’’

‘‘Really?’’ That surprised me.

‘‘Oh, yeah. They think it’s erotic.’’

‘‘No, no,’’ I said, grinning. ‘‘Just surprised he has his own server. What do they call it?’’ I asked.

‘‘Oh, shit,’’ she said, ‘‘I don’t remember that. God. But something like the common man net, or some such thing. Maybe free white net, or common free?’’

‘‘Thanks,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We’ll check that out.’’ She pushed her chair back, making a screeching sound on the old hardwood flooring. ‘‘In the meantime, how do you intend to go about getting your information? You can’t be too obvious or quick…’’

‘‘Hell, I know that.’’

‘‘I mean,’’ said Hester, ‘‘I know it’s a little soon, but I’d like to know what you intend…’’

We went over what we wanted, again. We expanded the list, not to give her more work, but more leeway. We were very clear that she was under no obligation to obtain all the information. Just suggestions and hints. We’d take the rest.

‘‘Right,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘Look, I just want to thank you for letting me have something to do with getting this bastard…’’

I made sure she was still sitting there when the two reserve officers came through with Nola Stritch. Our guys had given Nola a bulletproof vest to wear, which looked a little silly on her. It was for someone much larger, was white, and had the long tails on it so you could tuck it into your uniform pants and not have it pull your shirt out when you moved. Kind of looked more like a bulletproof apron, as a matter of fact. I pretended to be a bit upset when Nancy introduced herself, so Nola gave a little statement to the press.

‘‘It’s pretty bad,’’ said Nola, ‘‘when you can’t even trust the press anymore.’’ She started to walk toward the door.

‘‘What do you mean?’’ asked Nancy.

‘‘You know just what I mean,’’ hissed Nola. ‘‘You’re all in the pay of the Jews and the One World Government. You know that. Don’t try to deny it, you are. You know you are.’’ With that off her chest, she turned and just about dragged the officers out the door. It always amazes me when I hear someone I think is intelligent start ranting like that. This time was no exception.

When the door closed, Nancy sighed. ‘‘Well, so much for the sympathetic approach.’’ She grinned. ‘‘I’ll see what I can do for you,’’ she said, heading for the door. ‘‘Just give me a couple of days. I’ll be in touch.’’ And she was gone.

Hester and I exchanged looks.

‘‘I hope we’ve done the right thing here.’’

‘‘Don’t worry, Carl. You worry too much. You’re beginning to sound like George.’’ Hester smiled. ‘‘Speaking of whom… we’d better let him know what’s happening.’’

True. Because when it came right down to it, George had access to the resources that we only wished we had.

When we got to the back room, I greeted George with ‘‘George, you little Zionist, how the hell are you?’’

He looked up. ‘‘I knew it. Now you’re gonna want a ride in my black chopper.’’ He pushed his papers back across the desk. ‘‘So how’d it go?’’

‘‘I don’t know,’’ I said, sitting down near a stack of computer paper. ‘‘All right, I guess.’’ I picked up the first sheet. ‘‘She knew him, though. Didn’t like him.’’

‘‘She’s going to keep her eyes open for us,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We’ll see.’’

‘‘Well, while you were gone, I came up with something that may be very serious.’’

What George had found was a series of messages to an address in Idaho, and returns from the same place.

‘‘This man Stritch has some very interesting connections.’’ George indicated a handwritten list he had made. ‘‘Several of these names of organizations that are mentioned here are the same ones I heard at a very sensitive briefing about three months ago.’’

The FBI, it transpired, was working three of the mentioned groups regarding illegal weapons, Ponzi scams, bank fraud, a possible series of bombings where only very small devices were used, and planning things such as bank robberies, armored car holdups, etc. None of the planned things had happened. All of which told me that the FBI had people inside more than one group.

‘‘Small bombs?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Really small,’’ said George. ‘‘Like they blow up mailboxes.’’

‘‘They getting these folks confused with teenagers?’’ I asked.

‘‘Oh, no,’’ said George. ‘‘Not at all. The little bombs are planted as proof that the mechanism works, for one thing. Very sophisticated, they tell me. But, more important,’’ he said, in a worried tone, ‘‘it proves that the strike teams they sent out actually reached their target.’’

Food for thought.

‘‘What kind of targets?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Oh, investigators’ ‘in’ boxes in Sheriff’s Departments,’’ said George, deadpan.

I admit it, I looked at my ‘‘in’’ box. Broke him up.

Actually, as he explained when he’d recovered, what they did was get either close to or into government property and set off these little devices. Not only federal but state and local property as well. They’d started off with places like isolated forest and park ranger stations, and had expanded to include police stations, office buildings, a couple of post offices, a Coast Guard installation, and others.

‘‘Were these connected to the Oklahoma City bombing?’’ I asked.

‘‘No. Not at all. Nothing like that. So far, at least,’’ he said. ‘‘I haven’t heard of anybody even being slightly injured.’’

‘‘Just for the effect?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Seemed to work in a few cases,’’ said George. ‘‘Several victims were really intimidated. But that’s not what they have in mind.’’ He shrugged. ‘‘According to my sources.’’

George’s sources, in this case, were from Washington, D.C., and were pretty damned accurate. What these people were doing was honing their skills. More than fifty incidents, in all sorts of locations. Practicing. But for what?

‘‘If anybody at the conference knew, they sure didn’t tell us,’’ said George.

Hmmm.

‘‘And Herman has been corresponding with the bombers?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘At least with their parent organizations,’’ said George, with the addition of the ‘‘federal hedge.’’ ‘‘Inasmuch as there is any true organization, of course.’’

‘‘Well, sure,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Inasmuch as…’’

‘‘Well, they’re pretty loose,’’ said George.

‘‘You wish,’’ she said.

‘‘Anyhow,’’ I interjected, ‘‘what’s old Herman been saying to these people?’’

Oh, yes. Herman. George leafed through the messages. ‘‘Basically,’’ he said, looking up, ‘‘he offered to provide a training area for them, and they accepted.’’

You could have heard a jaw drop.

After a moment, I asked George if, or when, a date had been set.

‘‘I believe so,’’ he said. The last message had been on June 3rd, and stated that they would be glad to take advantage of the training area, and that two to four selected local men could also be included to participate and observe the training. Further contact would be in person.

‘‘The message was accepted for, but not by, a fellow named Gabriel.’’ He waited, but just for a moment. ‘‘That would be Gabriel, you know, for which Gabe is short,’’ he announced.

‘‘We know,’’ said Hester. ‘‘I think we’ve met.’’

‘‘Our favorite colonel,’’ I said, remembering the tall man at the edge of the cornfield. ‘‘Well, somebody better tell DEA. None of this is dope-related, and never has been.’’

‘‘Maybe now,’’ said Hester, smiling, ‘‘we can have our whole case back.’’

Right.