Warn Me When It's Time

by Cheryl A Head

  She was up to footage from the last night of Hassan Pashia’s life, when she finally saw something that might have a bearing on their case. A biker with a helmet came into view from the direction of the mosque, and turned onto Ford Road heading west. Charlie stopped the tape and watched the biker in slow motion. There was no way to know if this was the same person she and Don had seen in the videotape a week before the bombing, but it could be the one who had looked back at the mosque on the night of the explosion. The timing was close.

  Charlie toggled the strip mall footage backwards, and this time spotted the man with the canvas bag. The one they’d seen walking away from the mosque. He got into a small white truck, backed out of the lot, and exited the camera’s view. She knew the FBI had the technology to isolate—and zoom in on—the truck’s license plate. She jotted several notes into her book and sat back in her chair, pleased with her discovery. She considered calling Don, but remembered his planned time with his family. She did text James to say she’d found something on the strip mall video.

  It was almost eight o’clock when Charlie turned off the lights in the three-room office suite. She locked the door and armed the new security system the management company had provided months before. The elevator was at the lobby level, and she adjusted the items in her backpack while she waited for it to chug to the fourth floor. The guard wasn’t at his station as she crossed the lobby and exited the front door. Charlie hit the key fob and the Vette’s lights came to life. She’d had the car nearly three years now and had thought about trading it in, but it still drove superbly and still had relatively low mileage. Charlie had just opened the driver’s door when she heard the voice behind her.

  “Give me the bag, lady.”

  She spun to find a bulky white guy, dressed in camo pants and a dark jacket, his hand near a sidearm in his waist holster. His eyes squinted and his lips tightened into a thin line.

  “Don’t make me ask again. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will.”

  Charlie always wondered why someone with a gun threatened to shoot a person they confronted. She guessed they thought it sounded menacing. If this man had any notion of shooting her, his gun would already be drawn.

  He was a few inches taller than Charlie but he’d made the mistake of getting too close. Charlie reached for the shoulder strap of her backpack, watching the man release the tension in his shoulders and arms. He didn’t even see it when she drove her keys into the side of his face, then shoved his head down to meet her rising knee. It was a basic martial arts move for close hand-to-hand combat.

  The man’s knees crumpled beneath him, and he lay unmoving in the street. Charlie waited a couple of seconds to make sure he wasn’t faking unconsciousness, then maneuvered around him to retrieve his revolver—a .34 caliber. She threw her backpack into the Vette and dialed 911. Then sat in the car and opened her glove box where her own weapon was kept.

  Charlie insisted that Mandy shouldn’t come to help her. “Nope. He’s out cold and I have my gun. I’m not pulling it out unless he moves. I don’t want the cops to get the wrong idea. I’ll call again when I’m done with the police.”

  The lobby guard, who’d returned to his station, saw the car lights, Charlie’s open door, and the man sprawled in the middle of the street. He came running to investigate, standing next to Charlie’s car until the police arrived.

  Noticing her race, fancy car, and the white man she’d disabled, the police were immediately inclined to find Charlie somehow at fault. It helped to have the security guard on hand to verify her tenancy in the building. While all she wanted to do was go home, they were pushing for her to come to the police station to fill out a report. She reluctantly invoked Captain Travers’s name and handed one of the officers his business card. After he phoned the captain, he returned the card and her car keys, and gave a salute as he waved her on her way.

  “I’m done, and I’m famished. I also need some wine.”

  “It’s a good thing you called. I was about to come down there,” Mandy said.

  “Yeah. I know. I had to do a bit of talking to the officers who responded. I even had to use Travers’s name.”

  “Oh. I know you hated that.”

  “The whole thing was infuriating.”

  “Come home to me now,” Mandy said. “You can eat and then get a hot bath. Hamm and I will take care of you.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Chapter 8

  Judy stood, came around her desk and gave Charlie a hug as soon as she walked in the door. Charlie looked over Judy’s shoulder at Tamela who had paused in her filing with a worried look. Charlie gave a wave.

  “I’ve called you three times. Johnny at the front desk came by this morning to tell me what happened,” Judy said.

  “I went to police headquarters this morning to file a formal report. It was an attempted mugging, that’s all. I wasn’t hurt and the guy didn’t get anything.”

  “You should have called.”

  “There was nothing you could do, and I know you’d worry yourself the rest of the night. I didn’t tell Don either.”

  “I think he knows though,” Judy said. “He called to ask if you were in, then just hung up when I told him I hadn’t seen you yet.”

  It was likely Don did know. One of his cronies at the department would have called him once they made the connection between the Mack Agency and the report of an assault. They were pretty well known at headquarters. Last year, they’d worked with the department to amass clues solving a murder case that involved a prominent Michigan family. Two years before that, Charlie had posed as a homeless person to catch the serial murderer of street people, and topple a drug operation involving a rogue police detective.

  “What time is Don coming in?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Charlie dumped her backpack and briefcase on her desk in the bullpen. The trip to police headquarters meant little time for exercise. Today they would continue trying to identify Pashia’s threatening student, follow up with James on the mysterious biker and the man with the bag, and check out the new witness list Don had procured. Now might be the only time Charlie could fit in a workout, so she grabbed the backpack and returned to the anteroom.

  “Judy, I’m going down to the gym for forty-five minutes. Are you back on the students’ social media accounts?”

  “Yep, and Tamela will be once she’s completed filing.”

  Exercise was a natural part of Charlie’s day. It had been a habit since high school when she played softball. As an adult she’d practiced and taught martial arts for a dozen years. Last night’s attacker wasn’t aware of that until after he’d regained consciousness. She could be obsessive about her physical fitness routine and, more often than not, her food and drink intake. The latter wasn’t always easy when surveillances, late-night meetings, and working lunches were the norm.

  The building’s small gym wasn’t fancy. There were two ellipticals, two bikes, and two treadmills. The one weight machine had limited performance. But there were good showers and dressing rooms, and an attendant was always on duty during business hours. Charlie nodded to Deborah, then grabbed a towel and changed into her leotard and top. She listened to the music app Judy had downloaded onto her phone and did a twenty-minute, medium-level program on the bike. Charlie spent the rest of her time with the ten-pound free weights, then showered and changed into slacks and a collared shirt. She ran her fingers through her hair, left a fiver in Deb’s tip jar, and, feeling better, took the stairs up to the office.

  Tamela was at the reception desk, and looked up with a smile. “We have company,” she said, pointing her chin toward the conference room.

  Charlie could hear the murmured voices. “Don here?”

  “Yep, he’s in there with Judy and the gentleman from the FBI.”

  Charlie bypassed the bullpen. Don, Judy, and James were drinking coffee and looking at last night’s security footage on the whiteboard.

  “So the gang’s all here,” Charl
ie said.

  James stood when Charlie entered and offered a handshake. “Sorry about your altercation last night. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Charlie said waving off his concern.

  “I realize I didn’t have an appointment, but I cleared it with Don.”

  Don grunted and gave Charlie a look she couldn’t read. But there was no mistaking Judy’s face. It was heavy with worry.

  “So did you see the biker?” Charlie asked nodding toward the whiteboard.

  “Yep. After I received your text, I separated the footage,” James said. “So we have in one file the man leaving his bike and moving toward the mosque, his return to the bike ten minutes later, and then riding off. That was a week before the explosion at the mosque. The other file has the night of the bombing with the biker staring at the mosque as he rides by, and the footage of the man with a bag heading down the street, and later getting into a white truck at the strip mall.”

  “You know the biker is a man?” Charlie asked.

  “Yep. We have technology that tells us that from his gait,” James said. “We’ve also identified the other man, from his license plate, as Frank R. Wyatt Jr.”

  “That’s fast work,” Charlie said.

  “There’s more, Mack,” Don said dourly.

  Charlie raised an eyebrow toward James.

  “Wyatt is the man who tried to mug you last night,” James said.

  “What?” Charlie said, feeling her heart leap to her throat.

  “And the cops found a piece of paper in the guy’s pocket with your name on it,” Judy said with a pained look.

  “Shit!” Charlie said.

  Chapter 9

  “What do we know about this Wyatt guy?” Charlie asked. She was looking at his photo, and the piece of paper he’d carried with her name printed in neat block letters.

  “No record to speak of. A couple of DUIs. A veteran. Fifty-two years old, and lives in a rental house in Garden City. He works as a part-time plumber and owns a website where he bills himself as a handyman. We were able to match his prints to a partial print at the mosque.”

  “Well, there you have it,” Charlie said. “We’ve found Mr. Pashia’s murderer.”

  “Maybe,” James said. “The guy’s talking, and he says he didn’t plant the bomb. He claims there was some kid with him who did that. He also says another guy is the one who came up with the idea to attack the mosque.”

  “So you’re saying this is a conspiracy?” Judy asked.

  “We’ve tracked almost one thousand incidents by these hate groups, and the members rarely act alone. Even if they do, there’s someone who has knowingly, or unknowingly, aided and abetted their criminal activity,” James said. “We’ve labeled them domestic terrorists.”

  “Let’s just call them what they are,” Charlie said, stunned by the statistic. “Racists. Angry about the growing influence of nonwhite people.”

  “. . . especially a Black president,” Don added.

  “That too.”

  “Is Wyatt one of the people in your database?” Judy asked.

  “No.”

  “Can you tie him to any of the other incidents in the last six months?” Charlie asked.

  “We’re working on it.”

  “So, what’s next?” Don asked.

  James loosened his tie and leaned over his arms on the table. “We’re going to work the guy to find out how he knew about Charlie.”

  “Does this mean she’s in danger?” Judy asked.

  “I think we have to assume that,” Don responded. “This guy knows we’re investigating the Pashia case. That can only mean there’s a leak on the task force.”

  Charlie gathered her brainstorming tools—multicolored Post-its and dry marker pens—and moved to the whiteboard.

  “Let’s see what we know, and what we don’t,” she said.

  Charlie’s way of making sense of a case involved the tactile exercise of placing the notes on a blank surface, and manipulating them in ways that helped her think differently about the facts, questions, and assumptions of a case. Occasionally an outsider got to see the process. James watched as Don and Judy called out information to be placed on the board. The notes were initially organized by color. As always, there were more questions than answers, more speculation than facts. Sometimes Charlie circled a note or connected two disparate notes that didn’t seem to have a connection. Until they did.

  “That’s impressive,” James said. “Do you ever include a timeline or photos?”

  “We’ve used photos,” Judy responded.

  “But mostly we just let Charlie stare at the board,” Don said. “I know it sounds like new-age nonsense, but I’ve seen it work a lot of times. So now I’m a believer.”

  “It also helps to hear the big questions that come out of left field. Our former partner, Gil, used to be good at asking those,” Judy said. “You met him on the Birmingham case.”

  “I remember,” James said. “He retired, didn’t he? That’s how you got moved up to investigator status.”

  “Associate,” Judy said.

  “That was a smart move.”

  As Judy and James made small talk, Don got another cup of coffee and munched on a doughnut. Charlie stared at the board and moved Post-its around in no apparent pattern. Then she stepped back and stared some more.

  “What if,” Charlie began, “these incidents aren’t just about spewing hate? What if the vandalism is a cover for the burglaries?”

  The three stared at Charlie’s display of sticky notes. The greens and reds were spread across the board in pairs and sets of threes.

  “Do you have a list of the things missing from these incidents?” Charlie asked James.

  “Not with me, but I can have someone email it over.”

  “Could you please do that?”

  James left the room to make a call, and Judy checked on Tamela’s progress on the social media searches. Don sat in the chair next to Charlie with something on his mind.

  “I don’t like it, Mack. A leak on the task force. A man tries to assault you. I don’t like it.”

  “Sorry. What did you say?”

  “I said, I’m worried about this case. That guy who assaulted you knew your name.”

  “He didn’t try to assault or kill me. He asked for my bag.”

  “At gunpoint. So that makes it attempted armed robbery.”

  “He never actually wielded the gun . . .”

  “For heaven’s sake, Mack. You’re not taking this seriously.”

  “Okay, you’re right. It could have turned out badly. The guy was armed.”

  “You’re unfocused. What is it?”

  “Whoever is targeting these places of worship—it’s not just because they don’t like people different from them. I think these incidents are robberies first, and hate crimes second.”

  “If that’s true, why didn’t they take the expensive computers and satellite technology at the mosque?” Don asked. “That stuff must be worth tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, they left the equipment to burn in the fire.”

  “Maybe they’re not after hardware. Maybe they want personal information like addresses, telephone numbers, social security numbers, and bank information. That stuff also has value.”

  James returned to the conference room with news that the stolen items inventory had been emailed to Judy. “I already asked her to print a set for each of us.” He stopped. “What were you two talking about?”

  “Charlie has a theory,” Don said. “She thinks these hate crimes are really a cover for identity thefts or something like that.”

  James looked thoughtful. “That’s a possibility. But if so, it isn’t a very complex operation.”

  Judy returned with four lists of missing items, and they began to pore over them. In all of the Black church breaches, the offices had been ransacked and files removed. In a few cases, desktop computers had been taken. In at least one synagogue breach, the only things missing were membership records. Things
like expensive artwork and valuable artifacts had been bypassed for folders with contribution information and credit card receipts.

  “So Charlie’s right,” Don said.

  “At least partially,” James agreed. “I’m taking this info to our techs at Quantico to cross-reference these names, accounts, and credit card numbers with our database of flagged transactions.”

  “Flagged transactions?” Judy asked.

  “Purchases of large amounts of ammunition, bomb-making ingredients, airline tickets to countries on our watch list. Those kinds of things.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Charlie said, opening her tote. “Don found these near a tree across from the mosque. It’s a gum wrapper and what Don thinks might be a bicycle clip. Maybe it belongs to our guy.”

  “I’ll check it out,” James said, standing. “Good work, you guys.”

  # # #

  Tamela’s initial online search of the list of college students identified six people whose social media posts raised red flags. Judy’s task for the rest of the afternoon was to build a dossier on each student.

  “Oh, and we all need to finish reading this FBI report,” Charlie said. “It’s long, but I think it’ll help.”

  “Six hundred pages,” Don complained.

  “I know, but there might be something in the report that could be pertinent to the mosque attack.”

  “When are you going to tell Mandy about Wyatt?” Don asked.

  Charlie shook her head.