Chapter 110
RICH WAS ALREADY at the computer when I got to my desk. He looked like he was in fifth gear, his index fingers tapping a fast two-step over the keys. I thanked him for the Krispy Kreme he’d parked on a napkin next to my phone.
“It was my turn,” Rich said, not looking up as I dragged out my chair and sat down. “Dr. Roach called,” Rich continued. “Said there were fifty-five ccs of gasoline in Alan Beam’s stomach.”
“What’s that? Three ounces? Geez. Is she saying he drank gasoline?”
“Yeah. Probably directly out of the can. Beam really wanted to make sure he got it right this time. Doctor says the gas would’ve killed him if the fire hadn’t. She’s calling it a suicide. But look here, Lindsay.”
“Whatcha got?” I said.
“Come over here and see this.”
I walked around our two desks and peered over Conklin’s shoulder. There was a Web site on his screen called Crime Web. Conklin pressed the enter key and an animation began. A spider dropped a line from the top of the page, made a web around the blood-red headline over the feature story, then skittered back to its corner of the page. I read the headline.
Five Fatal Shootings This Week Alone
When are the cops and the DA going to get it together?
The text below was a sickening indictment of San Francisco ’s justice system – and it was all true. Homicides were up, prosecutions were down, the result of not enough people or money or time.
Rich moved the cursor to the column listing the pages on the site.
“This one – here,” Rich said, clicking on a link called Current Unsolved Murders.
Thumbnail photos came up.
There was a family portrait of the Malones. Another of the Meachams. Rich clicked on the thumbnail of the Malones and said, “Listen to this.”
And then he read the page to me:
“ ‘Were the murders of Patricia and Bertram Malone committed by the same killers of Sandy and Steven Meacham?
“ ‘We say yes.
“ ‘And there have been other killings just as heinous with the same signature. The Jablonskys of Palo Alto and George and Nancy Chu of Monterey were also killed in horrific house fires.
“ ‘Why can’t SFPD solve these crimes?
“ ‘If you have any information, write to us at CrimeWeb.com. Diem dulcem habes.’ ”
My God, it was Latin!
“We never told the press about the Latin,” I said. “What does it mean?”
“Diem dulcem habes means ‘Have a nice day.’ ”
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Let’s hope it’s going to be even better than that.”
I called the DA’s office, asked for Yuki, got Nick Gaines, told him we needed a warrant to get an Internet provider to give us the name of the Web site holder.
“I’ll buck it up the line,” Gaines said. “Just asking, Sergeant: You’ve got probable cause?”
“We’re working on it,” I said. I hung up, said, “Now what?” as Rich clicked on a box labeled Contact Us.
He typed with two fingers: “Must speak with you about the Malone and the Meacham fires. Please contact me.” Conklin’s e-mail address showed that he was with the SFPD. If the Webmaster was Pidge, we could be scaring him off.
On the other hand – there was no other hand.
I needn’t have worried. Only a couple of minutes after firing off his e-mail, Rich had a response in his inbox.
“How can I help you?” the e-mail read.
It was signed Linc Weber, and it contained his phone number.
Chapter 111
THE MEETING WITH WEBER was set for four that afternoon. Conklin and I briefed Jacobi, assigned our team, and set out at two o’clock for a bookstore in Noe Valley called Damned Spot. Inspectors Chi and McNeil were in the van parked on Twenty-fourth Street, and I was wired for sound. Inspectors Lemke and Samuels were undercover, loitering in front of and behind the store.
My palms were damp as I waited with Conklin in the patrol car. The Kevlar vest I was wearing was hot, but it was my racing mind that was causing the heat.
Could this be it? Was Linc Weber also known as Pidge?
At three thirty Conklin and I got out of the car and walked around the corner to the bookstore.
Damned Spot was an old-fashioned bookstore, dark, filled with mystery books, secondhand paperbacks, a two-books-for-one section. It bore no resemblance to the air-conditioned chain stores with latte bars and smooth jazz coming over the speakers.
The cashier was an androgynous twenty-something in black clothes, hair buzzed to a bristle, and multiple face piercings. I asked for Linc Weber, and the cashier told me in a sweet feminine voice that Linc worked upstairs.
I could almost hear the scratching sound of mice nesting in the stacks as we crept along the narrow aisles and edged past customers who looked psychologically borderline. In the back of the store was a plain wooden staircase with a sign on a chain across the handrails reading NO ENTRY.
Conklin unlatched the chain, and we started up the stairs, which opened into an attic room. The ceiling was cathedral-style, but low, only eight feet high under the peak, tapering to about three feet high at the side walls. In the back of the room was a desk where high piles of magazines, papers, and books surrounded a computer with two large screens.
And behind the desk was a black kid, maybe fifteen, reed-thin, with black-rimmed glasses, no visible tattoos, and no jewelry, unless you counted the braces on his teeth, which I saw when he looked up and smiled.
My high hopes fell.
This wasn’t Pidge. The governor’s description of Pidge was of a stocky white kid, long brown hair.
“I’m Linc,” the boy said. “Welcome to CrimeWeb dot com.”
Chapter 112
LINC WEBER SAID he was “honored” to meet us. He indicated two soft plastic-covered cubes as chairs, and he offered us bottled water from the cooler behind his desk.
We sat on his cubes, turned down the water.
“We read your commentary on the Web site,” said Conklin, casually. “We were wondering about your take on whoever set the Malone and Meacham fires.”
The kid said, “Why don’t I start at the beginning?”
Normally that was a good idea, but today my nerves were so close to the snapping point, I just wanted two questions answered, and as succinctly as possible: Why did you use a Latin phrase on your Web site? Do you know someone who goes by the name of Pidge?
But Weber said he’d never had a visit from cops before, and meeting in his office had legitimized his purpose and his Web site beyond his expectations. In fifteen minutes, he told us that his father owned Damned Spot, that he’d been a crime-story aficionado since he was old enough to read. He said that he wanted to publish crime fiction and true-crime books as soon as he got out of school.
“Linc, you said ‘Have a nice day’ in Latin on your Web site. Why did you do that?” I said, breaking into his life’s story.
“Oh. The Latin. I got the idea from this.”
Linc shuffled the piles on his desk, at last finding a soft-cover book, about 8½ by 11, with an elegant font spelling out the words 7th Heaven. He handed the book to me. I held my breath as I flipped through the pages. Although it resembled a big, fat comic book, it was a graphic novel.
“It was published first as a blog,” Weber told us. “Then my dad staked the first edition.”
“And the Latin?” I asked again, my throat tightening from the strain and the possibilities I could almost see.
“It’s all in there,” Weber told me. “The characters in this novel use Latin catchphrases. Listen, can I say on my Web site that you used me as a consultant? You have no idea what that would mean to me.”
I was looking at the title page of the book I held in my hands. Under the title were the names of the illustrator and the writer.
Hans Vetter and Brett Atkinson.
There was an icon under each of their names.
Hans Vetter was
the pigeon and Brett Atkinson, a hawk.
Chapter 113
BY FIVE THAT EVENING, Conklin and I were back at our desks in the squad room. Conklin clicked around the Internet, researching Atkinson and Vetter – and I couldn’t stop turning the pages of their novel.
I was hooked.
The drawings were stark black and white. The figures had huge eyes, and called to mind the manga style of violent borderline pornography imported from Japan. The dialogue was edgy, all-American slang punctuated by Latin sayings. And the story was actually crazy but somehow compelling.
In this book, “Pidge” was both the brains and the muscle. “Hawk” was the dreamer. They were depicted as righteous avengers, their mission to save America from what they viewed as an obscene fantasy world for the very rich. They referred to this American “piggishness” as 7th Heaven and described it as a never-ending spiral of gluttony, gratification, and waste. The Pidge-Hawk solution was to kill the rich and the greedier wannabes, to show them what real consumption was – consumption by fire.
Pidge and Hawk dressed all in black: T-shirts, jeans, riding boots, and sleek black leather waist jackets with logos of their name-birds front and back. Sparks flew from their fingertips. And their motto was “Aut vincere aut mori.”
Either conquer or die.
Hawk – the boy, not the character – had done both.
My guess? They never expected any of their victims to live long enough to give away their pseudonyms.
The motives and the methods the killers used were clearly drawn in their book, but it was all disguised as make-believe. And that was making me crazy with anger. Eight real people had died because of this arrogant nonsense, and we had virtually no evidence to prove that the real-life Hawk and Pidge were their killers.
I flipped the book to the back cover, scanned the rave reviews from social critics and the high-profile bloggers. I said to Rich, “The sickest part yet? This book has been picked up by Bright Line.”
“Hmmm?” Rich muttered, still tapping his keyboard.
“Bright Line is an indie studio,” I said. “One of the best. They’re turning this screed into a movie.”
“Brett Atkinson,” Rich said, “is a junior at Stanford U, majoring in English lit. Hans Vetter also goes to Stanford. He’s in the computer department. These creeps both live at home, only two blocks apart in Mountain View, a couple of miles from Stanford.”
Rich turned his computer monitor around, saying, “Check out Brett Atkinson’s yearbook photo.”
Brett Atkinson was Hawk, the boy Connor Campion had shot, the handsome, blond-haired boy with patrician features we’d seen in the hospital just before he died.
“And now,” Rich said, “meet Pidge.”
Hans Vetter was a good-looking tough, an illustrator, computer sciences major, now polishing his extracurricular activities as a serial killer.
“We will get warrants,” I croaked. I cleared my throat and said, “I don’t care who I have to beg.”
Rich looked as serious as I’d ever seen him.
“Absolutely. No mistakes allowed.”
“Aut vincere aut mori,” I said.
Rich smiled, reached over the desk, and bopped my fist. I called Jacobi, and he called Chief Tracchio, who called a judge, who reportedly said, “You want an arrest warrant based on a comic book?”
I barely slept that night, and in the morning Rich and I went to the judge’s chambers with 7th Heaven, the crime scene photos of the Malones, the Meachams, and the Jablonskys, and the morgue photos of the Chus. I brought Connor Campion’s statement that the boys who’d come to his house with a gun and fishing line had said their names were Hawk and Pidge, and I showed the judge their yearbook photos, captioned with their real names.
By ten a.m. we had signed warrants and all the manpower we’d need.
Chapter 114
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, an A-list university for the best and brightest, is located 33.5 miles south of San Francisco, just off Highway 280, near Palo Alto.
Hans Vetter, AKA Pidge, spent his days in the video lab of the Gates Computer Science Building, a pale five-story, L-shaped building with a tiled roof and a rounded bulge at the entranceway. The labs and research offices were clustered around three major classrooms, and the building itself was isolated on an island of its own, separated from other school buildings by service roads.
Conklin and I had gone over the floor plans of the Gates Building with the U.S. marshals, who were coordinating with campus security. With windows on all sides of the building, the law enforcement team would be seen by anyone sitting near a window.
We parked our vehicles out of sight on the curve of a service road and moved in on foot. Conklin and I wore Kevlar under our SFPD jackets and had our guns drawn, but we were taking direction from U.S. marshals.
Adrenaline surged through me as we were given the signal to go. While others stood by side entrances, twelve of us charged up the front steps and entered the high-ceilinged lobby, then went to the stairwells and landings.
Pairs of marshals peeled off as we took each floor, clearing the open spaces, locking classrooms down.
My thoughts raced ahead.
I was worried that we were too loud, that we’d already been seen, and that if Vetter had smuggled a weapon past the metal detectors, he could take his classmates hostage before we could bring him down. Conklin and I reached the top-floor landing and marshals took up stances on both sides of the doorway to the video lab. Conklin peered through the sidelight of the door, then turned the knob, swung the door wide open.
Backed by Conklin and the U.S. marshals armed with automatic rifles, I stepped through the doorway and bellowed, “FREEZE. Everyone stay still and no one will get hurt.”
A female student screamed, then the room erupted into chaos. Kids bolted from their stools and hid under workstations. Cameras and computers crashed to the floor. Glass shattered.
Kaleidoscopic images spun around me, and shrieks of terror ricocheted off the walls. The situation went from bad to out of control. I kept scanning the room, trying to pick out a stocky boy with long brown hair, square jaw, the eyes of a killer – but I didn’t see him.
Where was Hans Vetter?
Where was he?
Chapter 115
THE LAB INSTRUCTOR stood transfixed at the front of the room, his blanched face going livid as shock turned to outrage. He was in his thirties, balding, wearing a green cardigan and what looked like bedroom slippers under the cuffs of his trousers. He shoved his hands out in front of himself as if to push us out of his classroom. He announced his name – Dr. Neal Weinstein – and demanded, “What the hell? What the hell is this?”
If it weren’t so damned terrifying, it would’ve been almost funny to watch Weinstein, armed with only his flapping hands and his PhD, face down adrenaline-pumped federal law enforcement officers primed to blow the place apart.
“I have a warrant for the arrest of Hans Vetter,” I said, holding both the warrant and my gun in front of me.
Weinstein shouted, “Hans isn’t here.”
A white female student with black dreads, a ring in her lower lip, peeked out from behind an overturned table. “I spoke to Hans this morning,” she said. “He told me he was going away.”
“You saw him this morning?” I asked.
“I talked to him on his cell.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
She shook her head. “He only told me because I wanted to borrow his car.”
I left marshals behind to interview Weinstein and his students, but as Conklin and I left the building, I felt terra firma shimmy beneath my feet.
Hawk’s death last night had sent Pidge underground.
He could be anywhere in the world by now.
In the parking lot across from the Gates Building, some kids were clinging together in clumps, others dazed and wandering. Still others were laughing at the unexpected excitement. News choppers circled overhead, reporting to the world on an incid
ent that was a total disaster.
I called Jacobi, covered one ear, and summed up the situation. I didn’t want him to know how scared I was that we’d blown it and that Vetter was still out there. I tried to keep my voice even, but there was no fooling Jacobi.
I heard him breathing in my ear as he took it all in.
Then he said, “So, what you’re saying, Boxer, is that Pidge has flown the coop.”
Chapter 116
THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT and their SWAT team rolled up alongside our squad car as we braked on a crisp, well-shorn lawn. In front of us was a three-story colonial-style house only a couple of miles from the Stanford campus. The detailing on the house was authentic to the period, and the neighborhood was first class. The mailbox was marked VETTER.
And Hans Vetter’s car was in the driveway.
Walkie-talkies chattered around us, and radio channels were cleared. Perimeters were set up, and SWAT got into position. Conklin and I got out of our car. I said, “Everything about this place reminds me of the homes Hawk and Pidge burned to the ground.”
Using a car door as body armor, Conklin called out to Hans Vetter with a bullhorn. “Vetter. You can’t get away, buddy. Come out, hands on your head. Let’s end this peacefully.”
I saw movement through the second-story windows. It was Vetter, moving from room to room. He seemed to be shouting to someone inside, but we couldn’t make out his words.
“Who’s he talking to?” Conklin asked me over the roof of the squad car.
“Has to be his mother, goddamn it. She’s gotta be inside.”
A TV went on in the house and was turned up loud. I could hear the announcer’s voice. He was describing the scene we were living. The announcer said, “A tactical maneuver that began two hours ago at Stanford University has changed location and is centered in the upscale community of Mountain View, a street called Mill Lane -”
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