by Vivian Barz
“Well, yes and no. The old-school methods are still being used by a lot of groups—arson, vandalism, etcetera—but the game has changed because of technology, the internet, and the dark web. They’re definitely not the hippy-dippy tree huggers of the days of old, chaining themselves to logs in forests and throwing red paint on women wearing fur coats. Now, you can see a very fixed distinction between activist and terrorist, though a lot of the terrorists would like the world to believe that the government is simply rebranding them as such. In the beginning—back in the sixties and seventies, I’m talking about—the lines got a little blurred, since environmental activism was a fairly new construct in America. Anyone who spoke out against the government was deemed a radical. Now, though, there are actual textbook definitions to the terms and specific actions we look for as red flags. You start setting off bombs or threatening to kill CEOs, you’re going to be called a terrorist, which a lot of them don’t seem to understand.”
“So, it must be a ‘thing’ again, then? Ecoterrorism?”
“I wouldn’t say it exactly that way,” Susan said, “since it never fully went away. It’s more like the activity of radical environmental groups comes and goes in waves. A lot of individuals get riled up; then someone makes a very public grand gesture. Things go quiet for a while, until another incident happens and people once again take notice.”
“It’s strange, though, the extremism? It seems like these environmental groups are either sane and aboveboard, or they are completely nutty and dangerous. It’s unfortunate, because the shady ones are giving the good ones an undeserved bad rep.”
Susan said, “And the scary groups are also a lot more covert now and organized. Militarized in a way that hasn’t previously been seen. Again, because of the internet. Back in the day, they’d have to photocopy newsletters and then hit the street, hoping to get them distributed to even a couple hundred people. Now, with a click of a few keys, they can reach millions of people all over the world. It’s frightening, when you think about it, how quickly a group can spread their doctrine. They can create an army of followers without even leaving their homes.”
“This is the sort of stuff you hear about and you start to think that maybe moving to the middle of nowhere and living off the grid isn’t such a bad idea.”
“After some of the things I’ve seen working here, I’d have to agree,” Susan said with a laugh. “But DOTE, they’re an odd one.”
“Odd how?”
Susan went quiet as she considered the question.
“It’s okay if you can’t tell me—if it’s FBI confidential. I don’t want to get you into any kind of trouble for leaking information,” Eric said. While he’d unofficially worked with her and Howell on a case previously, he’d always respected her boundaries and took her professional limitations into consideration, which Susan appreciated.
Always, except for his plans of writing a tell-all book, she reminded herself.
He added, “I don’t want you thinking that I feel as if I’m entitled to the FBI’s database. I know I never would have even met Howell or have access to confidential information if it weren’t for you.”
“Thanks, but it’s nothing like that. I was just trying to figure out how to phrase it. DOTE, as a group . . .” Susan shook her head, even though he couldn’t see her. “They’re almost like Jekyll and Hyde.”
“How so?”
“Again, I’m basing this on what Johnathan encountered during his dealings with them,” she said. “On the one hand, you’ve got the members who are so cliché and phony that they might as well be cardboard cutouts of themselves. Remember those—what did Jake call them—trustafarians we met up in Clancy?” The recollection stung Susan as soon as the words came out of her mouth. She and Eric had been on vacation at the time, and still a couple. They’d traveled up to Washington together in the same car from California; they’d gone out to eat, hiked through the lush Pacific Northwestern forest, toured the dying little downtown. And, at night, they’d shared the same bed. She squeezed her eyes shut, pushed the sweetest memories from her mind.
Eric laughed. “I remember. Those two wannabe hippy kids in that beat-up, spray-painted RV, ‘roughing it’ with their brand-new smartphones, laptops, and purebred dog—”
“Drinking lattes, bitching about how they couldn’t get their nature photos to upload on Instagram.” Susan chuckled through the hurt.
“Don’t forget their shiny road bikes that cost more than our cars.”
“Right! Anyway, there’s one side of DOTE that is the Dr. Jekyll side. While they’re bothersome to those they target, they’re generally harmless and they mean well—like the trustafarian couple. They’re your garden-variety young, impressionable college kids looking for a cause to rebel on behalf of. They’re typically in their early twenties and come from fairly well-off backgrounds. Idealists who have yet to be really hurt by the world.”
“Sounds just like Samantha—or at least how Bryan described her.”
“I’m not surprised,” Susan said. “Anyway, these are the members who do things like go to protests and take their grievances out on social media. Wear shirts with slogans.”
“Pretty standard stuff.”
“Right. Then, though, you’ve got the Mr. Hyde side of DOTE. These are the scary members, the ones we try to keep an eye on, although it’s difficult to pin down the perpetrators. They never put a name to their work—criminal activity, I mean, not protests—not the way a group like Earth Liberation Front did when they were most active.”
Eric asked, “What do they do?”
“I’ll give you an example, which will help explain the two-sidedness. The first DOTE case Johnathan worked involved the Art Modern Museum of San Francisco and Neal Proctor. Proctor’s this ultramodern artist who makes ‘art’ I don’t really get—installations with crying, naked people throwing chess pieces at each other and giant boxes of cigarettes painted with squid ink. Cuckoo stuff that sells for a couple million bucks.”
“Hey, whatever floats, right?” Eric said with a chuckle.
“I guess rich people need frivolous things to spend their money on too,” Susan commented. “Anyway, Proctor did this one installation that involved stuffed fox carcasses with pig’s blood dripping from their eyes. There were also live orchids sticking out the foxes’ butts. The pieces were suspended from the ceiling by old telephone cords.”
“Naturally,” Eric joked.
“The doters were furious about the dead animals, so they picketed the museum day and night for weeks, even when it was closed. They set up tents on the sidewalk, sprayed with the DOTE emblem, which is a red capital D with a triangle around it. They also dressed up in fox costumes—like those big mascot outfits with googly eyes—and called customers names as they bought tickets. Some covered themselves in fake blood and sprawled in front of the museum, screaming their heads off. Johnathan showed me footage; it was quite a show.”
“Don’t these people have jobs they have to go to? How do they afford to take so much time off work?” Eric asked.
“Funny, I asked Johnathan the same thing. Guess you can always tell a person who didn’t grow up rich, because having enough money is a constant concern.”
“True that.”
“Most of these wealthy DOTE kids don’t work—it’s their parents who are footing the bill, half of whom probably don’t know what their kids are up to,” Susan explained. “Of course, the media started showing up at the museum, and then the whole exhibition became more about the war between Proctor and the doters than the art itself. Eventually, they had to shut the exhibit down because it was affecting road traffic near the museum, not that Proctor minded. He made millions from the publicity that his pieces had gotten. It actually made him more famous than he already was.”
“I’m sure DOTE were livid. Talk about a backfire.”
“I’m sure of it, too, because here’s where the Mr. Hyde side comes in. A couple nights after the exhibit closed, Proctor was sleeping up in his l
oft when a fire broke out in his studio below. It was where some of his new paintings were being stored—his works in progress.”
“Arson?”
“Absolutely. Molotov cocktails,” Susan said. “He barely made it out alive, since the doors had been nailed shut. He had to throw a chair through a window and jump down about fifteen feet. He got all cut up from the glass and broke his ankle.”
“Jeez!” Eric breathed. “So, DOTE wasn’t just trying to send a message. They were genuinely trying to kill him.”
“That’s the thing—DOTE never takes credit for the really bad, illegal stuff, but Johnathan is sure they’re behind the attack.”
“How?”
Susan said, “He brought a suspect in for questioning that he knew was affiliated with the group. Kid started bawling his eyes out the moment they sat him down in interrogation. Just as he was about to crack and roll on those responsible for the arson, the parents—wealthy, that goes without saying—came in with some big-time lawyer they keep on retainer and got him to clam up. Seems this wasn’t the first time the little shit had gotten himself into trouble.”
“That’s just gross.”
“The kid later recanted everything he said. The lawyer made it out that he had given confused testimony because he was under duress. It’s like whoever is calling the shots at DOTE is using impressionable college kids as a smoke screen to conceal the truly nefarious activity. It’s like they want people to look at the group—the Dr. Jekyll side—and say, ‘Oh, look at those silly kids, wearing their costumes and making spectacles of themselves.’ Meanwhile, the Mr. Hyde side is committing the truly heinous acts.”
“So, the Dr. Jekyll kids are basically a diversion,” Eric said. “But every military has a leader, so then who is DOTE’s?”
“That’s what makes the group so clever. Because they never take credit for the really bad stuff, it’s difficult to pin down who’s in charge. They’re not a registered charity the way other environmental groups are, and they stay out of trouble with the IRS by not collecting any monetary dues. Instead, members pay dues through direct action: protests, writing blog posts, etcetera—although, Johnathan suspects that the rich kids are funneling funds to the group through stealthy means. And, as far as the illegal activity, they’re almost like a gang in this respect: they get members to commit crimes so that they never have to worry about the members turning on each other.”
“You’re not going to rat on someone for committing a crime if you’ve committed one yourself,” Eric said, and Susan agreed.
“Anyway, DOTE are on the FBI’s watch list, but near the bottom.” Susan moved her mouse around on her desk to wake up her computer after it had gone into sleep mode. “Remind me again of Bryan’s full name.”
She used the FBI database to run a search, immediately seeing that he was flagged as being wanted in connection with Samantha’s murder. Her parents had political pull, indeed, if both the police and the FBI were on the lookout for him. She delved further, finding information that seemed to refute Eric’s claims about the kid being innocent. “This is not good,” she said darkly. “Your boy Bryan is a registered sex offender.”
CHAPTER 7
Spotting Howell swiftly approaching her desk, Susan didn’t get to further explore Bryan’s charges. She would have liked to see specifics on the sex crime, since the conviction contradicted Eric’s earlier stance that Bryan was a morally upstanding human being with the unfortunate luck of having himself set up as a fall guy. Eric’s insight was typically keen when it came to crime, so she was surprised that a college student who seemed a far cry from a criminal mastermind had managed to bamboozle both him and Jake.
She quickly hung up, secretly hoping that she could later find a reason to call Eric back. It had felt good to hear his voice, but it had also made her wistful. She wondered if he might be feeling the same.
She was on the brink of asking Howell what was happening, but, like always, he beat her to the punch. “Just got word that Chung Nguygen’s body was found,” he said.
“Where?”
“A couple hikers discovered it washed up onshore two miles downstream from the dam.”
“And what about Dov Amsel?”
Howell shook his head. “Still at large.”
“Are we thinking that he’s looking good for the murder?”
“Seems like it. The working theory is that Amsel went to lunch with the intention of murdering Nguygen, though the motive remains unclear.”
“Are we still thinking this has something to do with Gruben Dam, or is it personal?” Susan asked. Reflecting out loud, she added, “There’s always the possibility that it was not premeditated. Maybe the two went to a bar, had a couple drinks over lunch, and things got heated during an argument. Although, the fact that Nguygen’s body was found so close to the dam might suggest otherwise. I’ll check the bank statements to see where they ate, once I hear back from IT.”
“Only time will tell on that one, but it would be premature to rule out a potential security threat to the dam.” Howell glanced at his watch. “IT probably won’t have anything for you until tomorrow morning. There was a delay down there because of a possible mainframe breach. They shut down for a few hours.”
Susan made a move for her jacket and bag. “I’ll go to the dam now, then, and talk to some of Amsel and Nguygen’s coworkers to see what I can dig up. Their jobs are entirely unrelated, so I’m curious as to how the two became close enough friends that they’d take a lunch break together. I wonder how much cause an engineer and armed guard would have to interact on the job, especially at a location as vast as a dam. Maybe they met at a company picnic or something. Or maybe they knew each other before they started working at Gruben.”
“Those are good questions to ask while you’re there,” Howell said, and then he and Susan parted ways.
On the way to the dam, Susan placed a call to Dr. Mikael Abbonzio, the medical examiner in charge of Nguygen’s autopsy. Like Howell, she was polite but brusque, which Susan didn’t mind too much. Between the conversations she’d had with Eric and Howell, she was feeling rather talked out.
“Cause of death is blunt-force trauma,” Abbonzio said. “Back of the skull. One solid hit was what seems to have done it.”
“So, this indicates that the murder was more out of necessity than passion—or else you might see more injuries, right? Could this indicate that it was premeditated, because, if it wasn’t, the attack might have been sloppier?” Susan asked the doctor.
“I’m no psychologist, so I can’t comment on that. All I can tell you is what I see,” she said blandly, and Susan started to miss Salvador Martinez, the ME she’d always worked with at Perrick PD. He would have commented, being a huge true-crime buff in his private time. Hell, he probably would have had a whole theory cooked up, complete with diagrams, and he would have shared them with her and concluded the conversation by giving her a recipe for a grilled fish marinade. She missed that about working in a small town, the personalized touch. At the San Francisco FBI, the specialists she interacted with were often rotating, so it was difficult to build rapport. They were mostly all business, which had its perks when she was in a hurry.
Sometimes, though, it was a reminder of how alone she really was.
Susan, while outgoing, didn’t have a lot of close friends. She’d never been a “go out with the ladies for cocktails” kind of gal; she preferred a one-on-one setting. Her family unit was virtually nil; she was an only child, so no siblings. She was close with her mother in a vague sort of way, polite and warm on the surface, yet their conversations (usually by text message as of late) were typically about superficial topics: work, crime news, weather. And her father, well, the only thing she really had in common with him was the youthful looks they shared. With the same chocolatey brown hair, deep-blue eyes, and athletic build, they looked closer to brother and sister than father and daughter. She hadn’t spoken to him in almost a year, when he’d berated her for not wanting to sell her story
to a salacious publisher, which she’d learned would have given him a hefty finder’s fee for convincing her to work with them.
She never thought she’d become the sort of person who could say her job was her life, yet here she was. The median price of a home in San Francisco was over $1.2 million, so she’d given up the idea of owning her own place in the area some time ago. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t craving a little stability and hominess.
Her homelife wasn’t much of a life at all. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d made herself a sit-down meal—she didn’t really have “meals.” She merely scavenged scraps of food from the refrigerator whenever she became aware that her stomach was growling. With Eric—here you go, fixating on Eric again, she thought with some disdain—she’d had a taste of domestic bliss. Now that it was gone, she was wondering how she’d ever functioned so long without it, much the same way a person who’s walked all their life on sore feet feels once they’ve been blessed with an automobile. Being with him had made everything feel so effortless. A single person again, she’d thought about hitting the dating scene in theory. It was the actual practice part that made her stomach do flip-flops.
She sighed away from the phone, so the doctor wouldn’t hear her losing her patience. “Right. Is there any possibility that this could have been an accident? He worked at a dam, so is it possible that he could have fallen into the water somehow and hit his head on a rock, or something to that effect?”
“I don’t really like to speculate . . .”
The doctor was about as pliable as cold titanium. “Oh, go on—I won’t arrest you if you’re mistaken,” she said in her cheeriest voice.
Abbonzio cleared her throat. “If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say, no, he didn’t fall into the water. The wound is far too concentrated for it to be accidental, at least from my experience.” Susan got the impression that she was answering just to speed things along.
“What do you think did it, then? The weapon, I mean.”
