by Rick Mofina
Cutty tossed the handcuff keys onto the table next to Thorne.
“You take them next time,” he said, then pulled out store-bought egg salad sandwiches and water from the backpack on the picnic table and handed them to Lori.
Their chains jingled softly as they ate.
Cutty stripped off his coveralls. Now he was wearing jeans and a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt with the words Hammer of the Gods on it. He dragged one of the chairs closer, placing it in front of the back door. He sat with his gun on his lap, watching them over his phone while he played a video game. Thorne had removed his coveralls, too. He was wearing khaki cargo pants and a military green T-shirt. He faced them from the picnic table where he watched them over his laptop as he worked with his gun next to him.
Soft beeping and clicking mingled with birdsong, breezes and the occasional swish of water as Billy drank from his bottle.
After they were done eating, Billy fell asleep.
In that surreal moment, as Lori struggled to understand what had befallen them, she wished Dan was by her side.
“Can I please talk to my husband again?”
Cutty ignored her. Thorne continued working on his laptop. The silence grew ominous.
“Why are you doing this to us?”
Thorne stopped his work and looked at her.
“Because you deserve it.”
She was baffled—what could she possibly have done to deserve this? “I don’t understand.”
“You will. You were chosen because of your crimes as nonbelievers.”
“Nonbelievers?”
“Let me show you what happens to nonbelievers.”
Thorne got up from the table with his laptop, holding it so Lori could see the video he played for her.
A woman in her thirties was on her knees in the desert. Her hands were tied behind her back.
Lori gasped. The familiar footage was from a recent news report she’d seen on TV. She remembered that the woman was an aid worker from England working in the Middle East before she’d been taken hostage by extremists. Lori had never seen the video in its entirety. It was too graphic for news networks to broadcast. Standing next to the woman was a man, clad head to toe in black. A black balaclava concealed his face. He held a large knife in one hand and was ranting to the camera before he yanked the woman’s hair back, exposing her throat and—the knife flashed—Lori turned away.
She knew what followed.
The woman had been beheaded.
32
Dallas, Texas
Music hammered in the hallway.
Empty pizza boxes, beer cans and used napkins were strewn along the floor. Vulgar graffiti bled on the cracked walls near Unit 506 of the apartment complex in South Dallas.
This was Jerricko Titus Blaine’s most recent address.
From the command post across the street, Dallas FBI agent Trent Doyle trained his binoculars on Blaine’s unit. Colors and shadows flashed as someone inside moved from room to room.
One of Blaine’s associates?
Doyle rolled the focus wheel.
The Dallas Police Department had set up the outer perimeter and helped evacuate the building’s residents. Children clutched stuffed toys, and a white-haired woman grabbed her Bible as anxious tenants were escorted out of harm’s way to a park just beyond the perimeter set up with police tape.
The SWAT team, which had already studied the building’s floor plan, moved swiftly and quietly into position, forming the inner perimeter.
The music still pulsed from behind the door of apartment 506.
This part of Dallas generated a large number of police calls to the neighborhood every day. Over the past six years, five officers had been shot while executing warrants, as the FBI, backed by Dallas PD, was doing today. The five officers had survived, but it was just another reason why Doyle, like all others at the command post, was wearing body armor.
Slowly, he swung his binoculars toward the snipers on the adjacent building’s roof. There were others behind Dumpsters, cars, and in apartment units facing the target.
Inside the building, SWAT members had taken positions on the stairs leading up to Unit 506, and on the landing, the fire escape and the roof. Everyone was in place, whispering reports over their headsets above the thunder of the music.
Given that Blaine was suspected in an ongoing robbery-hostage-taking, the team poised for a no-knock, forced rapid entry. After a final round of radio checks, the commander gave the green light to his squad sergeant. A signal was relayed to the electricity company. Power was suddenly cut. The building became eerily silent, save for the distant yelp of a dog.
Within seconds, deafening flash-bang grenades smashed through windows and heavily armed SWAT members charged through the apartment door and the windows from the balcony, shouting orders to the man on the sofa.
“FBI! Get on the floor, now!”
SWAT members, guns drawn, forced him to the floor amid the smoke and chaos.
“Hey, what the hell’s this!” the man protested while on his stomach as his hands were cuffed behind him.
He was in his twenties. He wore a tie-dye T-shirt and torn jeans.
His wallet was yanked from his back pocket.
He was Eldon Luna, age 24, of Arlington, according to his Texas driver’s license.
“Hey, what the hell? You hurt my ears, assholes!”
The bathroom was checked, closets were checked; special equipment was used to scan the walls and ceiling for body mass. As the smoke from the grenades dissipated, the apartment was inspected two more times. The sound of metal against glass sounded as one agent tapped his weapon against a large rectangular tank in one corner.
“Damn! That a python?”
“It’s an Asiatic rock python.”
“You got a permit for it, Eldon?”
“It’s not mine.”
The squad leader radioed his commander, who alerted Doyle and the other agents that the apartment was cleared and declared safe.
By the time they’d entered, Eldon Luna had been placed back on the sofa where he remained handcuffed and under guard. While the other agents tugged on latex gloves and searched the unit, Doyle sat on the coffee table and faced Luna.
“Man, I think you dicks got the wrong place. I’m going to call a lawyer and I’m going to sue your asses off,” Luna said.
“Yes, you could do that from jail, Eldon, where we’re going to hold you for seventy-two hours. A lot can happen to you in jail in that time. Or...you can cooperate with us.”
“Cooperate? Why? I didn’t do anything.”
“Do you know Jerricko Titus Blaine?”
Luna said nothing.
Doyle leaned into his space.
“Do you want to sleep in a cell tonight?”
“No.”
“Answer the question.”
“Jerricko rents this place.”
“Where is Mr. Blaine?”
“What’s this about? Is he in some sort of trouble?”
“Answer the question.”
“He’s out of town on business.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think again.”
“I really don’t know. He’s been away for a few weeks.”
“What’re you doing in his apartment, Eldon?”
“He’s letting me stay here because my old lady kicked me out.”
“How do you know him?”
“I met him at a computer science conference in Fort Worth.”
“Eldon, tell me what you know about the robbery.”
“What robbery?”
Doyle indicated the cell phone and laptop on the coffee table next to him.
“These you
rs?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve got warrants to search everything on the premises. I’m sure we’ll find all kinds of enlightening evidence once our people probe every aspect of your life.”
Luna looked fearfully at Doyle then the other agents.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You think fast and you think hard. Things will go much better for you if you cooperate with us now. Later will be too late.”
“Think hard about what? I don’t even know what this is about!”
“Are you involved in the robbery in any way?”
“I don’t know anything about a robbery.”
“Did you help plot it?”
“What? Plot what?”
“How long have you lived here?”
“About a month.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Ask my ex-girlfriend, Karen. Karen McWhinney. She kicked me out a month ago. I’ll give you her number.”
“How did you come to live here?”
“After the conference, Jerricko and I hung out. He liked to talk about politics and we agreed that America had made some bad policy choices in the Middle East. We had some good talks, became friends. Then when Karen kicked me out, Jerricko invited me to live with him and Rose.”
“Rose?”
“His python.”
Doyle rubbed his hand over his face. This kid was running him in circles. “Tell me about Jerricko.”
“Easy to live with. He’s quiet, doesn’t like rock music. I respected that. He was always in his room on his computer. I could hear him talking to people online or over the phone.”
“Do you know who he talked to?”
“No. I’m not nosy—why should I know who he talks to?”
“What did they talk about?”
“I only heard parts. I wasn’t listening because it was none of my business. And usually I’m just listening to music on my headphones since he doesn’t like it, or watching a movie or something. His TV’s awesome.”
“Can you recall anything about the conversations you overheard?”
“Not much...”
“Did you ever hear Jerricko mention someone named Dan Fulton? Or anything about New York? Anything about a bank?”
Eldon shook his head.
“Anything about bombs?”
“Bombs? Hell, no. What’s going on?”
“Eldon, I need you to focus and tell me anything you did hear.”
“I heard some stuff about politics, the news, oppression and...stuff about nonbelievers, or something. But I wasn’t listening.”
Doyle was making notes.
“Anything else that sticks out? Anything that sounded strange?”
Luna shook his head, then stopped and bit his lip.
“Wait. There was one thing that was weird. The last time he called here to check in, he said that if anything happened to him he wanted me to take care of Rose.”
33
Santa Ana, California
Lieutenant Sean Baylor came around his desk and greeted FBI agent Wade Darden with a crushing handshake.
“Have a seat, Wade. Got everything right here.”
Darden, the Bureau’s resident agent for Orange County, was handling the FBI’s urgent request for the Santa Ana PD to share the personnel records of Lori Wallace, a former officer with the force.
Several file folders waited on the small table where Darden and Baylor pored over them.
“Okay, from the top. We’ve got her application—she was married to Dan Fulton at the time but kept her family name, Wallace. There’s her education file. She’s got a degree in criminology from Cal State,” Baylor said.
Turning over file pages, Darden took his time, reading carefully through Lori Wallace’s background investigation, her personal history statement and her psychological evaluation, which included a written exam and an interview with a psychologist.
“She passed her medical and excelled on physical agility, the wall, the long pursuit and the body drag. High scores at the range, too,” Baylor said.
They continued flipping pages that reflected an exemplary career.
“In the four years she was on the job she was mostly on patrol. She’d received several commendations. Letters of thanks from the community,” Baylor said. “She took a little time off when she had her baby, came back to more commendations.”
They turned to pages documenting new assignments.
“She did outstanding investigative work and was on track to become a detective,” Baylor said. “Then it all turned to crap. It’s the next folder, Wade.”
Darden opened the red folder of reports, pages of statements, maps, drawings, photographs and a list of other items relating to one homicide and a police-involved shooting.
“Wallace and her partner, Tim Rowland, a seven-year veteran, are on overnight patrol,” Baylor said. “They roll up to a corner store for a coffee and come upon an armed robbery in progress. As they step out of their patrol car, the suspect, who had just robbed the clerk of one hundred and sixty-one dollars, is exiting and firing a handgun into the store, hitting a pregnant woman in the arm. Rowland reacts, reaches for his sidearm but the shooter beats him, getting off three rounds, hitting Rowland in the jaw, neck and shoulder above his vest. Rowland stumbles back, collapsing into Wallace, who manages to catch him while drawing her weapon and firing at the suspect.
“The suspect fires more rounds at Rowland, who is now a shield for Wallace, enabling her to fire repeatedly at the suspect, hitting him in the head and heart, killing him while Rowland dies on top of her in her arms. That’s what happened. Much of it was caught on the store’s security cameras. I’ll get you a copy of the videos.”
Darden stared at the photos, shaking his head in awe.
“That’s one hell of a firefight, Sean.”
“The investigators say it all went down in four or five seconds. It’s all there in the report.”
Darden turned to the next folder and Baylor continued his story.
“She surrendered her weapon, homicide took over and all procedures were followed to the letter with regard to a police-involved shooting.”
The next reports showed that Wallace took leave with pay and underwent counseling.
“The district attorney’s office called it a righteous shooting and Wallace was cleared of any wrongdoing,” Baylor said.
Reports showed that five months later, Wallace returned to patrol with a new partner but had trouble concentrating on the job.
“One day, they were backing up other units, pursuing a suspect reportedly armed with a gun after a domestic. Wallace had taken a point at the side of the house. When they called on her to move, she didn’t respond. She just froze. They found her on her knees, sobbing and calling out Rowland’s name. She took another leave from duty after that.”
Wallace underwent more intense therapy, according to the files. The next reports showed that her posttraumatic stress after Rowland’s murder was more severe than first thought. The final document showed that she’d resigned from the department.
“It was a shame because she was about to make detective,” Baylor said. “To help get her life back together, her husband sought a transfer and accepted a post with the branch in Roseoak Park in Queens. They wanted a fresh start. He helped Lori get a job investigating fraudulent claims at Dixon Donlevy Mutual Life Insurance.”
Darden read the glowing letter of recommendation Santa Ana’s police chief had written to the company on her behalf.
Flipping back through the files he shook his head, stopping to reread her psychological reports detailing how she was grappling with survivor’s guilt and guilt over the killing of the twenty-five-year-old suspect, Malcolm Jordan Samad
yh.
“Do you have anything on the shooter?” he asked.
“Blue folder,” Baylor said.
Darden studied Samadyh’s file. He had a long criminal record. When he was twenty, he was sentenced to three years for robbery at Tehachapi, the state prison in Southern California’s Cummings Valley.
His mother, an English teacher, had been born in a war-torn tribal region of Afghanistan where she’d met Malcolm’s father, an American aid worker from Los Angeles. They’d moved to California, gotten married and she became a US citizen. She’d given birth to Malcolm soon after and then his younger brother.
According to his file, Malcolm had been fourteen when his dad was killed in a traffic accident. Apparently he’d never gotten over it—instead he’d gotten into trouble, joining a gang, which led to crime, prison and, eventually, his death.
Just as he was closing the binder, Darden stopped cold. He’d almost missed it.
Flipping back through the shooter’s file, he found the records showing that, while in prison, Malcolm had taken his mother’s family name. Malcolm’s father’s name was Andrew Blaine.
Malcolm’s little brother was Jerricko Titus Blaine.
Darden reached for his phone.
34
Manhattan, New York
Dan Fulton’s in the vault, opening his briefcase, unfolding a duffel bag, filling it with bricks of cash then leaving the bank. Now he’s walking hurriedly to his Ford Taurus in the near-empty parking lot, driving out of the west exit.
“Run it again, Steph,” Varner said.
Agent Stephanie Transki, the New York FBI’s forensic video expert, clicked her mouse, replaying the security video taken inside SkyNational Trust Branch 487. They’d received it at the FBI’s New York division some thirty minutes earlier from the bank’s security team. The recording was packaged with footage from exterior cameras monitoring the building.
The contrast was good, the images clean and sharp. The exterior recording had captured two parked cars in the lot belonging to the tellers who’d opened the bank, but no other movement or individuals.
