Shoreline

by Carolyn Baugh

  “One of its early voices was Wesley Swift.”

  Baker’s voice had grown louder, surer, as though settling into his role. Nora tilted her head to listen to him. She wondered if any television preachers would endorse such a message.

  “What was that church Swift founded?” Nora asked. “Christian Christians or something?”

  “Church of Jesus Christ-Christian,” said Anna.

  Sheila asked, “Is he alive? Dead?”

  “Oh, way dead,” Pete said. “Must have been the sixties.”

  “1970,” Anna volunteered. “His disciple Richard Butler founded the Aryan Nations.”

  “Who’ve been racists without a country for a while now—they lost big in a lawsuit. No more compound, no real leadership,” Pete said.

  Emancipation from the yoke of Judaism was once the greatest of necessities … and now we add to this the yoke of the black, the Muslim, the Arab, the Asian, the African, and all the unwashed migrants swarming over our sovereign borders. What self-deception it is to pretend we do not hold a natural repugnance against all of these, instinctive as it is primal and born of self-preservation, preservation of a noble race.

  “I don’t think ransom is going to help April Lewis,” Sheila murmured. “Not a federal government representative, true, but a government official. A black one.”

  “Do we have proof of life yet?” Pete asked.

  “No,” Sheila responded, shaking her head. “Chief Nichols and I are going to visit the family as soon as we’re finished here and discuss how to proceed. And listen, people. You are all representatives of the federal government. Which means we don’t set foot outside this office without Kevlar from now on.”

  Pete glanced at her skeptically.

  “Even just to go for coffee, Peter,” Sheila said, putting on the scary face. “Does each of you understand me?”

  They all grunted assent. Anna was leaning forward, as was Pete. Nora, too, was riveted.

  “He’s kinda hot,” Anna admitted. “Married, though. Nice ring…” Baker made yet another solidarity fist. As the camera zoomed in, the hammered silver band came into view. “Nice teeth. All in all they picked a good spokesman.”

  Nora looked at her, a little repelled by her callousness.

  Anna seemed self-assured though. “Well, look, they needed someone to bring together all these alt-right groups, didn’t they? Christian Identity and Patriots and whatnot … I mean did you ever see John Trochmann? It’s only logical that someone easier on the eye should step up this time.”

  Baker had his fist up again, inciting his people.

  An act of rebellion every day to take back our country once and for all; a purging of the country’s impurities. A replicable plan for those who know that only through revolution will we regain what has been lost; the lie of democracy is not enough.

  Fourteen acts of violence will collectively work the deed that redeems the world.

  Pay attention. Pay careful attention and repeat this formula over and over, in your towns, in your cities, in the furthest reaches of the globe.

  Fourteen.

  All four of them looked at each other.

  Finally, Sheila said, “Pete, do you think your Starbucks friend could be convinced to deliver? It’s going to be a long week.”

  * * *

  The Critical Incident Response Group had taken rather more of Nora’s time at Quantico than she’d deemed necessary. She had not elected to tread a path that led to being part of CIRG, but it felt to her that, in response, the Bureau made her study the division and its organization even more, perhaps to cultivate the necessary level of awe. CIRG had emerged out of the post-Waco self-flagellations and remained as a sort of bloated beast, feeding off the Bureau’s fear of failure. Those training for either its Aviation and Surveillance or Tactical Operations sections tended to walk with a particular swagger, while the Behavioral Analysis people cultivated a mystique that fluctuated between brainiac and seductive psychotherapist. Those in the Critical Incident Intelligence Unit, meanwhile, spoke to no one but each other.

  Nora knew that the CIRG sweeping into Erie would be transformative. Both the scope of the CIRG and the egos of those directing it were massive. Sheila would be eaten alive, and whatever limited sense of power the three special agents on staff had attained would vanish.

  She looked at Pete and Anna, feeling like she needed to brace herself.

  Anna said, “Anyone feeling nostalgic for pedophiles?”

  “Ooh, me,” Pete said, immediately.

  Pete was assigned the task of sorting out a source for the webcast link that had originally been emailed to them. Anna and Nora were to parse the text for any concrete indications of a plan, including any possible threats against local institutions. Sheila was busy calling in the cavalry and managing the councilwoman’s abduction, an issue that both the family and the FBI were desperate to keep from the media.

  Anna’s reading glasses were perched on the tip of her nose as she made a grim list using her trademark incongruous purple felt tip pen. “Blacks, Jews, Muslims, Arabs, immigrants…”

  “Mexicans … Latinos generally. Illegal immigrants generally. And then probably refugees, right?” said Nora. “The writer is complaining about the government letting people in, and you have a refugee population here.…”

  Anna looked up as though remembering something. “We got a call, actually. Two or three days ago. Wait.”

  She popped out of her seat and began rummaging about on the shelf over her desk, her orange hair looking particularly unkempt. Nora just had time to peek at her BlackBerry, the screen of which was now blank. Ben had given up trying to talk to her. By now, the field office in Philly would know about Gabriel Baker. She wondered if Ben were back at work after “taking care” of his ex-girlfriend in New York City.

  “There was some graffiti,” Anna said, finally seizing a different legal pad than the one she’d been jotting notes on. “They called it in as a hate crime.”

  “Who’s this?” Nora asked.

  “You said refugees. I’m saying, the Office of Refugee Resettlement in DC has a local office here, and they called in some graffiti on their building on Monday.” Anna looked slightly guilty as she said this.

  “I take it we didn’t get back to them?” Nora asked.

  “Well, Monday and Tuesday we were knee-deep in Frank Burgess, right?” Anna replied, looking, it seemed to Nora, as though she were seeking absolution.

  Nora gave her none. “What did the graffiti say?”

  Anna checked her notes.

  “Go back where you come from.”

  “Unfriendly,” Nora observed.

  “Nothing more unfriendly than a dangling participle,” Anna rejoined. “On the other side of the building they wrote Rabid dogs.”

  “Better. I like to see good old campaign rhetoric take root.”

  Anna gave a small shrug and seemed to be scanning the notes for anything else that might provide insight.

  “Why would you come to Erie as a refugee?” Nora wondered aloud.

  “Why do you go anywhere as a refugee?” Anna responded absently.

  Nora shrugged, hesitant to admit she was a little vague on the process.

  “Anyway,” she said, looking up from her notes, “since the natives are leaving the area in record numbers, the refugee population has boosted the city’s numbers.”

  “Given Erie’s overall lack of diversity, should I assume the natives are leaving because the refugees are coming in?”

  Anna tsked softly, shaking her head. “Nah. The natives are leaving because there are no good factory jobs and fewer white-collar positions. Same old story. Still, the cost of living here is easier on a new resident than, say, Philly or Pittsburgh. Getting by in Erie is more doable.”

  Nora contemplated this. The rent on the French Street apartment was seven hundred dollars. In Philly, the same rent would have landed her in a roach-roiling death trap. She shivered. Her current home was more spacious than the apartment
in which she grew up.

  “Well, I guess that we have a pretty good idea where to start on our list, then.”

  Anna nodded. “Let’s pay them a visit and see if we can’t suggest they get some emergency plans in place. Or maybe just shut down for the next couple of days until we sort this out.”

  Nora had taken to wearing light cotton undershirts in case she needed to add the Kevlar vest to her outfit. The vest was hard to disguise under her Oxford shirt, but with the blazer it wasn’t too noticeable. The summer heat made the blazer seem like the accessory of an insane person, however. She and Anna exchanged knowing glances as they headed out into the July morning.

  Nora liked the way Anna drove. She was calm, assertive, and never swore. She drove as though she expected the traffic to part for her, and as far as Nora could tell, it actually did. They took State Street all the way up to 26th. It was not a pretty drive. The sedan passed several abandoned factories, their many-paned windows broken or blackened. Small, weedy lots were occupied by used car dealerships and shuttered businesses. Turning onto 26th, they traveled past shabby row houses with limp aluminum siding and listing window air conditioners.

  The Office of Refugee Resettlement’s International Institute inhabited a long, low building on East 26th. The two agents entered, their eyes adjusting with effort to the dim lighting after the fierce July sun. The mismatched chairs outside the office area held an array of people, and Nora regarded them curiously as Anna showed her badge to the intern.

  The intern asked them to wait in the waiting area. Nora settled into a folding chair, listening carefully to the soft buzz of languages around her. The faces were drawn, tired, and used-to-waiting.

  A tiny woman in a cream-colored headscarf spoke rapid Syrian Arabic to a gaunt teenaged boy with a thin layer of down on his upper lip. A little girl, no more than four, rotated between them, leaning against each set of knees, occasionally careening in her trajectory slightly beyond mother or brother and then skidding to a confused halt as she got too close to a stranger. With wide, blinking eyes, she would walk backwards and then begin again.

  One object of the girl’s fascination seemed to be the towering magenta wrap perched atop the head of an elderly African woman. The woman did not even glance at the little girl, though, and instead sat regarding Nora steadily. Her wide black eyes, the whites laced with a web of red veins, conveyed a total lack of interest. Nora felt that the gaze had been there, long and heavy, and Nora had accidentally sat down in it. Two tall men sat to the woman’s left, talking softly in a language Nora couldn’t divine.

  The heat in the room was intense, and Nora began to fidget. “What’s the name of the director?” She had just murmured these words to Anna when the intern tugged the sliding glass window aside and said, “Regina will see you now.”

  They stood and were given access to the office. Regina’s office was small and crowded with towering stacks of paper. The bright light barreling through the window at Regina’s back made her hair seem to glow. She was herself thin and gaunt, her face pale. Her half-hearted stab at makeup seemed to accentuate her paleness: two dark streaks of eyeliner weighed heavily on her eyelids, a jarring contrast to her blond eyelashes and eyebrows. She wore an orangey shade of lipstick. Nora, who wore no makeup at all, suddenly wanted to lean across the desk and do something she’d never done: offer girly advice. That look is all wrong for you. Maybe in just the way she’d heard women do occasionally—in the hushed tones of professional women who want to maintain professionalism. You have lipstick on your teeth. There’s mascara in your bangs. Your tag’s sticking up in back.

  Regina looked irritated.

  As though sensing this, Anna led off. “We apologize for the delay in getting back to you. We’re grateful that you contacted us.”

  Regina nodded gravely. “We’ve had an uptick lately in incidents. You know. It’s a different world now…”

  “Incidents?” asked Nora.

  “People come in. Kids. Bullied in school or walking home from the bus. Veiled women are getting yelled at more, headscarves being pulled off. But it’s a general xenophobia. My kids from the Congo are having a hard time. All it takes is an accent and even the other black kids go after them.”

  Anna tilted her head. “You have many from the Congo?”

  Regina nodded, her face pained. “Yeah. Often they’re kids who’ve been child soldiers, you know? So they get bullied like that, it’s like brushing off flies. Sometimes they’ll ask me, though … how much are they allowed to react.…”

  Anna nodded. “But nothing serious, no threats?”

  Regina looked at them with a steely gaze. “I think the graffiti is serious. And a threat. Which is why I called you for help.”

  Nora appreciated the firm response. She realized this woman didn’t give a damn what Nora thought about her makeup.

  “Has anything like this happened before?” Anna asked.

  “Never. People are generally pretty welcoming. With the exception of the incidents I mentioned, I’d call Erie folks very giving, very tolerant. Proud they are a host city.”

  Nora saw that Anna’s phone was vibrating with an incoming call. Anna glanced down. Sheila’s name filled the screen. Anna frowned, then stood up to walk to the hall. “Forgive me,” she said to Regina.

  Anna walking out did not help Regina’s mood. She watched Anna leave, then let her eyes rest on Nora.

  Nora shifted under her gaze, searching for something to say. “How many refugees are in Erie now?” she finally asked.

  “Upwards of nine thousand. There are five thousand Bhutanese alone.”

  Nora wasn’t going to confess she had no idea where Bhutan was.

  Regina sighed impatiently. “Look, you clearly have no idea what goes on here. We are the ones who greet refugees at the airport. We set them up in apartments and make sure they understand how to use flushing toilets and gas stoves and—”

  At Nora’s frown, Regina interrupted herself. “Look, not all of them are urban Europeans like the Bosnians. We get people from the Congo and remote areas of Sudan who’ve lived the last ten years under a tarp in a refugee camp where they had to dig their own latrines.”

  Nora nodded, feeling ignorant, as Regina continued.

  “We show them where the doctor is, get them plugged into English lessons, get them social security cards, get them jobs, help them fill out their tax forms, call their landlords to explain they have no hot water, teach them how to ride the city bus to get to work, enroll their kids in school.…”

  “So the people in the waiting room there—”

  “Have had their homes blown up, their daughters raped, their husbands shot, their brothers beaten. They’ve spent anywhere from two to twenty years in a filthy, over-crowded camp where you have to wait in line for clean water. They’ve spent years being lost. And we’re just trying to help them find their way.” Regina’s eyes were tired. Nora weighed the woman’s words in silence.

  Anna pushed open the door, her face drawn and tense.

  “Okay, so Regina, I do not want to rush through this, but I’m here to suggest that you get a solid emergency plan in place. More than this, I think it’s essential that you shut down for the next few days.”

  “Shut down?” Regina asked. “You’re kidding, right? These people rely on us for services, for—”

  “No, I’m afraid I’m not kidding. We have good reason to believe that this refugee community is a possible target of domestic terrorism.”

  Regina blinked. “Domestic terrorism,” she repeated incredulously.

  “There are patriot groups and white militia organizations all over the country,” Anna explained patiently. “We got a message from a local group that they have some issues with—”

  “—Everyone,” Nora supplied.

  “Well, with everyone not white,” Anna continued.

  “And so we were hoping—”

  But Regina was not listening. She had tilted her head slightly, narrowing her eyes as she listen
ed to a near deafening roar coming from the street. The glass pane in the window trembled. Each woman rose to standing. Nora instinctively put her hand on the handle of her gun as she and Anna exchanged a look. Motorcycles. A lot of them.

  And then the window exploded inward. The sound of rapid gunfire mingled with screaming filled the air. Regina tumbled forward over her desk as Anna yanked Nora to the ground; both women threw up their arms to avoid the shower of glass and bullets as they sheltered in front of Regina’s desk. The screaming in the lobby intensified, and the sound of gunfire grew even louder.

  Anna tugged the unconscious Regina all the way over her desk and onto the floor. “No pulse!” she said to Nora.

  Nora released the safety on her gun.

  Anna placed a hand on her arm, her eyes wide. “Those are semi-automatic weapons, Nora.”

  “And I’m a very good shot,” she said, shaking her off.

  She cracked open the door to Regina’s office and felt Anna immediately at her back. The scene unfolding took her breath away. Two women in jeans and T-shirts stood firing into the waiting room and reception area. One had a long blonde braid, the other medium-length brown hair that swung with every discharge of her weapon.

  “Hey!” Nora screamed, but she could not even hear her own voice over the thunderous sounds of the gunfire and the screaming. In horror she saw that the little Syrian girl was lying face down, her soft curls spilling onto the floor.

  Nora took aim through the smoky air and fired two bullets into the back of the woman with the braid; she fell forward immediately. Her brown-haired companion whirled to face Nora, a look of fury on her face. Before she could open fire, Nora plowed three shots into her midsection.

  The force of the bullets caused the woman to fly backwards and collapse onto the lap of one of the very tall Africans who was now slumped dead in his chair. The woman’s weapon spewed a few more bullets into the drop-ceiling before clattering onto the floor.

  Nora flattened herself against the wall of the corridor and met Anna’s eyes as she emerged fully from Regina’s office. She looked the way that Nora felt. Her face was white, her eyes wide. Her gun hand shook.