Demolition Angel

by Robert Crais

  “This isn’t going to take long. It was pretty easy, compared to some of the stuff I do for you guys. But I’m kinda curious about something.”

  Starkey noted that Bergen talked to Pell without looking at her. She thought that he was probably uncomfortable around women.

  Pell said, “What’s that?”

  “When I get jobs like this, I file a voucher back through Jerry, but this time he said leave it alone.”

  “We’ll talk about that later, Donnie. That isn’t Detective Starkey’s concern.”

  Bergen turned a vivid red.

  “Okay. Sure. Whatever you say.”

  “Show us about Claudius, Donnie.”

  “Okay. Sure. What do you want to know?”

  “Show us how to find Claudius.”

  “It’s already found. I was there this morning.”

  Bergen, who was sitting on the far side of Pell, as far from Starkey as he could get, reached over and punched several computer keys.

  “First thing I did was run a search for web sites about bombs, explosives, improvised munitions, mass destruction, things like that. There are hundreds of them.”

  As Starkey watched, the screen filled with the home page of something called GRAVEDIGGER, showing a skull with atomic bomb mushroom clouds in the eye sockets. Bergen explained that it was built and maintained by a hobbyist in Minnesota and was perfectly legal.

  “A lot of the more elaborate sites have message boards so people can post notes to each other or get together in a chat room so they can talk in real time. Do you know how we run the assassination scans?”

  Starkey said, “Donnie?”

  Bergen cleared his throat, glancing at her quickly before looking away.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “You don’t have to ma’am me. But I want you to talk to me, too, okay? I’m not going to bust you for smoking pot or whatever it is you’re worried about, okay?”

  “I wasn’t smoking pot.”

  “Just talk to me, too. I have no idea how you run the assassination scans. I don’t even know what assassination scans are.”

  Pell said, “Maybe we shouldn’t get into this.” Bergen turned red again.

  “Sorry.”

  “Just tell us how you found Claudius and bring us there.”

  Bergen twisted around to point out a stack of bright blue PowerMacs wired together on a metal frame.

  “What you do is search for word combinations. Say your combination is President, White House, and kill. I’ve got software that floats on forty service providers, constantly searching for that combination of words on message boards, newsgroups, and in chat rooms. If the combination shows up, the software copies the exchange and the e-mail addresses of the people involved. What I did was task the software with looking for the word ‘Claudius,’ along with a few others, and this is what we found. It’s as easy as keeping the world safe for democracy.”

  Bergen clicked another button, and a new page appeared. His chest swelled expansively.

  “You can run but you can’t hide, motherfuckers. That’s Claudius.”

  It was a face with a head of flames. The face was tortured, as if in great pain. Starkey thought it looked Roman. Along the left side was a navigation bar that showed different topics: HOW TO, THE PROS, MILITARY, GALLERY, LINKS, MOST WANTED, and several others.

  Starkey leaned toward the screen.

  “What are all these things?”

  “Pages within pages. The gallery is pictures of blast victims. It’s pretty gruesome. The how-to pages have articles about bomb construction and a message board where these a-holes can talk about it with each other. Here, let’s take a tour.”

  Bergen used a mouse control to click them through a tour of hell. Starkey watched diagrams of improvised munitions flick past on the screen, saw articles on substituting common household products for their chemical counterparts in order to create explosives. The gallery contained photographs of destroyed buildings and vehicles, medical text pictures of people that had been killed by explosive blasts, endless shots of third-world people missing feet and legs from land mines, and photos of animals that had been blown apart in wound research studies.

  Starkey had to look away.

  “These people are fucking nuts. This is disgusting.”

  “But legal. First Amendment, babe. And if you read close, you’ll note that nothing posted on these pages, which we call public pages, is legally actionable. No one is admitting to crimes or to buying and selling illegal items. They’re just hobbyists. Ha.”

  Pell said, “We’re looking for someone who calls himself Mr. Red. They talk about him here. We were told that he might even visit himself.”

  Bergen was nodding again before Pell finished, letting them know that he was still ahead of them. He checked his watch, then glanced over at a large desktop Macintosh.

  “Well, if he’s been here since eleven-oh-four last night, he’s calling himself something else. I’m charting the sign-ons.”

  He swiveled back to the laptop and used the mouse control to open the message boards.

  “As far as people posting about him, you got a lot of that. A bunch of these freaks think he’s a fucking hero. Red, and these other assholes. We’ve got discussion threads here about the Unabomber; that guy out in California they called the IRS Bomber, Dean Harvey Hicks; that asshole down south who was trying to kill judges and lawyers; those Oklahoma pricks; and a ton of stuff about Mr. Red.”

  Starkey said, “Show us.”

  Bergen punched up a thread devoted to Mr. Red, explaining that a thread was a string of messages posted on a particular bulletin board and how she could move sequentially from message to message to follow the exchange.

  She said, “Where do I start?”

  “Start anywhere. It won’t matter. The thread goes on forever.”

  Starkey chose a message at random and opened it.

  Subject: Re: Truth or Consequences

  From: BOOMER

  Message-id: >187765.34@zipp<

  »…that the Unabomber did his thing for so many years without being caught proves his superiority …«

  Kaczynski was lucky. His devices were simple, crude, and embarrassing. If you want elegance, look to Mr. Red.

  The Boomster

  (often mistaken, but never wrong)

  Starkey opened the next message of the thread.

  Subject: Re: Truth or Consequences

  From: JYMBO4

  Message-id: >222589.16@ nomad<

  »If you want elegance, look to Mr. Red.«

  What elegance, Boom? So he uses a schmantzy goo like Modex, and nobody knows who he is. The Unabomber wasn’t identified for seventeen frigging years. Red’s only been around for two. Let’s see if he’s smart enough to stay uncaught.

  But I do have to admit that his nonpolitical nature appeals to me. Ragheads and terrorists give bombers a bad name … ha! I dig it that he’s a straight-ahead ass-kicker.

  Rock on,

  J

  Starkey looked at Pell.

  “None of these people should be allowed to breed.”

  Pell laughed.

  “Don’t worry about that, Starkey. I’d guess most of these people have never had a date.”

  Starkey glanced to Bergen.

  “That’s what they do here, they leave messages back and forth like this?”

  “Yeah. That’s why they call it a message board. But these guys are the lightweights. No one here is gonna admit to anything criminal. If you want the real kooks, you’ve got to go to the chat room. See, most anyone can get where we are now if you know where to look, but the chat room here is different. You can’t just sign on, you know, like, knock, knock, here I am. You’ve got to be invited.”

  “How did you get invited?”

  Bergen looked smug.

  “I didn’t need an invitation; I broke in. But normal people need what’s called a hot ticket, that’s special software that someone has to send to you via e-mail. It’s like a key to
get in. These guys want to talk about things they can be arrested for, so they want their privacy. They know that I’m out here, man, the guys like me. But they think they’re safe in the chat room.”

  Bergen hit more keys, after which a window on the screen opened, showing two names having a conversation, ALPHK1 and 22TIDAL. They weren’t discussing bombs, or explosives, or anything even remotely related; they were discussing a popular television series.

  Pell said, “They’re talking about a goddamned actress.”

  “They can talk about anything they want in a chat room. It’s real time. They’re having a conversation just like we are, only they’re typing it. These guys could be anywhere on the planet.”

  Starkey watched their exchange with a growing sense that she might be discovered, that these people might suddenly look through the computer screen and see her.

  “Can they see us?”

  “Nope, not now. We are cloaked, man, absolutely invisible. There are no walls on the Internet, no walls at all when I am at play.”

  Bergen laughed again, and Starkey thought he was probably as crazy as the loons they were watching.

  Pell sighed deeply, then nodded at her.

  “I can see him here, Starkey. These people would appeal to his ego. He would come here, read all this crap about how great he is, it’s just the kind of thing a guy like this would do. We can reach him here.”

  Starkey was swept by the realization that any of these people could be Mr. Red himself.

  She looked past Pell to Bergen.

  “We can leave messages here if we have a screen name?”

  “Sure. Post messages, come here into the chat room, anything you want if I set you up for it. That’s why we’re here, right?”

  She looked at Pell, and Pell nodded.

  “That’s what we want.”

  “No problemo. Let’s get to it, and you can get on your way.”

  Pell

  They chose the name HOTLOAD. Pell thought it was silly, but, as they sat there working, he decided that there was a subliminal sexuality to it that could work for them.

  He watched Starkey out the corner of his eye, admiring her intensity. Bergen’s office was small and cramped; barely big enough for the three of them to fit in front of the computer. Bergen smelled so bad that Pell kept leaning away from him into Starkey. Every time Pell touched her, Starkey shrank away. Once, when their thighs touched, he thought she was going to fall out of her chair.

  Pell wondered about that, thinking that maybe she had an aversion to men or hated being touched, but he decided that this was unlikely. When he’d had the damned spell in Atascadero, she had expressed a surprising warmth that he’d found moving … even as she chewed his ass about Tennant.

  “Earth to Pell.”

  Starkey and Bergen were both staring at him. He realized that he hadn’t been paying attention, that he had been thinking about Starkey.

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, Jesus Christ, Pell, pay attention. I don’t want to spend the night here.”

  Bergen showed them how to use the little computer, how to turn it on and off, and set them up with an Internet address through an anonymous provider owned and operated by the government. Then he showed them how to get to Claudius once they had accessed the Internet. They talked over how to proceed and decided to do something that Bergen called “trolling.” Writing as Hotload, they posted three messages about Mr. Red on the message boards: two affirming Hotload’s status as a fan and one reporting a rumor that Mr. Red had struck again in Los Angeles, asking if anyone knew if this was true. Bergen explained that the idea was to provoke a response and establish a presence on the boards.

  When they finished, Pell told Bergen that he would be back in a few minutes, then walked Starkey out.

  Starkey said, “Why do you have to go back?”

  “ATF business. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Oh, fuck yourself, Pell. Jesus.”

  “This annoyance? Is it perpetual with you?”

  Starkey frowned without answering. She shook out a cigarette and lit up. Pell thought about all the smoking and drinking, wondering if she had always been this way or if this Starkey had been born that day in the trailer park. Like the tough talk and bad attitude. Sometimes, as he drove around the city or lay in his shitty hotel room, Pell wanted to ask her those things, but knew it wouldn’t be appropriate. He knew too damned much for his own good, such as how something like the trailer park could change a person, like if your inside was weak, you covered it with a hard outside. He forced himself to stop thinking these things.

  She waved the cigarette like she wasn’t happy with the way it was lit, then stared past him.

  “I’ve got to get back to Spring Street. I’m supposed to go out with Marzik, looking for people who saw our guy.”

  “You take the computer. We can get together at your place later to see if anyone responded.”

  She glanced at him, then shrugged.

  “Sure. We can do it at my place. I’ll wait in the car.”

  Pell watched Starkey walk away until she was gone, then went back to Bergen’s office. He knocked again, and Bergen peered past him down the hall just like before, making sure that the coast was clear. Pell hated dealing with people like this.

  When the door was closed, Bergen said, “I hope I didn’t say anything wrong in front of her.”

  Pell took out an envelope containing twelve hundred dollars, then watched as Bergen counted it.

  “Twelve hundred. That’s fine. This is the first time you guys have paid me in cash. Usually I file a voucher, but this time Jerry said to leave it alone.”

  “If Jerry said to leave it alone, you should leave it alone.”

  Bergen shrugged, nervous.

  “Right. You want a receipt?”

  “What I want is a second computer.”

  Bergen stared at him.

  “You want another one? Just like the one I gave you?”

  “Yes. Set up so I can reach Claudius.”

  “What do you need a second one for?”

  Pell stepped closer, met Bergen’s eyes in a way that made the muscular man flinch.

  “Can you fix me up with a second computer or not?”

  “It’s another twelve hundred.”

  “I’ll come back later. Alone.”

  8

  • • •

  After Starkey dropped Pell back at his motel, she and Marzik spent the afternoon interviewing customers of the Silver Lake laundry with no success. No one recalled seeing a man in a baseball cap and long-sleeved shirt making a call. Starkey dreaded reporting to Kelso that the suspect likeness would remain unresolved.

  At the end of the day, they swung past the flower shop to show Lester Ybarra the three likenesses that Starkey had gotten from Pell.

  Lester considered the three pictures, then shook his head.

  “They look like three different guys.”

  “They’re the same guy wearing disguises.”

  “Maybe the guy I saw was wearing a disguise, too, but he looked older than these guys.”

  Marzik asked to bum one of Starkey’s Tagamet.

  Starkey drove home that night determined to give herself a break from the gin. She made a large pitcher of iced tea. She sipped it as she tried to watch television, but spent most of the evening thinking about Pell. She tried to focus on the investigation instead, but her thoughts kept returning to Pell and their earliest conversation that day, Pell saying that he would take the bullets if Tennant filed the charge, Pell saying he would take the hits.

  Starkey shut the lights, went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. Not even her usual pathetic two hours.

  Finally, she took Sugar’s picture from her dresser, brought it into the living room, and sat with it, waiting for the night to end.

  One man had already taken the hits for her. She would never allow another man to do that again.

  At ten minutes after nine the next morning, Buck Daggett called her at Spring S
treet.

  “Ah, Carol, I don’t want to be a pest, but I was wondering if you’ve had any breaks.”

  Starkey felt a wave of guilt. She knew what it was like to be in Buck’s position, feeling that you were on the outside of something so devastating. She had felt that way after the trailer park. She still did.

  “Not really, Buck. I’m sorry.”

  “I was just wondering, you know?”

  “I know. Listen, I should call to keep you up on this. I’ve just been so busy.”

  “I heard they found some writing in the frag. What’s that about?”

  “We’re not sure what we found. It’s either a 5 or an S but, yeah, it was cut into the body of the pipe.”

  Starkey wasn’t sure how much she should tell him about Mr. Red, so she let it go at that.

  Buck hesitated.

  “A 5 or an S? What in hell is that, part of a message?”

  Starkey wanted to change the subject.

  “I don’t know, Buck. If anything develops, I’ll let you know.”

  Santos waved at her, pointing at the phone. A second line light was blinking.

  “Listen, Buck, I got a call. As soon as we get anything, I’ll call.”

  “Okay, Carol. I’m not nagging or anything.”

  “I know. I’ll see you later.”

  Starkey thought he sounded disappointed, and felt all the more guilty for avoiding him.

  The second call was John Chen.

  “We got an evidence transfer here in your name from the ATF lab in Rockville.”

  “Is it bomb components from Miami?”

  “Yeah. You should’ve told me it was coming, Starkey. I don’t like stuff just showing up like this. I got court today, and now I have to take care of all this chain of evidence paperwork. I’ve gotta be at court by eleven.”