‘‘Do you think they were serious?’’ asked Hester.
‘‘Well, I thought they were kidding, until the officer got shot.’’
We sent her home to get any documents she might have, with the suggestion that she leave Mom there with her daughter when she came back. Sounded good to her.
Well. Not too shabby for an afternoon. And we weren’t done yet.
When Melissa returned, George was there. We were just a little concerned about her reaction to another FBI agent, after the hassle about the kidnapping, and as we knew how her in-laws felt about the Feds. We needn’t have worried.
She smiled at George. ‘‘I wasn’t kidnapped, but I’m getting screwed over, and I want something done about it.’’
She had a stack of papers in a brown grocery sack. A thick stack.
‘‘I kind of brought stuff you might be interested in.’’
I picked up the phone. ‘‘Sally, could you come back here when you get a chance . . . we have a whole bunch of copying to be done . . .’’ I looked at Melissa. ‘‘If that’s okay with you?’’
‘‘Fine,’’ she said.
‘‘Then let her do it,’’ came a faint voice over the phone.
‘‘We’ll see you back here in a couple of minutes?’’
‘‘Yes . . .’’ said Sally, just a little disgusted.
‘‘You know,’’ said Melissa a few minutes later, ‘‘I’m just sorry the law won’t let me testify against Bill.’’
‘‘That’s no problem,’’ said Hester.
‘‘But I thought . . .’’
‘‘You can’t be compelled to testify against him. But you sure can, if it’s of your own free will. That’s how abused women can testify against their husbands.’’
‘‘No shit?’’ You could almost see the lightbulb come on.
‘‘Hey, there’s lots to learn here,’’ I said.
‘‘I guess so,’’ said Melissa.
‘‘For us too.’’ I leaned forward, pen in hand. ‘‘Let’s get back to that mission, or whatever they called it.’’ I adjusted my reading glasses and looked at her over the top. ‘‘Any idea whatever what they were talking about doing? Or when?’’
‘‘Honest, Mr. Houseman, I don’t think I do.’’
‘‘Mmmmm . . .’’
‘‘Really, I don’t. Only that it struck me that it would be sometime not too far off.’’
‘‘Any idea why?’’ asked Hester.
‘‘Why it was soon?’’
‘‘Why you think it is.’’
‘‘Well, Herman was saying things like ‘We have to be ready,’ and ‘any day and they could come,’ and stuff like that.’’
‘‘Oh.’’ Hester looked at me questioningly. Do I keep up this line, or what?
When you interview, it’s always best to avoid having the interviewee speculate regarding areas where they have no knowledge or experience. The danger is that you stop doing questions and answers, and cross the line into conversation. We were really close to that line with Melissa.
‘‘Did Herman make any specific preparations for the mission?’’ I asked. My last shot.
‘‘Oh, yeah, he did that all right. That’s when he bought the ski masks and the cammo clothes for him and Bill. They were the ‘blockers,’ or the ‘linemen,’ or something like that. Reminded me of football.’’
‘‘Blocking force?’’ asked George, looking up from the documents Melissa had brought.
‘‘That sounds right.’’
Melissa looked back at me, proud of herself. George looked at me and made a time-out sign.
‘‘Well, Melissa, thanks a lot. You’ve been a really big help . . .’’ And after about two or three minutes Melissa was leaving, with a promise to return with more documents, as soon as she could round them up.
George, Hester, and I had a discussion. Much about what George had discovered in the documents, and a little about the mission. The possible link to Herman and company raising the marijuana for cash. That came first, in fact, and just about thirty seconds after Melissa had left the building.
‘‘I’m worried about that mission business,’’ I said. ‘‘Whatever it is, it doesn’t sound like harvesting marijuana.’’
‘‘Yeah,’’ said Hester.
We both looked at George, half expecting a ‘‘pish tosh’’ official FBI disclaimer.
‘‘Yeah, it scares me half to death,’’ he said. Earnestly.
‘‘Oh, swell,’’ said Hester. ‘‘You were supposed to say that there was nothing to fear, or something like that.’’
‘‘Yeah, I know,’’ said George, sitting back down and picking up the stack of Melissa’s papers. ‘‘However . . . A ‘blocking force,’ of course, is a military term for force that blocks.’’ He looked up, pleased.
‘‘Boy,’’ I said, ‘‘am I glad you’re here.’’
‘‘No, no, no,’’ he said. ‘‘Let me finish. That dude you and Hester saw making his getaway from the farm, I think I’ve found him in here. Or his tracks anyway.’’ He pushed a single-page document toward us.
It was a letter, obviously mimeographed, with the recipient’s name newer and darker than the rest. ‘‘Armed Forces of the Reoccupation Government’’ was in a curved letterhead, with a little guy in a tricornered hat, with a musket and a flag. Very similar to the National Guard symbol, except the man was standing in front of a capitol-shaped building with a cracked dome. There was one of those little wavy banners below that, which said ‘‘White Freedom.’’ The body seemed to be a notification of a meeting of some sort, and exhorted everyone from the ‘‘unit’’ to be there. The date was about three months ago, April 14th, and the location was a town in Minnesota I never heard of. The signature was Edward Killgore, Col., AFRG. But it was actually signed with a scrawl that looked kind of like a G with a couple of circles after it.
‘‘So?’’ I asked.
‘‘The signature,’’ said George. ‘‘Look at the signature.’’
I squinted, then put on my reading glasses. ‘‘God?’’ I asked.
‘‘No, no, no!’’ he said, exasperated. ‘‘Not God, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that’s Gabe. That’s an e that he trails off, and it looks like . . .’’
‘‘Gabe.’’
‘‘Gabe.’’
We all needed coffee after that. Sally came back to copy the papers, and we got her some coffee too.
It turned out that what Melissa had provided us with was a fairly complete paper trail for a theoretical hoard of gold, kept in Belize and manipulated from San José, Costa Rica. The manipulating organization was known as the P.M. Corporation, with offices in San José; Portland, OR; Corpus Christi, TX; and St. Paul, MN. Well, box numbers. They listed suites only in San José and Portland. P.M., it seemed, stood for Precious Metals. So . . .
What they did was this: You bought a share in the P.M. gold, for $500. This got you an ounce. They kept the gold marked with your name, and it would be instantly available to you when and if the government of the United States collapsed and there was a ‘‘World Upheaval followed by a World Crash.’’ This, by the way, seemed to be pretty inevitable, if you listened to P.M. If, on the off chance, the United States hadn’t collapsed by 2015, you would receive $5,000 per invested share. Right. Wanna buy a bridge?
Interestingly enough, although P.M. stoutly claimed that there was no money of value except gold (the rest were all ‘‘false creations of credit’’), they would accept your personal check.
And it was in this bunch that Herman had invested his and his son’s net worth. So had many, many others, if you could believe that part of the P.M. spiel. This wasn’t the first group that did this that I’d had information about, but P.M. was the first one I’d seen with glossy, slick brochures.
‘‘People can’t really be this dumb, can they?’’
‘‘Carl,’’ said George, ‘‘they get a lot dumber than that.’’
I’d worked fraud cases before, but it had been my experience
that the average Iowa farmer would read a spiel like that one and spit on the shiny shoes that tried to sell it to him. Politely, of course. Maybe even apologetically. But he’d spit accurately, nonetheless. Herman must have been a little short of saliva one day. Not to mention brains. Yet he was known to be a little short on assets as well. He’d been convinced enough to borrow and beg to get the funds to buy into the P.M. hoard. The ‘‘pot of gold,’’ as I began to think of it.
‘‘God,’’ said Hester. ‘‘He borrowed money to buy into that?’’
‘‘Yeah,’’ I said.
‘‘Well,’’ said George, ‘‘that’s not half of it. We’ve dealt with P.M. and its right-wing connections before this. There actually is some gold, you know.’’
No, I hadn’t known. As it turned out, P.M. was just one of several names used by a small group of Nazi types in South America who were supporting the neo-Nazis in the United States. The money that they gathered in was shipped back into the United States and ended up in the coffers of some militant groups, who used it mostly to buy equipment and for publicity and recruitment propaganda. Well, a lot of it went into the pockets of certain individuals too.
‘‘You know,’’ said George, ‘‘that’s one of the stranger aspects of all this business. Most of the individuals who prosper here have followers. Most of them exhort those followers not to pay their federal taxes, and many don’t. But most of those making the big profits do report to the IRS, and pay their taxes up front. They just claim that they don’t. Neat, isn’t it?’’
‘‘That it is.’’ I got up to go get more coffee. ‘‘Anybody else want more?’’
‘‘Me,’’ said Sally.
‘‘Okay.’’
‘‘Can I ask a question?’’ said Sally.
All three of us officers had worked with Sally enough to know that she could be trusted completely and that she frequently contributed quite a bit to investigations.
‘‘Sure,’’ I said.
‘‘What do you think Herman’s wife thinks about all this? I mean, don’t you think she’d be furious about the money?’’
‘‘I don’t think Nola probably gave him too much crap about it,’’ I said, sort of absently. I hadn’t really thought about it.
‘‘I sure would,’’ she said earnestly.
‘‘Yeah,’’ I said, ‘‘but think about this situation. They’ve been married, what, about thirty years by now? Experienced the same ups and downs. Know the same people. They were probably quite a bit alike when they got married, for that matter.’’
‘‘So,’’ said Sally, ‘‘you think she agrees with him?’’
‘‘I think so,’’ I answered. ‘‘Either that or she could be behind it and he’s just following her. It sure wouldn’t be the first time.’’
‘‘But that big an investment?’’ Sally seemed truly perplexed.
‘‘Actually,’’ said George of the Bureau, ‘‘it’s not so much an investment as . . . as a commitment, I guess you’d say.’’
‘‘Commitment?’’ said Sally. ‘‘Like, in a promise?’’
‘‘Sort of,’’ said Hester. ‘‘I think George’s right. It would be like a couple investing heavily in their church or their mutual religion. That happens a lot, for a lot less of a promise of a good return on the investment.’’
‘‘Oh.’’
‘‘On the other hand,’’ said George.
‘‘No!’’ came from me and Hester at about the same time. George is an attorney by education, and an agent only by trade. He can argue endlessly on either side of a question.
‘‘Sorry I asked.’’ Sally grinned. ‘‘But I still say I’d be bent about that . . . even if’’—and the grin broadened— ‘‘it was my fault in the first place. I mean, if he’s dumb enough to do what I told him to do?’’ She smiled coyly. ‘‘What’s a girl to do?’’
The point? How well did we know Nola Stritch? Obviously not well enough to know if she was like Sally, so not well enough at all.
‘‘I’ll do her,’’ sighed Hester. ‘‘Thanks, Sally.’’
‘‘No problem. Just too bad the smartest cop got stuck with it.’’ With that, she stuck out her tongue at George and me and went back to copying papers.
In the meantime, George told us about the computers.
The combined DCI/FBI evidence team, working the Stritch residence, had apparently seized three computers, along with numerous disks. Neat. They were coming into the office with them before going to the lab.
‘‘We think,’’ said George, ‘‘that Herman and company probably did a lot of their correspondence on the machines, along with, maybe, a database of addresses . . .’’
‘‘Great,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We get to go over it?’’
‘‘That could be a problem,’’ said George. ‘‘The lab folks want their experts to do it, in case there’s any crypto stuff, and messages might be destroyed if we pry . . .’’
‘‘I don’t think,’’ I said, ‘‘that Herman’s able to cope with anything complex . . .’’
‘‘But do we want to take the chance?’’
Normally, I wouldn’t want to take a chance on destroying evidence. But George told us that it would be about three weeks before the information would be back from the lab.
‘‘Your lab, the FBI lab, right?’’ I asked.
‘‘Sure.’’
‘‘And they won’t give us shit,’’ I said. ‘‘If there’s anything concerning the P.M. organization, for instance . . . it’ll be classified because it’s part of an ongoing investigation, and we’ll never hear about it. Right?’’
George didn’t say anything.
‘‘And no matter what’s there, it just might as well be destroyed as far as our little investigation is concerned. Right?’’ I asked again.
George had kind of a pained look on his face. ‘‘Probably.’’
‘‘And even if your people,’’ I said, turning to Hester, ‘‘had rights to the stuff, they’d just hand it over to Eff Bee One.’’ I used the derogatory term for the FBI. Well, one of them.
‘‘Sure,’’ said Hester. ‘‘No administrator can take the hard decision. Even if it kills the investigation. He’s still ‘done the right thing.’ ’’ She shrugged. ‘‘That’s a lot better than trying to explain why you permanently screwed up the evidence.’’
It was quiet in our little room.
‘‘Well,’’ said Sally, ‘‘that’s terrible.’’
It was quiet again, for what seemed like a minute.
‘‘Are we agreed,’’ I asked, ‘‘that there’s likely to be stuff on those machines we need to see?’’
‘‘Oh, sure,’’ said George. ‘‘No doubt.’’
‘‘Yeah,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Probably quite a bit. For all the good it’ll do us.’’
‘‘Well,’’ I said, ‘‘do we agree that Herman is probably not a computer genius?’’
We did.
‘‘And even if his wife is ten times brighter, he’s still going to have to be able to run it without screwing it up too bad if he makes a mistake?’’
We agreed about that too.
‘‘So just how heavily encrypted can this be? Just a simple password, probably?’’
Probably would be. We agreed on that too. In fact, we also agreed that it wouldn’t be too complex, and would be something that Herman couldn’t possibly mess up.
‘‘Like,’’ said Sally, ‘‘his name?’’
I’d almost forgotten she was there. But she was probably right.
It was silent for a few seconds more.
‘‘Is it time to eat supper yet?’’ I asked.
‘‘That all you think of?’’ asked George.
Eighteen
THE PLAN WAS THIS: When the two agents from the lab crew got in, they’d have several priorities. First of all, they’d be thinking both about supper and about their motel room. Fine. George, as the resident agent, would offer to take them to a good restaurant. Actually, the only resta
urant. But, given the press being all over the place, they surely couldn’t leave their evidence in their car. Nor, given the sensitivity, could they very well leave it at their motel. Especially after George would explain that we thought we’d seen some known extremists in the area. Where would they store the evidence until they could get it to the lab? Why, at the Sheriff’s Department, that’s where. Where else?
George was really funny, saying things like ‘‘I can’t believe you’re actually going to go through with this,’’ and ‘‘I can’t believe I’m going to be a party to this,’’ and things like that. His own curiosity, however, was the deciding factor. He was totally suave with the lab guys.
I didn’t do too bad myself, writing out a receipt for each separate component of the computers they’d brought in: a tower, a desktop, and a laptop. Two monitors, one printer, and one external modem. And one external 5¼-inch disk drive.
‘‘Must have been running old software,’’ I said, writing the serial number of the drive on my sheet.
The youngest of the lab agents glanced at me when I said that. Suspicious of people, he wasn’t too happy leaving the equipment with someone who knew what it was. Like I’d do anything . . .
Anticipating that they’d be polite and ask Hester and me to go with them, we decided we had already eaten. We were also busy. But ‘‘thanks anyway.’’
After the computers were in our padlocked evidence room, the absent Lamar and I being the only two officers with a key to the heavy padlock, and while the agents were eating and then sleeping, what would the local homicide unit be doing? Slick, no? I doff my hat . . .
About an hour later, Hester and I were sitting in the tiny evidence room, with almost no ventilation, locked in by Sally, who had been entrusted with my key to the padlock, and whom I would contact via walkie-talkie to let us out. Having finished taking three Polaroid shots of the computers just the way the FBI agents had placed them in the room, and then struggling with the extension cords we’d had to scrounge up to even get power to the computers, not to mention having to sit on the floor with the machines, as there were no tables in the room, only shelves, I was having second thoughts about the whole business.
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