Known Dead

by Donald Harstad

  ‘‘But why,’’ I asked, ‘‘would Herman do what Borcherding told him to do? Especially when it came to killing a man. And why would he say something stupid, like ‘he’s got a bomb,’ for Christ’s sake?’’

  ‘‘Well,’’ said George, with unusual enthusiasm. ‘‘Well. If he’s got a dedicated line to a modem, I say we just go up and pick up Borcherding’s ass and ask him!’’

  ‘‘It might be easier than that,’’ said Hester, staring out the window. ‘‘I think that’s him out there with the press right now.’’

  Sure enough. He was at the far end of the parking lot, in a little cluster of, maybe, six reporters who were having coffee and doughnuts. Damn. It was Friday, and we were going to be moving Herman, Bill, and Nola to the courthouse for their preliminary hearings. Normally we wouldn’t have had to do that, but they had seen a magistrate on the day they were brought in, and he’d arranged for a District Court judge to review his bail amounts. The hearing was set for 1000.

  ‘‘Why aren’t they all waiting at the courthouse?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘Better photo ops as they come down the jail steps,’’ said Hester, taking a swallow of coffee and continuing to look out the window. ‘‘Our man has a camera around his neck. With,’’ she continued slowly, ‘‘a pretty long lens.’’

  George, naturally, rethought his position.

  ‘‘Well,’’ he said hesitantly, ‘‘we might want to be a bit more circumspect here.’’

  ‘‘Maybe for more reasons than you’d think,’’ said Hester. ‘‘If we go out and just scarf him up right now, your bosses are gonna wonder just how on God’s green earth we knew it was him.’’

  ‘‘Good point,’’ said George. Quickly.

  ‘‘Well,’’ I said, gently mocking George, ‘‘we might just come up with a reason to suspect him of something without having to use the e-mail stuff.’’

  ‘‘Not likely,’’ said George.

  ‘‘I didn’t say it’d be quick,’’ I answered. ‘‘Anyway, I want to see whom he reports to.’’

  ‘‘He owns his own paper,’’ said George.

  ‘‘I said ‘to,’ not ‘for.’ He was relaying a message to Herman at one point. For my money that was a message from the ‘masked man’ Hester and I saw running away . . .’’

  ‘‘We could watch him forever,’’ said Hester, still not turning toward us, ‘‘and we’d never know that.’’

  ‘‘Not us,’’ I said. ‘‘Can you see if Nancy Mitchell’s out there?’’

  ‘‘She’s not,’’ said Hester. ‘‘She’d be at the courthouse anyway. She does words, not pictures.’’

  ‘‘Ah.’’

  The phone call to the clerk’s office took only a few seconds. Then Nancy was on the line, and curious as to why we wanted to see her, to say the least. I told her to say it was in regards to Rumsford, in her capacity as a witness.

  ‘‘It’ll be later this afternoon, after the hearings and all that,’’ she said.

  It was time for another favor. Which she knew, of course.

  ‘‘Look, make it in the next five minutes, and I’ll see to it that you get to talk with one of them as they go through the building.’’ She agreed, readily, but without noticeable surprise. She was getting used to the preferential treatment.

  George, as usual, was a bit nervous. ‘‘I don’t know that we should be dealing with this woman . . .’’

  ‘‘Oh, George,’’ said Hester, sounding exasperated, ‘‘the FBI probably wouldn’t. Those of us without resources, however, have to punt once in a while.’’

  ‘‘Once in a while?’’

  ‘‘Frequently,’’ I said. ‘‘Very frequently.’’

  As it turned out, George was sufficiently bothered by the whole business that he decided to be taken off the kicking team. While Hester and I met with Nancy in the booking office, George stayed in the back room, poring over the papers from last night.

  Nancy was wearing olive slacks, a white blouse with short sleeves, and a gray vest. She looked a little warm already, and it was supposed to be in the middle nineties until Sunday.

  ‘‘So,’’ she said, bustling into the room, and smiling at both of us, ‘‘when do I get to see ’em?’’

  ‘‘One of them,’’ I said. ‘‘And not for at least an hour.’’ I indicated an old wooden office chair. ‘‘Just have a seat. They have to walk right by you.’’

  She sat, and Hester and I did the same. All three of us in the same heavy old wooden chairs. We’d gotten them from the courthouse when they remodeled the courtroom. We liked to say we had a matched set of thirty-seven. We were clustered around a heavy old wooden table. Guess from where. Only two of those, one for the prosecution, one for the defense.

  ‘‘So what can I do for you?’’ she asked.

  ‘‘We’ve got a problem,’’ said Hester. ‘‘You’re going to have to be our scout for a little while, with a guy . . .’’

  ‘‘Who is probably not my type,’’ said Nancy.

  ‘‘Probably not,’’ said Hester. ‘‘At least, I hope not.’’

  ‘‘I think you know him,’’ I said. ‘‘The man who runs the right-wing paper up north?’’

  ‘‘Borcherding? Oh, not Borcherding! No way!’’

  ‘‘Jesus, dear,’’ said Hester. ‘‘You don’t have to sleep with him.’’

  ‘‘The hell,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘That son of a bitch thinks he’s God’s gift to women . . . always tries to talk his way into your pants, grabs a feel whenever he thinks nobody’ll notice . . . and he’s a creepy asshole to boot.’’

  We didn’t say anything.

  ‘‘He’s a real nutzoid, always trying to come on to you with some bullshit about taking over the country, about killing the Zionists . . .’’ She began to slow. ‘‘Wouldn’t put it past him to get somebody . . . killed . . .’’

  Silence. We just looked at her.

  ‘‘You’re kidding,’’ she whispered.

  I shook my head.

  ‘‘How could he be involved?’’

  ‘‘That’s where it begins to get a little more than Confidential,’’ I said. ‘‘Up past Restricted, and all the way to Secret.’’

  ‘‘Is there a story in this?’’ she asked.

  ‘‘Oh, absolutely,’’ I said. ‘‘Probably one of the bigger ones.’’

  ‘‘Exclusively?’’

  ‘‘That,’’ said Hester, ‘‘remains to be seen.’’

  ‘‘Right. But if I do what I have to do with Borcherding? Other than screw him?’’

  ‘‘Probably.’’ Hester grinned.

  Nancy unbuttoned her vest. ‘‘It’s getting a little warm in here,’’ she said. She pulled out a small tape recorder from the pocket, and showed it to us, making sure we could see it wasn’t turned on. ‘‘Can I tape this?’’

  ‘‘We’ll just give you access to ours later,’’ I said.

  She gave me a questioning look.

  ‘‘The alarm clock radio on the cabinet,’’ said Hester, who knew all about it. ‘‘Picks up everything in the room.’’

  ‘‘And the video camera,’’ I said, gesturing at the little box in the corner of the ceiling that was smaller than half a cigarette pack, ‘‘catches most of the action.’’

  ‘‘Oh.’’

  ‘‘You could take notes,’’ said Hester, ‘‘but we don’t want them leaving the room.’’

  ‘‘Right.’’ She eased back in her chair. ‘‘If you want me to get close to this geekhead, I assume you have a good reason.’’

  ‘‘Yeah,’’ I said.

  ‘‘Well, fill me in . . .’’

  ‘‘What we want,’’ I said, ‘‘is to know who he hangs around with. Who he talks to. That sort of thing.’’

  ‘‘Oh, no,’’ she said. ‘‘That’s a Freedom of the Press issue, I’m sorry.’’

  I glanced at Hester; she nodded.

  I reached into a drawer under the desk and took out a black marker. I unfolded a copy of the crucial Br
avo6 e-mail, and crossed off the FROM line. I pushed it over to Nancy. ‘‘Look at this . . .’’

  She did, and her eyes narrowed, and her face got noticeably pale for a second.

  ‘‘Your basic kill order, in the flesh,’’ said Hester.

  ‘‘Who sent this?’’ asked Nancy.

  Neither Hester nor I said a word.

  ‘‘You crossed that off . . .’’ She hesitated. ‘‘You’re sure?’’

  We still said nothing.

  ‘‘You are, aren’t you?’’ She stared at the sheet. ‘‘You know, and that’s why you want . . .’’

  She looked at the sheet again. ‘‘But,’’ she said, her voice getting louder, ‘‘that motherfucker is just outside in the parking lot!’’

  ‘‘Slow down,’’ I said. ‘‘We know he is.’’

  ‘‘Then go get his ass!’’

  ‘‘Not yet,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Calm down. That’s where you come in.’’

  Nancy took a deep breath, then another. ‘‘Okay, so why not? Why’s he still loose? Why not get him now?’’

  ‘‘The way we got the message,’’ I said, ‘‘might give us a little admissibility problem.’’ Not true, of course. At least, not in the strict sense of criminal procedures. The admissibility came from not wanting to admit what we’d done to the FBI. But Nancy sure didn’t have to know that. At least, not to help us get the information from another source.

  Nancy looked at both of us in turn. ‘‘You’re kidding . . .’’

  ‘‘Had to be done,’’ said Hester. ‘‘No other way to get timely data.’’

  ‘‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’’ said Nancy, ‘‘because they got Phil. I don’t want anybody getting off here.’’

  I thought it was pretty clearly implied that, if whoever shot Phil got off, Nancy’s paper would kill us. That was fair enough.

  ‘‘Now,’’ I said, ‘‘we have less than an hour here, so let’s get down to it . . .’’

  After refreshing her memory a little, which certainly didn’t take much, we asked Nancy what Phil could have said or done that would give the impression that he had a bomb. At first she couldn’t think of anything, but then she remembered Phil’s bottled mineral water. He always drank it, when he could get it, and liked it cold. He had a habit of wrapping it in two of those beer can insulators, and just sticking the neck of the bottle through the little hole in the ‘‘bottom’’ of the upper insulator. He had obtained his insulators from an implement dealer during a photo session, so the two insulators were black, with a yellow rectangle with black printing on the side. In effect, a black cylinder about ten inches long, as big around as a beer can, with a small, white cap on one end.

  ‘‘He left it at my car,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘When we were going to go in together, he realized he didn’t have it. One of your reserve guys went to the car and got it for him.’’

  No shit.

  ‘‘Borcherding was set up near the car,’’ said Nancy.

  ‘‘I know,’’ I said. ‘‘You pointed him out, sort of.’’

  ‘‘He could have seen that. When the cop brought it to him. Phil probably just stuck it in his bag. He wouldn’t have tried to hide it or anything.’’ She thought a second. ‘‘He had a cell phone modem thingy on his laptop.’’

  ‘‘Borcherding? Are you sure?’’ asked Hester.

  ‘‘Yeah. I told Phil that I’d have to get one like that.’’

  ‘‘So Borcherding probably wasn’t really inventing the part about the ‘bomb,’ then, was he?’’

  ‘‘Probably not, Carl.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘Probably not.’’ She looked up. ‘‘That fucker.’’ She thought again for a few seconds. ‘‘You’re absolutely sure it was him?’’

  ‘‘Yes,’’ I said, looking her straight in the eye. ‘‘We know the message came straight from his e-mail address, and could have been sent only by somebody at the scene.’’ I hesitated for a second. ‘‘None of the networks had a live feed going.’’

  ‘‘No,’’ she said. ‘‘No, they never went live until after Phil was shot. I know that.’’

  Hmm. Well, by that time our dispatch center would have been so busy they probably turned the TV off.

  ‘‘We don’t have any reason to believe he gave his laptop to anybody else,’’ said Hester. ‘‘His password had to be used to log on to the server. If he’d loaned it to somebody else, they’d have used their password, most likely. And his seems to be one of those little local companies . . .’’

  ‘‘He runs his own server,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘He brags about it.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘He’s one of those people who think they can get in your pants by telling you all the techno drivel they have in their entire head. Supposed to make us horny, or something.’’ She snorted. ‘‘Likely.’’

  ‘‘Really?’’ That surprised me.

  ‘‘Oh, yeah. They think it’s erotic.’’

  ‘‘No, no,’’ I said, grinning. ‘‘Just surprised he has his own server. What do they call it?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘Oh, shit,’’ she said, ‘‘I don’t remember that. God. But something like the common man net, or some such thing. Maybe free white net, or common free?’’

  ‘‘Thanks,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We’ll check that out.’’ She pushed her chair back, making a screeching sound on the old hardwood flooring. ‘‘In the meantime, how do you intend to go about getting your information? You can’t be too obvious or quick . . .’’

  ‘‘Hell, I know that.’’

  ‘‘I mean,’’ said Hester, ‘‘I know it’s a little soon, but I’d like to know what you intend . . .’’

  We went over what we wanted, again. We expanded the list, not to give her more work, but more leeway. We were very clear that she was under no obligation to obtain all the information. Just suggestions and hints. We’d take the rest.

  ‘‘Right,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘Look, I just want to thank you for letting me have something to do with getting this bastard . . .’’

  I made sure she was still sitting there when the two reserve officers came through with Nola Stritch. Our guys had given Nola a bulletproof vest to wear, which looked a little silly on her. It was for someone much larger, was white, and had the long tails on it so you could tuck it into your uniform pants and not have it pull your shirt out when you moved. Kind of looked more like a bulletproof apron, as a matter of fact. I pretended to be a bit upset when Nancy introduced herself, so Nola gave a little statement to the press.

  ‘‘It’s pretty bad,’’ said Nola, ‘‘when you can’t even trust the press anymore.’’ She started to walk toward the door.

  ‘‘What do you mean?’’ asked Nancy.

  ‘‘You know just what I mean,’’ hissed Nola. ‘‘You’re all in the pay of the Jews and the One World Government. You know that. Don’t try to deny it, you are. You know you are.’’ With that off her chest, she turned and just about dragged the officers out the door. It always amazes me when I hear someone I think is intelligent start ranting like that. This time was no exception.

  When the door closed, Nancy sighed. ‘‘Well, so much for the sympathetic approach.’’ She grinned. ‘‘I’ll see what I can do for you,’’ she said, heading for the door. ‘‘Just give me a couple of days. I’ll be in touch.’’ And she was gone.

  Hester and I exchanged looks.

  ‘‘I hope we’ve done the right thing here.’’

  ‘‘Don’t worry, Carl. You worry too much. You’re beginning to sound like George.’’ Hester smiled. ‘‘Speaking of whom . . . we’d better let him know what’s happening.’’

  True. Because when it came right down to it, George had access to the resources that we only wished we had.

  When we got to the back room, I greeted George with ‘‘George, you little Zionist, how the hell are you?’’

  He looked up. ‘‘I knew it. Now you’re gonna want a ride in my black chopper.’’ He pushed his papers back across the desk. ‘‘So how’d it go?’�
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  ‘‘I don’t know,’’ I said, sitting down near a stack of computer paper. ‘‘All right, I guess.’’ I picked up the first sheet. ‘‘She knew him, though. Didn’t like him.’’

  ‘‘She’s going to keep her eyes open for us,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We’ll see.’’

  ‘‘Well, while you were gone, I came up with something that may be very serious.’’

  What George had found was a series of messages to an address in Idaho, and returns from the same place.

  ‘‘This man Stritch has some very interesting connections.’’ George indicated a handwritten list he had made. ‘‘Several of these names of organizations that are mentioned here are the same ones I heard at a very sensitive briefing about three months ago.’’

  The FBI, it transpired, was working three of the mentioned groups regarding illegal weapons, Ponzi scams, bank fraud, a possible series of bombings where only very small devices were used, and planning things such as bank robberies, armored car holdups, etc. None of the planned things had happened. All of which told me that the FBI had people inside more than one group.

  ‘‘Small bombs?’’ asked Hester.

  ‘‘Really small,’’ said George. ‘‘Like they blow up mailboxes.’’

  ‘‘They getting these folks confused with teenagers?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘Oh, no,’’ said George. ‘‘Not at all. The little bombs are planted as proof that the mechanism works, for one thing. Very sophisticated, they tell me. But, more important,’’ he said, in a worried tone, ‘‘it proves that the strike teams they sent out actually reached their target.’’

  Food for thought.

  ‘‘What kind of targets?’’ asked Hester.

  ‘‘Oh, investigators’ ‘in’ boxes in Sheriff’s Departments,’’ said George, deadpan.

  I admit it, I looked at my ‘‘in’’ box. Broke him up.

  Actually, as he explained when he’d recovered, what they did was get either close to or into government property and set off these little devices. Not only federal but state and local property as well. They’d started off with places like isolated forest and park ranger stations, and had expanded to include police stations, office buildings, a couple of post offices, a Coast Guard installation, and others.