The Third Coincidence

by David Bishop

  “Is this the separation of powers we learned about in school?” Carsten asked.

  “Yes it is,” Professor Lee replied. “Our founding fathers developed a system of checks and balances so that no single branch could dominate the others. We rely on the Supreme Court to interpret our laws and the Constitution for the good of the entire country. The justices do this by applying precedents from their previous rulings and by looking forward to how our principles should govern us. If the people’s elected representatives do not like the Court’s decisions, they are empowered to legislate a change in the law. And if they do not, the people, holding the ultimate power through voting, can change their elected representatives.”

  The camera panned in for a closeup of Carsten. “Catherine Lee, professor of American government at Georgetown University, with a civics lesson for LW and his militia, and for each of us.”

  LW sat at home, eating microwave popcorn, watching D.C. Talk, and growing more furious by the minute. Once again the program had failed an opportunity to bring the real issues to the forefront. They just kept saying the same things about him, Jack McCall, and the president, while ignoring the growing cancer that was devouring America. And, now this twit, masquerading as an expert, has misrepresented the role of the Supreme Court.

  The media is part of the conspiracy to steal our freedoms.

  • • •

  After Jack learned that the lists from the shooting ranges and of the dissidents would not be ready until between seven and eight that night, he told everyone to take a few hours downtime.

  “We need to stay after this guy,” Colin said in halfhearted protest.

  Jack threw his hands up in exasperation, “Doing what? I understand that we’re all keyed up, but we have nowhere to go. Rachel, leave word with . . . what’s her name? Marsha, Marsha White, to call me when the lists are one hour from being ready.” He turned back to the group. “These lists will include details that apply to LW as a real person, not his aliases. When Marsha calls me, I’ll call you and we’ll meet back here, now get out of here. Everybody. Scram.”

  LW hacked back into Dr. Eberhard’s computer and learned that Evans’s law clerk had confirmed the chief justice’s dental appointment for tomorrow. Next, he went to his chessboard. He didn’t have a lot of time, but then he didn’t need a lot of time.

  Three days ago, his opponent had moved his bishop to the outside column, thus reducing its capacity to move from four directions to only two. He wondered how this lamebrain ever advanced this deep into the tournament? Now he’s moved his second knight deep into my territory. He doesn’t have enough pieces remaining to provide enough help to make this knight a meaningful threat. LW decided his opponent was going for a stalemate.

  No way, Jos. Two more moves and your ass is mine.

  He took his next move and posted it on the Internet. Then he took out his ironing board and pressed his special traveler’s khakis that converted to a pair of shorts with a quick yank along a velcro strip. And pressed his sweatshirt. His mother used to also iron his underpants, but he had broken that habit.

  Tomorrow would be special. To represent his own father and America’s founding fathers, he wanted to look neat.

  CHAPTER 44

  Is there progress on the LW front? Nobody’s saying anything for the record, but the mumbles are loud and clear: no.

  —Marian Little, NewsCentral 7

  The ringer on Jack’s phone brought him around. Caller ID read Rachel. He spoke before getting the phone up to his ear. “Did Marsha call you?” he asked, reaching into his shirt pocket for the pack of cigarettes that wasn’t there. It had been eight years, but still he sometimes instinctively reached for his old habit.

  “Marsha didn’t call. I just wanted to talk for a few minutes before we head back. Did I wake you?”

  “I slept some. Dreamed some. Thought mostly.”

  “Tell me about the dream?”

  “I’m on my knees looking for something. I don’t know what or where I was looking. It’s all gone fuzzy. You know how dreams fade. Is everything okay?”

  “Everything but nailing shut LW’s coffin,” Rachel said. “But I think we’ll be doing that real soon.”

  “It can’t be too soon for me.” Jack carried the phone to the kitchen to splash water on his face.

  “You have your next assignment lined up?”

  The question took him by surprise, Jack had become more than just interested in Rachel, and sensed she had grown to care for him, but to some degree such feelings were expected. People working together on dangerous assignments develop a special caring based on the knowledge that, at any moment, one of them could hold in their hands the lives of the others. He had felt this on many assignments, for many comrades, but his feelings for Rachel were more than that.

  “There’s no next assignment,” he told her. “This one’ll be it for me. I had already decided to resign before, but I couldn’t refuse Sam Schroeder.”

  “I haven’t told anyone else, but I’m hanging it up, too,” Rachel told him. “Listen, I gave you a ration of shit early on, but you’ve been just great. You’re always there with direction and encouragement. Even the way you’ve put up with Millet. He’s eccentric, but he knows you respect him so he gives you all he’s got.”

  “Millet is different, but then we all are. He’s just way more different, but he brings a lot to the table. Whatever we’ve accomplished would have been impossible without him and you, but the bottom line is we haven’t accomplished much yet—and it’ll stay that way until we stop this guy.”

  Jack opened his fridge and took out a beer, then slid it onto the shelf in the door and settled for a bottle of soda. He twisted the cap free and used his foot to swing the door shut.

  “We’ll get him, Jack. We’ll get him.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement, but if these lists don’t reveal LW’s identity, we’ll be left with chasing down violent ex-agents and military personnel one by one. And once we start that, the scuttlebutt will get to him and he’ll run. Our only other option would be to try and capture him during one of his attempted assassinations.”

  He eased back the corner of his drawn drapes. At first glance the street looked okay. He widened the opening a little and used his vision as if it were a camera to take a series of pictures spanning the entire area. From a different window he repeated the process in the opposite direction.

  “Regardless of how this turns out,” he slanted the drape covering the next window, “this’ll be it for me.”

  “I drove home going over what we have,” she said. “He’s had to have been practicing shooting for years. At some point in the past he practiced under his real name. The part about his father, well, we’re reading some tea leaves on that, but I think it’s got merit.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Jack sounded calmer than he felt. “What are your plans? Or did a rich boyfriend propose?”

  “There’s no rich boyfriend, and since I’ve grown accustomed to eating and sleeping indoors, I’ll need to work. I just want to stop the bureau from being able to just up and transfer me to any old place, whenever they damn well feel like doing it.”

  “I know that feeling,” Jack replied. “Since college I’ve spent more than half my life outside the U.S.”

  “I can’t imagine how you’ve dealt with that as long as you have. At least my transfers have all been Stateside. You’ve been sent all over the world.”

  “What type of work do you see yourself doing?” he asked.

  “Investigative work is okay. I enjoy the challenge. I just don’t know what kind. It could be corporate security, or maybe some sort of computer work. I’ll figure it out. I just want to have a life. Am I being selfish?”

  “No. I want the same thing.”

  “I’d like to have a family. The doctors tell me I can’t get pregnant. I’m okay with adopting, but first I need to get my life in order.”

  Jack understood that not being able to have children could make a woman f
eel inadequate.

  “What happened?”

  “The doctors say it’s a birth defect in my reproductive system. I understood the high points. It has no effect on my health or life expectancy.” Her voice seemed to be crawling out of somewhere deep inside her. “Just no little ones.”

  He could hear the hurt in her voice, and knew that for Rachel the subject was difficult to speak about. He was flattered that she had confided in him.

  “There are lots of children who need loving homes,” he said. “I’ve seen them all over the world.”

  “It kinda shook me at first,” she admitted. “I’d like to get married some day, and I know men want children of their own.”

  “Most men probably,” Jack assured, “not all of us.”

  “Listen to me, will you?” she said ruefully. “There’s a million sad stories in the naked city, and you’ve just heard mine. Let’s change the subject. What do you see in your future?”

  “I’d like something that would allow some balance between my personal and professional life. I had a beer with Frank the other night. He and Nora have talked about opening a private agency. He’s a good man and a fine detective.”

  “I’m very impressed with both Frank and Nor—”

  “Hang on,” he said, interrupting her. “My other line’s ringing.”

  It was Marsha White calling to tell him the lists were done except for programing the commands that would allow them to manipulate the data. She expected to have it all wrapped up and to the Bullpen in an hour.

  God. Jack wanted this LW mess over with. He wanted to tell Rachel how he felt. Hold her tight and then walk off with her into the sunset. But he had to put those thoughts out of his mind, for this new information might lead to failure.

  Still, he was betting it all that the lists would be the answer. They just had to be.

  CHAPTER 45

  Former NSA Director Robert Quartz has agreed to appear on this show one week from today.

  —Mel Carsten, D.C. Talk

  Jack’s running shoes squealed as he ran across the CIA emblem inlaid into the marble floor just inside the agency’s original headquarters building. The Bullpen was located on the ground floor of one of the two six-story buildings, which together measured more than one million of the two-and-a-half-million total square feet of the CIA complex.

  At this time of night he got little more than a nod from the security guards who all knew him. He dashed down one of the two connecting corridors leading to the new headquarters building, past the portrait gallery of former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, and beneath the model of the U-2 spy plane that hung in the four-story atrium. As he slowed his pace before turning the final corner that led to their squad room, he saw a young woman standing outside the Bullpen. She had a heart-shaped face, eyes the color of old mahogany, a thin waist, and was busty enough to spread the rib stitching in her turtleneck sweater.

  “Hello, Mr. McCall. I’m Marsha White. I have your lists right here.” She held up her laptop case. “Both hard copy and CD.”

  “I’d like you to stay until the rest of my squad gets here,” Jack said as they shook hands. “Give us your overview. Answer questions and make sure Millet’s able to work with the data on your CD.”

  Her grasp was as firm as a man’s. “Not everyone can be a data expert, Mr. McCall, and not everyone can lead the chase. I suspect your job’s tougher than mine.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. Here’s my group coming now. You’ve met Millet and Rachel, and I’ll bet you know Colin Stewart. Colin seems to know every beautiful woman in the city.”

  “I surely don’t feel very attractive right now,” Marsha said. “I haven’t bathed or changed my clothes in two days.”

  After Jack introduced Marsha all around, Frank mentioned that he and she had met two years before. “You gave a great presentation over at Metro on Internet research for police. The department adopted a lot of what you shared that day. We’re lucky to have you on this.”

  “Marsha has been at this nonstop for more than forty hours,” Jack said while his team came to the table. “We can all relate to that. She has agreed to stay with us for a while.” He gestured to the newcomer. “Marsha, run with it. No one will interrupt until you’ve finished. Then you can expect questions.”

  “We were asked to work up two lists,” she began. “The first to contain member and nonmember users of shooting ranges within a defined radius around D.C. and Dallas. The second list to consist of people with a public audience who have spoken out against the U.S. Supreme Court and/or the Federal Reserve System five or more times.”

  Jack felt himself growing tense. This was it. In the next hour or so he would know whether or not they were holding an empty bag.

  “We found many more speeches and articles critical of the Federal Reserve than of the Supreme Court,” Marsha continued. “Still, the shooting range lists are far longer, with just under seven hundred names. The lists of members are by club, showing the year each member joined with a notation of the year in which terminated members dropped out. We cross-referenced where we found a member dropped out of one club and joined another.”

  Seven hundred shooters. Jack clenched his teeth. He hadn’t expected that many.

  Marsha glanced toward Millet. “The CIA’s database software will allow you to slice-and-dice the data any number of ways. There are two names that appeared on both the dissident list and the list of shooters. We poked around enough to tell you they both appear to be solid citizens. Those two have double asterisks.”

  “May I share some other observations?” Marsha asked. “I’ve spent a lot of time with these lists, but I don’t wish to come off like I’m telling you how you should do your thing.”

  “Please do,” Rachel said encouragingly.

  Marsha fought down a rising yawn. “This afternoon Rachel told me LW may have been planning his killings for two years, perhaps even longer. With that guidance we assumed LW had frequented a shooting range using his real name before his decision to start killing and that after that decision he switched to a new range and a new name.”

  She pointed to one stack of papers “The shooters on that list dropped their memberships within the last five years; there are thirty-nine names. When we broke out the members who dropped within the past three years, the list was cut down to twenty-three names. May I also summarize the list of dissidents?”

  “Take whatever time you need,” Jack told her.

  He admired Marsha for fighting through her exhaustion and making her presentation as professional as possible.

  “The list of dissidents is much shorter,” she told them. “We found thirty-one people who had used speeches, articles, columns, or public appearances to rail against the Fed or the Court more than four times. We ignored disagreements, even vehement ones, with a single ruling of the Court or financial decision of the Fed, and focused on attacks that were more institutional in nature. I’m holding those who did not meet your criteria of more than four times in a raw data file in case you want us to develop them later.

  “We then grouped these dissidents by the number of occurrences. The quantities range from one energetic fellow who protested one hundred twelve times, to the stipulated minimum of five. You requested copies of their speeches or writings. We have about seventy-five percent in their full text. We’ve provided abstracts or news accounts sufficient to bring the total with some type of written record to ninety percent. We’ll continue the effort to get the remainder under normal working schedules, that is, unless you instruct us to continue what Colin described as a balls-to-the-wall effort. We did not research the exact meaning of that description.”

  “Marsha, I’ve never heard an overview of a major research project presented better,” Jack said when the team had stopped laughing. “Are you ready for questions?”

  “I hope I’ll be able to answer your questions.”

  “Marsha,” Frank said immediately, “you indicated that one dissident attacked t
he Fed or Court more than a hundred times. What’s the next largest quantity?”

  “Seventeen.”

  Frank whistled before asking the obvious. “What’s the name on the top of that list?”

  “A man. Harry Dalton. I did a cursory reading of about a third of his hundred twelve. In the overwhelming majority he went after both the Court and the Fed. He accused them of destroying representative government in America. Stuff—”

  Colin’s posture came erect. “He used those exact words? Representative government?”

  “Many times.”

  A crackle of energy rippled through all of them.

  “Do you have anything on this Harry Dalton?” Jack asked without bothering to disguise the urgency in his voice.

  Marsha grinned like a Cheshire cat. “I thought you might be interested in him so I dug around some. Give me a moment while I switch to a different doc in my laptop. Here it is. Harry Dalton was married to a Jane Styles, a woman twelve years younger than himself. Mr. Dalton died in nineteen eighty-two, Mrs. Dalton in nineteen ninety-five. In the seventies Harry Dalton worked as a college professor of political science. In seventy-eight, he retired after refusing his university’s repeated demands that he end his vehement talks on the threats from within the government.”

  Rachel started to speak and then, apparently, thought better of it.

  “Harry Dalton ran for the U.S. Congress in nineteen eighty,” Marsha continued. “He filled his campaign with the same angry rhetoric that had poisoned his academic message. He lost in the primary with less than two percent of the vote. In eighty-two he committed suicide by shooting himself through the mouth.