The Verdict on Each Man Dead

by David Whellams

  Peter responded, “If he’s not entirely alone in this, then the chances are that his partners are in the terrorism business, with a more coherent agenda than our man. That’s worrisome. I recommend you follow that angle.”

  He was telling them that an individual madman’s grievances could be exploited by terrorist groups, but they weren’t ready to listen to this speculation in 1985, before Ramzi Yousef, Timothy McVeigh, and Osama bin Laden showed how cataclysmic terror could be. Nothing came of Cammon’s theorizing, and everyone forgot about the consult.

  But someone must have remembered his sermon. By the end of 1994, the task force had begun to despair of tracing the pipe bombs back to their demented creator. More innocent Americans had been mutilated and two more had died. Feelings about terrorism had progressed, too. Ruby Ridge in 1992 and Waco in 1993 showed how off the rails anti-government agitation could get, while the detonation under the World Trade Center, masterminded by Ramzi Yousef, signalled the vulnerability of America’s infrastructure. Against this evolving backdrop of fear, the quirky Unabomber pursued his solitary campaign and became the symbol of the feds’ investigative inadequacy.

  In 1994, Deputy Director Lattner called Sir Stephen Bartleben, Peter Cammon’s direct supervisor, and explained his needs: could New Scotland Yard spare Cammon for a month to work for the task force in Denver, Colorado? At first Peter balked, feeling no different about the thin evidence. But the Unabomber had struck several more times, and Lattner played on his dilemma in his follow-up call directly to the chief inspector. “That time — nine, almost ten, years ago — you raised a theory that seems almost prescient now. You suggested that the Unabomber was building to something bigger, more destructive. Well, he took a break for six years after Salt Lake City in 1987, then he struck again in California in June ’93, twice, and again just last week in New Jersey. They were especially nasty packages, did a lot of damage.”

  “I threw a lot of theories into the mix,” Peter said with self-deprecation.

  “Yes, and I have a growing appreciation of their shrewdness,” said Lattner generously, “but now you have more examples to test them on. For example, I’d like to know if you still think he lives in a rural area, and in what state.”

  “I’ll come,” Peter said “but I need a month to shut down a current investigation here. Meanwhile, send me the details up to today.”

  As it turned out, Peter did not make it to Denver until late February, although by then he had absorbed the files thoroughly and revised his main theory of the Unabomber’s whereabouts. He had settled on a strategy for answering another question: did the madman have assistance in planning, fashioning, and delivering the bombs?

  Denver immediately became Peter’s home base, but he spent little time there, for his plan required him to visit seven — eight or nine, if he had time — of the bombing locations and the cities where the Unabomber was known to have mailed his packages. With a Calgary cop who was on secondment to the FBI’s Denver office, Peter drove to Evanston, Chicago, Nashville, Ann Arbor, and Salt Lake City, and flew to Berkeley and San Francisco. The Canadian and the Englishman wandered the Midwest and the Far West for almost a month.

  By the second peripatetic week, Peter felt the presence of a shadow, a more intelligent shaper behind some of the attacks. The Unabomber had crossed a line when his opposition to government and corporations began to express itself in the rash targeting of strangers. Someone had been there, particularly in the early years, pushing him up to that line.

  Tiring of the road, Peter hived off from his Canadian partner, returning to Salt Lake City for a week to take a closer look. He still had faith in his idea that the place of mailing was as important as the place of impact, and Salt Lake loomed large in this theory. He noted that Kaczynski planted his fifth bomb at the University of Utah in 1981 and a few months later sent his sixth device from a Brigham Young University post office; similarly, his tenth mail bomb derived from the Utah capital. Also, if the Unabomber lived in a rural setting in the West, as Peter believed, then Salt Lake provided a convenient hub for highway or air connections across the country.

  But the February 1987 bombing, Incident Number 12, remained by far the most intriguing one of the bunch. The target had been the owner of a computer store in a Salt Lake mall; the reasons for selecting him were obscure, likely irrational. The Unabomber’s tactics made it probable that someone else would be injured when he planted his contraption in the parking lot. Peter knew that the bomber didn’t mind blowing up strangers, but this effort seemed poorly planned. Although the Unabomber had previously deployed bombs in person, Peter wondered: Had he planned to take a bus somewhere else that day but panicked? Had he started out for the post office and ditched his package along the way?

  Less than fourteen months before, the bomber had committed his first murder-by-mail, the owner of a computer rental store in Sacramento. Now he was wanted for a homicide and the Postal Inspection Service had increased the reward, raising the pressure a notch. Perhaps he was extra-nervous that day in Salt Lake.

  Incident Number 12 occurred on a sunny but cold morning. The device, disguised as a road hazard, lay on the asphalt, and coincidentally the computer store owner arriving for work was the first driver to see it. In removing the contraption, he tripped a spring lever switch, causing the bomb to detonate. While it caused severe and permanent injuries, it did not kill him. The big difference this time was that there was a witness. Minutes before the explosion, a secretary in the store saw the Unabomber lean down and plant the bomb by a parked car. She offered a description to the FBI, who quickly released a police artist sketch. Tips began to pour in to the task force hotline. The subsequent release of the police sketch and increase in the reward must have alarmed Kaczynski, for he did not attack again for another six and a half years.

  If there was one matter that Peter had needed to revisit during that distant winter, it was the witness sketches. He tracked down the computer store secretary and quizzed her on the accuracy of the three pictures that had been done of the Unabomber. The first one had been little used, but the second, painted in full watercolour, served as the reference image for investigators. The problem, as Peter well knew, was that this portrait had produced no sightings of the suspect in more than six years, resulting in the task force commissioning a revised poster in 1994, this one adding sunglasses and a hooded shirt. Peter queried the secretary about all the images of the suspect. She was now weary of the whole manhunt, but she remained firm on the main features, conceding only that perhaps that the hair was too curly and the chin too strong. (After Kaczynski’s capture, Peter was not alone in pointing out that the notorious wanted poster did not closely resemble Ted.) The man she had seen was indeed the man in the picture.

  The lack of tips from the poster nagged at Peter. Investigators in 1987 found a waitress in a nearby diner who claimed to have seen the man in the hoodie and shades on that day. The restaurant was located less than two blocks from the parking lot, and thus the bomber might have had his breakfast and strolled with his nailed-together boards in a canvas bag to the target site. Now, in 1995, Peter located the waitress and she confirmed her sighting: the man in the poster had been in the diner.

  Everything changed for Peter on April 19, 1995. He had been in the United States for more than the one month promised, and he was winding down his efforts in anticipation of going home by April’s end. The Unabomber hadn’t struck again while Peter was in the country, and except for locking in his belief that the terrorist lived close to Salt Lake City, Cammon was no further ahead than any other investigator. But on that date, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols blew up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. Panic ran through the federal law enforcement agencies, already on edge because of the Unabomber’s months of silence, and it did not take long for the task force to look for links between the Unabomber and OC. The bomb attack in 1993 on the World Trade Center had fuelled ongoing fear of foreign terrorists g
oing after domestic targets and perhaps led President Clinton to jump to the conclusion that Islamist terrorists had blown up the Murrah.

  The same day, Peter got a summons from Deputy Director Lattner. “Cammon, you offered the opinion to the Unabomber task force that the bomber might be hooked up with domestic terrorism.”

  “I thought this was Middle East terrorists,” he replied.

  “Not foreign, never was,” Lattner said. “Arabs in Oklahoma City? Not likely. Knew it was domestic the moment I heard ‘Ryder truck’ and ‘fertilizer.’ Thousands of half-baked local revolutionaries know how to make a fertilizer bomb, doesn’t take a hundred-plus IQ. We are swamped with leads and phone-ins. One thing we want to be absolutely sure about is that the Unabomber has no connection whatsoever to Oklahoma City. What can you do for us, Chief Inspector? You’re the man with the theory.”

  Within a day, it became clear that foreigners hadn’t detonated the truck, and the president withdrew his statement. Peter was about to drive from Denver to Oklahoma City when he heard the name Timothy J. McVeigh for the first time. McVeigh had been apprehended by a highway trooper and charged. The relief felt by all the federal agencies produced a call from Lattner cancelling Peter’s trip. Peter protested but was firmly ordered to “stay home.”

  But home for Peter was England, and he had a hard choice: fly away or fashion a credible new theory to keep him in America. Conspiracy theories received a boost when Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, both tied to radical militia movements, were connected to McVeigh, but nothing in the Unabomber’s history linked him to the plot.

  Peter learned that the night before the Murrah Building explosion, Tim McVeigh had stayed in a motel in Junction City, Kansas, parking the infamous Ryder truck behind his room. FBI special agents found a delivery man who claimed to have seen McVeigh in the motel. Before leaving for England Peter obtained a copy of the witness sketch. While the face did resemble the Unabomber, by this time Peter had lost faith in the accuracy of the widely distributed wanted poster, which had produced few good tips. He kept a copy of the sketch but never did make it to Oklahoma.

  Five days after the Oklahoma City attack, a parcel from Kaczynski arrived by mail at an address in Sacramento, blowing up a timber company executive. At Lattner’s request, Peter flew to California to investigate possible connections to McVeigh, but it turned out that the Unabomber had mailed his device from Oakland a day or two before McVeigh carried out his nasty deed. There was no connection.

  Peter Cammon remained convinced that he almost had Kaczynski. The bomber was getting more aggressive and taking greater risks, as Peter had predicted. The reward had reached a million dollars. Somebody would have ratted on Kaczynski if his brother hadn’t done so a few months later. After the 1987 Salt Lake attack, the Unabomber had vanished, not striking again for almost seven years, but between 1993 and 1995 he struck four times. He was building to something. Peter guessed that he would soon demand a response from the authorities and from the society he was attacking. The bomber was growing frustrated with himself, having achieved notoriety but not public acceptance of his philosophy.

  Kaczynski issued his Manifesto later that fall, and the big papers published it. There was a short period between the publication of the Manifesto and his brother turning him in where Peter might have nabbed him. But Peter was back in England when they caught Ted.

  Peter took the portraits of the Unabomber and filed them, until that morning the padded mailer arrived in the post from the widowed Henry Pastern.

  CHAPTER 26

  Peter woke up in the dark. His watch, adjusted to Mountain Time, read 4 a.m. He listened for snoring, bird sounds, maybe wolf howls, and imagined coyotes patrolling just beyond the glass patio doors.

  He half expected Henry to be pacing the house, perhaps drinking again. He used the bathroom next to the guest room and flushed, but Henry didn’t stir. In the living room, Yoda and the fractured airplane sat between the plates on the table. He considered tossing the chicken bones outside but then realized what a bad idea that was. Clearing the mess, he went back to the bedroom for a notepad and pencils and brought Henry’s files to the table. He began to read.

  In two hours, he ran through Henry’s material three times. Police authorities had conducted a token inquiry, but obviously no one believed Henry or Mohlman. Terrorism wasn’t mentioned in the state police report. Details emerged and he jotted notes for follow-ups, such as the curious facts that Devereau owned three computers and that fine metal tools were found under the ash in one corner of the basement. Peter sat back and rotated the Yoda in his hand. Add one more line of inquiry. Who fashioned the polymer toys, and why?

  At 7 a.m., Henry was still in bed, no sounds coming from his end of the house. Peter chafed to get on the road but decided to give Henry ten more minutes. He slid open the door to the patio and stepped outside. The morning air stimulated him, speeding up his metabolism and increasing his impatience. He had been bored at the cottage, unmotivated by the open future called retirement and the well-trodden pathways of Leicestershire. He recalled that he had dreamed in the night of restless heroes from his childhood: crossing the Negev with T.E. Lawrence and questing with Burton to the source of the Nile. The dreams carried messages of yearning from the wastelands of Old Age.

  He looked out to the dunes and scrub desert and saw a figure in motion. It occurred to him that it might be a mirage. He made out the Mormon cleric, white shirt and black trousers, no tie, striding towards the horizon, oblivious to everything but the desert. Peter gazed on until Tynan disappeared.

  Peter had understood from the outset that he would need the help of government authorities, including all three levels of police, but he was determined to delay his approach as long as possible. Once he invoked a terrorism link to the Hollis murders, Homeland Security would co-opt the investigation. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but for now there were quieter avenues to explore. The American politician Tip O’Neill had said, “All politics is local.” All crime was local, too. A wife dead. A neighbourhood ruined. Seeds of distrust sown on a dead end street. Devereau was a terrorist, but first and foremost he was the scourge of Hollis Street.

  Peter waited another hour and rang up Phil Mohlman at West Valley police headquarters. Henry had said that his partner’s injuries kept him tied to his desk. Phil invited Peter to come right over.

  Henry still showed no signs of life. Peter took his host’s keys and went out to the Subaru.

  Although Phil Mohlman was seated, Peter could tell that he suffered a limp and endured pain in his left leg. The veteran street cop leaned back a few inches in his hard wooden chair, creating the angle necessary to allow him to stretch out the leg. Mohlman faced a practical problem. He had to remain in denial about the limb, since it wouldn’t do for management to catch him limping to his desk. Peter guessed that he told everyone that he was on the physio path to a full recovery. Until then, management had limited his fieldwork. If his colleagues were smart, no one on the West Valley force would call him a gimp.

  Peter smiled and shook his hand. Mohlman skipped the smile. Although Phil had chauffeured Peter and Joan to and from Theresa’s funeral the previous fall, they had avoided discussing professional matters. It was time for a fresh introduction.

  “Henry speaks highly of you,” Phil began.

  “He speaks very highly of his partnership with you,” Peter said.

  “Enough of that. I haven’t seen Henry in over a month, and he storms in the other day and tells me you’re coming to town with a theory of who Devereau really is, and how you’re going to trap him. Is that about right?”

  Peter said nothing.

  “I checked you out, Cammon. You were here in ’95. For the record, that’s long before my time in Salt Lake City. It says you were on the Unabomber task force for a while. Also, you liaised with the Oklahoma City investigation. Is that your theory, that Devereau has a connection to domest
ic terrorism from a decade and a half ago?”

  Mohlman squirmed in the stiff chair and his leg banged against the desk. No doubt this cop invested his talents fervently in every investigation, Peter concluded. His hair was more grey than Irish black, and each etched line in his hound dog face charted a different case. Peter wondered if Phil’s nagging injuries would drive him back to Boston.

  “Possibly. I’ll explain, if you like,” Peter said.

  “Before you do that, let’s be crystal clear. If you have evidence linking Devereau to domestic terrorism, you’re going to need the regional Joint Terrorism Task Force’s help. You know this. Henry is still hooked in with Washington, and I presume you still have old friends at the Bureau there. So the big question I have is, why are you coming to me before approaching Homeland Security? Answer? Because you don’t quite believe Henry Pastern when he swears that the body in the basement on Hollis isn’t Ronald Devereau.”

  “I believe it,” Peter said.

  “But you want to see if I’ll confirm what Henry swears before you go to the Bureau. You think you might look like a fool.”

  Peter, miffed, leaned forward. “I’ve looked the fool before, Detective. I don’t need to come all the way to the middle of nowhere to look foolish again.”

  Mohlman suppressed a smile. He recognized Peter’s allusion to the insult levelled at Mitt Romney by British prime minister David Cameron regarding the Olympics. “Okay, Chief Inspector, what’s your plan?”

  “I want you to look at some pictures without telling your superiors you saw them.”

  Phil scanned the array. He shook his head. Here was this short, ancient, retired English cop in an inappropriate black suit, thousands of miles from home, looking to stir up a bunch of shut-down investigations. “Devereau is the Unabomber?”

  “No, Devereau advised Kaczynski. The witnesses fingered Devereau in ’95.”