The Verdict on Each Man Dead

by David Whellams

  Peter took a chance, saying, “But maybe it went beyond theory. They both disappeared after the Murrah bombing.”

  “Jim wouldn’t have blown up children.”

  Young Riotte was growing touchy at all these probes, so Peter employed the interrogator’s technique of taking the subject into his confidence. He laid out the theory of Devereau’s betrayal of Marcel’s brother, culminating in the gruesome defrosting of his corpse in the cellar at 13 Hollis.

  Marcel recoiled at these images, moving to the door of the trailer and opening it to let in fresh air. “I never saw anything good about their bein’ friends.”

  Peter shifted tack. “Do you remember anything else about Shaw?”

  “Yes. He loved technology. Was a whiz, Jimmy swore. Cameras, weapons.”

  “Maybe bomb making, too?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Did your brother ever mention him in connection with the Unabomber?”

  “Kaczynski? Never. Didn’t the Unabomber oppose technology?”

  “You said his eyes were wrong. What’s that mean?”

  “Scary eyes. One moment they were fixed right on you, like he was making a big point, the next he was lookin’ all around, crazy-paranoid, like.”

  “Fixed on you? I thought you met him only twice. Did you have a conversation with him?”

  “More that he gave me a lecture. That time with the gasket on the truck, like I was trying to tell you, he helped fix it. At one point, he found a baggie of weed under the front seat of my truck. Started ranting about how drugs are bad for you and the police should raid all the dealers. Sounded like Nancy Reagan.”

  But young Riotte had no idea of Shaw’s address from 1995 or any other core information regarding his brother’s intimate friend.

  Peter flipped over the picture with Devereau’s name on it. “Ronald Devereau. Ever hear of him?”

  “French. But Jim wouldn’t have used that name. It’s not good French. He’d have known to add the x to it.”

  Peter considered running straight through to Utah from Crispin Breach. He could stay awake at the wheel for twelve hours, and nighttime in the mountains didn’t faze him. But he wasn’t about to risk challenges from a state trooper about his temporary tags, his English origins, or his scribbled field notes, which contained such words as terrorist and UNABOM, followed by many question marks. His credentials for investigating Devereau were shaky, and this was the age of paranoia on both sides of the terrorism war.

  Up by the I-70, the straightest interstate he’d ever been down, surreal at midnight, Peter booked into a cheap motel. The Paradise was shabby and he was one of only two customers, but the door to his room had a solid Yale deadbolt and the air conditioner worked. A sign by the office warned of rattlesnakes nesting under the ice cooler.

  He should have slept, but a hollowness overwhelmed him, as empty as the black sky outside his locked door. He had no next move. He had hoped for more from Marcel Riotte. The lad had confirmed that an unhinged figure was involved with his brother Jim at the time of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, but really, what did he have? Casper Shaw. Another unresonant alias on an expanding list.

  And the Kaczynski link? Marcel Riotte had confirmed Shaw’s love of technology. The forensics people had found shattered computers in the basement, damaged by sulphuric acid. The clumps of wire and aluminum framing seemed to have no practical use. Devereau/Shaw had retrenched to live the quiet life on Hollis Street, that much was known, and possibly he had become bored and, Peter bet, chagrined that he was contributing nothing to the battle for hearts and minds in the West. He watched the broader world getting crazier as the millennium turned. The U.S. government’s powers over the ordinary man were increasing, and he could neither speak out nor meet up with old allies to plan new blows against growing tyranny. And then it invaded his street. The obscene grow house on his home turf. How long had he suppressed his anger in the basement of the two-storey, fiddling with his machines?

  He was turning into that fool Kaczynski.

  The freezer? Had he always planned to place Jim Riotte inside for when the authorities got close? Or was it conceivable that Riotte had lain there for ten years?

  Thoughts of the freezer brought Peter around to the figurines. He unlocked the motel room door and fetched the Yoda and the airplane from the dash of the F-150. He sat on the bed, examining the objects under the bedside lamp. Yoda was a cheap statuette, with poor facial definition and no sharp edges. Everyone knew that George Lucas had shrewdly retained the merchandizing rights to the Star Wars characters, but this one seemed to be homemade, or perhaps from a cheap kit. It was fashioned from a yellowy substance, monochrome but ready to be painted by some collector. It bore no labels. The aircraft, while of the same material, was more ambitious, yet the attempt at detail in its wing and tail elements had left it brittle. Peter examined the underside of the plane and was able to make out three letters etched into the polymer: “SLS.”

  L for Princess Leia? Luke Skywalker? S for Han Solo?

  Peter booted up his laptop, but there was no internet reception. He didn’t bother moving to the open door to search for a signal. Instead, he called Marcel Riotte.

  “Sweet Jesus, man, why didn’t you ask me those questions when you were just here? I’m sorry I gave you my number. I’ve got things to do. It’s 2:45 in the morning.”

  Peter later regretted not asking what Riotte’s urgent plans were.

  “It just occurred to me, Marcel, did Jim’s friend collect anything? Did Jim say Shaw had any kind of hobby?”

  “What the hell? You called to ask me that? What kind of hobby? Guns?”

  “Sure. Or did he collect toys, Star Wars memorabilia?”

  “How would I know, I never got to know his ass.” The pause that followed was eerie as Riotte projected back in time to the man who might have immolated his brother. “He was a fitness freak, Jim told me. Hated drugs. Can’t see him collecting Star Wars toys. This guy wasn’t into kid’s stuff. He was a tough, cold bastard.” Peter let Marcel’s bitterness take form. “He was ‘fire and ice,’ Jim said.”

  “What’s the ‘fire’ part?” Peter said.

  “Didn’t I tell you? The weirdo liked to set fires.”

  “So you do buy into my theory, Marcel?” Peter replied.

  “That he killed Jim and set fire to the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah, probably. Either way, if I see him ever, I’ll kill him, even if he is Darth fucking Vader.”

  The sky was opaque, not even the suspicion of morning chasing his back, when he reached the Colby Oasis Travel Center on the Kansas-Colorado border. Violating his travel plan, he had rushed along the bleak interstate in search of a Starbucks with Wi-Fi service. He bought a venti coffee and a bag of pecans, most of which he would save for the long rush to Coppermount Drive. He retreated to a booth, started up his computer and Googled “SLS abbrev.”

  He hit the first listed site and forty-two suggestions leapt onto the monitor.

  “Self-Locking Systems.” “Side-looking Sonar.” Neither was helpful, even if the latter was the most popular notation. “Statistical Load Summary” was promising but it dealt with aircraft capacity. “Spider Lamb Syndrome” afflicted sheep — eight-legged lambs? (“Ares Brotherhood”? He was getting punchy.)

  “Symbionese Liberation Society”? No.

  Then it jumped out at him from the screen: “Selective Laser Sintering.”

  This was a manufacturing process used with 3-D printers to make machinery parts from ceramic and metallurgical compounds. High-powered lasers employed SLS to form shapes in computer-programmed layers. The geometrics were complex, but not beyond a bomb aficionado with a huge amount of time on his hands.

  Riotte, the brother, had said that Devereau obsessed on technology. Now the phantom was fashioning bomb parts using a 3-D printer.

 
Peter got in the truck and drove west. For the first time since arriving in the States, he felt truly discouraged. Shaw had disappeared. Peter had to draw in the counterterrorism professionals soon, and once that happened, he and Henry Pastern and Phil Mohlman would lose control of the pursuit.

  Maybe there was another way to find the shadow man. The Unabomber could be insane, Peter thought, but a visit to the Supermax might be helpful and timely.

  CHAPTER 28

  Peter reached the Coppermount house by late afternoon. The roughed-in street with its incomplete homes offered little comfort. He glanced down at Tynan’s worksite but detected no progress, and he wondered if the elder had ever invited Henry into his work-in-progress. For that matter, had Theresa ever been welcomed inside?

  Peter’s expectations for Henry’s sobriety were low, but when Peter came into the living room, there he was, clear-eyed, perusing his thick file on Ronald Devereau. Papers fanned across the table. The green bottle and all the Pontarlier glasses had disappeared. That was a relief.

  Henry looked up and smiled. “How was Kansas?” he said blithely.

  Peter, stiff and road-worn, went to the kitchen and took a bottle of orange juice from the fridge. Henry had washed the absinthe glasses and organized them on the kitchen counter. It seemed another half effort to kick his habit. If Henry were serious about giving up drinking, he would put them in the cupboard, or smash them. He filled a glass with juice and returned to the living room.

  “You look whipped,” Henry said. “What about Riotte’s brother?”

  Peter sat down, his back to the patio.

  “He met our man in 1995, or maybe late ’94. His name then was Casper Shaw. Nothing much more. No address, no photographs or signed papers. Marcel said he harboured grievances against the government. Shaw was good with technology and hated drug dealers, but so what?”

  “That could tie him to Hollis Street.”

  “In our view and probably nobody else’s. What are you doing there?”

  “Oh, looking through the files again. Peter, can I speak frankly?”

  Peter, on edge, wanted to say that they should have been having frank conversations from the moment of his arrival in Utah. He nodded.

  “Are we any closer to identifying him? These files aren’t getting us to the next level. We’re going to need help from somewhere official.”

  Peter’s frustration burst out. “I’m here to help. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “Whoa! Don’t get mad. I’m trying.”

  “Okay.” Peter rubbed the grit from his eyes. “I’m sorry. I agree. We have to draw in some of the agencies. Soon, I guess.”

  Henry, imitating Peter, rubbed his eyes hard against the heels of his palms. “Are you ever tempted to give up? I worry we’ll never find him.”

  Peter wasn’t in the mood for more whinging from Henry, although he was unsure of the source of his own anger. “We know that Devereau exists. Therefore he can be found. That’s all we need know to advance to the next stage.”

  Peter was on the edge of losing control, his voice rising with each sentence. He realized that he was venting his pique on someone who was trying hard, whom he would need for that next step. But it was Henry who backed off.

  “Sorry, Peter.” Henry held up a slip of paper. “Phil Mohlman called. With an address. Do you know someone named Alma May Reeve? She works in Provo.”

  If the Green Fairy had been sitting in the bar, Peter would have added some to his orange juice. Alma May Reeve was the waitress who had seen three men in a Salt Lake City diner in 1987 on the day of the Unabomber’s parking lot attack. Peter now believed that the three conspirators were Ronald Devereau, Jim Riotte, and Theodore Kaczynski. Peter had interviewed Alma in 1995 and showed her the famous public sketch of the Unabomber. She had responded, “He was one of them.”

  He had misinterpreted her words at the time. Alma was truthful when she said, “He was one of them,” but he had failed to understand her meaning. Peter hoped Phil Mohlman could find her. If there was a single motivation for Peter being in Salt Lake City now, it was this: to apologize to Alma May Reeve.

  “Henry,” Peter said, “I’m going to put a frozen pizza in the oven, maybe two, and then I’ll tell you about the waitress and the three killers. Tomorrow, we’ll visit Alma.”

  Over dinner, Peter mused on the Unabomber’s sins. “It was Salt Lake that caught my attention. I’d developed a crude scale based on adding up where a device was hand-delivered to or where it was mailed from. Salt Lake City scored six events. For example, Kaczynski mailed his sixth and tenth bombs, in 1982 and 1985 respectively, from Salt Lake post offices. His eleventh device, planted in Salt Lake City in 1987, interested me for a lot of reasons. It was the heart of winter, a strange time to launch an attack. I asked myself: Did he rush this one, change his plan because of the cold? He had been working away in solitude in some hovel, carving components, connecting wires, setting triggers, and now perhaps he was impatient. That winter, did he take a short ride — not to the far-off state capital in California, but to a closer capital city in nearby Utah — so that his gratification could be almost immediate?”

  “And so that he could watch it blow up?” Henry contributed.

  “Alma saw him that day. She may know something,” Peter said.

  “I like the strategy,” Henry said the moment Peter finished his tale. Peter regretted his earlier tirade. He needed a partner, even a flawed partner, and he could only hope that Henry stayed sober.

  “We’ll head over at mid-morning, once the breakfast rush is done.”

  “Thank you, Peter.”

  “I need you clean.”

  Henry got up from the table and approached the bar. “Let’s throw out the bottle now.”

  Another ritual, thought Peter. He ducked behind the counter and removed the bottle of absinthe, the slotted spoon, and one sugar cube. “Okay. But I recommend one last drink. I’ll fix it.”

  “I’ll do it,” Henry said.

  “No, I’ll do it.” Peter had no idea if this was a good or bad idea, but he was committed to the cathartic purpose of the ritual Henry had initiated. Henry watched as his partner fetched a Pontarlier glass and a jigger of water from the kitchen. Peter clumsily poured the absinthe and water into the glass. He set fire to the sugar cube resting on the spoon and they watched it burn off. All the while, Peter mused on the silliness of his friend’s exotic choice of indulgence. Why pick this odd, cloying drink, as opposed to scotch or bourbon? “Henry, is there a reason other than your English lit degree you tried absinthe?”

  Henry took a sip and grimaced. “It tastes terrible, I admit.” He raised his glass. “Because it hardly earns a mention in the Book of Mormon, that’s why.” He brought the bottle to the kitchen and poured it down the sink. In his enthusiasm, he returned for the glass, took a tiny swallow and dumped the dregs into the drain.

  “I’m going to bed. What time are we out of here tomorrow?”

  “Up at eight for nine?” Peter said.

  Peter usually slept well before a challenge, but not that night, and regret over Alma May Reeve was the cause. Had she suffered? Had the Unabomber case, some part of it unresolved, tormented her? It had certainly worn on him.

  He got up at 2 a.m. in a vague state. He tiptoed to the station in the living room and checked his emails, and for once there was nothing from home. He considered his address list.

  His message to Maddy, his daughter-in-law, was plaintively short.

  “Are you up?”

  Five minutes passed.

  “Yes. Call?”

  Him: “Yes, please. Me to you. Wake the baby?”

  Her: “No. Love to talk.”

  Mobile reception was erratic inside the ranch house and not much better in the surrounding desert. A report in the Deseret Star suggested that activity at the Utah Testing Range farther west had foule
d everyone’s signal, but this struck Peter as tinfoil-hat paranoia. He went out to the driveway — a hot spot, in his experience, but only if he stood in the bed of the F-150 and faced east. He punched in the number for Maddy and Michael’s home in Leeds.

  Maddy’s warm voice answered immediately. “Where are you, Dad?”

  “I’m standing in the bed of a pickup truck in the Great Salt Desert,” Peter said.

  “So you’re fitting right in, then. Is that what they call a tailgate party? I wish I could be there.”

  Maddy was left to interpret the flicker in Peter’s reply: “That would be … nice,” he said. Was it possible that he was homesick? Or was he feeling guilty because he had rushed away from England without having said a proper goodbye to her? During his last case, the Carpenter Affair, he had brought her in early, asking her to undertake an intense probe into Alice Nahri’s background. She had succeeded magnificently, to the point of tracking down Alice’s mother to Henley-on-Thames. He had every reason to rely on her.

  Like Joan, Maddy worried about Peter’s safety but knew to approach the subject obliquely. “You have your American map, and I put up a new one in the shed the day after you left.” The implied offer was that she was ready to track his adventures and provide support from afar. “Have you any idea where to find your killer?”

  Affection welled up in both of them. “I owe you an apology, dear. I should have fully briefed you beforehand. Maybe it was the sight of young Joe on your hip that night after dinner. I worried …”

  “That’s okay, Dad,” she interjected. He didn’t need to apologize. Everything between them was fine.

  “I could use your research skills, dear, if you have time.”

  “I have time.” She wasn’t about to explain that Joe pretty fully occupied all her waking hours, nor the counterweighing truth that she ached to be with Peter on the manhunt. She would be there for her father-in-law, and he wouldn’t challenge her again, she was sure. They were back on respectful ground.