by Mike Markel
“In the interest of speeding things along, Detective, let me say, with the utmost clarity, with no equivocation—which means I’m really really telling the truth, cross my heart hope to die—that I have not corresponded with anyone about past or future unlawful operations.” He tilted his head and raised his eyebrows, as if to ask me if that would be sufficient.
I looked over at Ryan, and he nodded. Go ahead, he was saying, show him the emails. I hadn’t planned out how far to go in telling Fredericks about the emails. On the one hand, I knew Nick Corelli told us to try not to use them. The safest thing would be to terminate the interview right now: Nick would start to like me, Ryan would still like me, Willson Fredericks wouldn’t dislike me any more than he already did, and I might be able to figure out who’s zoomin’ who. I’d like to do the safest thing, maybe not piss off everyone I work with, not give the other detectives a chance to place their bets in the office pool on when I’d be fired again.
It wasn’t that I saw myself as some kind of rebel with a cause. It’s more that I wanted to move things along. We had nothing. Forensic Services had gone over Weston’s estate north of town. Nothing to suggest anyone had been there and grabbed her, and with her place being more than ten acres, there weren’t any close neighbors. But we’d canvassed twice, and no eye-witnesses to anything suspicious. No phone calls with anyone outside her circle of rich buddies and her kids. And with the DNA from the rape still out, we didn’t have any decent forensics from the murder. All we had was the 1488 carved into Weston’s chest. And since Willson Fredericks was the only way we were going to track down the Nazi slug who did it, I wanted to set the pieces in motion. Plus, when an obnoxious prick like Willson Fredericks tells you straight up that he didn’t write the emails that we knew he did—well, I got kind of curious to see what was going to happen.
Would this get me fired again? Almost certainly. Would it get me killed? Quite possibly. Would it help me figure out what the hell happened to Dolores Weston? Perhaps. In other words, a no-brainer. I removed the paper clip holding the incriminating emails and slid them across the table to Professor Fredericks.
He sighed, pulled his reading glasses out from his inside jacket pocket, placed them low on his nose, and began to read. We watched him carefully to get an idea of what was going through his mind. But he showed us nothing. He read through one email and set it off to the side, then another, then the third. He turned the pile back over, then pointed to the paper clip, which I slid across the table. He clipped the sheets, rotated them one-eighty, and slid them across the table to me. He traced his mustache with this index finger and thumb, then, tenting his fingers beneath his chin, looked at me.
“Well?” I said.
He paused. “I’m sorry, Detective, is that a question?”
I counted to five. “I guess my question would be, since you said you haven’t corresponded with anyone from the patriot movement about any unlawful operations, and since these emails show that you have—I’m wondering if you have anything to say to us.”
“I have only one response: the emails are fake. I did not receive those emails addressed to me, and I did not write the email sent from my account. I do not know who that person is.”
“That person BC,” I said. “That’s not Benjamin Connors?”
“Detective, give me your full attention and concentrate: I did not write or receive those emails. I have no idea who that person BC is. Therefore, I cannot tell you whether that person BC is Benjamin Connors. For all I know, it could be Butch Cassidy.”
“You understand this puts us in a kind of difficult position, Professor Fredericks, what with you telling us one thing and these pieces of paper saying the opposite.”
“I do see that, Detective. But try to look at this situation from my point of view. I know the truth. I know what I have done, and what I have not done. You, on the other hand, do not. You are working from fabricated evidence, which you appear to believe is legitimate. I do not know how persuasive that evidence would be to a prosecutor. However, I suspect I will soon find out. And if you choose to prosecute me or take any other action against me, I will of course retain an attorney and fight vigorously to protect my reputation and maintain my freedom.
“One thing I have learned,” Fredericks added, “in my many years studying the Nazi era, is that evidence can be fabricated to support any claim. Detective Miner, perhaps you can tell me the source of ‘A lie told often enough becomes the truth’?”
“Lenin?”
“Very good, Detective. That quotation is variously attributed to Lenin, to Goebbels, who was the Nazi minister of propaganda, and to Hitler himself. I myself favor Goebbels; it has the rhythm, the lilt of his speech. But regardless of the original author, the sentiment is certainly true. If you act on the basis of these emails, two events will inevitably follow. First, the allegation will become public, and I will be fired, my career destroyed. Second, I will be murdered by the very people with whom you accuse me of conspiring.”
“Who would those people be, Professor?” I said. “You need to give us something to work with.”
“The names of the particular people are irrelevant. I do not know, Detective, which person or persons will kill me. I do know, however, that a breach of security of this magnitude would be viewed by the patriot leaders as catastrophic. Even though they would know the charges are false—because these emails are fabricated—they would be forced to eliminate me.”
“Why exactly is that, Professor?” I said.
“For one thing, failing to eliminate me would be seen as an unacceptable loss of face. The patriot movement, like any paramilitary movement, is built on discipline and obedience; failing to take appropriate action following a revelation like this would send precisely the wrong message about the importance of loyalty. For another, certain patriot leaders would need to eliminate me because, although I am innocent of those charges, they would fear that I might seek to enhance my own legal position by revealing information about them that might embarrass them or implicate them in other crimes—regardless of whether that information is true.”
“In other words, Professor, you’re trying to bully us here. If we act on this evidence, you’ll be ruined, then killed. Therefore, we can’t act on this evidence. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I am not telling you anything, Detective. I am making a simple statement of fact. If you use this bogus evidence against me, it will destroy me and then kill me.”
“So what are you asking me to do?”
“I am asking you to do one thing. Think about what I am saying. Understand the implications of your actions. Act mindfully.”
Chapter 13
Nick said, “What’d you get from him?”
Apparently, he hadn’t watched the interview on the CCTV. “He admitted to receiving spam email from the patriot groups,” I said, “but the three emails about operations—you know, the ones you highlighted in red?—they’re phony.”
“Damn,” Nick said. “I was hoping we could get away without showing him those emails.” We were standing in his office. He didn’t invite us to sit.
“Yeah, I know that,” I said. “But he was real obnoxious about receiving the spam email from the patriot groups. I wanted to see his reaction to the incriminating emails.”
Ryan said, “We agreed we needed to see his reaction because he was almost bragging about how he was on their mailing lists. Like that made him a real player. Plus, we could see he thought that’s all we had on him—he was acting like we were going to terminate the interview then and thank him.”
“Interesting.” Nick flashed his bright but very brief smile. “So the incriminating ones were phony?” He shook his head, like that was one he hadn’t heard before.
“Phony,” Ryan said, “as in, we made them up. They never happened.”
“Wow,” Nick said. “Could you get a read on him as he was talking?”
“It surprised me,” I said. “I was expecting some kind of a reaction. But he
just read them, like he was reading a newspaper or an article or something. He read one sheet, turned the page, read the next one. I didn’t see an expression on his face. Did you, Ryan?”
“No, I thought he’d either flip out or give us one of his little smiles.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s got a little smile that he uses right before he tells you something that shows he’s smarter than you. Then there’s this Mona Lisa he uses without saying anything. He does that one when he wants you to know he’s deliberately withholding information you want.”
“What was his demeanor during the rest of the interview?”
“He started out pissed when we brought him in” I said. “The interview room spooked him, but once we started talking he calmed down a little. When he was talking about his own writing he was fine, you know, in command, which he likes. That was why we were a little confused when he didn’t react while he was looking at the emails.”
“Did he say anything after he read them?”
“Yeah, like I said, he just read them, so then I asked him ‘Well?’ You know, so he can comment, and he gives me some attitude how that’s not really a question—”
“Which probably shows he’s a little scared,” Nick said.
“I guess. But when he starts talking, he’s under control, like he’s telling a kid what he has to do to get a B in the course, or whatever. He says if we try to force him to divulge the name of this guy BC, that will get out to the university and they’ll fire him, and then the patriots will kill him.”
“He does sound a little scared.” Nick paused, just sitting there, looking down at his desk, resting his chin on his tented fingers.
I gave him a few seconds. “We wanted to get your thinking on this. I assume you and the chief are gonna bring the emails to the prosecutor to force him to give up BC?”
Nick didn’t say anything right away. “Did you get the sense that he knew we were going to get those emails and he’d already had a chance to think about what the implications would be?”
Ryan said, “I couldn’t really tell. Like I said, he seemed like he thought we were done after telling him that we knew he was getting spammed by the patriots. But—maybe it’s just me—I sensed he was surprised when we showed him the emails, even though he didn’t seem to react. And his imagination started to get away from him, with how he’d be fired and then killed.”
“This isn’t making any sense,” I said. “He knows we’ve got the spam emails from his university account. How can he not know we’re gonna find the incriminating emails, too?”
Nick said, “If criminals thought everything out and acted logically all the time, they wouldn’t get caught. You never know: he might have thought those emails were on a different account, or he could have forgotten about them because he’d erased them. It could be anything.”
I wanted an answer to my question about what we’re going to do next. “So, Nick, we gonna tell the university that we’re bringing the emails to the prosecutor?”
“I think we have to. As a courtesy. Not right away, when we talk informally with the federal prosecutor. But as soon as he tells us he’s going to authorize it, yes, I think we have to tell them. At that point, it’ll become a matter of public record. If we don’t tell the university, word can get out, and that would put the university in a bad spot, being ambushed like that.”
“What do you think about what he said—that he’d be fired, then he’d be killed?”
Nick said, “I see that like Ryan does. He was getting scared, just talking.”
“You don’t see him getting fired? You don’t see the patriots taking him out?”
“Let me talk it over with the chief. My hunch is that the university isn’t going to take any action until they’ve got more to go on. They don’t want to be seen as panicking and infringing on his rights, you know, academic freedom and all that. If he turns around one day and admits he’s working with the patriots, then the university has to cut him loose. But that the police or the feds are leaning on him to give up BC? No, I don’t see the university acting on that. He’ll claim he’s protecting his sources, and the university will go along with that. The prosecutor doesn’t need to reveal the exact nature of those emails. I think Fredericks will be fine—assuming, of course, he’s innocent.”
“And when he says he thinks one of the patriot groups will try to hit him?”
“They might find out we’re trying to lean on him to get some kind of information, but I think they understand that if they hit him there’s going be two dozen FBI guys and a special-ops team down here the next day. That’s a hornet’s nest I don’t think they want to disturb.”
“Fredericks argued that the patriots would be afraid he had some incriminating information on them that he’d try to use in dealing down on a sentence.”
“Well,” Nick said, “if he’s got anything to deal, then he should be afraid. If he doesn’t, they’ll know that and just lay low until it blows over.”
“Can the feds offer him some protection?” I said.
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I think we could offer him protective custody if he asks for it or if he gives up some intel that puts him at risk. But he can’t have it both ways. If he wants help staying alive, he’s got to give us something in return. He can’t say he’s a misunderstood professor and, by the way, these bad people are going to kill him.”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I don’t like it.”
“What don’t you like?” Nick said.
“I buy everything you say about how the university’s gonna sit tight until us or the feds are done leaning on him, assuming the prosecutor agrees to lean on him in the first place—”
“That’s right: this whole thing might never materialize. The prosecutor might decide not to pursue it. After all, there’s no actionable evidence in those emails that Fredericks was involved in any crime, and they might see him as having free-speech rights or journalistic protection. Fredericks’ lawyer might argue that Fredericks is just a wannabe who gets off on pretending to be buddies with these guys.”
“Still,” I said, “let’s say the prosecutor decides to pursue it, and we tell the university—then we’ve lost control of the story. You can never predict what’s gonna happen. For all we know, the university might be pressured by some legislators who are all hot to show how much they loved Dolores Weston, and we have a responsibility to track down her killer, and we won’t tolerate hate, blah blah. Or some students could get wind of it—hell, Fredericks himself is the faculty adviser to the gay organization on campus—they could want to spin it that the university or the police or the feds or somebody is persecuting Fredericks because he’s gay, so they publicize it. Then, the legislature gets into it with the university. Shit, there’s a dozen ways this thing could blow up and cost Fredericks his job, and then he’s gotta worry about a bunch of pissed-off patriots who’ve got more guns than brains.”
“What are you proposing we do, Karen?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just saying I don’t like it.”
“You know what I don’t like?” Nick said. I looked at him, inviting his answer. “I don’t like what someone did to Dolores Weston.”
* * * *
“How about a different strategy?” I said.
“Such as?” Ryan was tapping out a rhythm on his desk with his pencil.
“Well, we could fart around for a while trying to get Fredericks to tell us who this BC guy is, but I’m not sure we’re gonna get anyplace with that.”
“Why not?” Ryan said. “Fredericks is scared, he wants to protect himself.”
“Yeah, but he’s probably meeting with an attorney right now, going over what the emails said. The attorney is telling him just what Nick said: you didn’t implicate yourself. You were just playing along with BC, trying to get his trust, making him think you’re powerful in the movement. It’s all part of your research, etc.”
“But if the prosecutor goes to the university, they’re goi
ng to be more motivated to find out whether they’ve got some kind of neo-Nazi sympathizer on their faculty. They’re motivated to lean on Fredericks, right?”
“The way I read that attorney,” I said, “the main thing that motivates her is to make sure nothing hurts the university. Hard to say how that’s gonna make her act. If we’re coming after a professor, her instinct will be to protect him—which is how she acted when we first brought up a possible link between Fredericks and a crime. Besides, she’s a lawyer, the prosecutor’s a lawyer. You never know what kind of shit’s gonna ooze out under the door when you put the two of them in a room together. All we know, they both might decide to go slow, hope something else turns up—some forensics or a new suspect or something—so they don’t have to get into a fight about a professor.”
“Okay,” Ryan said. “So what’s your idea?”
“A Hail Mary pass. The emails talked about how Fredericks has a bunch of guys available in case BC needs some muscle. Chances are BC is associated with the Montana Patriot Front, right?”
“A definite maybe on that.”
“I don’t see Fredericks chartering a bus to transport a bunch of morons across country. He’s sending them out to Lake Hollow in their pickups.”
“So we look at Lake Hollow, you’re saying?”
“Sure, why not?” I said.
“Well, main thing is, it’s out of our jurisdiction.”
“Yeah, I know, and we don’t have any evidence that anyone from Lake Hollow is tied in with Dolores Weston. But who says we have to go out there like they’re suspects? We just go up to—what’s his name, Christopher Barry?—”
“The Reverend Christopher Barry, please.”
“Yeah, sorry. We go up to the shithead and give him a heads-up we’re looking at a crime took place here in Rawlings. We don’t mention Dolores Weston, just that someone’s been putting racist flyers with 1488 on them on cars at the mall, and we’re interested in getting his views on what that might mean. We look at his reaction.”
