by Peggy Bird
She was just about to get back to worrying about Nick when she got a call from Tyler Radke, chief of staff for City Commissioner Harris Wilson. The commissioner was not the most cordial of sources for Fiona, but his staffer had lately been a reliable contact. Since Wilson routinely voted against the mayor, Radke was a good source on any number of stories, including the Anderbock bill, which his boss supported. The progress of the bill was the reason for Radke’s call.
Fiona listened for a while, asked a few questions, and then moved the subject to the attempted assassination.
“Look,” Radke said after a pause. “I’m not saying it was a good idea, what he did, but I have to say, trying to take the city in the direction she’s advocating, punishing the businesses we need to grow the economy, is bound to raise the hackles of a lot of people.”
“Give me some examples of what you think is taking us in the wrong direction.”
“It’s not me, Fiona. It’s my boss. He’s concerned about the costs to business to rename streets, mandate longer parental leave, and paid sick days. And don’t get me started on her support for increasing the minimum wage or her tax increases for developers.”
She noticed Radke had slipped into “me” but didn’t mention it. Bringing the conversation back to the attempt on the mayor’s life, she said, “But there have been disagreements between mayors and commissioners for the whole history of the city. Why do you think this mayor is such a lightning rod that a man tried to kill her?”
“From what I heard about the man who shot at her, it had to do with race. Not how Commissioner Wilson would want to address his differences with her.”
“And how would he do it?”
“The way any of us would. In an election.”
“Is your boss running for mayor?”
“Off the record? He’s been approached by people to run.”
“People?”
“Come on, Fiona, you know how this works. You ask the questions you want answered without giving away any of your sources. I answer by giving you as much information as I want you to have.”
She laughed. “So have we reached the end of what you want me to know about this subject?”
“For the moment.”
“Thanks, I appreciate your honesty.” Before she let him go, she said, “Tyler, two last questions. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about a white supremacist group interested in moving into Portland.”
“Yeah,” he said, hesitantly. “What’ve you heard?”
“Not much. Just the name of the organization and the possibility it’s backed by the deep pockets of a businessman in town. Any chance you know more?”
“I’ve heard a couple names. I assume you have, too.”
“Who have you heard?”
“Wellington and Cochran. I can’t believe either of them would put themselves out there, although you never know.” He paused for a moment. “Not that you asked my advice, but you might want to be careful where you’re asking questions. Whoever tried to have the mayor shot isn’t a nice person.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“What’s the other one?”
“Other one?”
“You said you had two questions.”
Fiona hesitated. Something about what Radke had said made her slightly uneasy about tipping her hand about the cabin. But it wasn’t a big enough red flag to stop her from eventually saying, “I was hiking in the Mt. Hood National Forest recently and came on a cabin with some of the regalia of the group we’re talking about. It was built by a group called Energy, Inc. You know anything about the cabin or the group?”
“The group sounds familiar. Let me nose around and see what I can find out. I’ll get back to you.”
For a few minutes after the call, she sat at her desk and mulled the conversation over in her mind. Odd that he only mentioned two of the four names everyone else mentioned. And he’d given her another warning. It was getting to be a regular thing when she asked questions about the White Knights. After Garland’s death and what had happened with Nick’s car, she not only didn’t like it, she was frightened by it.
On the other hand, Radke had volunteered to help her find information on the cabin. Maybe he was just being a good guy telling her to be careful. Somehow she doubted it.
Just before she left her office, she got a text message from Nick saying he was on his way back to Portland and should be at her house within the hour. She felt a sense of relief when she read it. He was okay. Her premonition was just nerves.
• • •
Nick got to the house, used the key he had to get in, then threw the deadbolt on the door, and immediately went to the front window. Concealing himself behind the curtain, he looked out and scanned the neighborhood.
“Nick? What are you doing? What’s going on?” Fiona asked as he dropped the curtain and turned to her.
“Nothing. Everything’s fine.” He tried to reassure her with a kiss but, not really focusing on what he was doing, he missed her mouth by a couple inches.
“No, seriously, what’s up? You’re scaring me.”
“Do you have a phone number for Sam at work?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Your premonition was on target, so to speak. My tires were all slashed when I got back from shooting and there was a note saying I’d better keep my nose out of other people’s business. I need to talk to Sam, but I don’t want Amanda to know or she’ll freak. I thought I’d try to get him before he left his desk. Where’s the number?”
She was frozen in place, fear obvious on her face.
“Fee, the number?” He was losing time and patience and knew it showed in his voice.
“Threatened? Where?” Her voice was choked, probably with the same fear he saw in her expression.
“Near a trailhead on Mt. Adams, where I left my car. It took forever for someone to come with new tires.” He ran his hands over his face as if to smooth out the tension lines. “I’m never going to be able to rent from Hertz again, am I?”
“This isn’t funny, Nick.”
“I know it isn’t, Fee, believe me. The only good thing is, whoever did it was clearly out to scare me, not hurt me.” He held out his hand again. “Sam’s number? Please?”
“Sorry, hold on.” She went to the dining room and came back with her phone. “It’s in my contacts.”
Sam answered, “Hi, Fiona.”
“It’s Nick.”
“Okay, hi, Fiona’s phone. What’s going on, brother-in-law? Did they get your phone, too, when they bagged your camera?”
“No, but I wanted to call you at work and Fee had your number saved. I have something to tell you I don’t want Amanda to know.”
“We don’t keep things from each other unless there’s a damned good reason.”
“I think this qualifies.” He summarized what happened while he was out shooting.
“You okay?” Sam asked.
“I’m fine. I watched on the way home. No one seemed to be following me. I really don’t want Amanda to worry.”
“I agree with you. You’ll need to make a police report in Washington State but I’ll do my best to keep it under wraps here until it’s sorted out.”
“Thanks, Sam.”
“But my price is this: restrict your travels to places where there are other people. Or have people with you.”
“My writer will be here in a couple days.”
“Not sure you should be going into the woods with just one other person.”
“This guy’s the perfect companion. He’s a big believer in the Second Amendment. He’s driving up from Northern California. Probably has a shoulder-fired missile launcher in his trunk. I’ll be perfectly safe with him.”
“Great. Not only are we outgunned by the bad guys, we’re outgunned by the people we’re trying to protect. Maybe we should just stockpile RPGs and AK-47s on every block and do away with the cost of maintaining a police force.”
Nick could imagine the look on his brother-in-law�
�s face. “I assume you’re not looking for a response.”
“No, I’m not. How’s Fiona taking it?” Sam asked.
“She’s hyperventilating; fussing over me.”
Sam laughed. “Who needs Amanda? You have Fiona to act in her place. I’d tell her not to worry but I don’t think it would work. So just tell her we’ll take care of it.”
• • •
At Fiona’s request, Nick stayed again that night. This time it was so she could feel comfortable about his safety, which helped her sleep until a phone call awakened them both.
“Fiona, get down here right now.”
She glanced at the clock—it was six in the morning. What had happened that her boss was calling her at this hour?
“Down where? What’s going on?”
“The mayor’s been shot. I need you at City Hall, with a camera if you have one other than on your phone. Our errant photographer is missing again.”
“I can do better than my old camera. I’ve got a photojournalist here. I’ll bring him.”
“Get him here ASAP.” Ben Stern didn’t wait for her to answer before hanging up.
The drive from St. Johns to downtown was silent. At least inside the car. Inside her head Fiona was trying to beat back the adrenaline-fueled fears that whoever was behind this was escalating things. Death threats, slashed tires, another attempt on the mayor. Maybe she shouldn’t have suggested Nick come along. Maybe this would put him more in the line of fire. But it was too late for that. He’d been as excited as she was to get dressed and into the car.
They arrived in downtown Portland to find traffic in the streets leading up to the complex of city, county, and federal buildings at a complete standstill. Police were all over the place, trying to direct traffic and keep people away from the crime scene.
Most of the near-by on-street parking was taken so, risking a rather large ticket, Fiona finally parked—more like abandoned—her car in a loading zone and ran the remaining half-mile to the Fourth Avenue side of City Hall, now festooned with yellow crime scene tape. Fiona looked for her boss but didn’t see him. Then she looked for Sam or one of the other police officers she knew but couldn’t get anyone’s attention even when she did see someone familiar.
She had to wait for Ben Stern to find her about five minutes later.
“What the fuck happened?” she asked.
“The mayor and her chief of security were coming into the building for an early morning meeting. Someone stepped out of the shadows over there,” he said, pointing to a group of trees to the north, “and fired six shots. Two hit the mayor before Bud could get between her and the shooter. He took the rest of the rounds.”
“Please don’t tell me…”
“Okay, I won’t. But he is.”
“Oh, God. How is she?”
“Don’t know. Is this your photographer?” he asked indicating Nick, who was shooting images of chalk outlines and shell casings, blood spatters, police tape, and the officers crawling all over the scene looking for evidence, anything he thought relevant and from all angles.
“Yeah. Nick, meet Ben Stern. Ben, Nick St. Claire.”
“If you’ll give us an exclusive on those images, we’ll pay you,” Stern said, looking not at Nick but at where Nick was aiming his camera.
“I’ll email them to you as soon as I have access to a computer. Use what you want. Just give me a credit.” He turned to Fiona. “How long you gonna be here, Fee? I have to meet Travis out in Troutdale and we’re heading up to Mt. Hood from there.”
She looked at her boss, who said, “There’s a presser in fifteen minutes, then you can get out of here. As soon as you drop him off, get the story on the web, then see what you can find out to make it bigger.”
The hastily called press conference was brief. The chief announced little the media didn’t already know. The mayor and her security chief had been shot at close range as they entered City Hall. The security chief was pronounced dead on the scene. The mayor had been taken to Oregon Health Sciences University. An update on her condition would be given later in the afternoon at a press conference at OHSU.
No questions were allowed.
After ferrying Nick home to make his dash to meet his buddy, she drove on over to the newspaper office. She tried to wring information out of Sam on the phone, but he didn’t know much more other than a few details about the caliber of the bullet. He was as terse and tense sounding as Fiona had ever heard him.
Which wasn’t a surprise. She knew the dead security chief had been his friend.
She got a piece about the shootings online and headed back downtown to see what more she could dig out from her contacts in City Hall. This time, in addition to the police barricade, she found a hastily sprung up memorial of flowers, candles, and American flags. There were also two groups of people, one from the mayor’s church praying around the memorial, the other, the disgusting one, a picket line of a few men with signs saying the mayor got what was coming to her. And with the swastikas tattooed on their arms, she didn’t have to guess why they were blaming her.
From the sidewalk she called a couple contacts inside City Hall. She found out the mayor, who had been wearing a protective vest, had been shot once in the shoulder and once in the abdomen. She was in surgery, but her docs were optimistic about her prognosis.
Fiona also learned this shooter had been either more intelligent than Preston Garland or had planned better. This one had gotten away. It was apparent, however, he—several bystander accounts said it was a man—had help as well as inside information about the mayor’s schedule. Only a handful of people knew she would be there so early. The focus of inquiry was on the few people, staff, and city commissioners mainly, who knew about the meeting called to discuss the mayor’s proposal to rename Broadway for Abigail Scott Duniway, the woman who’d spearheaded the drive for a woman’s right to vote in Oregon.
Fiona worked all her sources but no one could give her much more. The commissioners were tight lipped. The mayor’s supporters only wanted to talk about their ideas of who was responsible, none of which had any supporting evidence, and some of which were wild at best. It was one dead-end after another.
But if City Hall contacts didn’t have much to say, others did. The whole city was out on a ledge where a gust of rumor could blow them off. The Police Bureau had dozens of tips on the Bureau hotline as well as demands from all sides, ranging from people on the street to TV and radio talking heads to solve it.
After a good hour of chasing smoke, Fiona got a phone call from Tyler Radke asking her to meet him in an hour at a coffee cart two blocks from City Hall so they could talk.
Normally, she wasn’t uncomfortable about meeting sources in a public place. But the events of the morning made her distinctly uneasy. So she reported in to her boss, telling him where she was going, who she was meeting, and promising to keep Stern posted.
Tyler seemed nervous when she met up with him. Good, she thought. That makes two of us.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” he said, looking over his shoulder in the direction of City Hall. “Everyone’s watching everyone else so I don’t want to be seen talking to you for too long. You asked about a cabin on Mt. Hood. I overheard Commissioner Daystrom talking to his staffer, saying they needed to stay away from the Mt. Hood cabin until this blew over to protect the White Knights. The staffer said he’d get an email out to everyone. Said it had been cleaned out and no one needed to be there anyway.”
“Daystrom? Wow. He’s not the most progressive person in the city, but I wouldn’t have thought he’d be mixed up in something like this. Not with his strong religious stand on how we’re all God’s children.”
“You have any contacts with his office?”
“No one there is usually interested in talking to me.”
“I’ll see what I can do to find someone for you.”
“Thanks, Tyler, appreciate it.”
“What do you think you’ll do?”
The uneasiness ab
out talking to Tyler was back. Her gut told her not to be too forthcoming about her plans. “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to think about it.”
“You seemed interested in the place the last time we talked. I thought maybe if the cabin was deserted for a while, you could go have a look.”
“I may. I had to leave quickly the last time. Like I said, I’ll think about it.”
“It may give you the answers you’re looking for. But be careful. Wouldn’t want you to get hurt because of something I told you.”
As she walked away she replayed the conversation in her mind. There was something off about it, but damned if she knew what it was.
Chapter 14
“No, Fiona, you’re not going up on the mountain alone.” Stern was adamant.
“Then you come with me,” she said to her boss. “I want to take another look at the cabin. It’s important. I know it is. I can feel it.”
“I respect your instincts, but I’m concerned about your safety. And I can’t go. I have an editorial meeting and someone has to ride herd on the City Hall shooting story if you’re off chasing White Knights.”
“It’s all connected. I’m telling you. And with everyone’s attention here, it’s the perfect time to see what the hell’s going on up there.” She waved in the general direction of the mountain.
Stern closed his eyes and seemed to be mulling it over. “How about your friend Nick? Didn’t he say he and his writer were going up to Mt. Hood today?”
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with him. Texted him to meet me at the cabin. But I haven’t heard back from him.”
“Try again. I want someone with you.” Stern started to walk away from her desk. “And let someone in law enforcement know what’s going on. It sounds like the cabin’s in the Clackamas County part of Mt. Hood. Which is good. They might not be off looking for the City Hall shooter the way everyone here is. Call them.”
“I will. I promise. And for good measure I’ll call Sam Richardson. He’s been talking to me on background about this.”
She kept her promise. At least most of it. She called the Clackamas County sheriff’s office, told a bored receptionist what she was doing, how it was connected with the events on Portland, and then called Sam at his desk and left a message. And she texted Nick again.
