“Okay,” Hector said. “I'll be there in the morning.”
* * * *
Katie was drinking Gallo red again. Hector was drinking Coors. He seemed absent, she thought, and she remarked on it.
“Sorry,” he said. “I'm wool gathering.”
“No,” she said. “You're thinking. There's a difference.”
“Those two kids at the trailer park in Livingston,” he said. “Fifteen, sixteen years old. Gangbangers, shuffling drugs. Sylvia Greyeyes and her two boys, they're what now, ten? Looking forward to a dead-end future.”
Katie sat back. “Get over yourself,” she said.
Hector was startled. “What?” he asked, looking up.
“You heard me,” she said. “Meth is everywhere. It's like the weather. You take one guy down, four more pop up. Dragon's teeth.”
“Bailing out a bathtub with a teaspoon.”
She leaned forward again, and took his hand. “Sailing into the wind,” she said.
“One day at a time.”
“Best you can do,” Katie said.
Frank Child came into the Hitch, and looked around. Hector waved him over.
Child seemed a little awkward. “Dr. Faraday?” he asked.
They shook hands.
“Beer?” Hector asked him.
The FBI agent slipped into the booth next to Hector. “When in Rome,” he said.
Their pizzas came.
“Can we speak frankly?” Child asked Hector.
Hector glanced at Katie, putting a couple of napkins in his lap. “She'll hear it all, anyway,” he said.
Child nodded, concealing his smile.
“Or not,” Katie said.
“Might as well hear it from me, then,” Child said.
Hector folded his slice of pepperoni pizza the long way, so he wouldn't drip cheese on his pants.
“Okay, first of all, your guy moved around a lot, the last couple of years,” Child said. “Denver, Seattle, Albuquerque. Before that, though, his life seems to have been pretty stable.”
“Where was he?”
“Norfolk, Virginia.”
“Job?”
Child nodded. “Department of Defense subcontractor.”
“Lloyd was Army,” Hector said. “Norfolk is Navy.”
Child nodded again. “They worked on naval avionics. Don't ask. I did. Classified project.”
“Lloyd had a security clearance.”
“Dating back to his time of service.”
“What did he do, exactly, when he was in the military?”
“Communications intelligence.”
“Could you explain what you're talking about?” Katie asked.
Child smiled. “Closely held,” he said. “What they call compartmentalized, in the jargon. My security clearance doesn't give me access.”
“But you can make an educated guess,” she said.
“Intercept and analysis of electronic signals, like radar signatures and missile telemetry. These days, there's a virtual battlefield. It's on computers, not on the ground.”
“They still take casualties on the ground,” Katie said.
“There's that,” Child said.
“What did he get busted for?” Hector asked.
“There's no record,” Child said. “A court martial would have a transcript, but an Article 15 is at the discretion of the unit C.O. Commanding officer,” he added, for Katie's benefit.
“He lost his rank, but he kept his clearance,” Hector said.
“And took an honorable separation,” Child said.
“But eighteen years later, something happens,” Hector said. “The guy goes on the bum.”
Child shrugged. “That's how I'd read it,” he said.
“What pushed him over the edge?”
“He was in VA outreach. Post-traumatic stress, maybe. But he applied to get his rank reinstated. They turned him down.”
“Piss me off, if I were him,” Hector said.
“Which is about as far as I can take it,” Child said. “The only other thing I came up with was his Facebook account.”
“A place where vets can bitch about mistreatment.”
“And share resources.”
“If we got screwed, how do we screw them back?”
“Couple of linked Web sites. Lloyd was active on them.”
“How angry are the Web sites?”
“Pretty angry.”
“Turns out, FBI is monitoring them for domestic terrorism?”
“No comment,” Child said.
“I'm sorry,” Katie said, “but you seem to be trying awfully hard not to tell Hector something.”
“Here it is,” Child said. “You can be a homeless guy, but you can go into any public library and sign onto the Internet. Lloyd kept his accounts up and running. It doesn't matter where he was. Seattle or Albuquerque. He might as well have been in Warsaw or Moscow.”
“But he wound up on the backside of nowhere,” Hector said. “In a double-wide he didn't own. Cooking meth. How does he get from Point A to Point B? Or more specifically, how do we?”
“What have you got on Cloudtooth?”
“Cloudfoot,” Hector said.
“Whatever,” Child said.
“I'm going after him tomorrow,” Hector said.
“Could you use company?” Child asked.
“Wouldn't hurt.”
“Don't let your pizza get cold,” Katie said to them.
* * * *
There were two national wildlife refuges at the north end of Stillwater, Hailstone and Halfbreed. It was an empty end of the map.
Ab Enterprise obviously felt Big Lake was outlaw country, and he suited up accordingly. He had a Ruger .223 ranch gun on his rifle rack and a 12-gauge Remington pump clipped to the dash. He himself was carrying a Glock .40 in a hip holster, and a 9MM Springfield compact as a boot pistol.
“No joke, hey?” Child asked him.
Ab shrugged. “Better to have what you don't need than need what you don't have,” he said.
They followed Ab in Hector's truck. Going in, they saw a Forest Service vehicle on the way out. Ab waved the guy down and pulled over. The ranger parked on the opposite shoulder and Ab crossed the road to have a word with him.
“Good that he doesn't want to make a blind approach,” Child said.
“Ab's been at this game awhile,” Hector said. “He believes in leaving a light footprint.”
“And carrying heavy,” the FBI agent commented.
“There's no call to court trouble,” Hector said. “Not when it has a habit of finding you.”
“Is that one of those stoic Western aphorisms?”
“He's been in five gunfights, that I know of,” Hector said. “Other man always drew first. Ab's no cowboy.”
“You, either,” Child said.
“No,” Hector said, smiling. “I'm an Indian.”
Child laughed, a little uneasily, Hector thought.
The ranger drove off, and Ab came over to Hector's side of the truck. “Place is crawling with bass fishermen, man tells me,” he said. “Naomi Cloudfoot is doing a land-office business in ice, beer, cigarettes, and live bait. You sure you're up for this?”
Both of them said yes.
“Okay,” Ab said. He walked back to his SUV and got in, and they drove behind him on the unpaved road up to the lake.
The terrain rose slightly, and then dropped, and the trees fell away. The lake spread out in front of them, the water bright, as smooth as porcelain, one of those accidents of nature the Rockies serve up, a shallow basin carved by ice, stretching toward the horizon line, pristine and uncluttered, as if God had only just left.
Child whistled. “I should get out of the office more,” the FBI agent said.
“Take every opportunity you get,” Hector said.
“Indians have a name for this place?”
“Tanka Ble is what the Lakota call it,” Hector said.
“Which means what?”
“It means Bi
g Lake,” Hector said, with a straight face.
Child glanced over at him. “Half the time, I don't know if you're putting me on or not, Deputy.”
There was a fork, the road branching, and Ab took the right-hand turn, heading north along the shoreline. The nearest boat ramp and campground was on the east side of the lake.
The bass boats had been out at first light, when insects peppered the water. Now it was mid morning, the sun heating the surface of the lake, and the fish had gone deeper, or moved in close to the shoreline, where deadfall created pockets of shade. The fishermen had come in to change their lures.
Naomi Cloudfoot sold shiners and crawfish. A lot of bass guys used plastic worms and spinners, but some of them swore by live bait. The proof was in the pudding.
The three lawmen parked behind Naomi's trailer and got out.
“What's the drill?” FBI special agent Child asked.
“I'll see what I can get out of Naomi,” Ab said. “You want to chat up her customers?”
They nodded, and Ab got in line behind a couple of big guys in plaid shirts and waders.
“I don't know dick about bass fishing,” Child said.
Hector shrugged. “Me, either,” he said.
It wasn't much of a crowd to work, a few dozen men on shore, another dozen still out on the lake. The two deputies were in uniform, Child in khakis and a windbreaker, although you wouldn't mistake him for a civilian. The fishermen weren't a hostile bunch, in any case, just disinterested. They could have cared less about Naomi Cloudfoot's jailbird son.
“Haven't seen him,” one guy told Hector. “Last I heard, he was in the jug.”
“He's been out a couple of months,” Hector said.
“Ike's nothing but trouble,” the bass fisherman said. “His old lady stands by him because he's family, that's all.”
“He hasn't reported to his P.O.,” Hector said, “but I'm not looking to violate him.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Answers to some questions. Known associates.”
The fisherman snorted. “Ike's known associates are junkies and gang-bangers. He's pretty low on the food chain.”
“That's what I hear,” Hector said.
“Then you've heard all there is to hear,” the guy said, and walked off.
Child came over. “Any joy?” he asked.
“None of them admits to seeing Ike,” Hector told him.
“They covering for him?”
“I don't read it that way,” Hector said. “They might be protecting Naomi, but nobody seems to have any love lost for Ike and his line of business.”
“Why don't you kiss my ass?” they heard Naomi Cloudfoot say loudly. “You already put my boy away once.”
Ab Enterprise said something to her, quietly.
“That doesn't cut any ice with me,” she snapped.
Ab raised a hand, no harm, no foul, and moved away from the take-out window.
“Not getting any further,” he said to Hector.
“Might raise a wind,” Hector said.
Child's cell buzzed on his hip, and he stepped a little out of earshot to take the call.
“She's a shade too adamant,” Ab said.
“Nice word for it,” Hector said, smiling.
Ab smiled too. “Dollars to donuts, she's seen him,” he said. “Ike's only half smart. He knows better than to shack up with her, but he's dumb enough to hit on her for beer money.”
“You figure he's gone to ground close by?”
“That's the easy call,” Ab said. “But wishing doesn't make it so. He could be anywhere between here and Canada.”
Child snapped his cell phone shut. “His mom might not know where he is, but we do,” he said to them.
They both looked at him.
“Nearest town is Molt,” he said.
“Not much hat size to it,” Ab said.
“Big enough for a public library, and Internet access.”
“What have you got?” Hector asked.
“Ike Cloudfoot just signed onto his Facebook account, as we speak,” the FBI agent said.
“Eight miles of bad road,” Ab said to Hector. They were both thinking the same thing. Naomi could alert Ike before they even got close.
“Let's hit it,” Hector said.
They pulled out without urgency. They were a mile from the lake before Ab Enterprise put the pedal to the metal.
* * * *
Andrew Carnegie, the nineteenth-century Pittsburgh robber baron, put up seed money for public libraries all over the country. The library in Molt was the only brick building in town, a modest two-story affair, vaguely neo-Classical. At eleven that morning, the parking lot was already half full.
“I see a problem, here,” Hector said.
Ab nodded. “Background,” he agreed.
Frank Child looked at the two uniformed deputies.
“Civilians,” Hector said to him. “Library staff, old ladies with blue hair, kids out of school for the summer. From the number of cars, I'd say there were forty, maybe fifty people inside. Targets of opportunity, Ike decides to pick a fight.”
“We don't know if he's armed.”
Hector glanced at Ab. “Odds are, not,” he said.
“I wouldn't take it to the bank,” Ab said.
“How do you want to do this, then?” Child asked them.
“Ab and I go around the side, use the back door.”
“How do you know there is one?”
Hector smiled. “Handicapped access,” he said. “Wheelchair ramp. It's a Federal mandate, to qualify for matching funds.”
“Where am I?”
“You go in the front,” Hector said.
“I don't even know what Ike Cloudfoot looks like.”
“Tall, early thirties, skinny as a rail, hair tied back in a ponytail,” Ab said. “I forget to mention he's an Indian? You can't miss him.”
“Non-issue,” Hector said. “If his mom warned him, he'll be long gone. If she didn't, he doesn't know we're coming.”
“Here's the deal,” Ab said. “These places are all laid out the same. You walk in, there's a central check-out desk, open stacks. Ask to get on the waiting list for computer time. Ike won't be in the stacks. He'll be on a computer station, because he's only allowed an hour of use. He won't waste it.”
“That's a lot of variables,” Child said.
“There always are,” Hector said.
* * * *
In the event, however, they took him down without incident.
Hector and Ab came in the back and navigated their way through the stacks. Child was sitting at an open computer position, two seats down from Ike, who was oblivious to what was going on around him, until Ab pinned his arms, to keep him from deleting his recent Web searches. Hector scooted Ike's chair back and cuffed him. Child slid into Ike's seat and began scrolling through the screens he'd opened. It happened too fast for anybody else to react.
Then they drew reaction in very short order.
The first was a library patron, a woman in her mid forties who'd been at one of the other computer workstations. “What are you doing?” she asked. “There are children here.”
“With all due respect, ma'am,” Ab Enterprise said, “we were well aware of that.”
A second woman, an assistant librarian, put her hand on the first woman's arm. “Deputy,” she said.
Ab apparently knew her. “Miz Nicholson,” he said.
“I think Sally's scared,” the librarian told him. “We don't usually have armed, uniformed officers making an arrest on library grounds.”
“I appreciate that,” Ab said. “My apologies,” he said to the first woman, Sally. “We wanted to minimize the risk, and we needed the element of surprise.”
Sally blinked back tears, more shaken than she'd let on.
Hector got Ike Cloudfoot to his feet. He handed Ike's cell to Ab.
Ab flipped it open. The screen showed Naomi had called her son twice but the cell phone had been tu
rned off. Ab shook his head. “Ike doesn't play by the rules much,” he said, “but they ask you to silence your phone in the library.”
Hector looked over Child's shoulder. Child had saved Ike's searches to a document, and he was printing it out.
“I'm sorry for the disturbance,” Ab said to the two women.
“Are you keeping a record of the Web sites this man accessed on the Internet?” the librarian asked him.
“We're taking him into custody on an open felony warrant,” Ab said. “He's in violation of his parole, and he's a person of interest in an active investigation.”
“He has an expectation of privacy.”
Ab nodded. “Unlawful search and seizure,” he said.
“What's it about?” she asked him.
Ab hesitated. “Methamphetamine trafficking,” he said.
“Oh, hell,” the librarian said, sadly, and let it go.
* * * *
“What have we got?” Hector asked. They were outside, sitting in his truck.
“Online pharmacies, Canadian,” Child said.
“Pseudoephedrine,” Hector said.
Child nodded. You couldn't go into a drugstore in the States and buy enough cold medicine to make it worth your while, but on the Internet it was an open market.
“Is this legal?” Hector asked the FBI agent. He meant, was it usable evidence.
“International traffic falls under Homeland Security. It's subject to the anti-terrorism act.”
“So we can nail Ike as the supplier of raw materials to his cookers, but how do we connect him with Lloyd?”
Child handed him the printout.
“Walk me through it,” Hector said.
Child opened his laptop.
Hector wasn't that Internet savvy, so it took the FBI agent some explaining.
“Social networking, Facebook, MySpace.”
“You told me that's how Ike hooked up with Lloyd.”
“Little more roundabout than that,” Child said. “Lloyd was among the damaged and the disaffected.”
“Veterans’ blog sites. A place to bitch about mistreatment and ignored needs. The VA's a mess.”
“It's a recruitment pool.”
“I don't like where this is going,” Hector said.
“I don't like it, either,” Child said.
“A lot of guys came back from Vietnam or the Gulf wars with post-traumatic stress, battle fatigue,” Hector said. “They didn't turn to cooking meth.”
AHMM, July/August 2012 Page 14
