by Kirk Russell
“I always figured that was the plan.”
“I knew you knew, so I changed it. I don’t want to burn up my inheritance, so I’m going to sell drugs.”
“What kind?”
“Pretty much everything. I can make deliveries on the beater bike, and if I shoplift on the way back home it’ll be convenient.”
“What do you do when the store owner chases you out the door?”
“Race down the bike path.”
“The cops have bikes.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
This was a patter we kept that lightened things up. I’m sure what was on her mind and weighed on her soul was the video Nick had threatened her with. I wanted to ask but wouldn’t. It had to come from Julia. I had questions about Samantha Clark as well, but we didn’t have to go there today. I’d take my cues from her.
“I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t have one good friend living here already. They’re all pretty political. Two of them are hard-core. They like to argue.”
“What do your more hard-core ones worry about?”
“Being targeted by the government because they’re actively recruiting for Witness1. Last night they were talking about hiring someone to sweep the house for electronic devices.”
“They’ll pay for that but not air conditioning?”
“Priorities, dude,” she said, and smiled. “We’re close to the beach, so there’s the breeze. Or at least that’s what they said last night.”
“Is everybody on board with Witness1?”
“Totally.”
Witness1’s controversial aspects, such as how a posted video could shape a future jury, weren’t going to get resolved tomorrow. The argument against posting was that if you have a video that shows a possible crime in progress, turn it over to the appropriate legal authorities so that the evidence can be reviewed impartially. The counterargument was “Turn it over? You’ve got to be kidding. We’re trying to shame the police into changing.” In her next sentence Julia reinforced that.
“Some of the guys over here last night think the government is behind the power outages and will use them as an excuse for martial law.”
“That sounds ripped out of the playbook of right-wing nuts, not your crazy liberal vigilantes,” I said.
“I’m just saying. Look, I’m a spy here, UG. I’ll gather intelligence, and FBI SWAT can do a huge raid on the fire pit.”
“Would we get more than wine and dope?”
“You’d get a lot of that. Did I tell you I’ve got an interview for a job this afternoon? It would just be temporary, but at least I’ll be earning money. I’ve got to get ready soon. Do you want to see my room?”
We looked in at her room. Small but with two operable windows and worn oak-strip flooring. There was a single bed and a desk, and she told me she was ordering things from Amazon. We finished the tour in the kitchen, which had an electric cooktop and an island bar with blue Mexican tile. Wineglasses were near the sink, and a half-empty bottle of vodka bookended three cookbooks. “These girls are bomb,” Julia said. “It’s going to be fun, and I’m going to seriously check out Long Beach State. After I put my room together I’ll send you and Jo photos. This is the best thing I could think to do, at least for now. I’m sorry for how I’ve messed up.”
“I’m glad you’re checking out Long Beach State.”
“I’m not running away.”
“I know you’re not.”
“I told Detective Allred I’d call every day. He said I could just leave a message on his cell, so I’m doing that. The deal is he’ll only call me if he has a reason. Thank you for making me call Erica Roberts. I like her. She’s smart and pretty cool. I get what could happen. Everyone thinks I’m pretty naïve, but if you live around an FBI agent you pick up things.”
She gave me a sly smile, and I asked, “Are you talking to Agent Egbert?”
“Yes, and she said she was going to tell you, so I think I can. The tracker didn’t work. Nothing worked. They left the box out on a dirt road in the desert. There’s something else, UG, I should have told you. I screwed up and loaned Nick money. Don’t ask how much. Too much. Any ideas on how to get it back?”
“First we catch him. Would Samantha have any ideas where to look for him?”
“It’s Sam. Everybody calls her Sam. I don’t know why you have to call her Samantha, and Nick isn’t her problem. He’s mine.”
“But she knows him and she’s your friend and can talk to him. He took over her apartment lease in Las Vegas, right? And didn’t you deliver some things to her from him?”
She dismissed that with a shrug, and I said, “Those are my only ideas for getting the money back unless you can get ahold of one of his credit cards.”
She didn’t see the humor in that. Not long after, I left. I heard the front door shut softly behind me as I walked to my car. It was an empty place to leave things. Driving away I felt I’d missed a chance to tell her how much I want life to work out well for her. I hoped this move led to good things. She and Jo were my family. I had more I wanted to say, but the timing wasn’t right. Today was just about a house tour and Julia trying to assuage my concerns.
She called Jo later, and much later Jo called me.
19
JULIA
Julia had wanted to tell UG but somehow just couldn’t. She sat on the couch and wept after he left. Even as she’d toured UG around, she’d known she wasn’t going to stay in this house. She couldn’t stay here. On the drive through the desert from Las Vegas, she’d pulled off the freeway at an overpass and found a place to park, then waited there until her body stopped trembling and she could drive again. Her face was streaked with sweat all because she was listening to news reports on bombings. Her heart had pounded so hard.
Get over it, she’d told herself as she’d started driving again, but hearing any news about the substation bombings triggered things she’d thought she was over. Now she wondered if she ever would be over them. And last night, outside around the fire pit, they were talking about the bombings, and she’d explained away the shine on her face as heat from the fire and drinking wine. She’d only had a little wine, and it was chilly. What had disturbed her was their talk, the way they sort of probed each other and looked at her, wondering aloud if a bombing was a good thing.
A good thing? They don’t know anything, she’d thought. They don’t know what they’re saying. She’d flashed back to the Alagara and all the blood around her when she’d regained consciousness after the bombing. She remembered they carried her out, and she’d tried to look for her parents when they went through the bar area, and the paramedic guy held her head so all she could see was the ceiling and the hole in it. He wouldn’t let her look. Just remembering that made her feel sick.
Forget the power outages, the rotting food in markets, the car accidents, the clinics, schools, and businesses closed, dialysis machines that didn’t work, computers down, and on and on and on. Forget all that. That wasn’t what got her. It was the casualness of talking about bombings as if they could be good.
Like the hundreds of windows broken and all the chemicals released in the substation fires, like that, and cops working overtime driving everywhere, and guards at the other substations and everything electrical, all that money spent for what? To destroy something without first building or knowing what you’re going to build didn’t work for her. She couldn’t deal with that thinking.
Above all, Julia knew she couldn’t handle being around bombings. Couldn’t even tell UG that she’d been wrong to move here, because she couldn’t deal with making yet another mistake. She couldn’t leave, but she couldn’t stay and was unsure what to do. She’d written the rent check the first night, and they’d just put it on a kitchen counter and said, “Not yet.” They wouldn’t take it, because once they did, there was no refund. This morning it was gone, so she’d wasted more of her parents’ money.
You have to be tougher, she thought. You have to stay. You cannot cut and run. M
ake yourself stronger. If they talk about bombings, get into the conversation and tell them you lived through one. Tell them. It was a mistake moving in, but now you’re here. Change clothes. Get ready. Go do the interview. You have to figure this out on your own. That was it. No more Nicks. No more mistakes. No more blaming other people.
20
Los Angeles, April 26th
Late that night Jo called and said, “Julia told me what she believes Nick did. It made me quite sad. She’s not one hundred percent sure of everything. Some of it is like a dream. She was out with Nick and his friend Joel. They went to dinner and were at a club listening to music and dancing. Nick didn’t want to dance, so she danced with Joel, then they all went to a party in Summerlin. Julia said she and Nick were in a weird space. She drank at the party but not much. She knows she’s been drinking too much.”
“She volunteered that?”
“She did and we talked about that after. On the way back to Nick’s apartment, they bought whiskey and beer. She and Nick had been having problems, and she was close to breaking up with him. Joel drove. She was in the front seat talking with Joel. Nick wanted to sit alone in back. On the drive, Nick was talking weird.”
“What’s talking weird mean?”
“Joking with Joel they only had one girl between them and then saying to Joel, ‘You can try her tonight.’”
“Try Julia?”
“Julia said she turned around and got in his face. He apologized, said he didn’t mean that at all. When they got to Nick’s apartment, Nick put his arm around her and said he was very sorry and didn’t mean what she thought she heard. You with me so far?” Jo asked.
“Yes.”
“In the apartment they put on music and poured a round of whiskeys. Julia didn’t want any more hard alcohol, so she poured a beer in a water glass. Now they’re sitting around joking and talking. She finishes the beer. At some point later she uses the bathroom. When she comes back, her beer is half full again. Nick is drinking the rest of the bottle, and they’re watching her. She can feel something has changed.”
“She remembers with this level of clarity?”
“I’m telling you what she told me.”
“Okay.”
“They start talking again, and she stops thinking about the beer and slowly drinks it. The next thing she remembers is waking up Sunday morning on a rug out in the main room wearing only a T-shirt. She thinks she woke up when the apartment door shut, and that might have been Joel leaving. She goes to the bedroom and looks in. Nick wasn’t there and, in her words, ‘the bedroom smelled totally like dope.’
“She found her clothes folded on a chair in the kitchen, which upset her. She didn’t understand it. She took a shower and knew she’d been with somebody and assumed it was Nick but couldn’t understand why she woke up on the rug. She left. She came home.”
Jo paused, then said, “I remember that Sunday morning. I had gone to the hospital early to check on a patient. When I got home Julia was there. We got sandwiches for lunch at that new deli a couple of hours later.”
“Did she say anything then?” I asked.
“No, but she was very distracted. I remember that. She said today that she knew when we were together on Sunday something wrong had happened the night before. Wednesday morning she started to get little flashes of hazy memory. She remembered Nick slowly undressing her in the bedroom. She thinks she remembers him taking her hand and leading her into the front room and a soft comforter or something they sat down on. On Wednesday night she remembered Joel with his shirt off, and he may have been kissing her. The next day she remembered more. And more since then, including sex with Joel, though she’s not positive about that. She remembers Nick standing over her holding his phone. She’s certain she was drugged.”
Jo paused again, then said, “There’s more detail, but Julia asked me not to say anything more.”
“I understand.”
I did. I got it. Julia wanted me to hear enough details to know it really had happened.
“I’ll help find him,” I said. “He’s planned his escape and his new life, but I’ll find him.”
“I can tell you as a doctor all of this would be difficult to prove unless she is pregnant, and Julia uses birth control. You know how hard it would be in all the other ways to bring charges, and it doesn’t sound like she wants to. She also blames herself.”
“Family trait.”
“She’s been told the video is her and this friend of his having sex.”
“Who told her?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Police can get this friend, Joel, into an interview box and talk rape. I can make that happen.”
“She said you would say that. She doesn’t want to do that but is very worried the video will ruin her life, and not just temporarily but permanently.”
I didn’t answer. I was thinking about how to heat up the fugitive hunt for Nick Knowles.
“Paul?”
“I’m here.”
“Let her talk to you when she’s ready. It won’t be long. But let her do it her own way.”
“This is rape we’re talking about.”
“I know what it is better than you, but let her tell you her own way. Her focus right now is on the video.”
“When he hears what he’s going to be charged with I’ll bet Joel will give up Nick, especially after he hears there’s a fugitive warrant out for Knowles.”
“Julia knew you’d say that and doesn’t want to do anything yet. She’s hoping Nick will get arrested on the fugitive warrant and won’t be able to post the video. Let’s hope it happens that way,” Jo said.
I wasn’t as hopeful.
“What do you think of what you heard, Jo?”
She knew what I was asking, and she’d heard more accounts of rape than I ever would.
“She told you she was raped,” Jo said.
“What she said was, ‘I think he drugged me and his friend Joel raped me, or I had sex with him because I was drugged.’ I don’t know if that’s it word for word, but it was very close to that. She wanted to talk to you next. She didn’t want me to talk to you.”
“Are you telling me you were unsure if it was rape?”
“It was rape. They drugged her drink and I want her to go to the police so they can pick up Joel and start breaking him down.”
“She’s not ready for that. Julia is in deep distress and running from a betrayal of a grotesque kind. She needs us. The very best thing we can do is support her until she’s ready to go to the police. I know you don’t understand waiting and I’m not sure I do, but for now just support her. Can you do that?”
I could do that and find this Joel too.
21
Los Angeles FBI Field Office, April 27th
In the early 1960s, after the federal push to build dams on the Columbia River, hydroelectric power became cheap. So cheap it was worth building a transmission line from The Dalles, Oregon, to the LA Basin. That line runs 846 miles and ends at the Sylmar Converter Station at the northeast end of the San Fernando Valley. From the station, power is distributed to five utilities. It’s the largest, most sophisticated station in the world and floats like a ghost ship on the horizon in my nightmares.
I’d driven past it three or four times since moving to LA. Additional police patrols watched it. National Guard troops are stationed there, yet I still see gaps. I’ve pushed Fuentes and I’d dogged Caltrans. Caltrans has the equipment to move in heavy concrete barricades, but they’re swamped with other requests, and Sylmar won’t see more defensive measures installed until next week.
That afternoon, with Jace in San Francisco, and Mark and I here, we worked off a shared screen using the Bureau’s map of all known electrical-grid and cell attacks. It showed all attacks in every state. After looking at nearby western states for similarities, we enlarged California. Below each of the four LA substations bombed was the word “ANFO” in black. The four were now known as the HALO attacks: Hollywood, Anza, La
ke, and Olin.
I moved the map up to Klamath Falls, Oregon, and switched to split screen with a Google Earth view as well. On the Google Earth map, we followed the high-tension lines south through forest and mountains and across farmland in the California Central Valley. I scrolled until Los Banos was at the top of the page, then LA. Farther south the recorded attacks thinned.
“If we go to Mexico, I want to shop for a new swimsuit first,” Jace said.
“Be patient,” I said. “We’re looking at where they’ve concentrated and where they haven’t. With the National Guard deployed and local police patrolling, substations are becoming harder targets, so I’m following the high transmission lines.”
“You’ve been pitching high transmission lines since the attacks started. Let’s look at thefts of explosives before we wrap this up.”
Several break-ins at mine hives, facilities storing mining explosives, had occurred in the past six months. We vetted ideas several more hours and ended up with a list that might or might not mean anything, then signed off with Jace. I felt better for the back-and-forth, but an unsettled, restless feeling still lingered.
Toward dusk, Fuentes stopped me as I returned to the conference room where I was working. Can’t seem to work in the bullpen anymore. I need more space and quiet.
“You’re based in the Vegas office, so you’re probably more up on Palo Verde,” Fuentes said. “We just heard they’re evacuating all but essential personnel. Have you been following this?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your take?” he asked.
“That there’s something else going on they’re not talking about.”
“Like what?”
“A virus embedded in some ancillary piece of equipment that keeps reappearing. Have you ever heard of the Aurora Experiment?”
“No.”
“Idaho National Laboratory did an experiment with a cyberattack where they rapidly opened and closed diesel-generator circuit breakers. That resulted in explosions that destroyed them. I don’t know if it can happen in a similar way, but something took out the second line of pumps at Palo Verde, so now they’re down to battery-powered pumps as the only means of getting water into the cooling towers. The batteries are only good for seventy-two hours. If they can’t get water flowing, they know what their estimated time to meltdown is. But I’m betting they’ll figure something out. They’ll bring in more batteries. They’ll do something to buy time. They have to.”
