by Kirk Russell
“I have because sometimes I talk about Creech and Nellis Air Force bases being near me.”
“What about the Alagara bombing?”
Asking that was in some way an invasion of privacy, and I felt lousy about it, but it had to be asked. Julia was quiet, then said, “Yes.” That was enough for someone to put it together, I thought, but didn’t take it any further with Julia.
“Supposedly, the young woman he’s talked to about pacifism in a chat room has disappeared, and he really wants to talk to her,” I said. “He told his friend he needs to talk to her.”
“How could she keep him stable?”
“I couldn’t tell you, but I know her moniker.”
“Okay, what is it?”
“She signs as Peace Girl,” I said.
“No, mostly she—I mean, I sign as PG. Only sometimes as Peace Girl.” She ran her hands up her face and through her hair then asked, “Is this really happening?”
“It’s happening.”
“Are you surprised, UG?”
“When I heard about the young woman pacifist in the chat room, I wondered if it was possible that it was you. You may have been chatting with a former Army sniper named Jacob Corti that we believe is the cell-tower sniper we’re looking for. How did you find that chat room?”
“Through Sam.”
“I had a feeling you’d say that.”
“I’m done with her, UG. I’m pretty much done with all of them if it’s not too late.”
“Have you damaged property? Have you hurt anyone?”
“Neither. One night in Long Beach we had a ‘truth meet’ outside at the fire pit, where three of the girls said they weren’t comfortable with me. They asked if I was passing information to the FBI through you. I said no. I said I’d move out. So I did, and Sam talked me into going to the farm and getting my head clear there. She set it up so my car would be hidden near this artist colony, and no one would know where I was going. She said that would put me in control and let me reach out when I was ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“I don’t really know, but I was messed up by Nick posting that video, and a couple of the girls definitely didn’t want me in the house. There was stuff. Sam has always wanted me to join up with whatever the other group is they won’t talk to me about.”
“So instead of trying to talk you into it anymore, she sent you right there where they were building the bombs.”
She nodded, was quiet, and then said, “Still my mistake. We smoked some really strong dope, then they drove me there. I was out of it the whole drive. I didn’t have my phone, my laptop, or my ID the next morning. Someone stole my wallet. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past year, but I haven’t hurt anyone or trashed anything.”
“Did you ever provide support for anything violent?”
She laughed. It was an older, more experienced laugh than I’d ever heard from her. It was close to a bitter laugh learned the hard way. But I had to ask. I had to know. I’d put my integrity on the line.
“Kind of hurts my feelings you’re asking again,” she said.
“But I am.”
“I never wanted to know about or took part in any of their operations.”
“What about the planning?”
“They would never talk with me in the room or anyone who wasn’t part of the inner circle. I never heard anything. There were rumors, but I didn’t believe them.”
We drove in silence until I turned on the radio and listened to a report on the president’s tour of the western states. Phoenix refugees who’d migrated to Salt Lake and were living in a tent city met with the president today. In San Francisco he would give a speech in Union Square.
“What else can you tell me about Mr. Over and Out?” I asked, then I realized I needed to show her a photo. I had an easily accessible one on my phone and brought it up as she talked.
“Certain people give him violent thoughts. I’ve asked him what about them does that, and we talk about it. Some people he has to avoid being anywhere near. He gets surges of hate. Some are people he knows, some are public figures.”
“When we get to the Vegas field office and after we’ve met with my supervisor, would you be willing to try contacting him?”
“Sure,” she said, “but it’s pretty unbelievable. They’re going to think I know him, aren’t they?”
“Some will, for sure.”
“It’s chat rooms. Are there agents who monitor chat rooms for terrorists? Ask them. They’ll get how chat rooms work.”
“It’ll be okay, Julia. Here take a look at this photo.”
I handed her my phone.
“That’s Jacob Corti, the cell-tower sniper we’re looking for,” I said. “This is who it could be.”
“Cell-tower sniper? I don’t know about that,” she said.
I know you don’t, I thought.
We arrived at the Vegas office. It was Mara’s first look at Julia. She was eye to eye with him. Hers was a straight-ahead look, always had been. The insecurity and personal failure and shame that she’d revealed on the drive was nowhere in the room. I watched Mara look from the bruising around her cheekbone to her sunburned arms, scratched hands, broken nails, the raw physicality of youth. What we only have once.
That wasn’t lost on Mara. He was a guy conscious of the passage of time and his devolution into later middle age. Halfway through the meeting he asked me to leave, which was fine. Mara would get to the same place I did. I wanted to take her to San Francisco with me. I wanted to try a different route to Corti that might lead to him giving himself up.
To my surprise, Julia accompanying me to SF was approved. After I was back in the room, Mara asked her to log in to the chat room on a Bureau laptop and reach out to Corti.
“Hey, it’s PG. I’m back,” she wrote. As we waited, Mara asked, “Does he always sign off ‘over and out’?”
I forgot we hadn’t told him, but Julia did now.
“He signs ‘O&O’ like ‘over and out’ and sometimes ‘JC.’” She looked over at me. “Like Jacob Corti, I guess.”
That sealed it for Mara.
“I’m going to log out. I don’t have to answer right away if he picks up on that. Now at least he knows I’m back,” Julia said. “He hardly ever gets back to me right away anyway.”
In early sunlight the next morning, Julia and I descended into SFO. Jace picked us up at the airport and with a wry smile said, “Power went out in Saint Petersburg and part of Ukraine while you were in the air, plus about a dozen other Russian cities. Funny thing is, lights stopped flickering in thirteen US cities at the same time.”
“Quite the coincidence,” I said.
“True that. Some Brits seem to have heard about it first.”
“Good on them.”
Rumor had circulated through the FBI that the British separately concluded Russia was behind the US attacks. Allegedly, they had also warned Russia to expect retaliation after part of London and all of Bristol went dark three days ago.
The president will speak at Union Square for approximately twenty minutes near dusk. The lights of nearby buildings will grow brighter as he speaks. Jace got that from a Secret Service agent. The agent also said it’s very important to the president’s staff that surrounding building lights rise to full illumination as he talks so as to give the country confidence that things will soon return to normal.
Little of that mattered to me. Clearing Julia and finding Corti did. A few minutes after we arrived at the San Francisco field office, Julia logged into the War Room on an FBI laptop as I took a call from an Idaho number that turned out to be a Sheriff Summers, whose territory covered the eastern shore of Lake Coeur d’Alene.
“I’m holding a card with your name on it, Agent Grale.”
“Where did you get it?”
“From the home of a William Mazarik.”
“I gave it to him. Another agent and I visited him about a former Army sniper we’re looking for.”
“Who was
that?”
“A guy named Jacob Corti.”
“Mazarik was found dead of a gunshot wound four days ago. It was thought to be suicide, but his death may be murder.”
“How did you get from suicide to murder?” I asked.
“Angle of the shot and solvent used to wipe the gun, which was left in a dog bowl full of water.”
“So, inside the house?”
“Yes,” Sheriff Summers replied.
“Someone he invited in.”
“Or he opened the door and they were holding a gun.” After a beat he said, “We believe it was someone he knew. Could it have been this Corti?”
“Anything is possible, but I doubt it, given Corti’s movements.”
“Ever hear the name Gary Farue?” Sheriff Summers asked.
“We’re talking to him daily.”
“If you’re doing that, can you vouch for his whereabouts?”
“We can’t. It’s mostly cell conversations. I can give you his cell number but just so you know, he switches phones fairly often. He was in the Northern Star Freedom Brigade.”
“And he tried to quit?”
“You got it. Here’s his cell number.”
I read it to him and he said, “We’re going to want to interview him. He owed Mazarik money that Mazarik had threatened to sue to collect.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Some portion of $50,000 loaned years ago to Farue so he could buy a place in Missoula. But all of this is up in the air right now. There was barely any solvent on the gun. It’s possible the dog licked off Mazarik’s prints while drinking water. But neighbors say Mazarik would never kill himself and leave his dog in there to starve. And between you and me, I’ve got a young crime tech here out to make a name. He’s the one calling it a murder. I’m not so sure.”
“I’m going to tell you something, Sheriff,” I said, “something that goes absolutely nowhere. Not a word to anyone, but we hope to know more within a week. Stick with your young guy’s theory for now because we’re taking a really hard look at Gary Farue and not liking what we’re seeing. I’ll call you. Give me a week.”
I laid my phone down as Julia called out, “He’s here. He’s writing me. He’s here.”
54
San Francisco, May 10th
She’d written, Hey, what’s up, JC? I’m back. Been gone. Didn’t have Internet. Shoot anybody? Peace Girl.
L-Z-9-9-O&O: Still hanging.
No harm?
L-Z-9-9-O&O: Not yet.
Yet?
L-Z-9-9-O&O: Got something going.
Want to talk instead?
L-Z-9-9-O&O: Tried to find you for a while. Figured you were done.
Nope, on a farm. Hiding. No connection.
L-Z-9-9-O&O: You okay?
Sorta. But worried. You?
It struck me that Julia’s root honesty might be something he could feel and why he responded to her. She was forthright in a few words, which reminded me I only knew part of her.
L-Z-9-9-O&O: I’ve got head-tripping finger on the trigger type thoughts. Bad dude coming. Thinking of going over the falls.
She typed, Where are u?
L-Z-9-9-O&O: Norcal.
Me too.
L-Z-9-9-O&O: Where?
SF.
And just like that, we got to the hold-your-breath moment. We got there and he went silent. The laptop Julia worked from was tapped. As we waited for L-Z-9-9-O&O to respond, a tech agent walked in and announced, “He’s here. He’s right in this area.”
He turned to Julia. “Can I use your laptop to pull it up?” She slid her laptop to him and he showed us. “Mission District, either on foot, bike, or slow traffic. I can’t tell, but he’s moving.”
“How do we get more exact?” I asked.
“When he stops we can narrow it down.”
But it didn’t happen that way. He’d left the chat room and might have even disabled his phone. We lost him. I didn’t see any reason for it in the exchange he’d had with Julia. I thought about it, then pulled a chair over and sat near her.
“Julia, on the flight here this morning, you said that the last time in the chat room he didn’t sound like himself. It hasn’t always felt like you were talking to the same person. Am I remembering that right?”
“It’s one of the reasons I stopped talking to him.”
“What about this morning?” I asked.
“This morning it feels like him.”
“What’s different? What feels like him?”
She replied, “He’s like me in a way. When he’s there, he’s there, and gone when he’s done.”
“He left you with a cliff-hanger.”
“He’s not saying he’s going to do it. He says he’s thinking dark stuff. Sometimes he wants to bounce it off me.”
“And when it doesn’t feel like him, what’s it like?” I asked.
“Like somebody prying. Where do I live? What do I like to do? How old was I really? That spooked me. I mean, it was him but not.”
Julia turned slightly and pointed toward Jace, who’d finished a meeting and was at the far end of the conference table typing fast on her laptop. Jace had glanced at me a couple of times after coming back into the room, a signal she had things to talk about.
“I didn’t think about this again until you introduced me to her,” Julia said in a quiet voice. “It probably doesn’t mean anything, but . . . okay, so he always signs off as JC or just types ‘O&O,’ you know, like over and out.”
I nodded.
“Okay, so then once he said, ‘Call me Jace since that sounds like JC.’ Only it doesn’t really, right? It was weird because he wanted me to call him Jace when we were in the chat room, so not just sign off with it. So then I thought I was talking to somebody else for sure and stayed away. Plus everything else was going on, and then I didn’t have a computer. Coming here and finding out her name is Jace is freaky.” She leaned forward and whispered, “It wasn’t her, was it?”
“Definitely not.”
But I immediately thought about Farue. How could I not? We had a tracking device on his vehicle after talking a judge into a wiretap. The judge had almost balked.
“An Afghan war vet, a go-to security consultant for several cell-tower companies and telecoms, and he’s working with the FBI right now,” the judge had said. “I’ll sign it, but I’d never approve this if we weren’t under attack. All you’re giving me is a good reason to never approach the FBI and offer to help.”
That last bit stung a little, but we got the wiretap. It might not do any good, and no doubt he would switch phones again soon, but we knew from the information he’d fed us that he was tracking places Corti contemplated renting in San Francisco. He claimed to be doing that for us. Perhaps he was. But he was also making calls to various vacation rentals. We didn’t know yet what that meant. It could be that Corti was telling Farue about places he was looking at, as Farue claimed. Or Farue was gaming us and in truth the judge was right, we didn’t have adequate proof of anything.
I walked back down to where Jace sat at the end of the table.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Bring up the photo of the second man at the American River cottage. I’m coming around to thinking the second man may have been Farue.”
“Save it for a movie.”
“No, I’m serious. Baggy clothes, his body covered, could have been. Where I’m going with this is he may be playing both sides. Farue brags about being able to hack into computers. That could fit here too. Hacking into a computer Corti owns. I’m thinking aloud here, but Julia says in that chat room she thinks someone impersonates Corti. Farue may know she’s my niece. Could be he’s targeting her at times when he’s sure Corti won’t be in the room. He’s the one who told us about Corti and Peace Girl. He likes the thrill, likes living on the edge and flirting with danger, not to mention the money he’s making right now.”
Jace looked down the table at Julia then leaned closer to me. In a hushed voice she s
aid, “Reasonable people might say you don’t like Gary Farue.”
“I don’t, and you don’t like the idea he may have played us. Hear me out. Farue went to sniper school. He got to be friends with Mazarik and Corti. He shot with them and got to know their shooting styles. When he saw the cell tower where we met him, he knew the one-two signature pattern. He knew from the skill level and I’d guess a half dozen other things it had to be Corti.”
“What’s your point?”
“I’d lay down money he contacted Corti before he called us. He’s not playing both sides, but he’s working both sides.”
“What’s the difference?” she asked.
“He’s trying to manage the situation. He calls you, fishes for information, and passes on some of it. He wants Corti to keep shooting. He’s kicking ass financially thanks to the cell attacks. He also craves the thrill, the dangerous game of working both sides. He finally feels appreciated. He can pick up his phone and call a telecom exec at nine at night. They’re going to pick up.”
I kept at it because often enough Jace and I will go back and forth with each other and get somewhere.
“Corti is still deep with the Northern Brigade,” I said. “So maybe Farue sees a twofer. Make good with the Brigade by helping Corti, and make money mopping up behind cell towers Corti crashes.”
“Cell towers aren’t enough of a mission for the Brigade’s leader, Croft,” she said. “I’ve done more digging into his life.”
“I want to hear about it, but say Farue is hooked up with Corti as well as feeding information to us and maybe feeding it back to Corti, and he’s raking in the money. He’s got a brand-new pickup in the carport at home. He’s got a landscaper coming by once a week picking weeds at a house he’s never at. Maybe he had a long period of scraping by and now with attacks underway, he can charge whatever he wants. So what if he points out a target or two to Corti? I mean, what’s a cell tower or two between friends. What harm does it do? Nobody dies. Another project comes on line. It’s win-win.”
“That last is possible,” Jace said. “The towers will get repaired, but the crisis continues. The money continues to flow, and Farue looks prescient in his warnings.”
“There you go, that’s the word, ‘prescient.’ Puff the ego.”
