Lone Wolf

by Sara Driscoll

  “Ah.” McCord leaned back into the couch cushions, throwing one arm up across the top of the couch. “So you want to see if there might be any crossover between the huge list of possible plates and the smaller list of possible suspects.”

  “There’s not even any guarantee he’s in that box, but the Bureau has gone through a lot of files and I think there’s a chance. Of course, if our guy is anything like Skinner, he might not even have a valid license plate. But my gut says his vehicle was on the road that night and these all look like legitimate West Virginia plates.”

  “He may hold some of Skinner’s beliefs, but denying the legitimacy of the federal government might not be one of them. There are lots of people who begrudge having to pay the government a red cent, but do it anyway because otherwise their lives will be beyond difficult.”

  “Very true,” Meg said. “Now, what I need from you is a contact at the DMV. Someone who, if he can’t get access to the West Virginia files, knows someone who can.”

  “Done.” McCord sat upright and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “Can I tell them why I need it?”

  Meg looked at Cara, whose face mirrored her own doubt. “I don’t know. This should really be off the books.”

  “It will be. But if you want to light a fire under someone, you need to give them a reason to pitch in. I won’t lead with it, but I’ll keep it in reserve in case I need it.” He opened up his contacts information on his laptop and started scrolling.

  Twenty minutes and the promise of two bottles of Johnnie Walker Platinum Label eighteen-year-old scotch later, he had his contact in the Virginia DMV sweet talking a buddy in the West Virginia DMV into giving them a hand for the price of one of those two bottles and the knowledge he was helping stop the bomber.

  Thirty minutes after that, they had an impressive list of names.

  “One thousand, two hundred and fourteen names,” Meg said.

  “But only fifty-two to compare them to.” Cara raised her coffee mug in a mock toast. “Could be worse.”

  “Sure could be.” McCord pulled his laptop toward him. “I told you it was worth it to take the time while we were waiting to make an electronic list of the FBI’s possible suspects. Now it’s just a matter of running the search.” His fingers flew over the keys, merging the two lists and searching for duplicate entries. “And there we are. What do you know? Only got one name in common.” He turned his laptop so both sisters could see.

  “Daniel Mannew,” said Cara. “And the vehicle fits. CID suspected the perp drove a truck from the chassis size indicated by the wheel marks. This guy is the registered owner of a 2005 Chevy Silverado. Only vehicle registered to him.”

  Meg started digging through the boxes. “Mannew . . . I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that file. I’m pretty sure I put him on the list.” She kept flipping and flipping. Nothing in the first box. She moved onto the second. She found his file a third of the way down and slid it free.

  “Those are all his dealings with government agencies?” Cara’s widened eyes were locked on the file. “It’s got to be nearly an inch thick.”

  “Some people go out of their way to be miserable and to make other people miserable.” Meg carried the file to the coffee table, opening it to the stack of papers inside. “Keep in mind too that these are federal records only. We’ll have to talk to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources to see if he had a beef with them.” She shot a sideways glance at McCord. “Got a contact there?”

  He shrugged. “I’m a helpful guy, but I have my limitations. Given time, I could track down someone at the DNR, but no one at my fingertips after hours like this. Which reminds me. I may actually have something for you there, even though I’m not sure of the specifics.” He opened a file on his laptop. “We all remember message number two, right?”

  “The ‘you disrespect me, sir’ message?” Meg clarified. “Sure do.”

  He scanned the text on his monitor until he found the lines he was looking for. “Remember that bit about ‘Public education is the cornerstone of conflict management efforts’? And ‘Application of aversive conditioning techniques may provide immediate relief for agricultural damage and provide public satisfaction that a problem is being addressed’? And then he talked about the best answer being a bullet?”

  “That never made any sense to me,” Cara said. “But I always thought his sudden switch to grammatically perfect spelling was a little odd.”

  “That’s because he lifted those lines. I looked it up. They’re direct quotes from a DNR brochure about black bear management. Which makes me think when we find out what his issue was with the DNR, assuming there’s still some trace of it considering the office got bombed, it’s going to be around bears. His solution? Shoot them. Their solution must be to find other more peaceful ways to all live together. Now, let’s see what the feds have to say about him.”

  “And what he has to say about the feds.” Meg handed out sheaves of papers to McCord and Cara and the search began.

  “I’ve got letters to the Department of Agriculture,” Meg said. “What’s ‘scrapie’?”

  “Scrapie?” Cara echoed. “Used how?”

  “He says he’s from West Virginia, a farm outside Moorefield, near the Virginia border. His entire flock of sheep was euthanized because several of them had it. Guess it must be bad, because they killed all of them, apparently to keep it from spreading around the county. But he wasn’t insured, so he lost everything. He wants to sue for damages.”

  “I found it,” said McCord, scanning his laptop monitor. “It’s some sort of infectious neurological disease. Related to mad cow.”

  “We’ve all heard stories about farmers losing their whole herd because of mad cow disease,” Cara interjected. “Must be the same thing here. One animal gets it and they’re all killed to contain the spread to neighboring farms and beyond. He wrote a letter saying he wanted to sue for damages, right? What does it look like? Similar writing style?”

  “Meaning terrible spelling and all that? Yes. By the way, he signed off as Danny Mannew, instead of Daniel, so keep that in mind while you’re looking.”

  “I have a letter to the IRS that’s also signed off by Danny Mannew. He’s complaining about being nailed for selling moonshine without a license. Apparently two West Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control Administration guys caught him trying to sell to a local barkeep and then posed as buyers themselves. He’s calling it entrapment.”

  McCord rattled the papers in his hand. “This report goes along with the scrapie situation. Apparently the Department of Agriculture thinks it all started when he illegally brought in cheap, unregistered sheep from out of state. They were infected and that brought down the whole herd.”

  “Ouch.” Cara winced.

  Meg’s cell phone rang and she reached across Hawk and Blink to pick it up off the arm of the sofa. She glanced at Cara. “It’s Craig.” Then for McCord, “My boss.” She took the call. “Jennings.”

  “We’ve got something.”

  The urgency in Craig’s voice had her heart kicking double time. “What?” She held a finger to her lips and then put the phone on speaker so everyone could hear.

  “We just got a call into the tip line,” Craig continued. “Some barkeep had a guy in his pub last night, someone he’s known since the guy was a kid. It never occurred to him that he might be the bomber; he just seemed like a regular guy, down on his luck lately, but a regular guy. But last night he got into a dustup with another patron and something about his reaction didn’t sit right. He was threatening the other guy, telling him that he had no idea what he was really doing. The bartender started putting it all together—he’s apparently had trouble with the IRS lately, as well as the Department of Agriculture and the Division of Natural Resources. He asked that we go easy on him, if that’s who it is. He’s someone who’s had a hard life and the barkeep’s known the family for decades.”

  “Craig? Is the guy’s name Mannew?” She spelled it out for him.

&nbs
p; There was dead silence for the span of three full heartbeats. Then, “How the hell did you know that?”

  McCord’s shit-eating grin summed up her feeling of victory.

  In a few quick sentences she summed up her off-the-book activities.

  Silence reigned for another few seconds before Craig spoke. “I suppose I should be chewing your ass out for going outside Bureau ranks for this, except that you’ve just given us enough to get a search warrant to go after the guy almost immediately. Stay available. My bet is that first thing tomorrow they’ll send in a team, and if he rabbits, I want us on-site right from the start. And, Meg?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Get those damned files back in here so no one knows you took them out of the building.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a click as he unceremoniously hung up on her.

  McCord’s grin melted away. “Uh-oh. Are you in trouble?”

  “Not to worry. You just heard the last of it. Craig will cover for us and will bury how it was done. For him, getting the right answer is worth ignoring how we got there at this point.” She started piling papers back into the file. “Great work, guys. Without this connection, it might have taken at least an extra twenty-four hours to put it all together from the tip, and that could have given him more than enough time to rabbit, as Craig so succinctly put it. Now we have a chance to stop him.”

  Chapter 28

  On Source: The alert by a scent detection dog when it is at the source of odor.

  Friday, April 21, 8:40 AM

  Hardy County Courthouse

  Moorefield, West Virginia

  Danny quietly slipped down the darkened halls of the old courthouse, his gaze skimming over features he hadn’t seen in years. It was a building he wished he’d never set foot in.

  This was where his downfall had started. Where his bitch of an ex-wife divorced him and got full custody of their two kids, leaving him with few rights and even less money. Worse, she then took the kids and left the state. He hadn’t seen them since.

  Judge Harold Eggers was responsible for all of it. He could have stopped her, or at least lightened the custody payments and required her to stay in state. But no, he gave her everything, leaving Danny with nothing.

  Time for payback.

  He’d sent a last note that would have the feds looking at big buildings in even bigger cities. But for him, this was personal. A way to come full circle. For him, this was as big as it gets.

  He was going to start over.

  He thought of the cave, deep in the mountains, where he’d hidden the money. The bank would foreclose on the farm and the contents—whatever little was left at this point—but they never knew about the rifle, so they wouldn’t miss it.

  It was his great-great-great-grandfather’s .53 caliber, used during West Virginia’s time in the Union Army during the Civil War. A beautiful first model Burnside, it had an intricate, factory-engraved frame with a burnished wood stock so satiny smooth it gleamed. Several months back, he’d taken it to a well-known collectors’ gun shop in Pennsylvania. He’d driven a hard bargain that day and had come out twenty thousand dollars richer.

  Rather than trusting the money to a bank, he’d stashed it in the rafters with the C-4 until a few weeks ago, when he’d hidden it deep inside a cave almost no one knew about. It had financed the equipment he needed to buy to build the drones and now it was his ticket to a new life. They’d taken everything from him and he’d done his best to take back some of his own. His only way to win was to close out this portion of his life and escape to freedom as a new man with a new identity.

  But first he needed to settle one final score.

  He ghosted past the closed doors of the county clerk’s office. He knew Jimmy was in there; he’d unlocked the building already, but the office wasn’t officially open for another twenty minutes. But ever-trusting Jimmy paved the way for him to slip in the side door. This was Hardy County—some neighbors still didn’t lock their doors at night, so leaving the side door of a county building open a few minutes early didn’t require a second thought.

  Next he passed the glossy wood panel doors of the courtrooms. Number three was Eggers’s courtroom, always had been. Danny pulled on the heavy handles and the door opened silently on oiled hinges.

  God forbid a squeaky door interrupt the judge at work.

  Morning light streamed into the empty courtroom. Court wouldn’t be in session until ten o’clock, bringing the bailiffs and defendants and prosecutors. But, for now, the big room was silent, his steps whispering along the tile floor.

  His gaze was fixed on the narrow door behind the big wooden bench with the gavel—the judge’s chambers. Eggers would be arriving soon. An early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, it was well known that Eggers liked to work in his office for an hour before the start of court, and then vanish as soon as the day was over to indulge in a glass of the local ’shine at his favorite bar down the street.

  Danny was counting on having a few moments alone with him. A few moments was all he needed.

  He let himself into the room, slipping the backpack from his shoulders to the floor. He removed an ax handle from the pack.

  He was rewarded fifteen minutes later by the sound of footsteps in the courtroom. Seconds later the door opened and he only needed one quick look at the wide, bald head to bring the ax handle down hard.

  After that, it was only a small matter of removing the bandanna and zip ties from his bag to gag Eggers and then bind his arms and legs to his fancy antique wooden desk chair. Just before he pushed the backpack full of C-4 under the desk at the judge’s feet, he pocketed the detonator remote. Then he waited.

  It wasn’t long before Eggers’s eyelids fluttered and then slowly blinked open. The look of confusion, followed by alarm and then fear, gave Danny the most satisfaction he’d felt since the IRS bombing.

  “Remember me, Eggers?” he goaded softly. “Remember the man whose life you tried to ruin? Well, I’m back and now you’re going to pay. But before that happens, I want you to understand exactly why you’re going to die.” He leaned in closer, close enough to see the dew of sweat gathering on the older man’s forehead. “Because you are going to die.”

  Eggers tried to call for help from behind the gag, but all that came out was a gurgle. He struggled against his bindings, but Danny had pulled them too tight to have any give.

  “You started it all. If it hadn’t been for losing everything in the divorce, I’d have had the money I needed when the farm ran into trouble. It was bad enough losing my sheep to the bear, but the DNR not paying for them forced me to go out of state for new stock. Who knew they’d be sick? Then they were all dead, and just like that, a hundred and fifty years of family farming was gone.” He pointed back to the heavy oak door leading to the courthouse. “It all started right here. It’s all going to end here.”

  He nonchalantly strolled around the desk and rolled the chair out just far enough for Eggers to see the bag underneath. “See that, Judge? That’s all the C-4 I’ve got left.” He feigned an expression of shocked innocence. “Oh, didn’t I tell you about that?” Innocence melted away to reveal pure malice. “That’s what I have left after blowing up the Whitten Building, the IRS office, and the DNR. You’re going to be my crowning glory to all of this. One more bomb and I’ll be gone in a puff of smoke. Hope they can trace you through your DNA, because that’s all that’ll be left of you.”

  Eggers started struggling as if his life depended on it, and Danny, sick of the game, pulled the ax handle from behind his back and clipped him across the head again, leaving him stunned and drifting in and out of consciousness. “So long, Judge. See you in hell.”

  He threw open the window and pushed out the screen, then hopped down to the grass below, pulling the sash down behind him. He jogged across the lawn and into a small stand of trees at the back of the building. Ducking behind the trunk of a large oak, he peered back toward the courthouse.

  He’d picked this spot e
arlier because it had a straight line of sight into the judge’s chambers. As much as he needed the judge to die, preferably taking the whole damned courtroom with him, he needed to see it happen. After two misses, he wasn’t about to drive off into the sunset and trust that this bomb did its job. This time he needed to see the detonation and was willing to waste precious moments to experience the thrill. Then he could move on.

  Behind the glass, the judge was groggily coming to. It took a moment, but then memory and clarity returned and he started to struggle frantically. Smiling, Danny could imagine the muffled screams of terror from behind the gag.

  The explosion was staggering—the flash of light, the cacophony of sound, the thump of the shock wave hitting Danny, even sheltered behind the tree. He allowed himself one quick look at flames licking through the broken walls of the building and roiling black smoke billowing skyward, and then he was running, sprinting for his truck left a few blocks away.

  Victory fueled his steps, and his eyes fixed on the green hills rising in front of him.

  Fresh air. Open sky. Sunshine. No responsibilities.

  Freedom.

  Chapter 29

  Clue Searches: Each searcher looks for items the subject has left behind, such as clothing, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, keys, or backpacks. Handlers are trained to look up, to each side, and behind for clues while their dogs search for the subject’s scent.

  Friday, April 21, 8:57 AM

  Mannew Farm

  Outside Moorefield, Hardy County, West Virginia

  “We’re getting close according to the GPS.” Beside Meg in the SUV, Craig peered up the narrow mountain road, lined with sparse scrub on one side and a brutal drop on the other. “Keep your speed steady though. All the cars in front of us will be doing the same. Better to come in slow and quiet than quick and hot, giving the perp warning.” He turned around in his seat to check if Brian followed in his own SUV, carrying Lacey, Lauren, and Rocco. “Brian’s still with us.”