by Tom Swyers
David realized that Moore was fishing for his views on Muslims. He decided to turn the tables, to flush him out. “Are you saying this is true, Mr. Moore?”
“I’m not going to say, Mr. Thompson. I’m just discussing a hypothetical with you.”
“I have a tough enough time dealing with reality these days, so I don’t ponder hypotheticals too often.”
“Things aren’t often as they first seem, Mr. Thompson. For example, you would think the first mosque in the United States would have been built in a large city like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, or Washington, DC, right?”
“I suppose . . .”
“Do you know where the first mosque was built in the United States?”
“No, but I think you’re going to tell me.”
“In the town of Ross, North Dakota. Can you believe it? In the middle of nowhere North Dakota, they built the country’s first mosque in 1929. What do you think of that?”
“I think that’s an amazing footnote in American history. Thank you for sharing it.”
“And do you know who founded the mosque there?”
“No, but I can guess.”
“If you were going to guess the Salar family, you would have been right. Harold Salar’s grandfather founded the mosque. Did you know that Harold Salar was a practicing Muslim?”
“No, I didn’t.” Moore stared at him, but David didn’t flinch. “You’re looking at me as if I need to add something.”
“Mr. Thompson, one of the roles of the FBI is to investigate civil-rights violations, hate crimes involving race or religion. These are some reasons why I’m asking you these questions.”
“Do you think Harold Salar’s killing was inspired by hate?”
“It’s one possibility.”
“Well, Harold Salar was my friend, Mr. Moore. I’ve got a variety of friends from all different walks of life. Harold volunteered to help me out with the kids playing baseball in town. He volunteered to be my expert witness in a pending lawsuit.”
“How did you meet him?”
“He showed up at the kids’ baseball field one day, and I got to talking with him.”
“Did you think that was unusual?”
“No, I meet plenty of people at the ball field.”
“Where did your family originally come from?”
“Scotland on my father’s side; Ireland on my mother’s side.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, what’s your religion?”
David rubbed his chin a few times. “That’s an odd question. It sounds like you are trying to profile me or something.”
“I need to ask.”
“I’m confused.”
“What’s the problem?”
“There’s no problem. I’m confused. That’s my religion.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“Well, my great-uncle on my mom’s side was a Catholic priest, a monsignor to be exact. My great-aunt, also on my mother’s side, was a Catholic nun. My uncle and their nephew made a career out of poking fun at Catholicism in Playboy and New Yorker cartoons. My father’s side is Protestant, and my uncle on that side is a Lutheran minister. So, I grew up as a fan of two different teams in the same household. It was like trying to be a New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys football fan at the same time. You can’t be a fan of both because they play in the same division. Now, does it make sense to you?”
“I guess. Did you ever resolve it all?”
“Yeah, I married a nice Jewish girl.”
“So, you’re Jewish then?”
“Do you want me to be Jewish today? I can be anything you want.”
“Just tell me what religion you follow, if you follow one.”
“I don’t have a religious team. But I am a New York Giants fan. You could say I’m a G-man just like you.”
Moore’s straight face didn’t waver. “Do you have any feelings one way or another toward Muslims?”
“No, I don’t. But I do hate the Redskins.”
“Are you saying that you hate Indians?”
Is this guy for real? “You can’t be serious. I’m talking about the Washington Redskins. You do follow football, don’t you?”
“Do you believe that all African-American males follow football?”
Here we go again. This guy is trying to push my buttons, to get a reaction. He’s probing to see if I’m some kind of bigot and might be a suspect in Salar’s death. “Sounds like you’re playing the race card again with me, just like the first time we met. But you’ve thrown Muslims and Indians into the mix now. What gives?”
Moore didn’t answer David’s question. Instead, he pressed on. “Did you know Harold Salar had an interest in killdeers?”
“Yeah, I guess. He has pictures of them all over his bedroom wall.”
“Are you a member of the Killdeer Society?”
“No. Never heard of such a thing. What’s that all about?”
“It’s an association formed for the tracking and protection of the killdeer. Did you know that Salar was president of the Killdeer Society?”
“No. What does any of this have to do with Harold’s death, anyway?”
“There’s been a rash of slayings across the country over the past week. We discovered that all of them had one thing in common. The victims were members of the Killdeer Society. Dr. Sheila Safferson had her throat cut in a park on the outskirts of Valley City, North Dakota. Then there was Ronald Carson, who was strangled with fishing wire near a bike trail in Sandpoint, Idaho. Erik Albertsen was run over repeatedly in a parking lot in Moorhead, Minnesota. Crushed him to death.”
“How do you know they were all members of the Killdeer Society?”
“We found a list of names for the Killdeer Society in Safferson’s apartment in Castleton, North Dakota, about a forty-minute drive from Valley City. It listed all the contributing members of the association, and all three victims show up. Salar is listed as the president. Safferson was a Muslim, too. We don’t know about the other two at this point.”
“How many group members are there in total?”
“About fifty from what we can tell.”
“Do you have any suspects?”
“No, they all seemed like random killings until we made this connection. Tell me, Mr. Thompson, have you traveled out of state during the past year?”
“Yes, but not to any of those states, not even close. All my travels have been in the Northeast. Do you think there might be a serial killer involved?”
“Might be, or it may be there’s a group targeting the Killdeer Society. By the way, you are listed as a member.”
“What? But I’ve never heard of the Killdeer Society. There must be some mistake.”
“How do you explain it?”
“I can’t. You really can’t be a member of something you’ve never heard about, right? Harold must have put me on the list for some reason.”
“Did you ever give Mr. Salar any money to be a member of the Killdeer Society?”
“No.”
“Do you know of anyone who held a grudge against Mr. Salar and might have had reason to cause him harm?”
“I would imagine no one in the oil industry shed a tear over his death.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Harold Salar was a top-notch industry expert who toed the line for Big Oil. They called him King Crude, and he was never wrong when it came to oil. Everyone in the oil industry said Bakken crude from North Dakota was like any other crude, and Dr. Salar led the chorus. They’d say crude was crude, and that no crude—not even Bakken crude—explodes. But the fireballs and mushroom clouds from videos of Bakken-oil train derailments told a different story.
“Seeing is believing,” David went on. “Harold Salar saw the videos and began to question his study. He went to the Bakken region himself and got oil from several wells, right out of the ground. After he examined his samples, he found that thirty to forty percent of the crude oil was composed of gases. If you put the Bakken into
a mason jar and shook it up, the tin lid would pop and bulge. Unscrew the lid, and you could hear the hiss of gas escaping. If you put a match into the jar, the vapors would ignite. Once the gases burned off, the flame would go out. Not to worry, though. If you screwed the top back on and shook the jar again, you could unscrew the lid and throw in a match, and there’d be gas to ignite again. You could repeat the process over and over, and the Bakken would light up just like the first time. Harold was about to publish his findings, and I was going to use them during trial. Nobody in the oil industry wanted his new study made public.”
“So where’s the report?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.”
“Are you sure? Maybe you saw it and didn’t like what it said. We’ve done some background work on Salar. He’s always been on the side of the oil companies. Why would he change sides all of a sudden? It wasn’t in his best interest.”
“I don’t know. Maybe his best interest was served by following his conscience.”
Moore’s head jerked back, and he smirked. David could see he wasn’t buying any of it. This shocked him. Now he needed to know where he stood in the larger scheme of things. “How many potential suspects do you have in Harold’s case?”
“You’re the only one, so far.”
David’s heart almost jumped out of his chest. “You mean you haven’t interviewed anyone in the oil industry?”
“I’m not answering that question. I’ve probably said more than I should have already. Besides, the oil industry is huge. I’d guess it employs over one million people directly. So that’s more than a million potential suspects. It sure doesn’t narrow things down for us.”
“Why not start with Helmsley Oil, then?”
“What makes you think we haven’t looked at them?”
“Well, at least you realize there’s more than one suspect, then. That’s a start.”
“That’s your opinion. Look, we’re going to search Mr. Salar’s computer for clues. It’s packed with files and programs, and McNeal and I believe it will lead us to his killer. But everything on it has been secured or encrypted, and we haven’t been able to crack it.”
As Moore talked, David drifted into thought. Not only was he suspected of killing Harold, he now realized that someone might be out to kill him. Someone wanted something from Salar. If they hadn’t gotten it from him, the next person in line was David. As the executor of the estate, David might have found whatever the killer wanted in Salar’s apartment without even knowing it. On top of it all, now he was an enrolled member of the Killdeer Society, a group of people who were turning up dead left and right. He recalled the cryptic message from Salar in his will: always follow the killdeer. Did he mean to follow the bird or members of the society? Why should he follow the members if that meant he was going to get killed? David suddenly wished that he had never met Dr. Harold Salar.
“Mr. Thompson, did you hear me?”
“Yes, yes. I’m sorry. I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“You said you had Salar’s computer and were trying to access the information.”
“Are you concerned about what’s on it?”
“I don’t know what’s on it, and I don’t worry about things I can’t control. But I do worry when my life is at risk. And I’m concerned that this fact doesn’t seem to be on your radar.”
“Has someone threatened you?”
“You just said members of the Killdeer Society are being killed, and now I learn that I’m on that list. That’s as good a threat as I can imagine. You see me as a potential suspect; I see myself as a potential victim.”
“I’m just doing my job, Mr. Thompson.”
“But is it your job to protect me, or is it to defend the Constitution?” David knew that FBI agents weren’t sworn to protect and to serve. That oath was for police officers. FBI agents were sworn to defend the Constitution.
“Hopefully, these two overlap.”
“Hope won’t catch bullets for me, Mr. Moore. When I saw you on the street with your flat tire, I came out to protect you. You see, my wife called the police, and the dispatcher asked if you were a black man and said they’d be right over. I didn’t like the sound of that conversation, Mr. Moore, given all the police shootings of black men that are in the headlines.”
“The Indigo Valley police knew I was over there. They asked the question as an identifier, to see if it was me that you had spotted. You probably don’t have many blacks in your neighborhood.”
“Right, but I didn’t put two and two together until McNeal drove by, and I could tell that you both knew each other. You see, helping you with the tire was the excuse to come out and run interference for you if there was any problem with the police. If not for my wife’s phone conversation, I would have been perfectly happy to let you change your own tire. Would you do the same for me, Mr. Moore, if my car broke down in Albany’s South End? I’m sure there aren’t too many whites who live down there.”
“I’d like to think so.”
“I’d bet you’d help out, too. So now that we are seeing eye to eye on this as men, you might understand how I could take offense at the tone of your questions. You want to see if I hate people based on their religion or their race. I think you have your answer. Do you have a business card, Mr. Moore?”
“Yes, in my wallet.” Moore reached into his inside breast pocket and took a card from his wallet. “I’ll write down my personal cell-phone number for you, too.” He gave the card to David, and in exchange, David gave him his card, including his cell number.
“Thank you,” David said.
“But I do have some more questions for you,” Moore said. He was relentless.
“That’s enough for today. Now I’d like to get a copy of the FBI report you are no doubt going to write up.”
“Why do you want it?”
“Before I talk to you anymore, I want to make sure you don’t write up that I confessed to the killing and that I hate Indians. If that report is not accurate, I’ll be less apt to talk with you without getting myself a lawyer.” David extended his hand. “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Moore.”
Moore reluctantly reached out to shake it. “Okay, Mr. Thompson. If that’s the way you want to handle it. I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, if you’d like.”
David smiled and released Moore’s hand. “Have a good day, Mr. Moore.” With that, David turned and strode around the corner and down the quiet, dead-end street toward his car. He opened the trunk, pulled out an old blanket, and threw it on the ground. He took his cell phone out before removing his suit jacket and placing it in the trunk. He checked to make sure no one was around before he lowered himself onto on the blanket faceup and pulled himself under the rear bumper.
Just as he’d thought, someone had attached a tracking device to his car. It suddenly became crystal clear how the FBI had found him.
Give me a freaking break, already. He wasn’t sure if the FBI could attach a tracking device without a warrant. But David wasn’t interested in being a test case in some constitutional-law battle. He just wanted to be left alone. He thought about removing the device. But that would only embarrass the FBI and bring the agency down on him. So he snapped a picture of it with his cell phone and left it in place.
He got up and pushed some icons on his cell to stop the record function before getting in his Mustang to head for home. He had taped every word of his conversation with Julius Moore and would download it to his computer later.
TEN
David decided then to call Ben Prior. He got him on the first ring. It was still early afternoon, so David figured he could stop by while he was in Albany. Ben’s injury had caused a cash-flow problem. He’d had to sell his house in Indigo Valley and move to the Mansion District of Albany. He was living off his workers’ compensation check and didn’t have enough to make the hefty monthly mortgage payment. Living where he did in Albany helped stretch his check to cover food and medical expenses
.
One would think that the Mansion District would have a lot of big, beautiful houses. But names can be deceiving. The Queen Anne–style New York State Executive Mansion at the top of the hill was the only real mansion in this neighborhood of mixed row houses. The brick townhouses on the higher ground of the district gave way to blighted row houses as the poorer residents rolled downhill toward the Pastures District. That was another misnomer. The Pastures hadn’t seen fields or green space since the Dutch settlers used it for grazing in the 1700s. Both neighborhoods bore the scars of the urban renewal in the 1960s. Some sections never recovered.
Ben lived in a one-story garden apartment on the neighborhood outskirts, next to an abandoned garage and across from a vacant, overgrown lot on Park Avenue, not at all like the Park Avenue of New York City. Everything was gray and dingy, even the shredded wrappers from Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen that blew into the fragments of fencing around the lot. An empty Colt 45 malt-liquor bottle rolled downhill. David could see tattered lottery tickets mixed with the litter—wasted dollars and dreams.
David pulled his car to the curb in front of the building. There were hardly any cars on Ben’s block. His wood-frame row house stood out in contrast to the vast surrounding nothingness of his section of the block, the lone survivor of the wrecking ball. Paint peeled from the clapboard siding. Rusty security bars protected the single-pane windows from break-ins. Garbage overflowed the battered tin can next to the front stoop, and there was a stained couch on the sidewalk uphill.
It was the first time David had seen Ben’s new living quarters, and he felt angry and queasy at the same time. Peeling off his suit jacket, he laid it neatly on the back seat. He grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the floor, just as he did every time he met with Ben.
The doorbell dangled from two wires hanging off the building. David pushed the button, hoping he wouldn’t electrocute himself. He heard some furniture move across the floor. The knob made a half turn before it recoiled to its original position. Then, it happened again.
“Ben? Is that you? Are you okay?”
