High Crimes

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  Erica Baldwin Stewart was late. She must be on North Shore time, Georgia thought, then chastised herself for being flip. Not only had the woman lost a daughter, but she’d been reminded of it 24/7 by the media coverage. She was entitled to be late. Georgia grabbed a book off the bookcase. Red Harvest. Georgia thought she knew all of Dashiell Hammett’s stories, whether novels or movies, but she’d never heard of this one. She tried to get into it, but reading was difficult; she had a mild case of dyslexia.

  Her mind drifted to Vanna.

  Maybe a therapist could help. She dug her phone out of her pocket and was scrolling through “nearby therapists” when the door swung open and a woman entered with a younger man. The woman hesitated. Georgia had told Dena’s mother she was blond and would be wearing a gray North Face coat, a birthday gift from Jimmy, over her blazer. When the woman saw the coat, she came over.

  Georgia rose. “Erica?”

  The woman nodded. Her black hair, threaded with gray, was pulled back into a messy ponytail. She wore jeans, a wool jacket, and snow boots despite the absence of snow. Her neck was long and graceful, but her tight expression made her otherwise smooth features look sharp and out of place, as if they were surprised to find themselves arranged on her face. She was pale and thin, on the way toward emaciated. Grief, likely.

  “I’m Georgia Davis.”

  The woman, probably in her fifties, gave her a slight nod and gestured to the younger man beside her. “This is my son, Jeffrey. Dena’s brother.”

  That Dena had a brother was news to Georgia. It hadn’t been mentioned in the media. Jeffrey was several inches taller than his mother, but just as slim. Somewhere in his thirties. He shared his mother’s dark eyes and hair, minus the gray. His face held a somber, soulful expression.

  “He’s as devastated as I am. We both want to get to the bottom of this.”

  Get to the bottom of what? Three people had died, including Dena. A dozen more wounded. The shooter had been found—dead from an IED explosion on the roof of a hotel directly across from Grant Park. An open-and-shut case, or so officialdom proclaimed. Domestic terrorism. Tick off yet another massacre to add to the legacy of American gun violence.

  Georgia reined in her impatience. “Would you like some coffee? It’s on me.”

  “I—uh—tea would be nice.”

  A few minutes later, with cappuccino and a pastry for Georgia, the same for Jeffrey, and tea for Erica, they settled into chairs. Jeffrey cleared his throat. Erica sipped her tea. She looked dazed, almost lost. She was clearly struggling. An unusual tug of protectiveness came over Georgia. She gentled her voice as she prompted Erica.

  “You said, ‘get to the bottom of this.’ What do you mean?”

  Erica’s chest rose and fell. She took another sip of tea. “I assume you’re up to speed on the events of—of Dena’s death.”

  Georgia nodded. It was still the top story everywhere. A year had passed since the election of the most unpopular president ever, and despite a core base of supporters, millions were demanding he be removed from office. The president and his administration were incompetent, corrupt, and dangerous. The rumors were that Chicago bookies wouldn’t take any more bets about his odds for survival. A special counsel was investigating.

  Erica played with her spoon. “So let me tell you about Dena. She is—was—a left-wing progressive, and she supported Bernie until the convention. Afterwards, she switched to Hillary. She volunteered, rang doorbells in Wisconsin, made phone calls. She organized a rally in Evanston and even put together a carpool to drive seniors to the polls.” She shifted. “The morning after the results were in, she refused to believe them. Later that day she created a Facebook group, ResistanceUSA.”

  “Wait. Are you saying she founded the group?”

  A wan smile came across Erica’s face. “That’s right. She believed that the vote, particularly in the midwest swing states, had been manipulated by Russia. She wasn’t alone: others were—and still are—alleging it too. The group exploded, and by the end of the year, there were nearly forty-two thousand members.”

  “Forty-two thousand people in seven weeks?”

  Erica nodded. “Her energy never flagged. Within six months, she was a national figure. She was one of the first to call out every misstep by the new administration, every injustice, every example of creeping authoritarianism, every risk to our democracy. She was in the middle of expanding her ‘repertoire’ when she—died. She had begun to speak out about other issues. The dangers of fracking, the criminality of the new administration, the mess he’s made with our foreign allies. She’d really come into her own. It’s as if she was born to do this. Of course, in the process she made enemies.”

  “Such as?”

  “There were the bots—you know—automated tweets and Facebook messages that roll out whenever a specific subject is raised. Anyway, hundreds, maybe thousands of bots trolled her online.” Erica let out a world-weary breath. “Then there were the real trolls. Human crazies, I call them.”

  Georgia nodded. Like mutant viruses, they had invaded the Internet to sow discord and chaos wherever possible.

  “They accused her of lying, of propaganda, of being a traitor to the country. Some people even accused her of being a Russian spy working undercover.”

  “Although how they could, given the administration’s complicity with Russia, is nuts,” Jeffrey cut in.

  Erica nodded in acknowledgment. “Still, Dena was in her element. She thrived on allies and adversaries alike. When she wasn’t appearing on TV, she was organizing, bringing new converts to the group.”

  Georgia’s eyebrows went up at the word “converts.” Erica caught it. “Yes, it may have started as a cult, but it grew so big so fast that it became a movement. Dena is—was very persuasive.” Her smile held a mix of pride and sorrow.

  “So, last fall she and her crew decided to organize a grass-roots demonstration. They used the Facebook group to spread the word. She called for a million people to come out. Privately, she hoped there would be at least a thousand.”

  “For what reason?”

  “January marked a year since the inauguration, but in that short time so much of our country and policies are now unrecognizable. She wanted people to use their First Amendment rights to let the traitor know that what he’s doing and what he represents are not okay.”

  “She succeeded,” Georgia said.

  Another sad smile curled Erica’s lips. “It was amazing! Police estimated over two hundred thousand people came to Grant Park.” Her smile faded.

  Georgia understood. There was no need to repeat the rest. A sharpshooter with a .223 Bushmaster rifle equipped with a bump stock had opened up, killing Dena, group member DJ Grabiner, and a protestor in the front row. Her second-in-command, Ruth Marriotti, along with a dozen others, had been wounded. Chicago cops tracked the gunman to the roof of the White Star Hotel twenty-two minutes later, where they discovered he’d blown himself up with what they later learned was a pipe bomb. Why he hadn’t used the Bushmaster to off himself was still unknown.

  The shooter, Scott Allen Jarvis, had materialized seemingly out of nowhere. He was raised on an Iowa farm, but the family was forced to sell when Jarvis was seventeen. He moved to Iowa City for college but never graduated. His parents died in a house fire soon after he left home, leaving only Jarvis and his younger sister, Katherine. He enlisted in the army and survived two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. Afterward he resurfaced in Rogers Park, a neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side, where he lived with his sister and was unemployed much of the time.

  Law enforcement and the media scoured his history in the hope of tying him to some kind of radical terrorist group but didn’t find anything. It was as if the guy dropped in from another planet. That didn’t deter cable news, of course, hungry for any scrap of information, meaningful or not. They replayed the video of the shooting and the simple service that passed for Jarvis’s funeral so often that Georgia had to turn the TV off. She could only
guess how it affected Erica.

  Now Erica’s eyes filled. She swiped at them with her napkin.

  Georgia squeezed Erica’s hand.

  Jeffrey Baldwin cleared his throat. Georgia glanced over. He looked like he was struggling to control his emotions.

  Erica swallowed, then picked up her teaspoon, stirred her tea, replaced the spoon on the saucer. Finally, she looked up, and Georgia asked, “Why do you think your daughter was targeted for murder?”

  Chapter Seven

  Slowly Erica’s demeanor changed. Her spine straightened and her eyes narrowed. A fierce look came into her eyes. She reminded Georgia of a predatory cat, ready to pounce on an unlucky mouse. At the same time, her son, Jeffrey, started to squirm.

  “A few weeks after the attack,” Erica said, “I got an anonymous email.”

  “Anonymous?”

  Erica nodded. “Let me tell you what it said.”

  Dena’s mother might be bowed with grief, but she wasn’t broken. Georgia wondered if Dena had inherited the same grit. But Jeffrey, for some reason, wouldn’t make eye contact with her.

  “The email said, Jarvis was set up. Find the Beef Jerky.”

  Georgia leaned forward. “Excuse me?”

  “That was it. Jarvis was set up. Find the Beef Jerky,” Erica repeated.

  Georgia hoped she didn’t roll her eyes too conspicuously. Conspiracy theorists had found a weird kind of stature on the Internet. People could say anything they dreamed up, and there would always be a few gullible folks who took their pronouncements as omens, or even facts. Erica was an intelligent woman. She had to know that.

  “Beef jerky? Tell me you didn’t take it seriously.”

  “At first we thought it was as crazy as it sounds. You know, just made-up crap. But Terry realized that, whatever the veracity of the message, someone had penetrated our email system.”

  “‘Hacked’ is the word, Mom,” Jeffrey said.

  “So, what did you do?” Georgia glanced at them both in turn.

  “We—I—replied right away with Who is this? And why are you making these claims?”

  “And?”

  “My reply bounced. I got what do you call them, those mailer-daemon notices. There was no such account.”

  “What was the return email?”

  “It was noreply@xfetw.com. But it was dead. No such account.”

  “When was this?”

  “About two weeks ago.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I called my lawyer, who said to call the police.”

  “I need to say something here,” Jeffrey cut in.

  “Sure,” Georgia said.

  “I don’t agree with what Mom’s doing. I think we’re asking for trouble.”

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t know for sure who killed my sister. And I think it’s probably better that I don’t.” He looked over at his mother. “We both know that we’re not being told the whole story. Someone is holding back information. But I’m willing to let that go.”

  “Why? Do you think there’s some kind of conspiracy around her murder?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I just don’t want my mom in the middle of it. We’re playing with fire. What if something else happens? To her?” He gestured toward Erica.

  Georgia faced Erica. “You don’t agree.”

  Erica shook her head. “She was my little girl. I need to know. I owe her that much.”

  Jeffrey let out a breath, his expression grim.

  “So, the FBI paid me a visit. The police had already been to the house a couple of times. This time they took my computer and the router. A few days later they told me they couldn’t trace the email.”

  Georgia wasn’t surprised. “The FBI does have excellent resources. If they say they couldn’t—”

  Jeffrey cut her off. “Agreed. But they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—give us any information. Basically they told us, nicely, to forget it. And to buy new equipment. And change our passwords.” His disdainful voice told Georgia how he felt about that.

  “What did they say about the beef jerky comment? Did they talk about some kind of code? Or signal?”

  “They said it was probably a hoax,” Erica answered.

  “Someone hacked into your email as a hoax?” Georgia frowned.

  “Exactly. It doesn’t make sense,” Erica said. “There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there, you know. People from both the Right and the Left saying crazy things. The FBI said they haven’t found any evidence that Jarvis was in league with any group. But that email was just so weird . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Which is why you can’t let it go,” Georgia said.

  “Would you?”

  Like any mother, Erica was grasping for something to suggest her daughter’s death was more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even a bullshit comment on a mysterious email that the FBI said was a hoax was ammunition.

  “Look,” Erica went on, “for starters, that email came in on our private server.”

  “Private?”

  “When Terry and I got married—he’s my second husband—we set up a private server for the family. And Terry’s business. The security was supposed to be first-rate. Everything encrypted and all that.”

  “Why do you need encryption?”

  “Terry runs a hedge fund. Confidential data gets passed back and forth all the time. He doesn’t trust the Comcasts or AT&Ts.”

  Smart, Georgia thought.

  “So, whoever sent us that email went to some trouble to reach us.”

  “And hack in,” Jeffrey added.

  “But if the FBI said it was a hoax—”

  A spurt of irritation flashed across Erica’s face. “I didn’t say that. They did. What we say is that they couldn’t trace it.” She hesitated. “As a former police officer, and now a PI, we thought maybe you could help.”

  Georgia leaned back. Erica had done some homework on her. “Why me? And who recommended me?”

  “Paul Kelly. He’s one of our lawyers.”

  Georgia and Paul went back a long way. She’d been a newly minted PI, and he sold insurance when he wasn’t lawyering. He’d been responsible for her first “real” case. She trusted him. But that didn’t mean she should take this case.

  “And we wanted someone who had no connection to us or Dena. Someone who could fly under the radar, if need be.”

  Under the radar? That didn’t inspire confidence. “Erica . . . And Jeffrey,” she added, “I’m grateful for Paul’s referral, and I appreciate the opportunity, but if the FBI can’t trace the email, I doubt I can. My resources are minuscule compared to them. Even a large investigations or security firm could track SIGINT better than I could.”

  “SIGINT?” Erica asked.

  “Signals intelligence. Things that involve communications signals. Electronic messages. Texts. Emails. Intercepts of conversations. That kind of thing.”

  “You see? You know more about this than we do. We need someone to explain what’s going on. Without patronizing us.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “Paul said you’d say that. Look. We’ll pay you whatever you need. Please. We—I—really need to know the truth about Dena’s murder.”

  “What makes you think you don’t?”

  Erica took another sip of tea, then set down the teacup with a clatter. “So here’s what you don’t know.” Georgia glanced over at Jeffrey. He was watching her intently.

  “You need to know who my first husband is. Was. Dena and Jeffrey’s father.” She took in a breath. “His name is Carl Baldwin. He is a lobbyist. In DC now. He’s ultra-right wing. A member of CNP.”

  “CNP?”

  “The Council for National Policy. It’s supposed to be this secret group of right-wing politicos like Bannon, the Koch brothers, the Mercers, and more. You have to pay thousands of dollars to join. Once you’re in, you’re not supposed to admit you’re a member or even call it by name. But the membership list leaked out a while bac
k. Now you can see for yourself who’s part of it.”

  “Sounds like a bunch of guys in a secret fraternity.”

  Jeffrey took over. “Except that they’ve got their hands on the money and levers of power in DC. Who do you think put the president in office? Tried to destroy health care? Rammed through the tax cut? Got him to destroy federal regulations for the sake of profit?”

  “I’m not political, Jeffrey. The way I see it, the haves are always doing things to the have-nots.”

  “But you fight for justice, don’t you?” he said. “I mean, that’s what you do, right?”

  Georgia wasn’t prepared for a political rant, even from a grieving family. “Jeffrey, I do it because people pay me to.”

  It was Erica’s turn. Her voice strengthened. “Okay. Carl Baldwin, along with a few others, controls a lot of people with a lot of money and leverage. He can make people do what he wants.”

  That Georgia could understand. “Except Dena.” It slipped out.

  Erica didn’t say anything for a moment. “It’s no secret there was no love lost between them. Or us. Carl is abusive and narcissistic. Thinks only of his own interests. Beds a lot of women, too. Not so different from the occupant of the White House. One of his pals, actually.” She paused. “We don’t need resources, Georgia. We can get them for you if we need to. And money. But I just don’t trust the ‘official’ story.”

  “You can’t possibly think your husband—ex-husband—had something to do with Dena’s murder?”

  “Not directly. But what if someone was compromising him? The authorities wrapped this up fast. Almost as if it played out according to a script. The police found the shooter in just twenty-two minutes. Why don’t we know more about him? Why did he blow himself up? The media says he’s a domestic terrorist. Some say he was in the Klan. Others say he was a right-wing evangelical. The Left thinks he’s a Russian or Chinese spy. Why don’t we know for sure? Why doesn’t someone from his family—an aunt, uncle, even his sister—come forward? So far, he’s just a weird guy who emerged from the shadows. We don’t trust anyone. We need someone who can dig around for answers.”