Mike could feel Margaret bristle at that comment. She certainly agreed that all the protection was needed for her husband, but the sniper had never indicated they would attack family members. “I need groceries. We’ve been gone for a month,” she said in a brusque tone.
“Make a list. We’ll bring everything you need.” The agents voice was firm and allowed no room for discussion of a shopping trip.
That was end of it, no negotiations; the FBI had made them virtual prisoners for their own protection. Margaret wondered if this loss of control was what it felt like to be in the witness protection program. When they entered the house, Margaret’s anger grew. The living room and dining room were strange, but she had expected that. What she had not expected was the massive steel plates had been bolted into the travertine floors. A dozen tiles would need to be replaced when the steel was removed. The bedroom was dark and almost intimidating with the huge slabs of steel blocking both windows and the door to the deck. The master bath had a skylight, but otherwise it was now an ugly windowless box. Mike could tell she was about to cry. He hugged her for a few minutes before he got paper and pencil from the desk for her shopping list.
That night at dinner they had their first experience of using the weird dining table. From the backside, the room-sized angled mirror was a welded steel plate, but when they sat at the table, the illusion was obvious. Their every move was reflected out the window. Margaret had made a dinner of baked cod, carrots in savory butter, and a spinach salad. She served a small Whole Foods carrot cake for dessert. The cameras the sniper had hidden across the street would have shown the windowless van enter the garage and return later with the groceries. The lights now on in almost every room would inform him that they were probably they home, but Mike and Margaret both assumed it would take awhile for him to return to Sedona. Their dinner was relaxed because they felt no danger. Occasionally, they would see a shadowy figure walk around the outside of the house as the agents patrolled the perimeter, but the evening was otherwise uneventful. After dinner, they watched TV in the living room. Actually, what they watched was the reflection of the TV in the massive mirror that divided the living room in half diagonally. At 10:30, they went to bed. Both of them thought it would be nice to get back to work tomorrow.
Chapter 26
The following morning, things seemed almost normal. Mike’s chest was slightly sore from the knife wound, but the sharp pain he felt every time he moved was gone. Otherwise he felt great. They enjoyed ham and eggs for breakfast at the table in the breakfast room rather than in the strange “fun house” dining room. Mike always left for work by 7:15 for the forty-minute drive to his office in Flagstaff, and Margaret, whose nearby bank branch didn’t open until 9:00, left at 8:40 for her five-minute drive. They both took their iPads to work so they could show off their Paris photos to their friends and coworkers. Mike was looking forward to getting caught up on the current cases. For Mike, the ride to Flagstaff was disconcerting because of the windowless van, but he listened to a local radio station to get caught up on the Sedona news.
When Mike entered the Sheriff’s Department from the underground parking, people crowded around. Two of the women from the operations department hugged him and many others patted him on the back and seemed very pleased to see him. He appreciated the welcome.
It wasn’t his photos of their Paris vacation they were interested in. They all knew that he been stabbed in Paris, probably by the Park Sniper. Of course, the police had taken both the stiletto knife and his iPhone as evidence, but on his iPad, he did have a photo of the weapon impaled through the phone. That photo was sufficiently impressive that it created quite a reaction. The knife was still caked with his own blood. Mike was in good shape for a middle-aged man. He still had a muscular chest even if his washboard abs were long gone. The stiletto knife had been driven deep enough into the phone to kill most men, but an extra half of a centimeter was all it had taken to save his life and change a fatal wound into a cut that could heal in a week or two.
After greeting everyone in the Sheriff’s Department, he knocked on Sheriff Taylor’s closed door. Sheriff Taylor yelled, “Come in,” in a cross voice.
He was with two of the County Commissioners, and Mike assumed from their expressions that they were worried about the budget. Counties and cities in Arizona could not run deficits. If they spent their resources before the end of the fiscal year, there would be layoffs, deferred maintenance of vehicles, or other forced expense cuts.
Sheriff Taylor stood and shook hands, as did the commissioners. The sheriff commented, “I’m turning the major cases back over to you. I’ll be tied up until this afternoon, but at three, I can brief you on what happened while you were away. Welcome home. I’m thankful you’re still alive. Tell me more about the knife attack when we meet.”
Later that morning, Sean Mark came into Mike’s office as Mike was sorting through a month’s stack of paperwork. Sean had a big smile on his face. He explained, “Our saintly friend, the Reverend Doctor Paul John McIntyre of the Pentecostal Flame Mission of the All-knowing God is currently in the lockup. It seems there are fraud and larceny warrants out for him in both Arkansas and Oklahoma. Before coming west, Reverend McIntyre absconded with the building fund of the Holy Church of God in Mina, Arkansas. He also skipped town with all the cash in the building fund of the Pentecostal Mission Church of Boise City, Oklahoma. Someone from Oklahoma will be here tomorrow to take him off our hands.”
Mike smiled. He had disliked the sanctimonious bastard since they met. “Good. Sean, are you the one who found the outstanding warrants?”
“Yes sir. I didn’t trust the guy as far as I could throw him. Once we ran his name through the system, his identity didn’t check out. There was no history. I figured there was something fishy and kept looking until I found the warrants. The files included photo of the suspect. In other local news, it seems that the Riley boys reconciled with their mother’s young husband. Peter Barbour is back in town from California and now working at Riley Sporting Goods downtown. I think they finally realized that they all loved Millie and that was what she would have wanted.”
“Were you part of the team that looked into the sniper murders at the North Rim?”
“No. Sheriff Taylor was involved since it was in Coconino County, but the FBI took charge because it was in a National Park. I learned a little about it through the grapevine. A young couple was hiking down to the Cottonwood Campground when both were shot through the forehead from about a half a mile away. The shots came from high above, but no one heard or saw anything. Until a ranger hiked by, no one realized the backpackers had been killed. The sniper had plenty of time to get away. The rangers at the only exit from the North Rim remember a man with yellow-rimmed sunglasses, red hair, and red beard who drove out of the park at a rapid speed. They only remembered him because he didn’t slow down at the exit, and they thought that his hair and beard looked phony. No one knows if there’s really a connection between the man and the homicides. He was driving a midsized white sedan, maybe a Ford, but probably stolen. The team from the FBI is still in the conference room. They could tell you more.”
“I need to stop by and introduce myself. They may have questions about what happened in Paris. Did they ever select a new team leader?”
“Not as far as I know. They pay no attention to any of the deputies. No one I know except Sheriff Taylor has even exchanged a word with any of them. There’s a guy named Thomas Heeler who’s met with Sheriff Taylor a couple of times, but the rumor is that being a team leader is the last thing any of them want considering the demotions the last two leaders received.”
Mike had worked for a very large law enforcement group, the Los Angeles Police Department and the US Army Military Police. He knew that someone needed to be held accountable to protect the higher ups. He was sorry Adam Goldman was the one, but he and his family might be happy in Oklahoma City. There were worse places to raise a family.
After Sean left his office, Mike w
alked down to the conference room to introduce himself to the new FBI team members. There were three new faces that had been assigned to the staff group, the rest were carryovers from when Special Agent Goldman had been in charge. One familiar face was the team profiler, Meg Boron. They asked Mike many questions about the attack in Paris and spent a lot of time on his description of the assailant. He explained that the French police had pretended he was having open-heart surgery while he was actually in a safe house. They had hoped that the attacker would come to the hospital room they were covering. Nothing came of it, and they’d assumed the sniper was too smart to take the bait.
The FBI team had received a full report from Captain Granger of the Gendarmerie Nationale, but of course, it was in French and no one on the team had been able translated it. It had been sent to a local NAU professor for translation and was expected back in a few days.
There was one bit of news that the agents passed on to Mike. The website that was receiving the photo stream from outside his house had been accessed that morning. It would have a record of their arrival home since the cameras were motion activated. It would also show the agents standing guard at their house, further proof that they were back in Sedona. The Bureau’s experts in Washington had traced that access to a McDonalds in Morro Beach, California, but the Wi-Fi had been accessed from a parking lot. There was no indication that the sniper had entered the restaurant. That meant it would be at least another day before the sniper would be in Sedona, assuming he came directly and didn’t stop to commit other homicides along the way. Everyone took for granted that he couldn’t board an airline with his weapon. He wouldn’t want it in checked baggage in case it was x-rayed and discovered. They were certain that he’d come by car, truck, or camper.
It was almost time for his meeting with Sheriff Taylor when the FBI questions finally stopped. He’d missed lunch and stopped in the break room for a granola bar and an orange juice before returning to his office. The profiler, Meg Boron was waiting for him.
“Mike, I’m going to pass on some information to you in confidence. I know you’re currently risking your life to catch this assassin, and you may need to know what I suspect is actually going on. While you were in Paris, there was a closed-door Senate hearing about the Park Sniper, which I attended on behalf of our taskforce. The Park Sniper has killed at least one person in every state that has a member of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the FBI, and you can imagine how furious they were at being kept in the dark for almost a year while the homicides continued. Some senators demanded the resignation of the FBI director and some even wanted the Attorney General’s head.”
Mike wasn’t surprised at the outrage. He had the same reaction when he learned of the secrecy that had gone on for almost a year. He’d been told that the decision not to go public actually came from a senior person at the White House, but he had no way of verifying that.
Agent Boron continued, “I have a theory about what is actually going on that no one at a senior level will listen to. I think it’s something they don’t want to hear, but cyber intelligence has confirmed that much of the Park Sniper outrage is being driven by an active social media campaign promoted by Russian trolls in St. Petersburg. The campaign encourages firing the FBI director, the Attorney General, and the Deputy Attorney General. We know the Russians want to sow discord, and they seem to relish embarrassing the FBI. My ‘far out’ theory is that they are not merely stirring up trouble on social media. I believe the Park Sniper is a Russian military sniper assigned to this project by the Kremlin. That would explain his easy access to money and his ability to fly unnoticed to Paris. It also seems to be too much of a coincidence that every member of our oversight committee has had deaths in his or her district. If he is really a Russian agent, he could have multiple passports and fake identities to use to get to France and make the attempt against you.”
Mike was taken aback by the conspiracy theory. He knew the Russians had been involved in malicious cyber activity, but murdering over forty people seemed implausible. He didn’t actually know Agent Boron’s credentials. That made it difficult to assign a probability to her theory.
Agent Boron could read his skepticism, and said, “I can see you’re not predisposed to conspiracy theories. I think a rational approach is normally the only way to make progress on a criminal case, but at least keep this in the back of your mind. I’m willing to bet that if your trap catches this killer, you’ll find a whole stack of passports including multiple Russian ones. We may never trace his money, but we know of at least one account with over $250,000 still in it, and he has never accessed it since we identified it; that proves he must have other accounts. He purchased that original Mercedes camper with a $119,000 check on that account. The sales person said he sold it to a wealthy Russian who wanted to tour our national parks. Mike, this is a well-financed operation. That’s one of the reasons he’s been so successful and so very difficult to catch.”
Mike thanked her for the information. He was not a news junky, and he’d paid little attention to politics especially in the past month. He thought he’d mention the theory to Margaret. She was more up-to-date on political matters especially since she’d joined that Women’s March group. He wondered why Agent Boron would think the Russians cared who ran the FBI or Justice Department.
He decided to take one additional step to learn more about Agent Meg Boron.
Special Agent Linda Surrett answered on the first ring. “Mike, I’m damn glad you’re still alive, and I hope you stay that way. You’re involved in the nastiest case in the country. I can believe a small town cop like you gets involved in such huge messes. This one may bring down our director. I heard the Senate Oversight Committee nearly flayed him alive.”
“I’m glad to be alive too. We trying to set a trap for the Park Sniper with me as bait. If it works, we may have him in a few days. That should take the pressure off your director.”
He continued, “Linda, I have a question for you, but if you can’t answer, just tell me so. An FBI profiler named Meg Boron just told me a fantastic theory about the Russians and the Park Sniper. She thinks the killer is a Russian military sniper assigned to stir up trouble in America. She also thinks Russian trolls are trying to undermine the credibility of the Justice Department and the FBI by using this serial killer case. Do you know Agent Boron? Is this all bullshit?”
“Mike, I know Meg Boron well. I’ve worked with her several times, and I think she is the best the FBI has at profiling. We know for sure that the Russian trolls are trying to undermine the Justice Department and the FBI, but as to the sniper actually being Russian, I’ve never heard that theory. If I had to make a bet, knowing Meg, I’d say there is a better than even chance she is correct. However, that theory would be political dynamite. I don’t think it should ever become public unless there is definitive proof, and maybe not even then. Mike, I don’t like the idea you’re serving as bait. I assume the agents involved are desperate, but don’t let them get you killed. Call me anytime with questions. I’ll be in Saudi Arabia for two weeks, but I’ll always take your calls.”
Mike walked down the hall to Sheriff Taylor’s office. He noticed that Sheriff Taylor looked pale, as if he’d been sick. “How are you actually doing boss. You look different.”
“Shit Mike, I haven’t ridden my horse in a month. I’ve hardly been outside at all. I lived in the basement while my wife was with her mother for two weeks. Now she’s back and just as restless as I am. Of course, I look like shit. I was considering some sort of artificial tan like President Trump. There’s an election on the way. How the hell will I campaign if I can’t go anywhere? Since you’re back, I’m considering taking a two week vacation somewhere I can ride horses and spend quality time with my wife.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea. Just don’t get stabbed on your vacation. Stay away from nineteenth century painters.”
They spent half an hour getting up-to-date on the current cases. It was obvious that the sheriff was t
urning them over to Mike to supervise. He was seriously considering getting away someplace with his wife for his own vacation. Mike certainly didn’t blame him. Greg Taylor had been in his protective cocoon for a month. It bothered Mike after a single day.
“Boss, once you finish the budget work with the commissioners, there is nothing in the current caseload that I can’t handle.”
Sheriff Taylor smiled, “Mike, I was hoping you’d say something like that. I finished budget planning this afternoon. The commissioners are OK with me being gone for a couple of weeks as long as I keep in touch with you about the sniper and other cases. Frankly, my home life will be a lot less stressful if we go on a vacation. My wife visited her mother for the first two weeks, but now we’re both sleeping on the sleeper couch in the basement. I know of a resort with a few cabins near Telluride that is very remote, but we’d have access to shopping in town when we need supplies. There’s great hiking and horseback riding opportunities along the Continental Divide. If you’ve got my back here, I plan to leave tomorrow.”
“Will you be able to keep your location a complete secret?” Mike asked because it sounded like the kind of place the sniper loved for his kills, remote but with high vantage points for a hidden sniper.
“I’ll stop by the bank this afternoon. We’ll pay cash for everything. I know the resort’s owner, and he’s not the sort to keep any digital records. They have an old-fashioned guest register book. He even uses an archaic fountain pen for gusts to check in. There is no cell service, but I will call you on his landline once a day.”
The Body at Midgley Bridge Page 18