“No dues, no officers,” Deborah said. “But membership is only by invitation. A lot of these women aren’t out-out.”
“If you get time, can you make us a membership list? Think about why those particular women didn’t get threats? You know, haven’t attended in a while or left before dessert.”
“Why don’t you just come for dinner?” I asked.
“Uh, I’m expected home for dinner tonight,” Deborah said.
“Shit, Sarah,” Win said. “Screw favoritism—this is work.”
I took a deep breath. “Why don’t you call Leslie and ask her to come too.”
“Wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for tonight, but if we can make it early?”
“Five?”
Deborah nodded. “See you then.”
* * *
“Okay Win, I surrender. Tell me about this corps—like the Marine Corps, right?”
“Spelling-wise, yes. Intent, no.” She opened the file. “You don’t have to do this now. Seems like one minute I’m pushing you to leave work at work, the next I’m pulling you into this mess. Sorry for the mixed message but I’m used to dealing with intel as it comes in.”
I put my hands on her shoulders. “I trust your judgment, so let’s get to it. Maybe we’ll get some playtime later.”
Win pulled me onto her lap, kissed me and smiled. “We get through this and you can take a nap. You need it before fixing dinner.”
“Nap time for both of us?”
She grinned again and brought up the file. I felt the heat of her hand on my stomach and found it hard to concentrate on the screen. I laced our fingers together and began to read the reports.
Forty minutes later, Win closed the file. She bit her lip and frowned. “I’ll bet there’s a hell of a lot more we don’t know than we do. They remind me of an octopus with tentacles reaching all over the country. It’s squirted its ink so we can’t see anything more than the outline.”
Win sounded weary, so I put my arm around her shoulders. “Octopus? I thought you would’ve used the snake as an image.”
“You’re a genius.” She picked up the phone, then put it back down. “Maybe I need to do a little reconnoitering first.”
“For what?”
“Sarah, these guys need money. Think of the American money behind Shamsi’s acquisition of weapons. Fuck, it might be the same group. That’s another thread we need to find.
“But the question is, how is the group funded? Is it personally financed by some billionaires like the Koch brothers? Or do they make money? How? Ask their followers for contributions? What other support systems do they have? There’s got to be some. Finance, media. What I’m wondering is if they’ve used snakes as some part of the names or logos.”
“How the hell do you begin to look for that?”
“Hell if I know.” She shut the computer down. “Let’s go nap on it.”
* * *
I could see Win’s mind was still puzzling through those questions as we made dinner. I surrendered to slicing, dicing and chopping. I didn’t even know where to begin to discover this kind of national conspiracy. Or was there one? Could what we faced simply be a local backlash to local politics? Was Win used to looking for complicated plots and so she saw one here? Yet Nathan seemed to think the locals were receiving orders from…someone, somewhere else.
A car came up the drive at exactly five. I watched Deborah reach for Leslie’s hand as they walked to the front porch. I wondered if she’d feel so free if I was the old Sarah, the straight Sarah. If she’d even have told me about the letters.
“Hey,” Win said as she opened the door. “Let me take your coats.”
Deborah unwrapped her scarf and unzipped her long, quilted coat. “Smells delicious in here.”
Leslie handed her uniform jacket to Win with a little bob of her head.
“You want to eat first, then talk?” I asked.
“I’m starving,” Deborah said. “Missed lunch today. Okay with you, Leslie?”
“Sure.” She ducked her head.
Win slung an arm around Leslie’s shoulders. “Weird, huh? Having dinner with the boss.”
Leslie grinned. “You better believe it.”
“Remember, she’s a woman just like you. Puts her uniform pants on one leg at a time.”
Saved by the oven timer, I blushed and turned to the kitchen to get everything on the table.
Win opened the wine and poured three glasses. “Who’s driving?”
“I am,” Deborah said. “One glass is okay, isn’t it?”
Win nodded as I pulled the casserole in all its bubbling, golden cheese glory from the oven. Conversation was general as we ate, but I could see Leslie was still uncomfortable. I grinned at her. “Boss is a pretty good cook, eh?”
She grinned back. “Super. Best lasagna I’ve ever had.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t cook,” Win said. “All I know how to make are Middle Eastern dishes. Mom and I had a continuing war when I was young. Resulting in my banishment from the kitchen when I was eleven.”
Leslie eased into being a tad more comfortable.
As we sat in the living room with coffee and I tried to sum up what Win and I had discovered so far.
“Those letters resembled Sarah’s,” Win added. “But I’d bet they weren’t put together by the same hand. There are physical differences—when you get back to work, Leslie, take a good look at them. The cuts are different. Letters not so meticulously put on the page. But there’s no physical threat, only threats to out the women.”
“The language is very familiar to me,” I said. “Came directly out of the bible of the Reverend Manfred Brown of the Family Praise Tabernacle.”
“That kook who tried to out you?” Deborah asked.
“Yeah. The question seems to be if he’s the one who sent the letters or if someone copied his style to avert suspicion from them.”
“I’m so fucking tired of this anonymous band of cretins,” Win said, leaning her head back. “At least in a war zone, you mostly know who the enemy is. Your job is to blow them away.”
I rubbed her arm. “I think the whole department’s equally frustrated. The Brownes are dead. We’ve had one deputy wounded. Win’s been shot at. We seem to be on a constant state of alert and I can’t figure out why these people are spacing their attacks far apart.”
“You answered your own question,” Win said. “Stressed-out deputies make mistakes. Let their guard down. Hypervigilance can make you crazy.”
I took her hand and rubbed it with my thumb. “Which is why we need to find these guys and nail them ASAP.”
“We’ve got leads,” Win said. “No proof. Which is frustrating as hell.”
“The thing is, there’ve been attacks on three students who are members of the LGBT center in Bloomington,” I said.
“Which we can tie to the antigay group active here in the county—”
“We can tentatively tie them in, Win” I said. “Which is the problem we’re encountering with the whole group. We have an idea of what they’re doing, but—”
“No idea of the endgame,” Win said. “So you come up with the list of women who weren’t targeted?”
“Yep.” She got up, rummaged in her bag and handed me the list. “I think I figured out why. This whole group left a meeting right after dinner to catch a film.”
“How long ago?”
“Last month.”
“It could’ve been anyone there or outside,” Leslie said. “Someone who got onto the group one way or another, or an employee of the restaurant.”
“The letters started a couple of weeks ago,” Deborah said. “Some of the women are really nervous because the only person they’re out to is their lover. Well, except for the group.”
“Same tactics,” Win said. “Get people nervous. Looking over their shoulders. Sow distrust.”
“For women just coming out, believe me, it could be terrifying,” I said.
“If you want, I could come in a coupl
e of hours tomorrow and start on this new batch,” Leslie said.
“Oh no, you don’t. Anything else I can do, ladies, let me know,” Deborah said as she rose. “It’s time for us to go.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Win
Deborah turned to me as I helped her on with her coat. “Those photographs of you two in the bedroom are absolutely gorgeous. Did you hire a photographer?”
“No.” I wasn’t going to embroider. Sarah would probably kill me if she knew Deborah had seen the photos. “It’s been nice seeing you again, Deborah. Let’s do this again. Maybe meet for dinner at Ruby’s after things quiet down.”
“You’re on, Win. I told Sarah before, I always envied you two and Nathan when we were kids. It seems the trust you built when you were younger is paying off now.”
“Sarah’s always had my back.” I leaned forward. “Just make sure you’ve got Leslie’s.”
Deborah nodded. “She’s a real treasure in my life that I sure didn’t expect. I’m not going to do anything to screw that up.”
Sarah got Leslie’s coat. Looked at her chest. “You don’t have your vest on. Please tell me you didn’t leave it at the station.”
“It’s out in the car.”
“Go get it.”
Leslie opened the door, dashed to the car. Was back inside in a blink.
“You can’t wear the uniform without it, even when you’re off duty,” Sarah said. She turned to Deborah. “Make sure she wears it. Remember what we’ve been talking about tonight. All deputies have a target on their back until these guys are behind bars. Every deputy.”
“Thus spake the sheriff,” I said. “It’s a hard line to walk, Leslie. We discovered a watcher on the top of Foley’s Knob. Hasn’t been back as far as we can tell, but with a sniper rifle, he’d be able to take you out the moment you stepped out of the car. Or stood on the porch.”
Leslie paled. “I didn’t know about the watcher. I won’t take chances, Win. Honest.”
As the brake lights came on when they hit the bottom of the drive, I turned to Sarah. “So, was that awful?”
“Uncomfortable at first, but not as bad as it could’ve been. Thanks for taking care of Leslie, helping her relax.” She put an arm around my waist. “Leslie’s good people. I don’t want to scare the bejesus out of her, but I really want her to stay safe.”
“That’s the line we all have to walk right now.” I pulled her close. “There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, Sarah. We’ll get them.”
“Before they do more damage? Before I lose a deputy?”
Before I lose you? “We will.”
* * *
The call came as we were slipping into sleep. A deputy had run off the road on a bend. Heading for the hospital in critical condition. I started to dress while Sarah marshaled her forces.
“Is Mike Bryer on the way?” Sarah asked. “Good. I’ll head for the hospital. See that they look for a sniper’s nest. Maybe it’s too dark for him to have policed his brass. Look for anything, Caleb. We’ve got to stop this.”
When she hung up, I took her hands. “You’re sure this is an attack? Not just an accident?”
She nodded. “The deputy called dispatch for help and said he heard a shot before he lost control of his unit.”
“Okay.” I wanted to hold her. Soothe her. But she wasn’t in a mood to stand still. I could feel the rage radiating from her. “Let’s go.”
I drove Sarah’s SUV. She’d installed a rack that held two rifles. One of them was a .30-30, the other a Mark 12, my favorite sniper rifle. If anyone attacked, we’d be properly armed. That is, if we weren’t lying in a ravine unconscious.
“I think we’re going about this the wrong way,” I said. “I think we need to view these guys as fanatics—just like the insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan.”
Sarah turned to face me. “You want to call out the National Guard?”
“No. Dealing with insurgents, we gathered intel. Names, locations, travel patterns. Identified couriers. Intercepted communications. When we could, we disseminated false information. We had to be on the offensive.”
“Well, we’ve done some of that, Win.”
“Not enough. We need eyes on the guys we’ve identified all the time. Can I ask Bill for help with that? You don’t have enough deputies to do the twenty-four-seven coverage. He does.”
“You think he would?”
“He’s been tracking some of these guys for ten years. If he can swing it, he will.”
Sarah settled back in her seat, began to scan the highway again. “Go ahead and ask.” She was quiet. Alert. She sat forward. “Eyes—that doesn’t mean drones, does it?”
I shrugged. “It means whatever he needs to do the job. People on the ground, surveillance in the air. I have no idea what he has available domestically.”
Sarah groaned. “This isn’t Afghanistan, Win.”
“No. But some of these dipsticks want it to be. Read all that background material Nathan gave us on the militias. Sarah, they’re insurgents, want to overthrow the government of the United States beginning with local law enforcement.”
“Local lesbians too?”
“Hell if I can figure that one out.” I turned onto the road that would take us to the heart of Greenglen. “I don’t know if the religious fanatics are simply being used by people with a bigger plan or if they’re instigators. Still haven’t heard back from Nathan on the religious radical right.”
“He’s been busy, Win.”
“I know. We need more resources. We need people who can infiltrate. I need my security clearance back.”
“You’re not thinking about reenlisting, are you?”
“Never.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Sarah
We spent the night at the hospital, Win stretched out on a couch sound asleep, while I tried to help Larry’s wife keep it together. They’d only been married a couple of years and she was expecting. I refused to go where my mind wanted to—what if it was Win undergoing major surgery? I kept glancing at the couch and making sure she was still with me.
They’d finished the surgery around five in the morning, saying he’d live though his recuperation would be lengthy. We left when Jenny could see him. He was still too groggy to question.
I woke Win by calling her name and she amazed me by opening her eyes immediately and was fully awake two seconds later. “How do you do that? Sleep soundly and wake up alert?”
“Lot of battle practice. You grab sleep when you can, wake up fast.”
At the station, Win curled up on the couch in my office and was asleep again instantly.
News began to come in and I wanted to go to the scene, but at the moment, I was more useful coordinating the investigation. Maybe Win and I could go out there in the afternoon. I wanted her input as a sniper. My wife, the sniper. That fact never failed to shake me as much as having a wife.
The bullet was found in the tire, the same .30-06. When the sun was up, Caleb found the shooter’s location and brass. Both were on their way in with Leslie, who’d been called out early. I was glad I didn’t have to see Deborah today, though I understood with every fiber of my body why she’d be pissed.
Leslie gave a little salute as she headed upstairs, but she looked grim. I had to look at crime scenes, Leslie had to process them. Zoe called in for details and a statement. I gave her my answer: too early.
When first shift came in, I reminded them to vary their patrol routes. “Don’t just do it one end to other one day and then reverse it the next. Do not stick to the same pattern in any way. Period.”
Win woke at eight, stretched and asked if I wanted breakfast. “I can run over to Tillie’s Heart Attack Grill.”
“Get me whatever you get,” I said with a grin. She was perfectly awake, full of get-up-and-go while I was beginning to wilt. After we ate, I gave Win the files on the other two shootings and she busied herself with them.
Mike came in about ten o’clock with a full scen
e reconstruction. “Shooter had to know when Larry would be on that stretch of road because all the signs from the nest said he came, he shot and he left. All within a matter of a half hour, hour at the max.”
“I’ll have to ask Larry how he varied his patrol. I tried to explain that we couldn’t afford to be predictable and now, maybe they’ll listen. Talk to Mark. As head of patrol, if they don’t mix it up, his head’s going to be on a shiny platter.”
“Will do. In fact, I’ll help serve him up. Unless Larry didn’t pay any attention to the directive, my question is still how the hell did they know when he’d be on that stretch of road.”
“Did you check the patrol unit for a GPS tracker?” Win asked.
“Jesus, I didn’t even think about that. As soon as it gets to the garage, we’ll start looking.”
“If she’s finished with the lab work, take Leslie along,” I said.
An hour later, Mike called. “We found a GPS tracker. You need to tell folks to check their patrol units before they take them out. This one was on the back wheel well on the passenger side.”
“Roger that. Any prints on it?”
“Cleaner than Doc’s table before an autopsy.”
I told Dory to put out an alert to first shift. “Make sure they check them right now, not their next break or whatever. Now.”
“You changed tactics, they adjusted,” Win said. “Typical insurgent behavior. They’ll find a way around most things you do. Maybe you start finding GPS trackers before patrol goes out. They wait until a unit stops for a coffee break. You adjust, they readjust.”
“We’ve got to get ahead of them, Win.”
“I’ll call Bill as soon as we get home. My burn phone’s there.”
I nodded. “You think they’ve got the skills to hack our communications system? Email and phones?”
She shrugged. “That’s Nathan’s bailiwick. If anyone can put up enough firewalls and stuff, it’s him.”
I put my head down on the desk, cradled by my arms. “Damn. Damn them all to hell.”
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