by Jim Riley
“What do we know about them so far?”
“Apparently, instead of stealing members from other organizations and thus depleting them, it’s actually causing a growth spurt for everyone.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Well, people like to belong to something. So after they get motivated by New Millennium, they are gravitating toward whatever already-existing group is closest to their beliefs and they join. It seems to be energizing the whole movement, which I think is the goal.”
“What’s that mean? I mean, what’s it tell us?”
“Good question. And one that’s being asked by a lot of people but not getting any solid answers. My guess is this movement was started by a group of well-connected and very well-educated people who strongly believe in the premise of anti-Semitism.”
“Why not just white supremacy?”
He hedged a minute. “This is classified, but we have rumors that they’ve even reached out to the Black Supremacists and other extremist groups.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope. I guess someone finally figured out they needed to quit fighting each other if they all had a common enemy. Get together and join resources against a common enemy.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
“Exactly. Hate is hate. They’ll never put it away. They may very well get together on some level to go against the Jews, but it won’t last. It ain’t black on white, or white on Jew. It’s just hate. They’re on a mission.”
“Kind of like al-Qaeda.”
“Exactly like al-Qaeda.”
“Still, it’s kind of weird, the white and black supremacists agreeing on anything.”
“Hate makes strange bedfellows.”
“Well, there you go.”
Chapter Fifteen
The Gittleson murder case was almost five months old by this time, and I had never worked a case where so many clues had dribbled out over such a long period of time without me solving it. It was frustrating the hell out of me. I was sitting at my desk trying to get my mind off it by looking over a very poorly-written sexual assault report taken by a lazy deputy, when my phone rang. It was a very nice lady from Arizona. She’s what we in Colorado refer to as a snowbird. She and her husband were retired and lived in Eaglenest in the summer months when it’s cool, and in Phoenix in the winter where it’s warm. I should be so lucky. It seems that this past Christmas she, the kids, and the grandkids had decided to spend the holidays skiing. How nice, I thought, get on with it lady, I’ve got work to do. Anyway, she was just wanting to know if we had ever found out who killed that poor, unfortunate man that hit the tree. She had just told her nephew that very morning that he really needed to wear his helmet if he was going to ski, and although it may have not helped that poor man, it was still a very good idea. She was just getting into all the celebrities that died skiing when I asked what exactly she had called for.
“Oh yes. Well, I was speaking with my daughter and it turns out that she had been talking to Brittany. That’s my granddaughter. She’s fifteen and the smartest girl in her grade.”
“Yes ma’am. What did Brittany say?”
“Well, Brittany said she saw the man that the paper described as maybe being the person that pushed the other man off of his skis.”
“No kidding? How can I talk to Brittany?” I was grabbing my pen.
“Well, her mom doesn’t want her talking to the police. She thinks it will be too traumatic.”
Son of a bitch. She probably leaves the kid with a nanny fourteen hours a day and sees her on weekends, and suddenly she’s worried about traumatizing her. “I promise to be gentle. In fact, I can just talk to her on the phone and her mom can be on an extension.”
“I told her it would probably be okay, but she doesn’t think a lot of police. I’m sorry.”
I wasn’t sure if she was sorry that I couldn’t talk to Brittany or that her daughter didn’t like the cops. Either way, I didn’t care what the mom wanted or thought. “Ma’am, this man had a family, too. And they want desperately to know why he died. The leads on this case have really slowed down, and I really need to talk to Brittany.”
“Well, I tried to tell her that, but she really is stubborn.”
“How about if I talk to your daughter?”
“Well, I suppose that would be okay.”
Damn right, it would be. She gave me the number and I dialed it up. It was a San Francisco phone number. It took ten minutes, some tense words, and a threat of me sending a San Francisco cop to her door before the mom relented and let me talk to Brittany. It turns out after all that work it was only a little new information. She told me a man fitting the description we’d put in the press release had walked by her down at the base. She’d actually seen Mr. Gittleson get pushed up on the slopes from where she was down below, then watched the doer ski all the way down. She lost him in the crowd at the bottom, but then he suddenly came moving through the crowd. He wasn’t running but was moving quickly. He bumped into a snowboarder in front of her and got pushed back. The snowboarder said something to the effect of “watch where you are going or slow down,” and the perp had told him to “shut the hell up.” She’d gotten a look at his face, at least what she could see under the helmet and shield. He had a long, straggly beard and maybe a tattoo on his neck. She wasn’t certain it was a tattoo but saw something on his neck above his turtleneck. I asked what she thought it might be a tattoo of and she said she had no idea, it was just two lines that came to a point. Like the end of a tail or something. Right at the end of the conversation and almost as an afterthought, she told me something else.
“Oh yeah. He was from the South.”
“How do you know that?”
“His accent.”
“You could tell from just those few words.”
“Oh, yeah. I have a cousin that lives in Mississippi. He sounded just like him.”
“You’re sure.”
“Positive.”
I called Bell as soon as I hung up with Brittany. He told me that no one matching that description had come up on his radar in the case. He did tell me it narrowed my suspect pool to only every other man in the Deep South. I reminded him the guy may be involved in his murder case as well, and he promised to keep his ears open. He was getting as frustrated with his case as I was with mine.
“You find any motive other than the love-triangle theory?”
“Nope.”
“She didn’t need the insurance. Hell, she has more than money than you and I both could spend.”
“I thought he was the one that came from the wealthy family?”
“They both did. Her dad is some bigwig in the finance business. She was a trust fund baby from way back before she ever met Mr. Gittleson.”
“And nothing else?”
“Clean as a whistle.”
“How the hell did she hook up with the bearded piece-of-shit skier from the South that did her husband, then?”
“Maybe the boyfriend introduced her.”
“He wouldn’t have helped kill the husband if he was getting money from him.”
“I don’t know, then.”
“How the hell did she hook up with the boyfriend in the first place?”
“Haven’t been able to figure that one out either. Mrs. Gittleson is a socialite but apparently keeps her own council. No best friends or that kind of thing. Neighbors don’t know or ain’t saying. You know how rich people are about telling on each other.”
“Yeah. How about Connie the paralegal?”
“I didn’t get any more out of her than you did. But she is leaning toward the wife being involved.”
“Hell, you don’t have to be Agatha Christie to figure that out.”
“I think she’ll call if she thinks of something.”
“I thought the same thing. She have any idea the husband was doing the guy, too?”
“No.” He laughed. “Seems the younger generation aren’t all as tolerant as television wou
ld have us believe. I believe her exact words were, ‘Oh, gross.’”
“Any closer to a warrant?”
“Close, but not close enough. I think if I could get her in cuffs, I might be able to convince her lawyer to take some kind of deal, though.”
I thought that was wishful thinking. At this point, the case was definitely too thin to prosecute, and a lawyer would know it. Especially a $450-an-hour lawyer.
“Well, good luck.”
I had a thought right before we hung up. “Did the kid have herpes?” I waited while Bell looked at the autopsy report.
“Yep. How’d you know?”
“Mr. Gittleson had herpes too. Funny, now that I think about it, there wasn’t any medicine for it in his travel kit. I thought there was some kind of medicine for it.”
“Isn’t it just when they’re breaking out or something?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’d only recently gotten it.”
“Maybe that’s what brought this whole thing down.”
“Maybe. You did a search warrant for her blood and stuff, right?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t check for STDs.”
“Why don’t you check?”
“Yeah, I might as well. I’m at a dead end anyway. Maybe it’ll stir the pot.”
I didn’t call Kelly. It was already 5:30 and I was ready to go home. I’d call her tomorrow. You should never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. It was going to be a while before I got a chance to talk to Kelly again.
PART III
Chapter Sixteen
I was unusually tired. Tish and I normally stayed up and watched a little TV before going to bed. Tonight, I’d not been able to hold my eyes open and went to bed by 8:20. I was sleeping fitfully, though, and I was in that kind of sleep where you’re half conscious and half given to dreams. Tish had the CD player going, and I could hear BB King laying down the blues. It was like a soundtrack to the movie my mind was playing out. Occasionally I would have a lucid thought as I surfaced from sleep, then my mind would toy with it like a cat playing with mouse. BB was belting out I Pity the Fool and I was following some crosshairs around a room. It would land on items like pillows on the couch, or the lamp on a table, and I would squeeze off a shot. Nothing would happen but a noise, and it was more like a video game than anything else. Mary, the girl I had encountered on the third floor of the JP Goldstein building, walked into the room and sat down. She began telling me all about the blouse she had been wearing that day in the building and how she had sewn up the tears in it. I listened to her intently and we discussed different ways to mend silk, like I knew what I was talking about. BB woke me up with Stormy Monday. This time, I decided it was time to wake up in earnest, and I floated to the top. I had been out for four hours, but I probably only had gotten thirty minutes of actual sleep. My body agreed with me. I hadn’t had a dream like that in a long time. I was tossing in bed thinking about it when the phone rang.
Tish didn’t know I was awake and wouldn’t have come to wake me up unless it was important. It was Coop, and it was important. The conversation lasted almost ten minutes while he explained everything I needed to know, and what and how I needed to brief my Chief and the Sheriff. They weren’t going to get to hear everything. It was need-to-know.
I didn’t have dispatch page out the team yet. I decided I’d do it personally over the phone. I didn’t want anyone else knowing what was going on. Especially the public. The normal twenty-minute drive took me twelve. I could have made it faster, but I didn’t need to get into a crash. I pulled into the Sheriff’s Office and let myself in. Toby met me there. He’d been my only call other than the team, and even though I hadn’t told him why he needed to meet me there, he did. Stalone was going to be pissed for being left out of the loop, but Toby was still the SWAT Commander and my Chief would have just been another problem for me to deal with.
We both sat in his office. I’d finished with my last phone call and managed to talk to each team member. Even more amazing was that none of them had been drinking, which was good news. It was a Tuesday night just past midnight, but doing shift work, this was a weekend night for a few of them.
“Can’t you tell me what this is about?” It was the third time Toby had asked and the third time I’d given him the same answer.
“As soon as everyone gets here. All I can tell you right now is that the JTTF is officially requesting our assistance.” I know that must have sucked for him to be in the dark and I honestly felt awkward holding out on him. But I had very direct orders, and I was sure when it was over he’d understand. He could tell I was tense and he knew whatever it was, was no doubt pretty big.
All the team members finally got there. They’d all had good response times, but it still felt like it took days for the last guy to come in. I told Brett I wanted them mustered in the Squad Room dressed in Woodland BDUs and LBVs in ten minutes. He didn’t even ask what was up, just trotted off to make it happen. Good hand.
I went back to Toby’s office, got out the phone number of the Joint Command Center in Denver I’d written on a slip of paper, and dialed it. Someone I didn’t know answered, and I identified myself.
“This is Moffat with Logan County SWAT. I need to talk to Watts.”
It went to hold, then it got picked up. “This is Coop.”
“I’ve got my team together. What’s the latest?”
“No change. We still don’t have a bird available to take a look. Just put eyes on and get back to me.”
“What’s the ROE?”
“That’s almost impossible to answer at this point, Dell. We don’t have any idea who sent the email yet or if there’s anything to it or not. Hell, the email’s two days old so they may not even be there anymore, whoever it was. We’ll just have to see.”
I didn’t like it, but I understood. Coop wasn’t a typical admin pussy. He’d give me rules of engagement if he could. At this point there was just no way to know. Hopefully it would stay an intel-gathering mission anyway. “You got the address yet?”
I could hear him shuffling around, probably trying to get over to the intel board. “Yeah. 1367 Logan County Road 749. According to an old satellite photo of the area, it should be a large, two-story house, looks like on the side of a mountain.”
“Hell, everything up here is on the side of a mountain. I’ll call you.”
“Roger that. Be careful.”
“Roger that.”
I hung up and grabbed my map book. All of the county roads in Logan County had numbers so our 911 system knew where the call was coming from. They also had road names, which is how most of us identified roads. I about vapor-locked when I saw the name of the road name for CR 749. It was Rainbow Lane. 1367 Rainbow Lane was the Gittleson house. Holy crap on a cracker.
“Command Post.”
“This is Moffat again. I need to speak to Watts.”
“He’s on another line.”
“Get him. This is important.”
It took a minute before he picked up. “What’s up, Dell?” I could hear a little tension in his voice, obviously not happy I’d interrupted him.
“You sure the address is 1367 County Road 749?”
“Yeah, why?” He was still testy.
“That was my murder victim’s house.” There was silence. I could almost hear the gears grinding.
“You sure?”
Now it was my turn. “Of course, I’m sure.” There was another short silence. “What’s it mean?”
“Fuck, I don’t know. Maybe nothing. All we know is someone sent an email from that location thirty-six hours ago that the NSA picked up on. We only just now got the information and location.”
That was information Coop had already given me when I talked to him the first time. Now, with this new twist, I wanted more. This just wasn’t feeling right. “Tell me about the email.”
“I don’t know what it said, and even if I did, I probably couldn’t tell you. Look, the NSA’s Echelon program sniffs emails, phone calls, a
nd such. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, go on.”
“All I know is that it picked up on this email based on the pattern of words and sentences, and what appear to be code words. That’s it. May be nothing.”
“But it’s enough that you’re sending my team out to do a snoop and poop.”
Coop took a deep breath. I guess he was realizing I wasn’t going to let it go, so he slowed down to fill me in as much as he could. “The Echelon program gets millions of hits each day off all kinds of electronic communications. They are filtered and given a rating of one through eight. Levels five through eight are classified as possible coded messages that need to be looked at further. Levels one through four are classified as probables, with one being the most probable and four being the lowest on the probable scale. This email was a four, which means it barely made it. We have teams out all over the place checking on threes and fours. Yours is just one of them. The big guys are handling the ones and twos.”
“Do we have any information on the sender or the receiver?”
I could almost hear him at this point grinding his teeth. He was getting impatient with my questions but that was tough. “No. Everyone that is anyone is neck deep in this. There hasn’t been any time to track that stuff down. All we can do at this point is try to use all the assets we have to put eyes on as many targets as we can right now. If this had been a five, I probably would have just asked you to drive over there and do a knock-and-talk. Confirm who was there and see what you could find out. But it’s a four. And protocol tonight is that you go in covert to see what’s up.”