by Brian Thiem
Sinclair had called Maloney last night after he left Pratt’s house and brought him up to speed on the case. “Nothing since we talked.”
“Let’s keep his connection to the girl’s murder in house. The media will figure it out soon enough.”
*
Two hours later as Sinclair returned from the coroner’s office, Braddock hung up her phone and said, “Phil needs to see us ASAP.”
“What’s up?” Sinclair asked.
“I don’t know, but he sounded excited, and it takes a lot to get him excited.”
On their way to the intelligence office, Sinclair briefed her on the autopsy results. The pathologist had confirmed the presence of tattooing—particles of unburnt gunpowder—in the tissue below the eye where the bullet had entered. Besides the bullet wound, there were no other wounds or injuries. Sinclair pictured one of the men in the video—either as punishment for posting the video or to ensure he never named his coconspirators—visiting Edgar’s apartment, immediately pulling out his gun, pointing it at Edgar’s face, and pulling the trigger. No talk, no discussion, just bang—the weak link eliminated.
Roberts shepherded Sinclair and Braddock into his office as soon as they buzzed, and then he shut his office door. “One of my contacts from another agency noticed this,” he said as he jiggled the mouse to wake up his computer.
Sinclair and Braddock moved around his desk and studied a Twitter feed for a group named @BLM415. Roberts scrolled down a few entries and clicked on a photo to enlarge it. It showed Edgar Pratt sprawled on the floor of the apartment exactly as they had found him yesterday. The only difference was the pool of blood was smaller and brighter red in the photo.
“This must’ve been taken right after he was shot,” Sinclair said. “Who posted it?”
Roberts closed out of the photo and returned to the Twitter feed. Sinclair read the message poster’s name: Deathtowhores. The message read, Police snitches should lie in ditches.
“The profile was created yesterday,” Roberts said. “Probably just to post this.”
They both knew the difficulty in tracing social media posts. With a series of search warrants and a month or more of time, they could eventually track it to an IP address, but unless someone posted from his home Wi-Fi or used a cell service in his name, it would be a dead end.
Braddock sat down on the couch. “What’s B-L-M-four-fifteen stand for?”
“Black Lives Matter,” Roberts said. “The four-fifteen stands for San Francisco’s area code. It’s a Bay Area group that formed after the Ferguson shooting to bring attention to so-called unjustified police shootings of black men.”
“I don’t get it,” Sinclair said. “Why are anarchists and Black Lives Matter activists interested in killing a white woman who worked as an escort? And what’s this crap about death to whores?”
Roberts chuckled. “You have to stop thinking of these social media networks as traditional organizations. The same people who post stuff on sites connected to the Occupy movement post on the anarchist and Black Lives Matter sites. They’re activists and rabble-rousers. The organizations are nebulous, often no more than a cause that people attach themselves to. Some of the people at the last protest organized by B-L-M-four-fifteen were the same people who attended the Occupy protests. They don’t care about the cause, as long as it’s against the status quo. Some of their social media postings are about reasonable concerns, however . . .”
Roberts got up from his desk and gazed at his wall of plaques and certificates. “As a black man myself, I understand racial profiling is a problem. But as a cop, I know we stop blacks at a higher rate because blacks commit crime at a higher rate. People with their own agendas attach themselves to one or more of the causes to advance their own interests. Last year, a group of anarchists that called themselves the Black Bloc smashed the windows of fifty downtown businesses. Meanwhile, they looted the stores—not of food or necessities, but of two-hundred-dollar sneakers and electronics. The group Anonymous posted a video asking people to stop the vandalism and looting. Was that representative of Anonymous? Who knows? A half dozen of those arrested that night were first busted at the Earth First protests back in the eighties.”
Sinclair looked up from his notepad. “The old environmental group?”
“Right,” Roberts said. “They show up at whatever cause is popular at the time—environmental, animal rights, nuclear power in the eighties and nineties, and income inequality and police brutality today.”
“So the people involved in my murders could be some middle-aged radicals,” Sinclair said.
Roberts shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows? This isn’t a full-time job for these people. And don’t forget, the vast majority of the people involved in the protests are righteous citizens. We’re focusing on a small minority.”
“So, where’s this leave us?” Sinclair asked.
“If I were in your shoes,” Roberts said, “I wouldn’t worry too much about this social media chatter. Our friends at the state and federal level spend their days monitoring it, and even they don’t have a good handle on who’s involved in what and how they’re connected. If something comes up, like when Gothic Geek and Anarchist Soldier were named, I’ll let you know.”
“What about this guy’s account name of ‘death to whores’?” Braddock asked. “Is this a new cause connected with the anarchists?”
“It’s the first we’ve seen it,” Roberts said. “It could be disinformation.”
“Someone trying to throw us off the right track?” Sinclair said.
“I’ve seen it before,” Roberts said.
Sinclair and Braddock left the intelligence office and drove to the Best Buy store, where they met with the manager, a short, pudgy white man in his fifties with horn-rimmed glasses. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a clip-on tie and black leather shoes that he’d probably never polished. The manager had already heard about Edgar Pratt’s murder and was over his shock—if the murder of an employee actually shocked someone more comfortable around computers than people. He set up Sinclair and Braddock with a copy of the employee roster in a back room that he called their training room, though it seemed to double as a break room based on the clutter of empty energy drinks and candy wrappers on the tables.
By two o’clock, they had interviewed eight young men who were assigned to the Geek Squad and compiled twenty pages of handwritten notes. No one knew Garvin or Pratt outside the store, they all played computer games, but not with Garvin or Pratt, and no one had any idea why someone would kill Dawn or Pratt. The detectives took a break and walked through a steady rain to a sandwich shop in the same mall where Best Buy was located. Sinclair ordered the Italian special and Braddock had grilled chicken in a spinach wrap.
“This is the part of investigations I hate,” Braddock said.
“You and me both,” Sinclair said. “We could talk to a hundred people here over the next week and no one will know anything.”
“Or some will know something, lie about it, and we won’t be able to tell.”
“We’re too good to let that happen.” Sinclair winked.
His cell buzzed. He didn’t recognize the number.
“Is this the detective investigating the murder of Dawn Gustafson?” The voice was male and sounded white and young.
“Yes, this is Sergeant Sinclair.”
“Do you want her computers—the one from the apartment by the lake and the one from the condo downtown?”
Sinclair waved to get Braddock’s attention and cracked the phone from his ear so that Braddock could hear. “Absolutely,” Sinclair said. “Do you have them?”
“I can get them for you if you want to meet me.”
“Sure, give me your address.”
“No, this has to be anonymous. Meet me at Peet’s Coffee Shop on Lakeshore in a half hour.”
“Okay. How will I recognize you?”
“I’ll recognize you,” the man said before hanging up.
*
P
eet’s Coffee was located between a burrito shop and health food store in the trendy Lakeshore business district, just north of Lake Merritt. There was an empty handicapped space in front, but even a homicide car didn’t get a free pass to park there unless a dead body was lying next to it. Sinclair parked halfway down the block and walked with Braddock in the steady rain, dodging a few pedestrians whose heads were covered by umbrellas. Despite the rain, a man with long hair hanging out of a fedora similar to Sinclair’s sat on a wooden bench outside the door smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee from a paper Peet’s cup.
Inside the store, Sinclair removed his hat and shook off the water. Every seat was taken. Sinclair’s mind immediately flashed on his encounter with Garvin at the Mills Café four days earlier. He scanned the crowd—about thirty people, six or seven white males in the age group of his caller. Two of the workers behind the counter fit that description as well. No one gave him a second look. They were ten minutes early, so Braddock got in line to get drinks while Sinclair found a wall to put his back against and watch the door.
Braddock handed him a small cup of black coffee and shouldered in beside him. He popped off the top and sipped the dark French roast. She sipped her frou-frou coffee, something with a head of white foam. Sinclair couldn’t imagine anyone not making them for cops. His phone rang, and he dug it out from under his raincoat. The same number. “Sinclair,” he said.
“It’s too crowded in there, and I don’t want you to drag me downtown for questioning, so I’m leaving them on the top deck of the parking garage behind Peet’s. They’ll be in a black backpack by the far stairs.”
“Let’s talk a minute,” Sinclair said, but the line was already dead.
They walked through the parking lot next to the CVS Pharmacy to the parking structure. People under umbrellas or with turned-up collars and hunched shoulders rushed between cars and stores. Most of the spaces on the covered ground floor of the garage were full. Sinclair led the way up the concrete stairs to the open top deck. Nearly a hundred cars could park here, and on a nice Saturday afternoon, it would be full. He counted six cars parked by the stairs. Twenty empty stalls away was a single dark car parked by the far stairway. Braddock started toward it.
“Hang on,” Sinclair said.
Braddock stopped and turned.
“This doesn’t feel right,” he said. “Let’s check out these cars.”
They peered into each car, checking the front and back seats for occupants, but they were empty. They continued their march toward the far stairway, passing the ramp to the upper deck and one going back down.
The rain rolled off the brim of his hat. His unbuttoned raincoat flapped in the wind, and a gust flipped his tie over his shoulder. Halfway across the parking lot, Sinclair stopped and looked back at the stairway from where they came. He thought he saw movement, but couldn’t be sure with the rain and wind. There was no one there now.
“Why don’t you wait here,” he said to Braddock. “Watch my back and keep an eye on the car ramps and the far stairway. I’ll check out the car.”
She nodded. He walked toward the lone car. The wind whipped his coat open, and the driving rain soaked the front of his shirt and pants. He ignored it. He walked around the far side of the Ford sedan and peered into the windows. The car was empty. He walked around the rear of the vehicle and spotted a black backpack on the top step of the stairwell.
A memory from Iraq flashed in his mind. Riding shotgun in the middle Humvee of a three-truck convoy. Up ahead, alongside the road, he spotted a military rucksack—one of the old ones, OD green in color. He grabbed the radio mic and yelled for the lead vehicle to punch it and for his driver and the rear vehicle to reverse. Seconds later, the rucksack exploded with all three trucks just barely outside the kill zone.
Sinclair turned. Braddock was watching him. Beyond her, at the top of the other stairwell, stood the man who had been smoking the cigarette outside Peet’s. He pulled out a cell phone and held it in front of his face.
Sinclair pointed at him and yelled to Braddock, “Run!”
Sinclair crouched and sprinted toward Braddock. She turned and ran toward the man. Sinclair ran as fast as he could, the leather soles of his shoes slipping with each step on the rain-slick concrete.
The explosion sounded in his ears at the same time the blast wave hit him. The air around him moved. Instead of shoving him forward, as he thought it should, it felt like it picked him up and pulled him, as a rogue wave does to a surfer just before erupting over him and smashing him into the ocean floor.
Chapter 35
At six o’clock, Sinclair and Braddock walked up the same concrete stairs they had ascended three hours earlier. Sinclair grimaced with each step and limped slightly from where the doctors at ACH ER had dug a piece of concrete out of his right hamstring and closed the wound with five sutures and surgical superglue. The rest of his body felt like it had just gone ten rounds with a heavyweight champ. His thick raincoat protected most of his body after he went airborne and landed on the asphalt, where he slid, tumbled, and rolled for another twenty feet. Still, he ended up with road rash on his left hip where the surface of the parking deck tore through his wool pants, as well as oozing abrasions on his left arm and chin.
A canvas canopy the size of a small circus tent covered the far end of the parking lot where the device had exploded. Maloney waved at Sinclair as soon as he stepped under a smaller canopy that had been set up as a break area for the scores of officers and agents from a variety of local, state, and federal agencies. “I thought I told you at the hospital to go home when they released you,” Maloney said.
“I figured it was a suggestion,” Sinclair replied.
Maloney shook his head and sighed. “I take it the MRI found your brain wasn’t too badly rattled.”
Sinclair turned his head to the left, since the ringing in his right ear drowned out all but the loudest sounds. “No more than normal.”
“What about you, Cathy?” Maloney asked Braddock.
“I was a lot farther away, so the blast didn’t even knock me down.” She was almost yelling even though Maloney was only a few feet away. “Other than a slight headache from the noise, I’m good, but the bomber got away.”
“You stayed with your partner,” Maloney said. “That’s the right decision.”
Sinclair poured himself a cup of coffee and pulled a cigar from his pocket, bit off the end, and pulled out his Zippo. Immediately, a man in an FBI windbreaker rushed from the other side of the tent, yelling, “You can’t smoke here! This is a crime scene.”
Maloney turned toward the man and held up his hand like a stop sign. “This is Matt Sinclair, the man who was nearly blown up. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the crime scene and all the evidence is under the other tent.”
Sinclair lit his cigar.
The man in the FBI windbreaker introduced himself as the San Francisco Field Office assistant special agent in charge for counterterrorism. ASAIC Lee said, “You’re a very lucky man, Sergeant. They tell me if you were much closer, you wouldn’t be standing here right now.”
“No luck involved, sir,” another man with a weightlifter’s build said. He was wearing an ATF windbreaker, for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. “I just read the sergeant’s statement from the hospital. He recognized the backpack as an IED, saw the bomber preparing to trigger it with a cell phone, and hauled ass out of the blast radius. Only a fucking warrior knows to do that.”
Sinclair puffed on the cigar to get it started, drew a mouthful of smoke into his lungs, and exhaled. From the way the ATF agent talked, he had to be prior military, but Sinclair didn’t have the energy to swap military service and unit assignments with him. “Are you guys doing the scene?” he asked.
“Us and the FBI’s evidence response team,” the ATF agent said.
“What was the device?” Sinclair asked.
The ATF agent looked to Lee, who nodded his approval. “A simple pressure cooker bomb filled with b
lack powder and set off remotely with a cell phone triggering device that was attached to a blasting cap in the lid. The bomber didn’t fill it with shrapnel—you know, nails or ball bearings—like the Boston Marathon bomber and most other bombers do. Still, the concussion would kill anyone within twenty feet, lots more in an enclosed area. Some fragments of the pressure cooker became airborne projectiles, too. If one of those would’ve hit you or your partner, even from across the parking lot, you’d be in for a big hurt.”
“Does that mean the bomber was an amateur?” Braddock asked.
“Not necessarily,” the AFT agent replied. “He probably figured you would pick up the backpack, at which time he’d detonate it. No need for fragmentation projectiles at that distance. Amateur, professional, who knows. Anyone with an Internet connection can learn how to make a pressure cooker bomb.”
“Anything on the cell phone yet?” Sinclair asked.
“The lab will have to examine it, but it looks like a cheap flip phone, probably a prepay.”
Lee added, “We traced the number that the subject called you from. It’s a TracFone, part of a batch that was distributed to Bay Area convenience stores. It’ll take a while to trace it to a particular store. Eight minutes after the second call to you, precisely at the time of the explosion, the phone made an outgoing call to a number that’s part of that same batch of TracFones.”
“Which would be the phone used as the detonator,” Braddock said.
Sinclair drifted to the far end of the tent and looked through the rain to the large canopy on the other side of the parking lot. Thirty or forty people, most dressed in white coveralls and yellow booties, scurried about with cameras and evidence bags. The Ford sedan was a twisted carcass of metal and broken glass. Twenty feet of the parking structure’s concrete railing was missing, obviously blown apart by the blast. Sinclair felt a hand on his shoulder and turned.
“Glad you’re okay, partner.” Phil Roberts was dressed in an OPD baseball cap and a blue windbreaker with yellow OPD letters on the front and back.