by Kirk Russell
“If that laptop is going to Washington, I have to get a look at what’s on it first. Can you at least do that for me? Text me. I’ll come here and read what’s on it.”
“It’s tight around here. They’re down on us and very clear about the protocol.”
“Are we being videotaped?”
“Yes.”
“You and me talking?”
“Yes.”
“What I’m looking for predates the bombings. It’s something Jane and I were working on in early June. She took the lead, and I don’t have her most up-to-date notes. I’ve got to follow up on it, and you’ve got to help me with her laptop.”
That wasn’t reaching him, so I took another tack. I pulled a twisted aluminum fragment from my pocket.
“How much of this have you found?”
“Plenty. Where did you get that one?”
“A surgeon removed it from my niece’s hamstring. I think it’s an aluminum fragment from a wine refrigerator that was behind the bar. Does that make sense to you?”
Darza shrugged, not even willing to answer that, though it was already accepted that the bomb had been in a wine refrigerator.
“I was the first person inside. These fragments were everywhere. Under the bar the concrete was scarified by the blast. Where are you storing these fragments?”
“They shipped to DC.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“Okay, so we’ll see a report posted soon.”
“I don’t know about that. That’s above me.”
I handed Darza the aluminum fragment again, and I said, “I hear there’s a cell phone video. I’m looking for the driver who delivered the cake in that video. He might be in it because he helped carry the cake in. He’s missing.”
“The guy everyone is looking for?”
“Yeah, him, and I’m working him, so the cake delivery timing matters to me. Part of the rumor I heard this morning is there’s a stamp on the video that reads ‘8:03 p.m.’ If that’s true, hand me back the aluminum fragment I just gave you.”
Darza handed me the fragment, and I calculated as I slowly slid it into my pocket. My three-minute, forty-two-second conversation with Jim Kern had ended at 7:48. Lake Mead Boulevard is a long road, and I was on it for a while after talking to Jim. I’d hit a string of red lights, the last at the stoplight where I had looked across and seen the Hullabaloo van headed in the other direction, driven by Juan Menderes.
My call with Jim ended at 7:48. The blast was at 8:03, so there was a fifteen-minute gap between my hanging up with Jim and the bomb going off. How long did it take for Jim and Menderes to walk the cake to the table? Not too long, I guessed. Maybe a few minutes, and the cake was already paid for. All Menderes had to do was set it down and go. His text that delivery was made arrived at Hullabaloo’s office at 7:53. That left ten minutes for Menderes to cover the mile to where I saw him. That was too much time, and it troubled me.
There was another thing. When Menderes left the van, he left his phone under the passenger seat, most likely out of fear of being tracked with it. Its last activity showed a happy-face emoticon in a text to Hullabaloo and nothing more. So when I saw him on the phone in the intersection, he must have been on a different phone.
“Grale?” Darza said.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got to go back to work now, but we’ll get to the laptop today. Are you going to be around?”
“I’ll make sure I am.”
“I’ll call you.”
15
Beatty called after I left Darza. He said he’d seen his face on a TV in a mini-mart. He’d kept his head down, paid, and went from there to the insurance office of a friend in Tonopah he rented garage space from to pick up the garage key and retrieve a couple of things.
“With what’s happened I shouldn’t be bothering you,” Beatty said. “I’m sorry, Grale.”
“It’s okay.”
“When I asked my friend for the garage key, she said she was supposed to call the FBI if I showed up. I said, ‘Call them while I’m here.’ She did, and I talked to the agent.”
“Was it one of the agents who interviewed you yesterday?”
“No, someone else, a guy named Patterson.”
“How did it go yesterday?”
“Not that well. This Patterson told me to wait at the insurance office and two agents would come get me and bring me back—the FBI has more questions. I told him, ‘Not today, not after yesterday.’ He got fired up and told me to stay right there and agents would come get me. I don’t know what I said after that, but it wasn’t nice. My insurance broker friend told me the FBI took all my stuff out of her garage early this morning. We’re talking camping gear, the gun my dad gave me when I turned twelve, that kind of thing.”
“You’ll get them back.”
“On TV they’re turning me into a psycho. Where are they getting that from?”
“Not from us. Why don’t you answer their follow-up questions and then be on your way?”
“Did that yesterday, and there’s nothing happening at the airfield today. Besides, they’re just fishing. I think I’m going to take a ride and go see a friend. I’m just letting you know.”
“You don’t need to let me know. You’re making your own decisions. I’ll talk to you later.”
July 6th, late morning
Beatty got on his bike and rode south then west across the desert toward California. As he clipped through at ninety miles an hour he flashed back to a colonel pointing at him in a flight trailer, saying “Trigger puller,” meaning that as a high compliment, the one who takes it to the enemy. Back then it felt righteous.
He thought of Dr. Frederic lecturing him on post-traumatic stress disorder, telling him what to expect and how to manage it. He’d waited nine months after his discharge for an appointment through the VA with Frederic, and after all that, Dr. Fred turned out to be an asshole. But Frederic was right about his guilt.
He pushed the bike to 130 mph and screamed past a Nevada Highway Patrol officer sitting on the shoulder. The trooper threw on his lights and sirens but never had a chance. He was into California before the cop got anywhere close. He rode fast along the White Mountains and didn’t slow until Bishop and didn’t stop until he was south to Independence, where he took the turn out to Laura’s ranch.
Her truck and her old Jeep were there, but as he got off his bike he lost his nerve and for a long moment debated leaving. If she hadn’t opened the front door, he would have.
Laura came down the creaky porch steps, asking, “Why is the FBI getting serious about you?”
“I test-flew some drones in Taiwan and accidentally got into a Department of Defense investigation.”
“Is that the truth?”
“As best I know.”
“Do you want me to help?”
“I don’t want to pull you into this. I just wanted to see you. I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do. The FBI is looking at me for the Vegas bombings.”
“On TV they’re saying after your discharge you expressed extreme hostility toward the air force. Did you write any more letters to the air force like the one you did for Dr. Fred?”
“None like the one you read.”
“But you wrote more?”
“You can read them. There’s nothing wrong with them.”
“Is Paul Grale still helping you?”
“He’s telling me to suck it up and ride it out.”
“I’ve seen that trailer at Wunderland on TV. What are you doing living there still? You promised me you’d move out of there as soon as you had enough money. And why is plastic over the windows?”
“My computer is right there. The plastic blocks the sun. There’s too much glare without it.”
She had hated the trailer, hated the whole idea of him living in it. She called it hiding and only slept one night there.
“You look really good, Laura. I hope you’re doing great. I’m not here to freak you out.
”
She came down off the steps.
“Why don’t you call one of these TV reporters and tell them what the plastic over the windows is for?”
“I told the FBI yesterday.”
“Dude, sometimes I wonder how you got this far. They’re not against you. They’re trying to figure out what happened with those bombings, and they don’t know who you are yet. Park your bike in the barn and come on in. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
He rode the bike to the barn and rolled it in. The smell of horse urine lingered, but the horses were long gone, the barn floor dry as sand. Two fluorescent lights hung from roof trusses and looked new, so maybe she was going to stay for a while. This ranch used to be in her mother’s family and they had once talked about living here after they were married.
In the kitchen, he looked at her and wondered how he’d screwed up so bad that he lost her. She reached across the table and took his hand as they talked about the Kerns getting killed. Laura cried and they ate and talked and took a walk before he left. Laura believed in him, or maybe he just needed to believe that. Either way, on the ride back to Nevada and the airfield, Beatty felt calmer. It wasn’t until later when he checked news stories online that the feeling went away. When it did, it went a long way away and he came down hard.
16
July 6th, early afternoon
At 12:01 p.m. Vegas time, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula uploaded a video to their website with an English speaker talking about a corrupt American army officer at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan who had sold them the C-4 they’d used to strike against the devil. They outed an army warrant officer named Lansing Guthrie. The spokesman ranted about how easy it was to bribe an American soldier, as if that proved the West was corrupt—this from a culture where bribes were the norm. The rest of it was the usual crap, but I listened to all of it.
In an early afternoon briefing, we learned details of the sale of C-4 to the Haqqani network. The CIA had obtained the information about this and the secondary sale to AQAP from its sources. No real details were divulged of how they tracked it from that point. They never informed the army, but via a separate theft the army picked up on Guthrie and a second warrant officer, as yet unnamed, who was now cooperating.
There was additional information uploaded to the JTTF site on how the C-4 crossed into the United States. According to a still heavily redacted report, it came in a routine shipment of household-cleaning products from the manufacturing plant of a well-known US corporation. At the border an intentional spill of chemicals in the cargo area blunted border dogs’ ability to detect explosives. Many salient details were missing, including how the C-4 left a Phoenix warehouse without being detected. I reread this information and was still skeptical about the Phoenix disappearing act. I leaned back in my chair mulling that over.
“Get what you wanted from the briefings?” Venuti asked me.
“Not really.”
“Talk to me.”
“How did the C-4 leave the Phoenix warehouse if the warehouse was under constant surveillance?”
“A mistake got made somewhere. That happens. What else?”
“How do we know they weren’t watching boxes of detergent, and the C-4 crossed the border a different way?”
“How do we know anything? How do we know the earth is round? We know because a CIA team tracked it from Afghanistan to Phoenix. Why do you do this? Why can’t you take things at face value?”
“How did they confirm the poundage of what was actually delivered? Did they just assume that what was stolen got delivered?”
“Okay, that’s a good question.” Venuti wrote a note to himself and said, “There’s another shorter briefing this afternoon. I’ll find out what I can. What else?”
“Beatty. How did the interview with him go?”
“He answered all questions. He was alternately combative and contrite. People who know about these things say he exhibited paranoid tendencies.”
“But he answered all questions?”
“Yes, and you can watch the tape and draw your own conclusions.”
“We owe him a public response if we’re satisfied he had no direct involvement in the bombings.”
“He’s still under investigation, and we have follow-up questions he’s evading.”
“But so far, nothing ties him to the bombings other than the imagination of the DOD investigators.”
Venuti lifted a hand to stop me.
“I don’t want to sound condescending, especially with what you’re going through, but I doubt you can keep an open mind about Beatty’s motives.” He tapped his desk. “And he’s not your problem to solve. Just let him go for now, Paul. I mean that.”
“Are we leaving him dangling because we don’t have anything else? We’re going to let the media feed on him to buy us time to come up with better leads? Is that the plan?”
“Listen to yourself. Twenty-nine died inside the Alagara, including your sister, brother-in-law, and nephew. Including Jane, eight law enforcement officers were killed in the secondary explosion, and a Las Vegas Metro deputy commander was left paraplegic, but you’re indignant about a guy who sat in a blacked-out trailer with the US Capitol on his target screen. If we didn’t look hard at him, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs.”
“I’ve read everything that came from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the DOD. There’s nothing there.”
“We’re done here.”
Venuti pointed a finger at my chest.
“Beatty washed out after sitting in a lounge chair, flying drones for seven years. He should have gotten back on his feet a long time ago. The reason he didn’t is he has psychological issues, including extreme animosity toward his former employer, which happens to be the United States. I can’t do this with you, Grale. I don’t mean to cut you off, and I can’t imagine what you’re feeling today, but I can’t do this right now. With everything else, I just can’t.”
Throughout the afternoon, the story evolved on the Kandahar Warrant Officer Lansing Guthrie. Guthrie stoked the press by communicating through his lawyer that he had sold the explosives to an Afghan warlord to battle the Taliban after Obama pulled the troops out of Afghanistan. He did it for America. Some of the media loved that angle, one major TV station in particular, and, of course, various wing nut radio hosts in the desert.
At 2:30 p.m., I drove to the hospital and at the nurse’s station was told, “Julia’s grandmother is with her right now, sir.”
“It must be somebody else. Her grandparents are dead.”
The nurse hovered while I went in to resolve who the “grandmother” was. I was very grateful that a couple who were neighbors of the Kerns had sat with Julia yesterday. That’s who was there. Patricia Hunt, the neighbor, was in a chair reading a magazine. Near her were pound cake, pretzels, and a cup of coffee. It looked like she’d been there awhile. I couldn’t remember her husband’s name until I shook her hand. I thanked her for all she and Charlie, her husband, had done.
“We’ve been here as much as we can. Charlie has gone home to get some sleep, but he’ll be back tonight. We haven’t seen you at all.”
“I’m doing what I can.”
She looked long-faced and disapproving, and then just laid it out there as I moved to Julia’s bedside.
“What is it you’re doing that’s more important?”
“I’m working on things I can’t leave alone right now. Let me spend some time with my niece, if that’s all right.”
Julia was weaker than I’d expected, but she’d passed strength and motor tests on both sides of her body earlier in the day, so that was good. A doctor stopped in soon after and communicated that she wanted to talk outside in the corridor.
“She’s withdrawn,” the doctor said, “but she also has painkillers in her that could exacerbate those feelings. The back of her legs, her ear, and her back are very sore today, not so much from surgery as tissue trauma from the initial injury. And we need to talk about her ear. There�
��ll be a decision this afternoon about whether she needs another surgery. We’ll need to be able to reach you. Or would you rather her grandparents make the decision?”
“Her grandparents are dead. These are neighbors. Call me regarding anything to do with her health.”
“I must have misunderstood.” She paused on that, then said, “Try to be here as much as you can.”
“What about her spinal cord?”
“So far, so good, but we’re still waiting.”
I sat with Julia, and while I was there she texted several of her friends about coming to see her. I also realized as she scrolled through her phone that she didn’t have my number. I gave her all the ways to reach me, and she entered those in her phone. But I couldn’t do anything for her grief and was disturbed by the encounter with the neighbor. I told Julia I’d try to get back by tonight.
In the hallway I ran into Patricia again, who told me the Kerns’ dog, Coal, was now at their house. “He’s very happy there. Charlie moved him over today.”
“Thank you. Are you okay having him with you for several days?”
“We think ours should be his new home.”
“He’s going to keep on being Julia’s dog.”
“We have lots to talk about,” she said with peculiar brightness. “We had a number of very good conversations with Jim and Melissa. We were very close to them, and in these hard times we have to rise to do the Lord’s work. What is it you do, Mr. Grale?”
“I work for the government.”
“My father worked for the government. He was a postman, but he would have found the time to be here in this moment of need. God calls us. We have to answer when we’re called. Are you married?”