Peter soon learned that dramatic movement was the captain’s hallmark. No sooner had Peter entered than he was up, snagging his jacket from the rack and brushing past his visitor with, “You drink rye?”
“I drink beer,” Peter said.
“They have Guinness in this place.”
“Coors will do.”
That brought a smile. Brockhurst talked over his shoulder as they strode up the block to the restaurant. “You didn’t bring Detective Pastern with you.”
“I thought we might talk more frankly without the widower of Devereau/Shaw’s victim in the room.”
“Cold bastard, aren’t ya?”
At the restaurant, the captain went right to a booth. “I’m a fixture here, and no one bothers to listen to me, so we can talk freely. Tell me about Crispin Breach, Peter.”
Cammon covered the important points in twenty minutes.
Brockhurst ordered a second rye and ginger ale and sighed. “I want you to know I do accept that Devereau and Jim Riotte are different people. But you see the obvious problem I’ve got? Kansas can hardly issue a bulletin on Devereau without solid identification. No fingerprints were found in either of Riotte’s trailers, nor in Wichita.”
Peter waited until the waitress brought their drinks. “I understand the low-lifes in the park are sure Mark Riotte traded large amounts of heavy drugs, including heroin. It seems the killer looted the storage trailer before setting fire to it all.”
The captain nodded. “Here’s an interesting detail. The incendiary devices were homemade delayed-fuse bombs enclosed in wooden boxes. Our forensics team is looking at the remains now.”
Peter described the bomb left at Number 5 Hollis. He removed the Yoda from his pocket and handed it across the table. “Captain Brockhurst, could you ask your people if they found any of this material in the wreckage?”
“Sure, but it’s polymer resin. It tends to melt easily. But we’ll compare the two devices.”
Peter took out the sheaf of police sketches, which he had collected from Henry’s dining room chairs, including the latest Dreamland Motel portrait. Brockhurst looked at the Junction City drawings and nodded. “I’m mortified to say I’d forgotten about this witness. The Chinese-food delivery boy. No one believed him. I was on the Oklahoma City liaison group at the time, and I remember the chaos that week. This got lost in the shuffle.”
Peter laid out the sketches in a row. “They’re all variations of Ronald Devereau.”
“Or Jim Riotte. That’s your problem, you see? Without a name and prints …”
Peter produced a bound copy of the Fire and Brimstone document. He explained that Alma May had kept it for two decades. “Ronald Devereau wrote this diatribe and left it in a diner where he was having coffee with Ted Kaczynski.”
Brockhurst thumbed through the document. “Have you compared it to Kaczynski’s Manifesto?”
“It’s being done,” Peter said.
“So you’re saying your man was the theoretician behind two of the most nasty terror campaigns in U.S. history. You’ve got to take this to the Domestic Terrorism unit at the FBI.”
“I’m hoping to find him first.”
The Kansan shook his head theatrically. “The focus of Homeland Security on domestic terrorism is stronger than it ever was. They’ll share their case files if you shape your argument right. They maintain an Extremist Crime Database, or ECDB, which records every case of a violent attack by white supremacists, ‘patriot’ groups, eco-terrorists, and animal rights extremists. Between 1990 and 2010, there were 148 attacks by right-wing agitators, including Oklahoma City. Most of these can be characterized as ideologically motivated.”
“You stay plugged in to this area, I see,” Peter said.
“There’s another plus to gaining the cooperation of the Bureau and the anti-terrorism players. They have all kinds of new databases. Did you know they keep an index of highway serial killers? If you can win access to all this data, you may come across other plots inspired and influenced by our man.”
Peter decided to push harder. “I’m interested in what you personally remember of the period we’re talking about.”
“We saw this kind of thing in the early nineties. A bombing in a crack house in Yuma in 1992, where pipe bombs lit up the whole place. Colorado Springs a couple of years later, with an incendiary device detonated in a grow house. Another in Denver. I always wondered if the criminals were ripping off the druggies in order to finance domestic terror plots.”
“Was McVeigh’s operation financed that way?” Peter asked.
“Most of these Western militia groups preferred bank robbing. The Aryan Nation in particular is known to have robbed banks in Missouri and Iowa. Taking down a bank fit their self-styled populist imagery. Banks are like governments, fair targets. Remember that scene in Bonnie and Clyde where Warren Beatty hands his gun to the farmer so that he can shoot his house, which the bank has just foreclosed on?”
“Did the militias avoid drug raids because of the cartels?” Peter said, thinking of Avelino González.
“No. They’re about as macho as the Mexican and Colombian gangs. It just seemed easier back then to rob banks. Which makes me wonder about your man. Why is he obsessed with drug factories?”
“Money,” Peter said.
“Right. Always the quick cash. And that, my English friend, leads us to the question of what he needs the money for. My concern is a new terrorist attack.”
“Me too. But do you expect it?”
Brockhurst paused to sip his rye. “I don’t know. The raids in Crispin Breach and Wichita were close to demented, showed a real hatred of drug dealers. Is our guy a true terrorist? If so, he’s shown his incompetence so far. How could he forget his personal manifesto in the diner? And why not go back for it! I keep picturing him with his bacon and eggs. Kaczynski’s five minutes from leaving a crude pipe bomb in a parking lot, where it’s likely to kill some innocent pedestrian. Devereau, who is insecure enough to let a fruitcake like Ted get his goat, starts wondering what happened to his feature role in the revolution. He grabs the bomb and plants it himself. Sounds like a dreamer who tried to prove himself a tough guy.”
Peter reinforced the point. “And he thought he could manipulate Ted by handing over his own manifesto and getting him to take all the risk.”
“Maybe Kaczynski announced at the diner that he had already started his own manifesto.”
“Jim Riotte was the third man in the diner and was part of the team,” Peter said. “Let’s assume that Riotte and Devereau reached the same decision. They both realized that Kaczynski was becoming unstable and that the FBI would sooner or later nab him. They decided to disappear. They needed enough money to set themselves up with new identities, completely new lives. Probably they had already been accumulating cash by ripping off crack houses and grow ops and burning them out.”
“The Murrah attack and the 1993 and 1995 Unabomber incidents both had their imprint on them, a bomb in a box. The fertilizer in the Ryder truck was just a bigger version.”
Brockhurst smiled at the waitress as she passed, but Peter knew there was no need to command a second, even a third rye. It would arrive unbidden.
“Chief, I think Devereau inspired every one of these attacks. One thing we can be sure of is that Devereau plans to disappear again. The question is, will he make a big splash first?”
“Right. And that means we’re most likely to nail him during one of his fundraising raids before he commits a terrorist act. I’ll watch the ticker for fresh cases.”
“Does that mean you’ll help me and Henry?”
“I consider it unfinished business. Oklahoma City and the Unabomber, both.” Brockhurst looked amused. He nodded to a farmer in coveralls and waited until he was out of earshot before saying, “You know, Peter, Alma May Reeve was present for a moment in history, the sea change when Casper
Shaw realized his own misjudgement of the Unabomber there in the diner. A rare thing, a psychopath recognizing his mistake.”
“Kaczynski wasn’t up to Devereau’s standards as a terrorist, yet Ted was the one with guts to set bombs. That’s what our man was trying to prove when he took the device and delivered it himself.”
“And don’t forget the duelling manifestos. Ted got published. This one sits on the slush pile.”
“Consigned to the dustbin of history.”
“Trotsky said that. Also Reagan.”
Both men got up from the table. “Thank you,” Peter said.
“You take care now, Peter. I forgot to tell you. There were four attackers at the trailer park. Six in Wichita. Be safe.”
CHAPTER 32
In the ten days following his excursion to Topeka, Peter waited for an arrest, or at least the confirmation of a fingerprint from one of the Utah or Kansas crime scenes. Nothing so helpful occurred. Brockhurst called once, ostensibly to brief him on a pair of suspicious drug rip-offs he had heard about in Albuquerque, but really to explain that he had decided not to use the Mohlman-Pastern sketch of Devereau on the wanted poster for the Mark Riotte murder.
“What if everyone thinks it looks like the Unabomber?” Brockhurst said.
What indeed.
Maddy rang up to report. “Dad! I’ve done a first run on the Fire and Brimstone essay you sent me. There are many similarities with the Unabomber’s Manifesto. I believe your man contributed significant elements to the Unabomber’s rant. For example, a lot of the text in the chapter in the Manifesto on “The Nature of Freedom” is identical to Devereau’s. But there are differences. The Unabomber hates technology, blames the Industrial Revolution and government for all our woes. Your man doesn’t have it in for technological change.”
Maddy’s and Brockhurst’s were the only friendly voices. Phil Mohlman and Chief Grady, dreading interference by the feds, remained hostile to any talk of a terrorism link to the events on Hollis Street. Peter kept his distance from West Valley. He was uncomfortable with Henry, too. Though the younger man was always polite and mostly even-tempered, to Peter he seemed on the verge of taking to drink again. Peter was careful how he raised unresolved issues about Hollis.
One afternoon, Henry turned from the dining room table, where he had stacked his interview notes, one manila folder for each house, and stated, “I’ve been through all the statements from the residents again. There’s an anodyne quality to every one. Nobody seems surprised that the street went to hell. They really weren’t astonished that a grow op functioned on their block for a year, maybe two. When we went over there, did you notice that nothing has been done to refurbish the street since the fire?”
“They’ve shut down their own American Dreams,” Peter said.
It was perhaps the wrong turn of phrase. Henry had lost his own dreams, brutally, and the Coppermount house was as hollow as any building on Hollis Street. Peter was about to apologize when he perceived a hopeful glimmer in Henry’s reaction. Like Peter, Henry was driven by the need to stop an evil force, and they would eventually find common ground in that. Both of them would show up for the final confrontation. They had found their connection. Henry expressed it first.
“Peter, I’m trying. I’ll come round, I really will.”
Henry went off to nap, while Peter sat on the patio with a beer. The Gordian knot principle had kicked in: the investigation was strangling itself from cross-purposes and miscommunication. Only a dramatic development could cut through the confusion.
The phone rang and it was Boog DeKlerk, calling from the West Valley precinct. “Cammon, I’ve got somebody who wants to talk to you.”
“He must be the only person in Utah who does.”
“Do you know who Avelino González is?”
Peter rushed to figure out what DeKlerk was up to. He assumed that the South African didn’t know that Henry had relayed every detail of the Wendover meet to him.
“Yes, but he doesn’t know me. You sure you meant to call me? If González is favourably inclined to confide in Henry again, why doesn’t he call Henry directly?”
“He knows you’re staying at Pastern’s house …”
“Because you told him.”
“Can you drive down to the precinct without Pastern?”
This was a terrible idea. DeKlerk was dividing and conquering, and Peter saw the risk at once. This screamed setup. And when Rogers at the DEA heard about any new plan to interact with the Mexican, he would have a perfect excuse to have Cammon deported.
“No. We can talk on the phone. Even then, I have to plug in Henry right away.”
DeKlerk barely hesitated. The belligerent detective was nothing if not decisive. “Okay. I’ll be open with Pastern, but first I need to clear some things with you. I’m only asking what González asked me. Is Henry steady enough to meet with González tomorrow in Castle Rock?”
“Colorado?”
“Yeah. González was firm about meeting in the afternoon.”
Perhaps Boog knows me better than I figured, Peter thought. A session with González was intriguing, especially if he had fresh information to trade. It also occurred to Peter that González must have a powerful hold on DeKlerk for him to help set up a second meeting.
Peter said, “If I have the last meeting straight, González promised to feed us anything he learned about the Watsons. We’ve received nothing. That promise was made before Devereau killed the Proffets, wounded two detectives, and caused the death of Theresa Pastern. Do you think he has something new to offer that will tempt Henry?”
“I don’t know how Henry views González at this point.”
“Why don’t you simply ask him?”
“I’d prefer you sounded him out, Cammon.”
“DeKlerk, if you don’t think Henry’s up to it, send Mohlman. I don’t need to go.”
“González asked for Henry and you specifically. Hell, Cammon, you and Henry have the plus of being unofficial, off the books, not real cops.”
“Thanks. If I get shot, explain that to my wife. Why does González trust me?”
“I told him you are staying at Pastern’s house. González understands why you’re there.”
“Mind telling me?” Butter wouldn’t melt, thought Peter.
“To make sure that Henry’s revenge succeeds.”
“Is that your theory or his?”
“The Mexican’s phrasing, Peter. He also said that the evil that men do lives after them.”
“Julius Caesar.”
“Even I know that.”
“DeKlerk, do you know what González wants from me and Henry in Colorado?”
“Just a meeting, that’s your only commitment.”
“I think he wants more. He knows Henry and I have been working ‘off the books.’ He believes we’re willing to freelance some more. I bet he doesn’t want us involving Colorado State Patrol or Brockhurst in Topeka. Which, DeKlerk, makes me ask why you aren’t communicating all this to state authorities. I can see why you might keep your back channels open with a drug lord but …”
And then Peter understood the biggest part of the big picture.
DeKlerk paused and said, “That’s why I’m calling you. I owe Avelino González, and he wants some killing done. That is why you came to Utah, isn’t it, Peter?”
Peter was truly startled by DeKlerk’s bluntness but he had no intention of answering this question directly. He acknowledged that DeKlerk had a keen insight into his motives for coming to the States. This could be a blatant sucker play by the Mexican but this was the second time he had reached out to the police and Peter was fascinated and beguiled by this unorthodox move. He stated, “You have to tell all of this to Henry. Now.”
He walked to Henry’s bedroom and handed the phone over; then he went back to the patio to wait.
“What
do you think?” Peter said as soon as Henry returned.
“Peter, you and I have always seen this the same way. We’re hunting a man with the intention of exacting punishment. As soon as we let the FBI or DEA or state cops in, we lose our chance. González may be a thin opportunity, but I’m willing to take it if it means getting to Devereau.”
Nothing had visibly changed in Henry, but he seemed a touch more upbeat.
“Do you trust him, Henry?”
“Are you kidding!” Henry saw Tynan way out in the desert and waved. “But for some reason, González likes me, and I guess that’s enough.”
“But why does he like me?” Peter said with a half smile.
“Maybe he knows how many men you’ve killed.” Peter threw him a dagger; Henry continued. “Boog is taking a huge gamble in brokering this. Colorado police get wind of it, he’s toast.”
“I don’t know what he’s thinking,” Peter said. This was a lie. Boog DeKlerk was pushing this because he was on the take and González gave him no choice. DeKlerk was setting up Henry and Peter to take the fall if the plan shattered, thereby diverting attention from Boog’s own sins.
They drove into the city for a Japanese dinner at the Naked Fish. Both of them skipped the sake. Back at the house, Henry brought out his pistol to clean it.
“Henry, I suggest you leave your service piece at home.”
“Fine. I have another pistol I’ll bring. It’s a .45.”
Peter didn’t know which was riskier, carrying a Utah police weapon across state lines for a “private” purpose or bringing an unregistered handgun. But both men were excited. They would just have to drive within the speed limit.
Henry turned to Peter. “I know you British cops don’t usually carry guns, but you should have a weapon for yourself.”
“Bollocks. I expect González will have all the firepower I need.”
CHAPTER 33
The expedition felt crazy in the light of day, Henry and Peter agreed as they headed to Castle Rock — but after days of frustration, waiting for something to break, the caper was irresistible.
The Verdict on Each Man Dead Page 24