False Signs (John Taylor Book 2)

by Travis Starnes

  Whitaker had to tail far behind, since they were on an isolated strip of highway and with not many cars on the road around him. Brooks’s car was a small object in the distance, barely distinguishable.

  “I have no idea.”

  They followed him for another forty-five minutes when they hit Amarillo, one of the larger cities in the Texas panhandle, but not a particularly large city by comparison.

  “Maybe he’s got a delivery of some kind, or he’s meeting a friend or something,” Whitaker said as they entered the heart of the city.

  “Maybe,” Taylor said, sounding unsure.

  Taylor and Whitaker were both surprised when Brooks eventually pulled into a large post office and headed inside the building, carrying a large box that, from where they were sitting, looked to be packed full of letters.

  “He drove an hour and a half to mail a stack of letters? That makes no sense,” Taylor said as they parked and watched the front door of the post office.

  “I don’t know,” Whitaker said, watching the building.

  After about fifteen minutes, Brooks exited the building and headed back to his car.

  “Do we keep following him?” Taylor asked.

  “No. It’s possible he could be headed to do something else, but his shop opens in just under two hours. I’m willing to risk him slipping away to see what he was doing in here. Because a trip this far just to go to a post office makes zero sense.”

  “Agreed,” Taylor said.

  They watched Brooks pull out of the parking lot and drive away before they both stepped out of the car and headed into the post office. Inside, it seemed pretty typical for all those that Taylor had been in before. They walked past the rows of PO Boxes and headed to the counter where harried post office workers tried to get through a line of customers.

  Whitaker ignored the indignant looks the people in line gave her as she headed to the front of the counter and held out her badge.

  “I need to see your supervisor.”

  “Dan,” the woman yelled out, and then went back to slowly helping the person in line.

  A man, whom they assumed was Dan, had been a little ways back, sorting something in a large mail tub. When the woman called out, he set down what he was doing and came over to them, waving Taylor and Whitaker to one far side of the counter, out of the way of the customers in line.

  “Can I help you, Officer?” he said, seeing the badge Whitaker still had in her hand.

  “Agent,” she corrected. “Special Agent Whitaker with the FBI. There was a man in here a few minutes ago named Brooks. I’d like to see the MICT data you took off his mail, and anything else he has mailed out from this location, if he has.”

  “Sure, come on back,” he said, lifting a gate in the counter allowing them to walk into the back.

  As they passed through a door behind the workers, Taylor was suddenly amazed. He hadn’t considered how large the building was, but it was clearly bigger than what he’d expected. Row after row of sorting machines were sorting and boxing mail, with employees moving those boxes onto pallets.

  “Wow,” Taylor said despite himself.

  “Yeah. Most people wouldn’t realize it, but we’re the distribution center for North Texas. We ship out the mail from here to local post offices for distribution. Here we are. What did you say his name was?”

  “Should be Art Brooks. He was here in the last twenty minutes.”

  The man clicked through a series of screens, mumbling names and codes to himself. Finally he opened a file and a list of numbers appeared on the screen.

  “Here we are. Ohh, this guy sends a whole lot of mail.”

  “Can I get a print out of everything he’s done over the last three weeks?”

  “Sure,” Dan said and typed some more, until a printer nearby started spitting out page after page of information.

  When it stopped, he scooped up the papers and handed them over. Taylor was surprised by just how many letters Brooks had been mailing over the past few weeks. He had been expecting a few hundred, based on the box h’d seen, instead there were well over a thousand letters listed on the sheets in his hand stretching over the three weeks.

  “Is that all you need, Agent Whitaker?”

  “That should do it. Thank you for your time,” she said, turning and walking out of the employee area.

  Taylor followed behind her, a bit confused, as they left the post office.

  “What’s all that,” he said pointing to the papers. “And what is MICT?”

  “MICT is the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program. It was part of a package of laws congress passed in 2001 just after the anthrax letters got mailed around. Basically, it’s a system where the post office takes pictures of the mail that is processed through it and captures the information off that. Who mailed what to whom from where on what day. That kind of thing,” she said as they got back in her car.

  She pulled out of the parking lot and followed the same path Brooks had taken a little while earlier, back towards Lubbock.

  “That’s legal?” Taylor asked, surprised.

  “As of now. Technically, since we aren’t opening the mail, and just looking at the front and back of the letter, and then allowing it to pass through unchanged, we aren’t conducting either a search or seizure. It falls under a similar theory that the NSA uses to collect metadata, which essentially this is.”

  “Huh. I'm surprised this has not been shut down by the courts, yet.”

  “Not many people really know about the program. The post office doesn’t advertise it, and neither do we. However, when the NSA’s program was revealed a few years ago, it managed to survive a few court cases before the administration decided to pull the plug because of public pressure. So there’s a chance this would hold up too, unless of course public pressure forces it to stop, too.”

  “None of this bothers you?”

  “Taylor, remember who you’re talking to. I’m of the mindset that, you shouldn’t care if you have nothing to hide. I know there are going to be those people out there who scream about their privacy or what not, and sure, I sympathize with that. But my main concern is to protect those people and everyone else, and I’ll use every tool I’m allowed to until the very moment I’m told I have to stop.”

  Taylor made a non-committal noise but didn’t say anything. He could see her point, but his knee-jerk reaction was to be a little shocked and upset over the government tracking everything he was doing.

  “Think of it like this. Without this program, we couldn’t find out what Brooks is up to, without tipping him off, and possibly getting a whole lot of people killed. So it could save a whole lot of lives.”

  “I get all that. It still creeps me out a bit.”

  “Well, get over it and start looking through those,” she said, pointing at the papers she had set on the center console in the car.

  Taylor picked up the papers and started flipping through them. The information was pretty basic. It listed the location the mail was dropped at, Brooks name and return address, the name and address of who the mail was sent to, if it was a package or letter, and gave the weight.

  Thumbing through all the listings, Taylor could see they all came from the same Amarillo location, although Taylor didn’t know enough about the program to say if that’s because each location kept their own data separate from other branches or if Brooks only went to that one branch. He also saw they were all letters, and all were incredibly light, most likely containing just paper and nothing else in the envelope.

  The other thing that struck him was that the addresses the letters were being sent to were all over the country. Every state seemed to be represented. None of the names stood out but they seemed to cross at least all the ethnic ranges, or at least those that could be guessed from first and last names. There didn’t even seem to be a pattern on which states got sent to, in what time. The list went back three weeks and it looked like Brooks had been making trips to the post office twice a week for that time. Looking t
hrough the dates, the names didn’t follow any alphabetical pattern by weeks, such as one week sending F through G and the next visit H through I. There also wasn’t a pattern of places, so it seemed he wasn’t working off any type of ordered list. Or at least, not one that Taylor could work out.

  By the time they got back to Lubbock, Taylor had walked Whitaker through his observation and they’d gone through the list together, him calling out names and addresses and then the two of them discussing it. They’d already left Brooks on his own long enough that they decided a little longer was something they were willing to risk. Instead they headed to the police station and begged a workstation from Sheriff Goodman.

  “Any ideas?” Taylor asked as he pulled up a spare chair to the desk and terminal that the Sheriff was letting them use.

  “We just go through it methodically. It could be that only a handful of the names are important, and the rest just a smoke screen to hide them.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “It’s not uncommon. People assume there’s too much mail, and since it’s physical you can’t just have a computer grab everything and analyze it. Occasionally they get caught, but honestly, they aren’t wrong. A lot of stuff sneaks through because we only catch stuff if we’re watching or get lucky.”

  They spent the next several hours entering names into the National Crime Information Center databases and seeing if any of the people Brooks was sending letters to had criminal records. After three hours of work, they had run about two-thirds of the names. While they’d found a handful of people with criminal records, none were of the type you’d expect from a group like this. It was mostly shoplifting, a few drug arrests. The worst was a man in New Jersey with a twenty year old record for sexual assault. But considering he was sixty-six years old and that he had no records after serving five years in prison two decades previously, it seemed hard to believe he was involved.

  “Why don’t we call some of them?” Taylor asked, becoming impatient.

  “Because we don’t want to tip any of them off.”

  “Even you said a lot of them are probably a smoke screen. Let’s look them up on the social media and see who seems the safest bet, and call them. Find out why they’d be getting mail from Texas.”

  Whitaker thought it over and agreed. This meant another hour of searching out names, but they found two police officers and a fifty-year old grandmother from Seattle that seemed like a good bet.

  The calls, after giving reasons that explained why the FBI was asking questions without giving away it was involved with terrorism and murder, all went about the same. They had all apparently signed up for some type of contest on the web, trying to win a vacation. Since they were never asked to buy anything or asked for credit card information, each of them had felt it was safe and gave their name and address.

  They tried a handful more people, and got essentially the same story. It seemed a safe bet that all these people had filled out this contest and given over their info willingly. The question was, where did Brooks get their info, and why was he sending them letters.

  The website the people had signed up with had the name of a bogus company with a physical address that, while a real office building, didn’t have any business with that name in it. The phone number went to a digital voicemail that could be ordered over the internet. Whitaker explained they’d have to get a warrant to get the company to give over the information. The same was true of the credit card information used to place the ads in the back of various papers.

  They did catch a break however. Brooks was apparently not overly tech savvy. When he registered the website, he would have had to give a billing address to buy the domain. While there were ways to make that listing private so people couldn’t see it, Brooks apparently either didn’t realize it, or it didn’t occur for him to do it.

  A simple search yielded his name and his business address in Lubbock as the owner of the site. A few more searches gave them three more sites registered to Brooks. All more or less similar, offering free vacations or cruises if the person submitted their information.

  “So, Brooks is collecting this information, and he’s mailing them letters. Unless he’s collecting the information to use as a cover for mailing other people stuff, we have no idea what he’s up to. And even that isn’t much help. How do we know who the real target of the letters are?” Taylor asked.

  “I don’t know,” Whitaker said.

  By this point, the sun had gone down. They had gotten to the Sheriff’s station around lunch time and spent the entire day tracking down the names, with no luck.

  “It’s late in DC, but I can call my friend in the morning and run the names by her, see if they mean anything to her.”

  “So we go back to tailing Brooks.”

  “No. This is the key. The answer's going to be in these names. And, we need some rest. Neither of us got good sleep last night.”

  “You’re the expert,” Taylor said.

  He didn’t even try and hide the fact that he was happy they didn’t have to stake out Brooks again. He had realized by this point that he didn’t have enough patience for that type of police work. They grabbed some dinner and then headed back to the same motel they’d stayed at previously. The clerk was surprised however when Whitaker asked for just one room for the two of them.

  Whitaker wasn’t wrong about how tired they were, and she had crashed as soon as they were in bed. Taylor however couldn’t fall asleep. Something was bothering his sub-conscious that he couldn’t figure out. Lying there, Whitaker pressed against him, he felt like there was something just out of reach that he couldn’t quite make out.

  He managed to eventually drift off, but even his dreams revolved around trying to figure out what was bothering him. His dreams involved an endless stakeout at the post office they had visited, watching copy after copy of Brooks headed into the building and coming out again, essentially replaying the previous day's events in a loop.

  He woke suddenly at dawn when his brain, in a foggy half sleep, provided the answer. As soon as he snapped awake, he shook Whitaker.

  “Get up. Whitaker, wake up. We have to go!” he said, shaking her.

  As soon as she started to move, waking up, he was out of bed pulling on the clothes from the day before.

  “What the hell?” she asked in a sleepy voice.

  “Get up. I think I know what he was doing. We need to get on the road right now!”

  “What who was doing?” She asked, still trying to catch up.

  “Brooks. His trip had nothing to do with the mail. He’s planning something else.”

  “What are you talking about?” she protested, even as she slid out of bed and started pulling on clothes.

  “Yesterday we watched him walk into the post office carrying that package, right? But he didn’t mail any packages, just a small handful of letters to people, probably telling them that sorry, they didn't win the trip. He wasn’t carrying it when he came out. Who carries something the size of a shoe box with two hands, unless it’s somewhat heavy.”

  “You think he was planting something?”

  “I think he had a box of C4. Think about it. He can explain his trips if anyone asks. He had a reason to be at that post office. A weird one, since it was so far from home, but a reason. And, if he set a timer, he can be in a public place an hour away when it goes up.”

  “You could be wrong.”

  “I’m not. He’s going to blow up that building.”

  “With a single shoe box of C4?”

  “This isn’t his only trip. Who knows what he brought on the other ones. Rent some post office boxes, stuff them with C4, set the timers, and go.”

  “But it’s been weeks of this. Why wait till now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he needed enough C4 to do the job? Or maybe our hitting the farm pushed him to move-up his plans. Even if it’s not today, we need to find the explosive. I know it’s there.”

  “Fine. But if you’re wrong, we’re going to l
ook worse than we do now. No way this doesn’t get back to Tony.”

  “I’m not.”

  They hurried out of the hotel and Whitaker peeled out of the parking lot, heading back towards Amarillo. They tried calling the post office as they drove, but since it wasn’t open, the line just switched to a voicemail without ever ringing the building.

  “We need to warn them,” Taylor said in frustration.

  “I’m going to call Tony. He can get the locals over there to clear the building and have the bomb squad check it.”

  “Is that a good idea? Dorset’s not going to be happy.”

  “I know, but I’d rather deal with the backlash than risk the building blowing up with someone in it. If I follow regulations, I’m supposed to loop in his deputy on the task-force.”

  “Might not be a bad idea to have another witness on the call.”

  First she called the agent assigned as his deputy, who apparently hadn’t heard about her suspension. He was annoyed at the early call, but the urgent sound in her voice brought him on board. Their next call was to Dorset, with the deputy conference in and the phone on speaker.

  “Whitaker?” he said when he answered.

  “Sir, I have Agent Rollins on the line with us. I have a lead on the missing explosives. We think at least some of it is headed to the main post office in Amarillo. We want to get the locals looped in and have the building evacuated while we look for it.”

  “What the hell,” he yelled into the phone. “I told you to drop this. I thought I was doing you a favor by not making the suspension official, but you can’t seem to get the message. This has gone far enough. Rollins, you can hop off the call. I want you to start up the paperwork when you get in the office to have Agent Whitaker officially reprimanded.”

  “Sir, what if she’s right about the post office...” Rollins started to say.

  “She’s not. There are no missing explosives. Whitaker’s done. The Bureau has no room for this kind of insubordination. Now get off the damn line.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rollins said and hung up.

  “Lola, I don’t know what he did to talk you into this, but I gave you a chance. You chose to ignore my warning, and now it’s going to cost you. I hope you enjoyed your career.”