“I would like to be left alone now,” Miss Carvela said wearily. She fingered a slice of bread. Following Toby’s example, she dipped it into her soup. Her nose curled. “I will call you.”
“Absolutely. Fine. We’ll see what the carrier does. Just think about what I said, all right?”
“I shall. Thank you.”
Polhemus ambled off toward the next familiar face, extending his hands and offering condolence. Once he was out of earshot, Miss Carvela said, “Why do I feel as though I’ve just been bathed in muck?”
“Something not right about all that.” Toby ventured some coffee, forgoing more soup. “I’m serious, Miss Carvela. Let my lawyer—”
“Your lawyer, yeah, that’s a damn good idea.”
Everyone turned at the sound.
“Francis!” Miss Carvela almost sang his name, her hand held out for his. He looked wired, uneasy on his feet and wild-eyed. He scanned the room, face obscured by the hood of his sweatshirt, as though he feared being seen. His clothes smelled damp. He’d slept outside somewhere.
“Just what I wanted to talk to you about. Your lawyer, yeah. Got a thing or two to talk through.”
He finally took his great-aunt’s hand. But his eyes stayed fixed on Toby.
“I saw a thing or two last night. And talk I’m hearing, about how those fires started? What I saw and that talk, two different things. Two goddamn different things.” He rubbed his eyes, then shook his head hard, willing himself awake. “But I talk to your lawyer first. I get a deal. Then I tell what I saw.”
22
“There are three main groups connected nationwide to this kind of economic sabotage. Earth First, the Earth Liberation Front, and the Animal Liberation Front.”
Peterson, the FBI agent in charge of the presentation, handed out a flowchart with supporting memoranda, plus a diagram of the scene at the gas station, the tank truck, the van, the three bodies. They’ve already been up there, Murchison thought, but I haven’t. He felt brushed aside. It stung.
He’d worked with the Bureau dozens of times, mostly on gang jobs, the occasional car theft or bank robbery ring. The guys called in for this, though, were strangers. The materials they’d brought got passed hand to hand around the conference table. Just the kind of thing the feds loved: compelling visuals, a grim narrative, eye-popping numbers. Murchison recognized a few of the names—Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Others were new to him—the Rukus Society, Carnival Against Capitalism, the Evan Meecham Eco-Terrorist Conspiracy.
Peterson himself was classic: a wool suit, off-the-rack but pressed, princely jaw, sportscaster hair, eyes of a pitiless banker. His partner, named Chadwick, had more the look of a lifetime cop—rumpled gabardine sport coat, coffee-stained tie, beginnings of a bald spot and paunch. But those same eyes.
“The suspect found dead at the scene, Manuel Turpin—he had ties to the ELF.”
ELF, Murchison thought, smiling at the acronym. The handouts were littered with them: ALF, RAN, ATF, CDF, BLM, PETA. Cops, like the military—compress the idea of a thing into its initials, you somehow got smarter.
“By ‘ties’ I don’t mean anything like gang affiliations or even the kind of cell organization we see in foreign terror outfits, except maybe the IRA. It might even be a misnomer to call the ELF a group at all. These people seldom meet each other. They share a program—basically, class warfare disguised as radical environmentalism—and a so-called set of principles which they routinely betray, then just disavow something when it goes wrong. They communicate through a variety of handles over the Internet using routers that disguise the message’s origins.”
Then how do you know anybody in particular has “ties,” to the “group,” Murchison wondered. He saw the wisdom in not saying it out loud.
“All told, since 1996 these outfits account for six hundred incidents around the country, forty-three million dollars in damage.”
“Twelve million in that ski resort arson in Vail alone.” It was Chadwick, chiming in.
“There were sixty-seven incidents last year, with an uptick in the numbers here in California.”
“They’re listed on the chart.” Chadwick picked up his copy to read from it. “A BLM hay barn near Susanville. Lab equipment and records at Sierra Biomedical in La Jolla. Big one, seven hundred grand in damage, a cotton gin fire in Visalia.”
“They encouraged targeting FBI headquarters after that one,” Peterson said.
“And they’ve been active back east lately. Etching acid on SUVs.”
“Understand you had some SUV targets here.” Peterson directed the remark to the room.
“Fires.” It was the chief. He said it a little too earnestly, as though afraid no one was listening. He still wore his blues and brass, looking tired in them. “We’ve had SUVs set on fire.”
The man was desperate to get back into the Bureau’s good graces. He’d been frozen out since demanding to be present when agents questioned local Filipino Muslims in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks. Elections often turned, in Rio Mirada, on the Filipino vote. The chief knew who he worked for.
“Carport fires, too. Detective?”
The punt sailed across the table and into Murchison’s lap. He forced a shrug. “We were unable to identify a suspect in those. But there are hints from witnesses brought in on the Carlisle killing that this Manny kid, Turpin, he bragged about setting those fires.”
“No suspects?” It was the chief again.
“Typical problem with arson,” Murchison said. “Sir.”
He’d realized early on in the meeting that the role of goat was his. He could see it not just in the chief’s eyes but the eyes of every other man in the room. Stluka got himself killed, that’s bad luck enough. But the partner of a killed cop, he was the king of jinxes.
“No hard suspects except, like I said, this Turpin kid. And we didn’t have time to confirm.”
“A little more about him,” Peterson interjected. “He only has that one conviction we discussed earlier, out of Oregon, but he’s suspected in as many as five incendiary events in the northern end of the state, including the BLM hay barn fire near Susanville.”
“His target here for the tank truck,” Chadwick said, reading from jottings in a spiral notepad, “from what we can tell, given the stuff found on him and in his knapsack, was the Frontline Financial branch down at … Riverview Plaza.” He shot a glance around the table. “You guys know where that is, I assume.”
“There’s a lot of Internet chatter about lenders like Frontline.” It was Peterson again. “Banks like that, the hard money lenders, they’re a relatively new target. They get tagged as predatory lenders, then comes the vandalism, sabotage.”
“He’d never have made it.” Murchison decided what the hell, he didn’t have any status to lose here. “He would have burned up his brake lines coming down that hill with a full load. Presuming he knew how to drive the rig.”
“We understand,” Chadwick said, “he took some big rig courses in Lassen County and hijacked a lumber truck up around Quincy. Admittedly, he didn’t drive it far, he just wanted to set it on fire.”
“We’re not saying the plan was perfect,” Peterson added, “or that he was smart enough to pull it off. We’re saying what the materials found on him and in his belongings tell us. Plus, the houses that got targeted for the incendiary devices, they were all foreclosure properties, I’m right about that?”
“Frontline foreclosures, yes.” The chief spotted a chance to nudge in another good word. “That’s been confirmed.”
“Except for two,” Murchison said. “The Carlisle house and the Victorian next to it.”
“Those seem personal, not part of the plot per se,” Chadwick said. “Cover up any evidence of his having been in the Victorian—”
“We’d already bagged the evidence.”
“—then set fire to where he saw that white girl coming and going each day.”
“I
t matches his profile,” Peterson said. “The ‘power assurance’ type. Dissociated anger. Sexual obsession. Ineffectual sense of his own masculinity.”
After the Unabomber and Yosemite tourist killings and Virginia sniper fiascoes, Murchison would’ve thought they’d soft-pedal the profile concept. But cops never apologize—even if they get something wrong, it’s always for the right reason. Beyond which, who in this room could say with a straight face his masculinity was effectual?
“The old woman at the house where my partner got shot, she said something about two men, not just one, starting the fires. Anybody but me seem to think that might be relevant?”
“Remind me, Detective.” The chief shot a put-upon smile across the table. “That woman was, I believe, delusional?”
“There’s been corroboration, that there were two men in the white van, from others who I’ve spoken to,” Holmes said. “People who live up there.”
“Rumors get a little nuts in a thing like this,” Peterson offered.
“I didn’t say rumor.” Holmes sounded testy. “I said corroboration. Witnesses who saw a van—”
“Okay. Good.” Peterson drummed his pen on the tabletop. “There were two guys. Maybe. I can live with that. Your point?”
“I made it,” Holmes said, backing down.
“Well, I didn’t make mine,” Murchison said, “so here it is. I think all these”—he pitched his handouts into the center of the table—“are just an elaborate fairy tale till we find out who this second man was.”
“If he exists.” Chadwick now, defending himself, his partner.
“Well, that’s what we do, right? We find out.”
Peterson leaned forward. “Yes, absolutely. It’s what we do. And what we’ve done.” He nodded toward the handouts Murchison had discarded. “We’re not ruling out a second man or a third man or an entire cell of individuals lending support. You’ve had a squatter influx here, ever since the dot-com boom drove up rents in San Francisco. They haven’t moved back, even now that the dot-commers are gone and rents have settled back down. Those people are a breeding ground for what happened here last night.”
“Look, granted, they can be a pain in the ass.” Murchison remembered the five at the warehouse fire. “But we’ve never—”
“There hadn’t been loss of life before—and, Detective, no need to remind you, I’m sure, one of those killed was your partner.”
Murchison fought an impulse to jump across the table. “My partner,” he said quietly, “wasn’t killed by Manny Turpin.”
“Might as well have been,” Chadwick said, his eyes cold, like he’d be ready if Murchison lost it. “Or doesn’t that matter?”
“There a point in all this?”
The chief squeezed in. “Gentlemen—”
“My point,” Peterson said, “is that it was only a matter of time before somebody got killed. Country’s drifting right, these groups have gotten more and more desperate for airtime.”
“They’re not a bunch of tree-hugging hippies.” Chadwick was still staring. “They’re criminals. They’re well funded, smart, and sneaky as cats.”
“My point,” Murchison said, still struggling to contain his temper, “is that you’re shaping facts to your theory, instead of the other way around. On the basis of—”
“Detective, if I may. It’s important at this point we not confuse signal with noise.”
Murchison couldn’t help himself. That was worth a laugh. “That like ‘forest from the trees,’ just snotty?”
The chief went red. “Detective—”
“Okay.” Murchison got up too fast. His vision blurred, his head spun. It wasn’t just Chadwick staring at him now. “I get it. Sorry to be so contrary. Well, let’s get to it, fellas.” He clapped his hands like a softball coach. “What’re we waiting for?”
He was halfway down the hall before Holmes caught up. “Burning some serious-ass bridges in there.”
“Interesting choice of words, given circumstances.”
“What is it with you?”
That stopped him. “Come on, Holmes. They waltz in from out of town, don’t have more than six hours to get the lay of the land, haven’t so much as listened to one word we’ve had to say, let alone ask. But they’ve already got it figured out?”
“Murch—”
“You grew up here, Holmes. Like me. We’re not ignorant.”
“Look, granted, nobody likes the Feeb.”
“Chief’s scared shitless they’re gonna make him look bad. It’s wrong. It stinks.”
“Not like there isn’t evidence, Murch, get real. This Manny kid—”
“No. No. Something’s wrong, Holmes.”
“With you, Murch.”
Murchison froze. That was too much. “No, Holmes. Not with me.”
“Granted, a lot’s gone on—”
“Now I get your pity?” He squared off. “Stluka’s dead, you don’t miss him much, I can understand that. Gotta climb over bodies sometimes to get where you wanna go.”
Holmes took a step back. “I’m gonna do us both a favor and pretend—”
“This kid who shot Jerry, Roderick Whatever, the crackhead pimping his grandma for scratch—he wouldn’t be your source inside the Mooney crew by any chance, would he? Guy you’ve been so eager to protect?”
He could have hardly done worse taking a swing. “You are way the fuck outta line.”
“Stop being so damn scared you’re gonna screw up your big chance, Sherlock.”
Holmes stood there, close. But from the eyes alone Murchison could tell inside he was miles and miles away now. “That the way it is?”
Murchison turned to go. “I’ve got work.”
He headed off down the hall. Holmes contained himself for a bit, then called out from behind, his voice straining for control, “Need to go home, Murch. Been too much to handle last few hours. Go home, get straight. Come back fresh.”
• • •
In the dispatch room, two female operators were handling 911 calls, supervised by a sergeant named Gump. On a slip of notepad paper Murchison scrawled out the number where Joan had taken the girls, her parents’ place.
“Gump, hey. Do me a favor? Call my wife, here’s the number. Tell her I’m alive.”
Gump’s hand dwarfed the notepad slip. “Why not you?” He frowned. “Alive? That’s it?”
“Alive. Okay. In one piece. She wants to know more, make something up.”
Back upstairs in the detective bureau, he spotted Sheila Stluka. She sat at her husband’s desk, going through it with a uniformed officer, claiming the personal items.
She wore a slicker over a housedress, rain boots. Her hair hung limp; all the color had drained from her skin. Even her eyes and lips looked drab. Wrung out and left to hang, that was how Stluka once put it when he saw a woman who looked like that. He’d never said it of his wife, not in front of Murchison. They’d seldom discussed much private between them or socialized; their wives disliked each other, Sheila finding Joan stuck-up, Joan considering Sheila vulgar. Hardly surprising. He and Jerry, they’d been partners, not friends.
In the few things Stluka had said, Murchison got the sense Sheila had proved an equal match when it came to emotional firepower, and that alone had engendered what appeared from the outside to be a genuine respect, if not exactly romance. She’d been fronting a lounge act for conventioneers in Long Beach when they’d met. “Woman likes swagger, or thinks she does.” Murchison remembered him saying that.
He came up, said to the uniform, “Could you leave us alone for a minute?”
“No.” Sheila grabbed the officer’s sleeve. “Don’t.”
The officer looked trapped. Sheila ignored him, her focus solely on Murchison now. All that anger, he thought, all that hate. It’s mine now. Not the killer’s. Mine.
“You know, Dennis, Jerry always told me he’d have to hope you’d be there for him if things went bad. Because he didn’t know.”
It was Murchison’s turn to feel
trapped. Worse, it seemed right. “Sheila—”
“You understand? He had to hope. Because he didn’t know. Well, now we know. Don’t we?”
Ferry refilled his tank just north of Ensenada and bought three cups of coffee at a panadería. He added heavy cream to each cup, in deference again to his stomach, then mindlessly drank two fast. He carried the third with him back to the car.
Route I veered inland at the southern rim of the peninsula, meaning Punta Banda would be his last chance till Colonio Guerrero to see the ocean. This time of year, dolphins and gray whales schooled through the kelp beds, seeking out lagoons for breeding. There’d be boats moored off the malecón, too—American yachts, new ones, beauties—anchored there or out in the Bahía de Todos Santos for six months to escape taxes. It was why some people called it Tax Cheat Harbor. Meanwhile, like a monument to pipe dreams, the listing hull of the SS Catalina lay at the harbor mouth, empty and forsaken.
With Carnaval coming, traffic through town moved slow, and then the rocky point was fogged in, a mass of gray haze so thick he could barely make out the road in front of him. Pulling to the roadside near a locked-up churro stand, he parked, waiting for the burn-off. As he sat, he tried to picture the drive south. Vineyards covered the hillsides for a while, not unlike Napa. In fact, the development here was starting to match that up north, making the California-Mexico distinction all but academic. People here knew what the future held.
La Escalera Náutica, they called it. The Mexican government intended to build or improve marinas around the entire Baja coastline, from the Coronado Islands to the mouth of the Colorado River. Tourism—the great brown hope—followed by luxury homes in enclaves built like fortresses. The rest of the coast south to San Quintín would be next to go, along with Cabo and the tourist towns on the Gulf of California. And if the Mexican government shit backwards on the idea, like they always did, American developers would fill the vacuum—like they always did.
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