One Through the Heart

by Kirk Russell

  ‘About the Coryell investigation activating and you back in the news?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you contact police before you moved out?’

  After he moved out Lash didn’t expect to live long enough for it to matter. He knew the odds and expected to die soon and it was questionable whether plans would get approved and construction started before he died.

  ‘You gambled.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He stopped thinking he could do anything about it. He stopped caring. He had no explanation for the bloody cot or the partial skeletons and offered now that maybe it really was the long-time handyman. Raveneau wrote the man’s name down, but it was gratuitous. Neither he nor Lash believed it. Now Lash’s eyes closed and then he spoke one last time, though he didn’t open his eyes again.

  ‘Brandon killed her,’ he said. ‘I – am – sure – now – it – was – him.’

  FIFTY-TWO

  When the main municipal water pumping stations went offline Coe called and said, ‘They did it. We didn’t think it through well enough. They hacked into the computers at the two main pumping stations and cut the water supply to San Francisco.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Forty minutes ago. Latkos. Hackers she knows and they’re outside the US. From the size of the attack there are probably a dozen of them and probably getting paid.’

  ‘And I’m guessing you know where she is.’

  ‘Nothing we’re doing is getting us closer to Siles. We should have caught up to him by now. We were watching the reservoir and pipe system and they came in through the Internet. We’re getting beaten here.’

  ‘They’ll get the pumps restarted.’

  ‘They’re trying. The Water Department restarted one ten minutes ago and it went down again right away. Now they’re trying to bypass their computer systems to get the pumps running again. They don’t know if that’ll work. And you may not know this yet, but your police and fire nine one one system is under a denial of service attack as we speak. They’re trying to shut it down. What do you think, Ben? You know your city. Where is this going?’

  ‘It’s still about fire. The city burned seven times in the first fifty years. It’s probably not that hard to shut a pump down and I doubt the city has had the money to harden their computer systems. Latkos would know that. Whatever she did for us elsewhere in the world she can do here just as easily.’

  ‘That’s what’s going on. Where are you right now?’

  ‘In the Presidio.’

  ‘I’m going to come meet you. Tell me where exactly and give me fifteen minutes to get there.’

  Raveneau parked between two cars in a big lot in the Presidio. He should call la Rosa but didn’t call anyone yet. He looked at old barracks refurbished now and the officer’s houses remodeled, clean, and leased and could not help but think about what a different country it was when World War II was fought. 9/11 changed us, he thought. We got scared and we let these different government agencies and the military create secret units in the name of fighting terrorism. Coe is not even allowed to name who Latkos worked for. How can that be? Is that of the people, by the people, and for the people? Not at all, he thought.

  Coe’s car slid in two slots away and Coe walked over and got into Raveneau’s car. ‘This could cost me my career,’ he said. ‘It probably will.’ He held up his cellphone. ‘I can call my ASAC and Brian will agree with me on everything and then he’ll say we can’t do anything until we get approval and not from our SAC or even from headquarters. They’ll have to ask and the answer will filter back.’

  ‘Latkos is that protected?’

  ‘She did something for our government that we owed her for. She’s going to pay for what she’s doing now, but it’s got to come all the way down the line and that doesn’t work very well. We were told right away where she was living but I haven’t been allowed to share that with SFPD. We’ve had help monitoring her computer and the reason she hasn’t been spotted on the street is she hasn’t been on the street. We’ve been waiting for her to lead us electronically to Siles. She hasn’t done that and we’re having trouble learning about her network because she’s encrypting what she has sent out to eastern Europe and about ten other places. She’s way ahead of us.’

  ‘Way ahead of you.’

  Coe sighed. ‘The next war will be in cyberspace. The people paid to study these things say the early phases will be targeted skirmishes like our going after Iran’s centrifuges, but sooner or later, airport control towers will go dark. We’re cultivating an army of spies and enablers. She was one of those. Almost nothing is hardened and I’m telling you now that she’s coordinating an attack on the nine one one system, and even if they get those pumps up a few hours, she and her friends shut them down.’

  ‘Call your SAC.’

  ‘I can’t. He’ll say wait.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘It could be until tomorrow, could be longer. She was a very valuable asset and before she’s arrested here they want to weigh their other options.’

  ‘Has anyone told you that?’

  ‘No, and it would get denied anyway. She’s part of the forever war effort. I know that much.’

  Raveneau didn’t pick up that thread. He thought about waiting for an answer on arresting her until tomorrow or later, if it was even allowed, and then said, ‘That’s too long.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘We could find her. We could get lucky. Does she have someone she is going to call if that happened and we arrested her?’

  ‘Possibly, but once she’s arrested I think they’ll disappear into their agencies. They’ll write her off. She’s a big talent but they’ll let her go. They won’t want the blowback that will come with trying to shelter her. I’m going to leave now.’ As he said that he pulled out a folded piece of paper and laid it on the seat as he got out. He leaned back just long enough to say, ‘Four-twelve and four-fourteen. They’re corner condos joined together in a remodel.’

  Raveneau picked up la Rosa at the corner of Franklin and Pierce. The building was out toward the Sunset but not deep in the fog belt. It was well-maintained and nondescript with almost no landscaping, a few hedged junipers and a secure entrance with a video camera and a stout metal-framed door with wire glass. Not a place you’d associate with a person who had a lot of money, but if the money wasn’t their own maybe it made sense, and if you lived your life online what difference did the building you slept in make?

  A local fire captain had a key to the stairwell and let them in. When they came out into the corridor on the fourth floor and walked down to 412, Raveneau saw the door was slightly ajar. He touched la Rosa’s arm and pointed at the door. Backup units were on their way so they didn’t have to approach yet and he knew it was likely Latkos was tapped into the video cameras that were not only outside the building but in the corridors and the fire stairwell they had climbed.

  They didn’t have to approach but they were going to and it turned out he was right about the video cameras. Latkos had a set-up like a security office and the screens showed all approaches to her condo. She was in a chair with a view of nine monitor screens. On her head was a set of Bose earphones and faintly Raveneau heard Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. On the screen in front of her was a panorama of a beach and clear water and what looked like a perfect day somewhere in the North Aegean.

  Not a perfect day for her though. She had two entry wounds in the back of her skull and a piece of forehead missing where one exited. The shooter came in the door and she had to know, must have seen her killer coming for her. She put on the earphones so the last sounds would be Mahler not gunshots and she put this image on the screen.

  ‘I’ll call it in,’ la Rosa said, because Raveneau hadn’t moved or said anything. ‘I’ll get one of the uniform officers to take charge of the front door.’

  Raveneau backed away from the body. They needed to start knocking on doors to ask if anyone had seen or heard anything. He looked around the ro
om, expensively furnished, immaculate, and checked out something floating in a jar on the mantle above a fireplace. He stared and then checked out the rest of the space. Everything about the combined apartments said she lived alone. Nothing looked disturbed. Two of the bedrooms looked as if no one had ever walked in there after the decorator left.

  He returned to her body in the chair and the array of screens. Did she leave the door open and unlocked for her killer? His guess was she did. He walked out into the corridor, called Coe and listened to sirens as he waited for Coe to answer.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Raveneau was still on the phone with Coe when the dull whumph of an explosion crumpled the air. It was close but not that close. Still, it was somewhere in the city and two more blasts followed within seconds, and then a third, fourth, and Raveneau counted three more after that. With the last he saw a fireball. Coe heard them too. Coe said, ‘Fuck. I’ll call you back after I know what this is.’ He hung up.

  Now the air filled with sirens and black smoke rose from the direction of the Upper Haight. He and la Rosa heard a report over the radio that they were car bombs. Then a uniform officer approached a silver Toyota Prius where an initiating explosion had failed to ignite a gas-filled plastic water storage bladder lying on its side in the back. The seats were folded down, the bladder under a blanket; the officer, a little more foolhardy than brave, walked up after the windows blew out and the smoke from the initiator cleared.

  Seven cars exploded, all of them in the upper Haight, each adjacent and upwind of historic wood frame Victorian houses. A report of a seventh explosion came in just a little later and for a moment its location was confusing, then Raveneau recognized it as one of the storage lots of a towing company that contracted with the city. The car must have been parked illegally and ticketed and towed.

  Intense heat from the car bombs caused nearby cars to catch fire. Houses were burning along several blocks in the Haight and a general evacuation was under way in a ten block area. The Water Department did manage to bypass their computer system and jury-rigged a way to get the pumps running, so that was good news. But the pumps were running slowly and erratically and the water pressure was way down. Tanker trunks rolled toward the Haight. A Coast Guard helicopter ferried water from the bay though wind gusts were making that problematic and Raveneau heard they were going to give up on it.

  At Latkos’ apartment they waited for the medical examiner and as la Rosa interviewed residents Raveneau went back through the videotape. From the body and the still wet blood he knew he didn’t need to go back more than six hours. He looked at the time on the tape first and wrote it down as he saw a figure with their face fully masked approach the same fire door he and la Rosa entered the building through. It looked like a man. They watched him enter with a key.

  The apartment manager and the security subcontractor were with Raveneau as the man entered the stairwell. The security guy switched to the stairwell videotape. That took a few minutes and then the man was climbing the stairs with his head down. On the fourth floor he opened the door to the corridor and there was another pause to switch video feeds. As he waited Raveneau thought about Latkos. If she was watching she would have seen that someone was on the fourth floor coming up the fire stairs with a mask on and now in the corridor.

  The tape started to play again and there was no hesitation as the man turned left coming out of the stairwell and headed toward her condo. He knew the building or the layout of the building. It could be either.

  ‘Freeze the next frame,’ Raveneau said, and then studied the man’s build. It could be him. ‘OK, start it again.’

  They watched him slowly slide a key into her lock and bring out a gun, and then turn the key and open the door. He stepped in with the gun ready. The door shut and Raveneau wrote down the time on the videotape. Now they waited and minutes went by as he thought about it. At the ten minute mark they started forward again with the videotape. Less than sixty seconds later, the door opened. The gunman left it ajar, slipped into the stairwell and although Raveneau thought he would exit the building as fast as he could they still switched cameras. They watched him go down the stairs. He didn’t peel the mask off until he left the building and must have known that if he didn’t turn his head his face would never show. He pulled a sweatshirt hood up to cover the back of his head as he peeled the mask off and even with the frame frozen Raveneau couldn’t make out his hair color.

  From behind him la Rosa asked, ‘Was it Lindsley?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The medical examiner is here.’

  ‘OK.’ He stood and when he was sure there would be no misunderstanding about the videotape, that it was police evidence, he followed la Rosa. He asked her, ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘They’ve given up on one row of houses and are having trouble with another block.’

  ‘How about here?’

  ‘CSI is minutes away.’

  They talked with the ME and when the CSI crew arrived Raveneau took the elevator down and stepped outside. Black smoke spiraled up from the Haight and a report was coming in over one of the police radios that an armored car was knocking over fire hydrants not far from the fires. There wasn’t a count of how many, but a new report came as he stood there listening, of a man abandoning the armored car and running to another car. Police units were now in pursuit.

  Raveneau learned it was a middle-aged Caucasian male and that he had turned into a parking lot behind a two-story commercial building in the Richmond then ran up a flight of stairs to what appeared to be a second story office. The blinds were down so the officers couldn’t see into the street facing windows and no one had approached the back steps.

  Raveneau listened to this and then called la Rosa and said, ‘I’ve got to get over there. I’ll call you.’

  The office building was two offices overhead and retail below, a nail parlor and a florist. The florist fled leaving the door open and the wind carried the scent of newly cut flowers across the street. Both offices had street faces of glass and were accessed by a stairwell between the florist and the nail shop and by wooden stairs in the back that led to a small wooden deck. Both exits were covered and Coe and the Feds were on their way. The suspect had not shown himself since lowering the blinds. An officer used a bullhorn to order him out, but so far there was no response. Raveneau talked with the pursuit officers who got the best look and now he was around to believing it was Alan Siles.

  Maybe this was a pre-arranged rendezvous point, and lacking anywhere else to go and knowing he had a couple of radio cars following he came here thinking he could get inside the office before they had enough vehicles to shutdown his escape.

  ‘What do you think?’ Coe asked as he arrived.

  ‘That if it’s really him, and it looks like it is, then he didn’t expect to get away but he wanted to get here. He had the armored vehicle and car after he abandoned that. He drove here at high speed. The officers hung back. They kept their distance until he turned into the lot and they came in with sirens and lights. By then he was already taking the stairs two at a time. They got a good look at him and ordered him to stop, and he ignored them and they made the decision not to use force. He’s locked himself in the apartment.’

  ‘They’re sure it’s Siles?’

  ‘One of them is. The fires in the Haight are the grand finale. After the 1906 earthquake the big mansions along Van Ness were dynamited to stop the fire. Otherwise, the Victorians burning now would have burned then. Van Ness was wide enough that the fire didn’t cross. Lindsley studied that period and he worked it again when he was researching for Lash on the SFPD book. It’s Siles and it was probably a rendezvous point, and I’ll bet this hydrant bit was never in the original game plan. But this is it. There’s no dirty bomb, no Fourth of July finish. It’s over and we need to talk him out.’

  ‘We’ve a sniper setting up two blocks away and let’s hope he’s not needed, but we don’t know what he’s doing in there. He may be turning that office into a bomb.
’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘All right, as reigning expert on these psychos what do you recommend?’

  ‘That I go up the stairs in the back and tell him it’s over.’

  Coe smiled.

  ‘I’m not kidding. I’ll put on body armor; I’ll knock on the door. He knows it’s over and I’ll let him know he can surrender without getting shot.’

  ‘You really are a full service shop. What are you going to say when he opens the door with a shotgun blast?’

  ‘I’ve got a thread with him no one else has. I’ve read Coryell.’

  ‘What if he has decided there’s nothing left to live for and plans to take as many people with him as he can? That’s a likely scenario. It’s a believable one and may sound a lot better to him than a prison sentence of one hundred fifty years. This guy just set off car bombs and knocked over hydrants so he could avenge the American Indian. What kind of rational conversation do you think you’re going to have with him?’

  ‘Any other way he’s going to end up dead. There’ll be a SWAT team at three in the morning and he’ll be dead when it’s over. Smoke bombs and flash bang and still somehow he’ll end up dead. I think me trying to talk to him is worth a try.’

  ‘We can just as easily wait him out. We can cut off the water and power. We can wear him down without risking anyone.’

  ‘I’ll wear a flak jacket and he’ll recognize me. He’ll get I’m there to talk to him and there’s still a chance there is more to come, so maybe we can prevent that.’

  Two hours later, Raveneau drove slowly on to the lot in a vehicle with tinted windows. He paused, pulled forward, parked and climbed the stairs, his shoes a quiet tapping on the wood treads. He called to Siles as he climbed and knew snipers’ scopes were trained on the door. He called for Siles again. He stood to the side and rapped hard on the door. He called again and tried the door handle and finding it unlocked he pushed it open. He told Siles he was here only to talk and his heart pounded as he exposed himself enough to take a look.