by Kirk Russell
“Sounds interesting—I’d like to hear about it and see the house. How’s two this afternoon? I can give you a call when I leave the office.”
“Sure, okay, two is fine.” She sighed. “Doing this reaffirmation with Sam is actually a really big deal.”
“I don’t really know what ‘reaffirmation’ means yet, and I’m kind of flat from working through the night. I’d like to hear more about it when I see you, and I look forward to seeing the house.”
“It means what it sounds like. I take it you don’t think it’s a good idea to co-author with her.”
“I don’t have any opinion.”
“You sound like you do.”
“Can we talk about it when we see each other?”
“Okay, bye.”
I sat on that a moment thinking that I should get out of this pattern with Julia where how quickly or slowly I respond and with what level of enthusiasm too easily determines how the conversation will go. We needed to get on more equal footing. I mulled that over and listened to a news report on a White House press release that the president was planning a western tour to survey the damage and talk to the people. Good on him, but he should stay away. There was already enough pressure on city police departments without adding a security detail. The president would visit Salt Lake, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and then San Francisco, where he’d give a speech before flying to Seattle, the site of the first attack.
I thought about Julia’s friend, Samantha Clark. Investigations are driven by evidence, but patterns of character emerge as well. Clark’s character as a witness was called into question earlier this year. It was something I was aware of but nothing I’d said anything to Julia about.
On January 3, a gunman with an assault rifle shot and killed an Oakland police officer. Three days later, 361 miles south in the small city of Signal Hill, two Long Beach East Division police officers were gunned down as they left a Black Bear restaurant at 9:50 p.m. The shootings had some similarities if no evidentiary connection: a lone gunman, night, and the possibility the officers were stalked. The close timing of the killings pulled the Bureau in, although it was an LA County Sheriff’s Department investigation.
For the Long Beach officers, the stop at the Black Bear was a habit but not a routine. They only made the stop if they were near the end of a shift and returning in that direction. It wasn’t something they did every night, so it might point to an impulsive shooting or the dark specter that the officers had been stalked.
Then there was this. The Black Bear was nearly empty and fifteen minutes from closing when Samantha Clark came in. She wanted a window seat. All seven booths along the windows were empty. She had her pick of any and took the corner booth with the promise she’d order immediately, which she did, coffee and dessert.
From the corner booth she looked down the sloping asphalt lot at the Chevron station below and the intersection of East Willow and Cherry. She told detectives she saw the officers drive up and park. They looked beat but relaxed as they walked up to the restaurant entrance. To her, it seemed they liked each other. The male officer touched the carved wooden bear before going in the door as if he liked the feel of the wood or maybe for luck.
Inside, the witness may or may not have seen them order coffees to go. She remembered looking out the window at traffic going by in the intersection. She remembered a van and a car gassing up at the Chevron station. The McDonald’s adjacent to the Chevron was open. In her first interview she said she’d never been to this Black Bear before, although she lived in Long Beach. She’d said she’d gone there that night after arguing with a boyfriend, telling detectives a Black Bear diner was the absolute last place he’d look for her.
The detectives asked to talk with the boyfriend to confirm that, but she refused to give them a name or his cell number, the reason being he wasn’t really her boyfriend. That came out later. He was the boyfriend of someone else she knew. That woman was a friend of hers who would be very hurt if she learned that Sam was also seeing him.
The detectives pushed, told her it would corroborate her story, and she’d answered, “I don’t have to corroborate anything. I went to a diner and ordered coffee and dessert. You need to do your jobs and figure out who killed the officers. Who I sleep with is none of your business.”
When the two Long Beach East Division officers left the Black Bear, Clark said she watched them walk down toward their car. Then from the corner of her eye, coming from her right, she picked up on a man moving toward them.
Samantha Clark was the only witness to the Black Bear slayings. She’d caught the public eye when she created Witness1 and moved to California with the stated goal of “organizing.” She was a Las Vegas native and had reached out to Julia a year after the Alagara bombing, when Julia’s Rotary Club pacifism speech generated negative press. Julia was already aware of her and admired her.
Clark saw the shooter raise a gun. She saw the muzzle flashes and heard what she called “hard, short popping sounds.” The female officer, Leung, collapsed. “As if she just stopped being,” Clark said. The male officer, McDermott, died reaching for his gun.
Clark had encouraged Julia to do what she’d done, skip college and just get into life. Come up with an idea and go for it. I got the feeling Clark saw her as a protégé and liked Julia’s tragic celebrity as the lone survivor of the Alagara bombing. It was Clark who drew Julia into Witness1.
Signal Hill is a small city surrounded by Long Beach but has its own police department. Signal Hill officers responded to the call of two officers down. They strung tape and contained the site but deferred the homicide investigation to the LA County Sheriff’s Detective Bureau. The Crime Against Police Officers Section, CAPOS, a DA representative, two Long Beach homicide detectives, a Signal Hill detective, and the FBI all became part of the investigation.
LA County detectives had numerous issues with Clark from the outset. That the creator of Witness1, who’d made it her mission to police the police, should happen to be the lone witness in a double slaying of officers strained credulity. And despite their request that she not do so, Clark had posted on the Witness1 website after the shooting.
She took videos of the bodies lying on the asphalt until one of the Black Bear waitresses pushed her phone away, telling her it was obscene. That waitress carried the same outrage into an interview room the next day. When questioned about the apparent callousness, Clark had shrugged and told the detectives it was obvious the officers were dead. She saw nothing prurient in leaning over to video them then posting it as an eyewitness account.
There were other issues with Clark, one of which was her widely varying description of the lone male shooter. In surveillance tapes, baggy clothing disguised his body. He wore thin latex gloves. None of his hair showed and it was night, so in many ways it was unfair to take Clark to task over her descriptions.
But there was something disturbing in the casualness with which she changed descriptions, albeit with apologies, as she withdrew her prior statement and offered a new one. More than that, detectives felt she was working against them. As one put it, “She’s fucking with us.”
Her credibility with the detectives had done nothing but erode since, and the shooter was still at large. He’d hurried down Cherry Street along the backside of the Chevron car wash and was picked up by an unidentified sedan.
To the north a few weeks later, an arrest was made in the Oakland officer assassination. The sister of the shooter walked into the Seventh Street police station and handed over her brother’s laptop. On it were detailed plans of the murder. The shooter’s name was Robert Overton. The weapon was an AR-15 converted to automatic. He used a thirty-round magazine. Twenty-one of his shots missed, but with an assault rifle you don’t need to be much of a marksman. The officer was struck nine times and died on scene.
In Signal Hill the shooter was highly accurate, so precise that investigators debated it being a hired hit, a pro. They looked at whether the two officers might have been dirty. I read the in
vestigative files and am always interested in shooters with unusual skill. It’s so uncommon I could contemplate our cell-tower sniper as that shooter but for the fact this was a handgun, which is a different skill set.
Officer Leung was killed by two bullets dead center in her forehead. McDermott, her partner, was shot three times in a tight pattern at the right temple. Five shots perfectly placed by a man running downhill and across with his arm extended. But again, Clark was the only witness and as her credibility diminished with the shape-shifting descriptions of the shooter, so too questions were raised about her shooting account. Had the officers stopped walking? Was the killer running when he shot them, or had he stopped too? Clark might nod her head and say yes, maybe they did stop, and twenty minutes later say no, it didn’t happen that way.
Clark’s accounts varied enough that county sheriff’s detectives decided to shake up the interview process. FBI agents out of the LA office tracking the investigation interviewed her. In those interviews, Clark was less contradictory and talked of waking up at night with flashbacks and seeing things she didn’t the night of the killing. Trauma can do that, so our agents would have taken that in without judgment. Or they did at first. But they too grew skeptical.
One of them, an agent I’ve known a long time, Sara Decca, agreed with them that Clark was hiding something. That carries weight with me. Decca showed me video of Clark answering questions about the shooter.
“The gun was in his right hand,” Clark said. “He turned and looked through the window at me and I couldn’t move. I would know his eyes if I saw them again. I think he has a beard. I saw something below his lips. He’s got sort of a beak to his nose. His eyes are really, like, straight at you. Fierce-like or it’s the way he concentrates, so focused. His eyebrows are dark. He looked strong.”
“Would you recognize him?” Decca had asked.
“I’m not that good with faces.”
There was the mishmash quality to her descriptions, and there was this. Julia had once said to me, “Sam’s like famous for remembering people. If she’s met you before, no matter how long ago, she’ll remember you. That’s so cool. I wish I was like that.”
I’m not part of the Signal Hill investigation, but I care about the officers killed, and the anomaly of such a skilled shooter gets my attention. I’m also looking out for Julia. Samantha Clark has been a strong influence on her. Trauma can do a number on memory. I’ve seen that. But listen to the detectives working the Signal Hill murders as well as our agents, and they leave you with the feeling something is wrong. Something is hidden. Something Clark knows. What do I do with that and Julia?
17
“Hey, what’s up?” Farue asked.
“You’ve called Agent Blujace four times this morning. She’s swamped with other work, so she asked me to give you a call. What did you want to talk with her about?”
“She and I have a conversation going on.”
“Bring me in.”
Farue paused on that, then said, “It can wait until she has time.”
“We’re both so busy, Gary, we have to double-team things. I’m sure you understand. Hey, I know I’m not as much fun to talk to.”
“You’ve got that right.”
“I’ve got something I’ve wanted to ask you,” I said. “We got more back on Croft’s militia, but I don’t know if the sources are any good. Do you want to take a stab at helping unravel a tip?”
“Where did this tip come from?”
“Can’t say. Promised to keep it confidential, but if you want to help, here’s your chance.”
“Let’s hear it,” he said, as if I was an underling reporting.
“Did you and another Northern Brigade member, also former Army, own a cabin together outside of Missoula?”
He was quiet long enough for me to think I should repeat it or that he’d hung up.
“I bought Jake Corti out of the cabin in 2014. Who did you talk to that’s trying to make me look bad?”
“What do you hear in that question that makes you think that?”
“Look, I work my ass off to protect things. I want to know who said that to you.”
“Do you still have the cabin?”
“My cabin I never get to. You want to talk taxes and upkeep, or maybe you’re in the market? I thought you were so busy you and Jace have to cover for each other. But you’ve got time to talk about summer cabins?”
“Slow down, and explain what you meant about making you look bad.”
“I don’t like being gamed, but, yes, we bought it together and I bought him out. I bought him out because he changed his mind and wanted us to sell. I got a loan and it got done with no hard feelings.”
“So you’re good with him. Have you seen him lately?”
“No, but I’ve tried to reach him. I heard he was in California. What are you asking?”
“We’d like to interview Jacob Corti. The Army tells me he was highly skilled. He might be able to help us.”
“You don’t lie very well, Grale.”
“Teach me how to.”
He muttered something before saying, “I don’t know where Corti is, and sure I’ve thought about him and everyone else I knew who could shoot that well. But why would Jake be shooting up cell towers?”
“Could it come from Croft and the Northern Brigade?”
“Anything could come from Ashton Croft.”
“Why did you join the Northern Star Freedom Brigade?”
“Look at you finally getting the name right. Tell you what, I sure wish I’d never joined. I was in a bad space and influenced. When I look back I don’t get it.”
“So you quit.”
“I told Ashton to his face I was gone.”
“What did he say to that?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Oh, his usual ‘once in, you’re in forever.’” He was quiet, then added, “There are stories of guys who’ve gone missing, or their car has died on the wrong road in a snowstorm. Shit like that.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t disbelieve it.”
“Any current contact with other members?”
“None.”
“We hear Corti is still in. Can you send me the phone number you have for him?”
“Sure, but every single time I’ve tried to call him back, and I’m talking about right after he texts me, his phone doesn’t work. It’s like I’m his last call on a burner phone or something like that. But you’re the FBI. You guys are so good at everything maybe you’ll figure it out. I’ll send you his last one when we get off, but don’t call me back if it’s disconnected.”
“What was the thing that made you quit the Northern Brigade?” I asked.
“Some of the things getting said after Obama was elected I didn’t want any part of. Look, it all started years before that in Missoula when a couple of Croft’s guys bought me drinks one night. All of a sudden I was meeting up with the militia on weekends in Idaho. They sold it as just a good time and a chance to hang out and have fun on the occasional weekend. Mazarik and I were there to shoot and have fun with the guys. We weren’t there for their political opinions or any of their other deep thoughts.”
“What about Corti?”
“He was still there when I left. I’m a traitor. So is Mazarik.”
“Our photos aren’t current. What’s Croft look like now?”
“He’s lost all his hair, and his face is very pale and wrinkled. He’s got big jowls. He looks like a used condom. I heard a rumor old man Croft tried to start his pickup with his house key, and had gotten less than a mile from home and had to have someone come help him find his way. What’s that sound like?”
“Like you’re still keeping in touch with the guys. So who’s in charge now?”
“Let me say this before I hang up. You work domestic terrorism so you know more than me, but I know there are three hundred militias in the US. I was in one and I quit. That’s legal, right? Before that
I was in the Army protecting your ass. So was Mazarik and he quit Croft too. Corti, who the fuck knows with him. You and me, we’re done talking about it forever. I served my country. I don’t have to take crap from an FBI agent. You have a fine day, Grale.”
18
Long Beach, April 26th
“UG, come in! How do you like it?”
“Looks like a good street and not far from the ocean.”
“Not far at all, and I’m buying a beater bike to get around.”
The rental was a corner house probably built in the seventies, a mix of stucco and painted wood siding, an asphalt-shingle roof and brick-lined concrete approach with the desert landscaping I see more and more. Julia looked like she was trying to be happy but it wasn’t quite flowing yet. She moved out of the doorway and let me inside, where it was warm to stuffy and smelled of cat urine.
The main room’s windows and an aluminum slider opening to the backyard were all shut. Through the slider I saw the gas fire pit Julia had talked about. Around it were scattered sun- and salt-faded patio chairs.
“There was a break-in last week at a house pretty close to here, so they want to keep the windows shut, and they don’t run the air conditioning. Sorry about the smell. The people before had four cats, and one of them had kittens.”
It was spacious enough, and it ought to be fun to live with people her age. The main thing was getting on with life and finding direction. The aged aluminum slider scratched and bumped its way open, and we walked out onto a concrete patio, brick-lined like the front entry. On a rusting metal table were beer bottles and a couple of ashtrays with ends of joints poked in the sand. A redwood fence faded gray with salt and time marked the property edge. In the back and on one side were neighboring gardens.
“Nice,” I said.
“This is where everybody gets together at night. The other choice was finding an apartment, UG. I don’t know if I’ve told you, but it’s always been my plan to skip college and live off my inheritance while hanging around beach towns.”