Demolition Angel (18 page)

Starkey gave her the date and phone number.

“You want the tape if we have it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is this connected to what happened in Silver Lake?”

Starkey didn’t want to tell this woman that she was one of the officers on the tape.

“We don’t believe that they’re connected, but we’re checking. It’s just something we have to follow up.”

“If there’s a story here, I want in.”

“If there’s a story, you can have it.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Starkey.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Starkey was shaking when she put down the phone. She put her hands flat on the desk and tried to still them. She couldn’t. She thought she should feel elated or proud of herself for taking this step, but all she felt was sick to her stomach.

She dry-swallowed a Tagamet and was waiting for the nausea to pass when Pell called.

“Can you talk?”

“Yes, I can talk.”

“I wanted to apologize again about yesterday, up there with Tennant. I hope that what happened hasn’t created a problem for you.”

“I haven’t been marched upstairs to Internal Affairs yet, if that’s what you mean. Tennant could still change his mind and destroy my career, but so far I’m safe.”

“Did you report me?”

“Not my style, babe. Forget it.”

“Okay. Well, like I said yesterday, if it comes to that, I’ll take the hits.”

She felt herself flush with an anger that seemed more aimed at herself than him.

“You can’t take the hits, Pell. I guess you’re being noble or something, but I’m fucked for not reporting you whether you take the hits or not. That’s the way it works here on the local level.”

“Okay. Listen, there’s another reason I called. I’ve got someone who can help us with this Claudius thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“If it’s true what Tennant said, that Mr. Red goes there, I’m thinking we can use that. The ATF has a guy at Cal Tech who knows about this stuff. I’ve set it up, if you’re game.”

“You’re damn right I am.”

“Great. Can you pick me up?”

The card from Pell’s hotel was on her desk. She looked at it
and saw that he was staying in Culver City near LAX. A place called the Islander Palms.

“You mean you want me to come get you? Why don’t we just meet there? You’re way the hell in the wrong direction.”

“I’m having trouble with my damned rental car. If you don’t want to pick me up, I’ll take a cab.”

“Take it easy, Pell. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

The Islander Palms was a low-slung motel just off Pico Boulevard, a couple of blocks west of the old MGM Studio. It was two floors, with neon palm trees on a large sign overlooking the parking lot, sea-green trim, and an ugly stucco exterior. Starkey was surprised that Pell was staying in such a dump and thought he’d probably picked it out of a low-end tour book. It was the kind of place that screamed “family rates.”

Pell stepped out of the lobby when she turned into the parking lot. He looked pale and tired. The dark rings under his eyes made her think that the trouble wasn’t with his car; he was probably still shaken from whatever had rocked him up at Atascadero.

He got in without waiting for her to shut the engine.

“Jesus, Pell, is the ATF on a budget? LAPD would put me up in a better place than this.”

“I’ll call the director and tell him you said to shape up. You know how to get there?”

“I was born in L.A. I got freeways in my blood.”

As they drove back across the city, Pell explained that they were meeting a man named Donald Bergen, who was a graduate student in physics. Bergen was one of several computer experts employed by the government to identify and monitor potential presidential assassins, militia cranks, pedophiles, terrorists, and others who used the Internet as a source of communication, planning, and execution of illegal activity.
This was a gray area of law enforcement, and getting darker every day. The Internet wasn’t the U.S. Postal Service, and chat rooms weren’t private phone calls, yet law enforcement agencies were increasingly limited as to what they could and could not do on the Internet.

“Is this guy some kind of spook?”

“He’s just a guy. Do me a favor, okay, and don’t ask him about what he does, and don’t tell him too much about what we’re doing. It’s better that way.”

“Listen, I’m telling you right now that I’m not going to do anything that’s illegal.”

“This isn’t illegal. Bergen knows why we’re coming, and he knows about Claudius. His job is to get us there. After that, it’s up to us.”

Starkey considered Pell, but didn’t say any more. If Bergen and Claudius could help close her case, then that’s what she wanted.

Twenty minutes later, they found a spot in visitors’ parking and entered the Cal Tech campus. Even though Starkey had spent her life in L.A., she’d never been there. It was pretty; earth-colored buildings nestled in the flats of Pasadena. They passed young men and women who looked normal, but, she thought, were probably geniuses. Not many of the kids here would choose to be cops. Starkey thought that if she were smarter, neither would she.

They found the Computer Sciences building, went down a flight of stairs, and walked along a sterile hall until they found Bergen’s office. The man who opened the door was short and hugely muscular, like a bodybuilder. He smelled, faintly, of body odor.

“Are you Jack Pell?”

“That’s right. Mr. Bergen?”

Bergen peered at Starkey.

“Who’s she?”

Starkey badged him, already irritated.

“She
is Detective Carol Starkey, LAPD.”

Bergen looked back at Pell, suspicious.

“Jerry didn’t say anything about this. What’s the deal with her?”

“We’re a matched set, Bergen. That’s all you need to know. Now open the door.”

Bergen leaned out to see if anyone else was in the hall, then let them in, locking the door after them. Starkey smelled marijuana.

“You can call me Donnie. I’m all set up for you.”

Bergen’s office was cluttered with books, software manuals, computers, and pinups of female bodybuilders. Bergen told them to sit where two chairs had been set up in front of a slim laptop computer. Starkey was uncomfortable, sitting so close to Pell that their arms touched, but there wasn’t room to move away. Bergen pulled up a tiny swivel chair to sit on the other side of Pell, the three of them hunched in front of the small computer as if it were a window into another world.

“This isn’t going to take long. It was pretty easy, compared to some of the stuff I do for you guys. But I’m kinda curious about something.”

Starkey noted that Bergen talked to Pell without looking at her. She thought that he was probably uncomfortable around women.

Pell said, “What’s that?”

“When I get jobs like this, I file a voucher back through Jerry, but this time he said leave it alone.”

“We’ll talk about that later, Donnie. That isn’t Detective Starkey’s concern.”

Bergen turned a vivid red.

“Okay. Sure. Whatever you say.”

“Show us about Claudius, Donnie.”

“Okay. Sure. What do you want to know?”

“Show us how to find Claudius.”

“It’s already found. I was there this morning.”

Bergen, who was sitting on the far side of Pell, as far from Starkey as he could get, reached over and punched several computer keys.

“First thing I did was run a search for web sites about bombs, explosives, improvised munitions, mass destruction, things like that. There are hundreds of them.”

As Starkey watched, the screen filled with the home page of something called GRAVEDIGGER, showing a skull with atomic bomb mushroom clouds in the eye sockets. Bergen explained that it was built and maintained by a hobbyist in Minnesota and was perfectly legal.

“A lot of the more elaborate sites have message boards so people can post notes to each other or get together in a chat room so they can talk in real time. Do you know how we run the assassination scans?”

Starkey said, “Donnie?”

Bergen cleared his throat, glancing at her quickly before looking away.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“You don’t have to ma’am me. But I want you to talk to me, too, okay? I’m not going to bust you for smoking pot or whatever it is you’re worried about, okay?”

“I wasn’t smoking pot.”

“Just talk to me, too. I have no idea how you run the assassination scans. I don’t even know what assassination scans are.”

Pell said, “Maybe we shouldn’t get into this.” Bergen turned red again.

“Sorry.”

“Just tell us how you found Claudius and bring us there.”

Bergen twisted around to point out a stack of bright blue PowerMacs wired together on a metal frame.

“What you do is search for word combinations. Say your combination is President, White House, and kill. I’ve got software that floats on forty service providers, constantly searching for that combination of words on message boards, newsgroups, and in chat rooms. If the combination shows up, the software copies the exchange and the e-mail addresses of the people involved. What I did was task the software with looking for the word ‘Claudius,’ along with a few others, and this is what we found. It’s as easy as keeping the world safe for democracy.”

Bergen clicked another button, and a new page appeared. His chest swelled expansively.

“You can run but you can’t hide, motherfuckers. That’s Claudius.”

It was a face with a head of flames. The face was tortured, as if in great pain. Starkey thought it looked Roman. Along the left side was a navigation bar that showed different topics:
HOW TO, THE PROS, MILITARY, GALLERY, LINKS, MOST WANTED
, and several others.

Starkey leaned toward the screen.

“What are all these things?”

“Pages within pages. The gallery is pictures of blast victims. It’s pretty gruesome. The how-to pages have articles about bomb construction and a message board where these a-holes can talk about it with each other. Here, let’s take a tour.”

Bergen used a mouse control to click them through a tour of hell. Starkey watched diagrams of improvised munitions flick past on the screen, saw articles on substituting common household products for their chemical counterparts in order to create explosives. The gallery contained photographs of destroyed buildings and vehicles, medical text pictures of people that had been killed by explosive blasts, endless shots of third-world people missing feet and legs from land mines,
and photos of animals that had been blown apart in wound research studies.

Starkey had to look away.

“These people are fucking nuts. This is disgusting.”

“But legal. First Amendment, babe. And if you read close, you’ll note that nothing posted on these pages, which we call public pages, is legally actionable. No one is admitting to crimes or to buying and selling illegal items. They’re just hobbyists. Ha.”

Pell said, “We’re looking for someone who calls himself Mr. Red. They talk about him here. We were told that he might even visit himself.”

Bergen was nodding again before Pell finished, letting them know that he was still ahead of them. He checked his watch, then glanced over at a large desktop Macintosh.

“Well, if he’s been here since eleven-oh-four last night, he’s calling himself something else. I’m charting the sign-ons.”

He swiveled back to the laptop and used the mouse control to open the message boards.

“As far as people posting about him, you got a lot of that. A bunch of these freaks think he’s a fucking hero. Red, and these other assholes. We’ve got discussion threads here about the Unabomber; that guy out in California they called the IRS Bomber, Dean Harvey Hicks; that asshole down south who was trying to kill judges and lawyers; those Oklahoma pricks; and a
ton
of stuff about Mr. Red.”

Starkey said, “Show us.”

Bergen punched up a thread devoted to Mr. Red, explaining that a thread was a string of messages posted on a particular bulletin board and how she could move sequentially from message to message to follow the exchange.

She said, “Where do I start?”

“Start anywhere. It won’t matter. The thread goes on forever.”

Starkey chose a message at random and opened it.

Subject: Re: Truth or Consequences

From: BOOMER

Message-id:
>187765.34@zipp<

Starkey opened the next message of the thread.

Starkey looked at Pell.

“None of these people should be allowed to breed.”

Pell laughed.

“Don’t worry about that, Starkey. I’d guess most of these people have never had a date.”

Starkey glanced to Bergen.

“That’s what they do here, they leave messages back and forth like this?”

“Yeah. That’s why they call it a message board. But these guys are the lightweights. No one here is gonna admit to anything criminal. If you want the real kooks, you’ve got to go to the chat room. See, most anyone can get where we are now if you know where to look, but the chat room here is different. You can’t just sign on, you know, like, knock, knock, here I am. You’ve got to be invited.”

“How did you get invited?”

Bergen looked smug.

“I didn’t need an invitation; I broke in. But normal people need what’s called a hot ticket, that’s special software that someone has to send to you via e-mail. It’s like a key to get in. These guys want to talk about things they can be arrested for, so they want their privacy. They know that I’m out here, man, the guys like me. But they think they’re safe in the chat room.”