Divine Fury (35 page)

Walberg had given away his dog and sold two of his rifles.
 
A high school friend said Walberg maintained a virtual arsenal of weapons.
 
The friend had described Walberg as unstable, lurching back and forth between rage and depression.
 
At times, Walberg seemed in a confused daze, perhaps even hallucinating.
 
Maybe he still suffered from effects of a battlefield head wound or was under the unpredictable sway of the cocktail of medications he took.

Connors went into overdrive and worked the phones furiously.
 
She got the credit bureaus to run checks on Walberg to find out where he did his banking and what credit cards he had.
 
She called the Montana motor vehicles department which told her the only vehicle under Walberg’s name was a 1998 black Chevy Blazer.
 
She contacted the state police in Montana and in the several states Walberg might have passed through on his way to California and asked them to search their available records for any recent traffic tickets and arrests involving Walberg or his vehicle.
 

She also asked about crimes during the past three weeks, particularly those involving a black SUV, a person matching Walberg’s description, or the theft of any guns or ammunition.
 
When she encountered skepticism on the other end of a call, she had no qualms about getting the San Francisco Chief of Police to jump in and emphasize the importance of her request.
 
She was pulling out all the stops.
 
When asked what all the fuss was about, she said the department believed Walberg may be on his way to kill an important official in California.
 
She didn’t elaborate on who the target might be.
      

Connors was disappointed to learn that Walberg had withdrawn all his money from his bank and closed his account, and that he carried no credit cards.
 
She’d hoped that an ATM withdrawal or payment at a gas station or hotel with a credit card would help her find him.
 
The first round of database checks turned up no arrests or recorded stops involving Walberg or his SUV.
  

The deputy director of the Montana state police mentioned that the only unexplained murder in the state over the past three weeks was the killing of a security guard at a quarry in the northwest corner of the state.
 
It had been accompanied by the theft of enough C-4 explosive to take down a good-sized building.
 
With a growing sense of dread, Connors called the manager at the quarry herself and mentioned her search for Steven Walberg.
 
The name sounded vaguely familiar to the manager.
 
After putting Connors on hold for a few minutes, the manager read her the details of Walberg’s short period of employment at the quarry.

That was enough for Connors.
 
Any questions she had about whether there was enough to arrest and hold Walberg disappeared.
 
As far as she was concerned, the army veteran was coming after Harper and had already taken deliberate and deadly steps to implement whatever plan he had in mind.
 

After a few calls with the relevant Montana police agencies, Connors convinced them to consider Walberg a formal suspect in the quarry killing.
 
That would be enough to enter his information in the databases of Montana, California and the states between.
 
If Walberg were stopped by a cop who ran his driver’s license, an alert would not only say that he should be held for questioning in the quarry murder case, it would also warn that Walberg should be considered armed and extremely dangerous.
      

Connors made sure that every cop in San Francisco would be alerted to keep a watch for Walberg as they came on for duty.
 
In addition to his identifying information and a description of his Blazer with Montana plates, she circulated his photo.
 
It was taken from his driver’s license.
 
He’d had longish brown hair, a mustache and an enigmatic smile when the picture was snapped five years earlier.
   

* * *

Monday, June 14, 2004

The Sentinel Hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district had 22 rooms on four floors.
 
Each floor had a bathroom with showers.
 
It was an odd mix of decrepitude and overblown attempts to deny that the hotel, like its patrons, was in a worn-down state of decay.
 
Tropical murals graced the ground floor lobby, the oranges and blues vibrant against the walls that had started white but were now streaked with gray.
 
Planters held plastic foliage that shared the woodchips with cigarette butts.

The old guy at the counter had looked up at Walberg when he laid $200 in cash in front of him as the first week’s rent.
 
Then, he slid Walberg’s cash into a drawer and handed him a register to sign.
 
After Walberg scrawled something illegible, he gave him the key to room 3-C.

The creaky stairs that led up from the lobby emptied onto the upper hallways that were poorly-lit tunnels laid with thick carpet dark enough to hide the stains but not the amalgam of odors dominated by stale vomit and mildew.

The room was tiny. Twin bed with a tattered blanket.
 
Small refrigerator.
 
Four-drawer dresser.
 
Rusty sink with a dripping faucet.
 
The wall behind the door had a dried splattering of something brown.
 
Walberg shoved it all deep into his mind where it wouldn’t bother him – the splatter, the scent of rot and desperation, and the shadowy hallway where Walberg knew he’d hear the scurrying of rats at night.
    

He’d left the rifle in the van.
 
But he brought everything else.
 
One bag held the explosives and the Beretta.
 
The other had his clothes and the hunting knife.
 
He put them both on the floor.

He stood in the center of the room and closed his eyes.
 
He slowly rotated in a circle, stopping at various points.
 
Now, he was pointing down Market where he could take the subway two stops to Justin Herman Plaza.
 
Then, he was pointing the opposite way where the parade would inch its way toward City Hall.
 
And, finally, he was facing the direction where he could walk seven blocks and be on the steps of Trinity Cathedral.
 

Walberg remembered an afternoon years earlier when he was in the army at a base in Italy waiting for deployment and had a few hours to visit the local tourist attraction – a nearby cathedral built in the Middle Ages.
 
He’d stood in the middle of a side chapel and turned in a circle like this.
 
He took several minutes to appreciate the old paintings surrounding him that depicted the last days of Christ.
 
He had then closed his eyes and imagined the actual events of the stations of the cross – the condemnation, the long walk to Calvary, the falls along the way and, finally, the public Crucifixion.
  

Then, as now, Walberg had felt a profound peace fall over him as the noise of daily life seemed to fade altogether.
 
When he finally opened his eyes he felt refreshed and focused.
 
He had a sense of purpose that was deadly clear.
          

Chapter 45

EACH MOVEMENT REMINDED Lee that the places where his skin had been scraped away still were raw.
 
His back and left shoulder were killing him.
 
But whoever was calling him was damned persistent.
 
The phone had rung for four minutes straight.
 
Stopped for 20 seconds.
 
Then, started up again for another three minutes and counting.
 
The caller seemed determined to pry him out of bed.

He grimaced all the way to his desk where he sat down gingerly.

“Hello!” he shouted into the phone.
   

“Well.
 
Good morning to you, too,” said Bobbie Connors cheerfully.
 
“I heard you tried to take your bike off road.
 
How you feelin’?”

“It hurts,” he said.
 
“I’m up to my eyeballs in pain medication.
 
And listen, some guy
ran
me off the road.
 
It wasn’t like I had much choice in the matter.
 
Dude actually hit the damn bike and just drove off!”

“Hmm.
 
Wasn’t a black Chevy Blazer, was it?” said Connors.

“No.
 
Green.
 
Some kind of minivan,” said Lee. “I just hope I see the guy again.
 
Believe me.”

“Anyway,” he continued.
 
“Why exactly are you calling me?
 
I was planning on another 24 hours of sleep, you know.”

“I’m sorry about that,” said Connors.
 
“No really.
 
I mean it.
 
I am.
 
But I got a situation here and wanted to run it by you.
 
I thought maybe you could help me.”

“Well, okay,” said Lee.
 
“What is it?”

“First off,” she said.
 
“Let me just catch you up.
 
Where do I start?
 
Well, we’ve got an arrest coming down in Chicago.
 
Hopefully, it will happen this afternoon.”

“The guy Wilkins brought into this?” said Lee.
 
“The one who actually shot Truman?”

“That’s right,” said Connors.
 
“His lawyer is walking him into Chicago police headquarters at 6 pm local time there.
 
And, that’s all yours.
 
I’ll make sure we don’t even announce it until tomorrow.
 
The other media will go ape shit.
 
But, c’est la vie.
 
The lawyers will work out all the rest – exact charges, extradition.”

“Okay,” said Lee.
 
“I’ll tell Lorraine.
 
She’ll get someone to cover it.
 
They’ll call you.”

“Right,” said Connors.
 
“That’s the one in the hand.
 
Then there are the two still in the bush.
 
That’s the Terminator, quote unquote, who we are trying to find but has probably left the country.
 
And, there is the guy with the church, Brent Daggart.
 
Know who he is?”

“I’ve seen his name,” said Lee.
 
“Vice president or something.”

“Executive veep of Soldiers of Christ Ministry,” said Connors.
 
“Otherwise known as the ‘Mastermind’, the ‘Scapegoat,’ or – my term – the ‘Homophobic Sonofabitch!’”

“Oh.
 
I see.
 
You like this guy,” said Lee.

“I…I…I can’t even talk about him without going off,” said Connors.
 
“Anyway, he’s gone, too.
 
No idea where at the moment.
 
The church threw him overboard trying to save itself.
 
His fingerprints are all over this.
 
So, we’re still looking for him and the Terminator.
 
Warrants will be out, maybe tomorrow.”

“Wow.
 
Okay,” said Lee.
 
“And the details of the dirty tricks?
 
Burgess’ involvement?
 
Did Chapman’s campaign play any role?”