The Third Coincidence (11 page)

“Looks that way.” Jack leaned back in one of their new swivel- and-tilt leather chairs and clasped his hands behind his head. “All these cases are now officially federal.” He turned to Frank who had come in right after Nora. “You and Nora can stop faking working for Metro. You’re on this squad, unless you want off. All I’ll promise is long hours and lots of stress. And, I would guess, a loss of the over- time pay you’ve been getting from Metro.”

“Wow, Jack,” Nora said, “you certainly know how to charm a lady.”

“Can we have a minute?” Frank asked. “We’d like to give you one answer.”

“Go out into the hall,” Jack said, knowing that he would release them back to their local police work if they showed any signs of strug- gling with the decision to stay. The journey they were all starting would be tough enough even with total commitment.

Almost as soon as the door closed, it reopened. “We’re in,” Frank said. “Thanks for asking. We don’t like stopping short of the goal line.”

Three hours later, Jack met FBI Special Agent Rex Smith at the Bullpen door. Rex was an average-sized man on the shy side of forty- five. Freckles dotted the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. His chest- nut hair hinted it would have curls if allowed to live longer between cuts. His body announced that he ran and pumped iron.

Jack pointed. “Coffee’s on the side table along with some snacks.”

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“Thanks. I haven’t eaten since,” Rex looked at his watch, “dinner last night.” Rex put an ice cube in the bottom of a cup and filled it with steaming coffee, then piled some fruit on a plastic plate and added a large croissant. Millet had used the pause to pour himself a glass of cranberry juice as a chaser to his hot chocolate.

Rex walked around the table dropping a file in front of each of them. When he paused next to Rachel, leaned in, and handed her a copy, she glanced up. Their eyes met and they shared an easy smile. Jack felt a little annoyed, which he knew was absurd. She was only being polite. Friendly. And besides, he had no claim on her.

“These folders,” Rex began, “contain my report, the ERT’s pre- lim, and a copy of the report from the local Cleveland detective first on the scene. The neighbors were all reading, watching television, or sleeping. The Taylor house is dust. So are the three inhabitants: Fed Governor Charles Taylor, his wife, Susan Taylor, and his mother, Lucille Taylor. The killer used plastic explosive.”

“Anyone else hurt?” Jack asked.

“The houses there are well spaced,” Rex replied. “The neigh- bors got a little collateral damage but no injuries. The explosion oc- curred under Taylor’s house. The FBI will try to trace the explosives unless you want your squad to handle that.”

“We’d appreciate the bureau doing that,” Jack replied, before glancing around the table. “Any questions for Rex?”

Frank leaned forward so he could look past Millet to see Rex. “What’s not in your report? Your instincts?”

“It felt like a killing by someone from out of town. I can sum- marize all this paperwork in a few short sentences: Plastic explosive. House gone. Inhabitants dead. No leads. The end.”

Jack had been in harm’s way more times than he could count, and here he sat listening to a report on the death of a governor in the Federal Reserve Bank who lived an important but relatively safe life, only to be murdered in his own bed in a comfortable American neighborhood. On some level, that alone seemed a bit screwy.

Millet gestured with enough animation to slosh some of his cran-

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berry juice on the table. “Do the rest of you agree we can now quit chasing the families and coworkers?” He swiped at the spill and wiped his wet, red hand on his shirt.

“Millet,” Nora said in a deliberate voice, “we all agreed with you from the start. But until something more happened we had only what we had.”

Rachel raised her hands and then let them drop onto the table in a gesture of helplessness. “Our killers could be anybody in the frigging world.”

“So we’ll start with what we’ve got,” Jack said with his hands spread. “Millet, cross-check the hate and threat letters received by the Fed and the Court. See if any of those names match any names on the list of terrorists Rachel got from the agencies.”

“Done it early this mornin’. If you’re going to keep up, Jackman, you gotta think faster than that.”

“And?”

“No matches.”

Jack heard a sharp noise from near the door. He looked up, his hand instinctively going toward the butt of his Sig Sauer, as Direc- tor Miller stormed in. Harriet’s brown hair was pulled back so tightly that, from a distance, it appeared no more than a smear on her scalp. She was waving a piece of paper.

“This is a hard copy of a communiqué just broadcast by the ABC-TV affiliate in Phoenix, Arizona,” she announced loudly. “It ar- rived in a FedEx package posted in Redding, California. The pack- age contained a CD-ROM from a group calling itself the American Militia to Restore Representative Government. They’re claiming re- sponsibility for all the killings. The communiqué is signed by a Com- mander LW.”

Jack dropped his croissant. “Get somebody out to that station—” “Already done,” Director Miller said, punctuating her words with the eyeglasses she held in her other hand. “The FBI’s Phoenix office is fingerprinting and taking DNA samples from everyone at the station who has handled the package or CD. A military jet from

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Luke Air Force Base, just outside Phoenix, will get the CD to our lab ASAP. No doubt the package got contaminated before anyone knew its contents. Our linguists are already working it over and the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit will take a shot at profiling the person who wrote it.”

“Excellent.” Jack wiped his hand across his mouth. “Ask Gen- eral Crook to also have his geniuses at defense intel take a run at it. His people are really good at detecting which country a writer is from or what other languages the writer might speak. Have the NSA do it, too. This is supposed to be a multi agency effort, so let’s act like it.” When Director Miller left, Jack and his team circled the com-

muniqué as if it were an enemy encampment.

It is time to return to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. America’s financial system is run by the Federal Reserve Bank. The unelected Fed governors regulate investment margins, the rate of interest Americans must pay, and, by extension, decide which Americans can afford to buy a home, or keep the one they already have. This must stop. We named our militia for this cause. The only thing that can stop this second American revolution is for the government to take the action demanded in this commu- niqué.

Our forefathers intended America to have three equal branches of government: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. The job of the executive and legislative branches is to propose and pass laws. They are the people’s elected rep- resentative government. The courts are supposed to penalize those who violate those laws. The Supreme Court has arro- gantly evolved into seeing itself as the final government. If they disagree with a law, they rule it unconstitutional. They

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have even decided one of our presidential elections. This tilt- ing of the balance of power must end. The Court must ac- knowledge that its job is to judge those who violate our laws, not the laws themselves.

To evidence our good faith, we will stop eliminating these aristocrats under the following conditions: The Supreme Court justices are to stand down. They must hear no more cases and make no further rulings until they reaf- firm their proper limited role. Legislation banishing a Fed- eral Reserve System, by any name, must be passed. That legislation must make it a crime punishable by death for any American to again promote or encourage a privately owned centralized banking system.

You have thirty-six hours to take the first step.

Commander LW

Jack whistled long and low. “Initial observations? Anyone?”

“I see two,” Rachel said, her blue eyes darting back and forth be- tween the communiqué and Jack. “Repressed anger not sated by the killings is all over this message. Secondly, their demands will not be met.”

Jack stood and walked around the bench to Rachel’s seat. “Is this militia or Commander LW on any of the lists of terrorists or mili- tants you got from the CTC?”

“I don’t think so.” She pulled the lists from a folder. “Nothing even close.”

“Keep everybody talking, Rachel,” Jack said. “We need a plan to put us on the offense. I’ll be home for the next hour preparing for my meeting with the president—I’ll be back around six.”

The media wolves would soon be circling the White House. And Jack would soon find out if the president meant what he’d said about having his back.

chapter 19

With two assassinations and a news release in the past twenty-four hours, the rogue Commander LW is picking up the pace. Can McCall catch up? What’s really going on?

—Mel Carsten, D.C. Talk, June 10

“Happy anniversary, Jack. I was just reading some of your old press clippings. Today is two years from the night your brother lost his life during your failed desert mission. What makes you think you can protect these officials when you couldn’t even keep your brother alive? ”

“You bastard.” Jack took a deep slow breath. “It’s my job to stop you however I can, now I’ll enjoy taking you down.”

The caller hung up.

After the first call from this person, Jack had the FBI set up his phone so they could trace all incoming calls, but the caller had hung up in under a minute. Not long enough.

Jack half watched and half listened to the news networks he had run- ning on his two home televisions. Conjecture about the American Militia flourished on one television talk show after another. He turned up the volume when Mel Carsten, the host of
D.C. Talk,
walked on stage. Carsten’s narrow nose and high cheekbones gave him a strong face; his open-collar blue shirt, black slacks, and tan loafers adding a casual look. Carsten took a seat in his red chair be- tween two blue couches angled on a vee toward the cameras.

the third coincidence 85

“Today,” Carsten began, “we have with us Charles Nesbit, a for- mer member of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Section.”

Jack had known Charlie Nesbit for over a decade. The man could eat everything in sight and remain racehorse thin. He had al- ways admired Nessy’s ability to project a casual relaxed air even when deadly serious, his appearance indicated that nothing had changed.

After the usual pleasantries Carsten asked, “Mr. Nesbit, does our government know who these people are?”

“I wish I could say yes. But to my knowledge the U.S. intelli- gence community has no information on Commander LW or his militia.”

“Off the record, those officials, who will tell us anything, say this LW is homegrown.”

“Looks that way. At this point there’s nothing that suggests an out-of-town team.”

“What could make this Commander LW do these horrible things? It’s not as if America fosters revolution by oppressing its citi- zens.”

“This kind of killer comes up with an excuse so that he can feel he’s more than what he is, a murderer. He sees injustice not seen by the rest of us. In his demented mind he assigns himself a mission to right the wrongs he perceives. A classic example would be John Wilkes Booth the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln.”

“When you say ‘he,’ how sure are you that this LW is a man?” “The histories of these things suggest a man, but it could be a

woman.”

“Either man or woman, you see this person as mentally de- ranged?”

“Often militias consist of one psychotic, charismatic leader and a group of weak-minded followers,” Nesbit told him with an uneasy grin. “But the leader is always a nutcase. The Reverend Jim Jones, whose followers joined him in a mass suicide in Guyana some years ago is the sort of twisted leader I’m talking about.”

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• • •

President Schroeder slammed his hand onto the arm of his couch. “This son of a bitch isn’t going to shut down anything.”

Jack could not remember seeing Sam Schroeder snap like that. The pressure on the president had to be enormous. Jack poured him- self a glass of water and added a lemon wedge, giving the president a moment to calm himself.

“What do we know about this militia and Commander LW?” Schroeder asked.

“Not very much,” Jack admitted. “Nothing, is more like it. Until we got this communiqué, we didn’t even have the name. Your agen- cies’ preliminary findings should reach us in about an hour. We’re hoping they were able to connect them up.”

“I’ve spoken to the agencies,” the president said. “No one has anything. Have you been able to narrow the field at all?”

Jack swirled his water and looked inside the glass as if it were some magical potion that might reveal better answers.

“Other than ruling out you and me, sir, I’m afraid not much.” “Any clues from the crime scenes?”