Chapter 1
“Is he down for his nap?” Clare shucked her coat and unbuttoned her clerical collar.
“Like the proverbial baby, conveniently in time for the meeting.” Russ heard a vehicle pulling into their short driveway. “Is that Knox?”
Clare looked out the kitchen window. “Yep. And there’s a car parking on the street. I think you’re getting the whole gang at once.” She leaned against the glass to see more. “Why do so many young people drive those tiny things that look like Little Tikes cars?”
“Says the woman who had a roomy and practical Shelby when we met.”
“That was different. It had style.” She opened the door. “Come on in, Hadley. And you must be Yíxīn Zhào. I’m Clare Fergusson.”
His wife certainly pronounced the attorney’s name better than he had when briefing her on their Sunday conference. Knowing Clare, she had practiced.
Zhào smiled. “Thank you for getting my name right!” She looked even more like an undergraduate in jeans and a sweater. Instead of a briefcase, she hoisted a backpack and unzipped it, revealing a stack of papers. “Here we are.”
“Great. Let’s relocate to the dining room. We can spread out there.”
“What can I get you?” Clare went to the coffee machine. “Coffee? Tea? Water?”
“Coffee.”
“Tea, please.”
“Water’s fine for me, Clare.”
Southern hostess duties done, Russ led Knox and Zhào through the living room into their inconveniently placed dining room.
As he pulled out a chair he thought, not for the first time, that he absolutely needed to remodel the kitchen and restore the doorway that must have been there once.
“Okay, Ms. Zhào, what have you got for us?”
She separated the stack of documents into piles.
“These are the reports from Kevin’s undercover work in the summer.
” She slid the papers toward Knox. “These are the summaries and info he was able to share with me since he’s been up in the mountains.
” Russ took that. “This folder,” she reached into her backpack, “has photos, rap sheets, and any info we have on suspects that were flagged by other investigators working on the project.”
“Mmn.”
Knox flipped a page over. “Too bad we don’t have a whiteboard like at the shop.”
Russ snapped his fingers. “Oh, I’ve got something better.
” He ducked into the living room and retrieved a large folded easel and pad leaning by the front door.
“Clare had an outreach committee meeting here a couple days ago. She hasn’t returned this stuff to the church yet.
” He set up the easel, propped the pad on it, and turned over several large sheets covered with lists to the back. “Okay, Knox, go.”
She bent to the papers in front of her. “His primary contact was a guy named Aaron Kaspertzy. Worked at the traveling carnival. Transporting guns across the state line.”
“They were all popular small arms. We think they were for sale to raise money for the organization instead of for use.”
Russ paused. “Legal purchases in their state of origin?”
“Probably a mix of purchased and stolen.” Hadley picked up a paper. “Flynn helped this Kaspertzy guy to off-load a whole box to a licensed dealer who gave them a wad of cash, no questions asked.”
Zhào nodded. “We got an ID on him and flagged him to the state police, but it doesn’t look like he’s involved with any of the white supremacy groups.”
Russ wrote Kaspertzy—Guns—Money on the pad. “Where’s Kaspertzy now?”
“Living on unemployment in a trailer in Canandaigua.” Zhào took a photo from the folder.
“That’s typical of carnies—they’re laid off in the fall, and either go down south to work the circuit in Florida, or collect their unemployment plus any under-the-table work they can find.
” She handed the photo to Russ. “That was the last contact with him before the investigation was pulled.” It showed a lean, muscular man in his thirties smoking on the front deck of a single-wide.
“Did Kevin see any more guns coming in with the militia guys?” Russ dropped the marker and began looking through the papers he had taken from Zhào.
“I’m wondering if Kaspertzy might be their procurer.
” He picked up a sheet. “Camping gear. A chain saw. Acetylene torches. Are they building something?”
“Could be a bomb.” Clare entered the room bearing a tray with two steaming mugs, a glass of water, and a plate of cookies. “I had some shortbread a parishioner gave me, I brought them along.”
Zhào blinked at her. “A bomb?”
“Uh-huh.” She handed the girl her mug. “Acetylene and silver nitrate. You add some metal shavings. You can use the torch canister, so it’s pretty small.”
Zhào stared. “Aren’t you a … priest?”
Ross took his coffee from the tray. “Clare served eighteen months in Iraq. She learned a few things about improvised explosives.”
“Really?” Zhào’s face said she suspected they were pulling her leg. “A chaplain?”
“A Blackhawk pilot. Hadley, have a cookie.” Clare pulled a chair out. “Truthfully, the IEDs we encountered were usually made from uria nitrate, which was much easier to get hold of in such an agricultural country. You distill it from commercial fertilizers.”
“Huh.”
Russ continued sorting through the short stack of notes. “It doesn’t look like Kevin saw anything more threatening. Rifles galore, but you’d expect that.”
“I’d like to point out that rifles can be considered very threatening in the right circumstances.” Clare bit into a piece of shortbread.
“You know what I mean. What do you think about the acetylene torches?”
She shrugged. “If they’ve got mail service, they could order silver nitrate online. Although that would leave a trail.”
Knox frowned over her glass of water. “What else threatening could you do with acetylene torches? It doesn’t seem like it’d be very effective to run up to someone and blowtorch them.”
Clare touched a finger to the corners of her mouth, picking up a few crumbs. “You could weld plates on a vehicle to harden it. Make it more bulletproof. You could attach a cow catcher or a spreader bar on the front.”
“And drive it full speed through a crowd.” Russ’s coffee suddenly lost its sweetness. “Low tech, a huge number of casualties.”
“Did Flynn report any, you know, metal stuff lying around?” Knox sketched a rectangle in the air.
“No, but if they’re also building on site, he might not have thought to mention it.” Russ tapped the papers in front of him. “A pile for armoring and a pile for a heavy-duty storage shed would look pretty much the same.”
Zhào picked up her tea. “I’m just going to point out these master race types don’t usually put their own asses on the line, which you pretty much have to do if you’re driving into a crowd. Historically, they’re a lot more likely to stash a car bomb and be several counties away when it goes off.”
“That’s true.” Russ took a cookie. “They get caught because they’re bad at covering their tracks, not because they’re found sitting at the wheel.”
Clare sat back. “I don’t want to disparage anyone’s investigative work here, but are you sure this group is actually planning something nefarious?
I mean, Russ and I had lunch yesterday with a couple who put on a white supremacy float during the Greenwich Tractor Parade.
Their beliefs are abhorrent, but they’re much more like back-to-the-land cranks than part of a terrorist cell. ”
The attorney stared at Clare. Knox, more used to his wife, looked to Russ for confirmation.
“She’s right. They reminded me of granola crunchy types, except for believing ‘The Jews’”—he finger quoted—“control everything. I spent some time shooting with the husband. He struck me as a hanger-on. I don’t know why the hell these guys don’t just join the Elks or the VFW or the Masons. ”
“What are the Elks?” Knox asked.
“A fraternal organization whose members are mostly retirement age. Which is why thirty-somethings aren’t joining.” Clare gestured toward Zhào’s folders. “May I?” The lawyer slid them toward her.
“Clare has a point.” Russ picked up the marker and wrote RIFLES & ACETYLENE TORCHES on the pad. “Investigations have a tendency toward the sunk cost fallacy. I’ve seen it happen before.”
“You mean, because Flynn’s spent so much time looking for evidence, he thinks there’s got to be something there?” Knox frowned. “I don’t know. He’s a good cop. Solid.”
“Wait. Wait a minute.” Clare looked up. “Yíxīn, these persons of interest came up in the wider investigation?”
“Yeah. They’re known quantities—most of them have done time, and all of them were suspects in hate crimes.”
Clare spun an eight-by-eleven photo around for the rest of them to see. “I met this man yesterday. He was looking to borrow construction equipment from Rick Smith.”