Devil's Run (5 page)

As
I turned to leave the room, Mrs. Nesbitt appeared at the door. “Oh, are you
done?”

“Yes,”
said Nesbitt, before I could answer.

He
glanced around the room. For a brief moment, I saw the fear. A big, strong man
who would never forgive himself for not protecting the little girl he loved,
and for not communicating that love before it was too late. Then he closed up
again. He crossed to the desk and picked up the book I’d been looking at.

She
smiled and said, “I’ll show you out then.”

I
followed her down the stairs to the front door. I took my coat off the rack and
started to put it on.

“Your
right hand pocket,” she said, quietly.

As
I got my hand through the sleeve I reached into the pocket and found several
folded pieces of paper.

“Thank
you, Mrs. Nesbitt.”

She
nodded shyly. We heard her husband on the stairs. She spoke in a louder voice,
“You’ll tell us if you find anything, won’t you?”

“Yes.
Thank you, both of you, for your hospitality. I know this is a difficult time.”

I
opened the door and started out.

“Mr.
Craig,” she blurted suddenly, “do you, do you think Julie is alright?”

I
turned and smiled my most reassuring smile, the one I practice in the mirror.
“I really can’t say. There is no reason to believe anything has happened to
her.”

“I
know, but you do this for a living. Your intuition, what is it?”

Nesbitt
appeared behind her. “Evelyn,” he began.

“I
really wouldn’t worry, Mrs. Nesbitt,” I said. “Between me and the police, we’ll
get to the bottom of this.” She opened her mouth to speak again, but I cut her
off, too. “Thank you, again.”

I
went out the door and down the steps. The overcast sky was a dirty yellow and
the air had the stillness of a tomb. I felt her watching me as I walked to the
car.

She’d
seen in my eyes what I really thought.

I drove to the address
I'd found on the websites, which turned out to be a shipping store with dozens
of rental mailboxes in an anteroom just inside the entrance. The ‘unit number’
on the flyer address was merely the number of the box. Even without the number,
I would have found it easily; it was stuffed to bursting.

Inside two young women were
working an overhead machine that dumped Styrofoam peanuts into shipping boxes.
A line of women, each clutching a wrapped package, watched them with varying
degrees of interest. Ah, the Holidays.

I sealed up the hard
drive and phone records in a padded overnight envelope. I filled out a form and
took my place in line. Ten minutes later, after listening to repeated
instructions to “be careful, that's fragile” I was ready to shoot myself.

“May I help you?” said
the taller of the peanut wranglers.

“Overnight, please.”

“Sure thing.” She took
the order form and began to input the information. “Going to Brooklyn, New
York?”

“That’s correct.”

“Is this a business or
residential address?”

“Business.”

“Insurance?”

“No, thank you.”

“Comes with free
insurance to one hundred dollars. Is it more valuable than that?”

“Not to me,” I said.

That threw her for a
moment. She said “Okay” and returned to inputting my information.

“Listen” I said, putting
on my best smile, “do you mind if I ask a question?”

“Sure. What about?”

I decided upon truth.
Not always a winner, but I was too tired to lie convincingly. “I’m a private
investigator from New York on a missing persons case.” I flipped open my wallet
like they do in the movies and showed her my license. “Can you tell me anything
about the owner of box forty-six?”

She smiled again, but
shook her head. “I’m afraid I’m not allowed. Besides, I wouldn’t know anything
about who owns what box.”

I put up both hands, cranked
up the wattage on my smile. “Oh, my goodness, I’m not asking you to betray a
confidence. I’m just wondering if it is unusual for a box to get that full.
It’s probably mailings about environmental causes, and letters from all over
the place.”

She frowned, trying to
decide what I was up to. “How does that…?”

I took the picture of
Julie from my coat pocket. “This girl worked with the organization that rents
that box. She has been missing now for several weeks.”

She took the picture
from me and looked at it intently.

“I am just trying to
determine if she was the one who used the box.”

She shook her head. “I
don’t recognize her.”

“Is it possible someone
else could help us?”

“No one's here more than
me,” she said, handing the photo back.

“Is that all the mail
for this box? Or is it stacking up back there?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know.”
She finished typing and punched a button. A small machine to the left of the
computer spit out a label. She tore it off and started to put it on my
envelope. “Wait, you said environmental stuff? You mean like Earth something
fund, or whatever? That sort of thing?”

“Exactly”

She glanced over her
shoulder at her companion, who was ringing up a sale. She turned back to me and
said, “We’ve got a ton of it back there. It won’t fit in the box anymore.”

“Can you tell me what
the person looks like that picked up the mail?”

“It’s really hard for me
to say. I never actually see who opens what box, but I think it was this one
guy.”

“What guy?”

“Tall, outrageous blonde
hair. Built like a swimmer.”

“Cute, huh?”

She blushed. “Yes. He
had a great smile.”

“And beautiful blue
eyes?”

She laughed. “Actually,
they were brown.”

“Why do you think it was
him?”

“I don’t know. The way
he was dressed. Frayed jeans, work boots, flannel shirt. That’s kind of how you
expect them to look.”

“Tree huggers?”

The smile was abruptly
gone. “I guess you could call them that.” She straightened up, and her voice
had a little chill, now.

“Well, thank you so much
for your time,” I said. “You’ve helped a lot.”

She softened a little.
“Really? I hope she’s okay.”

“I’m sure she is.”

As I drove back to the
hotel, I had the nagging feeling I'd seen the Nissan Altima two cars behind me
more than once that day. There were two people in it. I couldn't make out
anything except both were male, clean cut, and wearing sunglasses. To see if
they were following me, I made two quick turns. They stayed with me through the
first turn, but continued straight when I made the second. Doubling back
quickly, I found no sign of the car. I decided it was probably nothing.

Back at my hotel I went
over the past few months of Ken's bank and credit card statements one more
time. There was nothing surprising, mainly cheap restaurants, gas stations, and
the school bookstore. Some Internet purchases from Amazon and Best Buy,
probably computer equipment or other electronics.

Then something caught my
eye, a purchase from the Gaia Bookstore in Bedford, Vermont for fifty-three
dollars. The books in Julie Nesbitt's room were published by Nature First Press
in Bedford. I used my phone to Google Nature First. The mailing address on the
website’s contact page was a PO Box in Bedford. I found the Gaia Bookstore
website, and it used the same address.

On the “About Gaia” link
page there was a brief blurb about the owner and founder, Jack Epstein. A photo
of a man in his late fifties or early sixties, wearing a pair of Ben Franklin
eyeglasses accompanied the bio. Although balding on top, he wore his remaining
hair long, tied back in a salt and pepper ponytail. I often wonder if people
who do that own a mirror. A frayed, open-neck shirt and dark vest completed the
picture of an aging hippie. To say his expression was one of smug superiority
was putting it mildly.

I wanted more screen
real estate so I went back to the business center. A Wikipedia article profiled
Epstein as a Vietnam era anti-war protestor now waging a lonely fight to save
the planet. The article highlighted the environmentally friendly publishing
business he'd built for himself in the idyllic wilds of Vermont.

Figuring he’d
written the Wikipedia entry himself, I searched more mainstream magazines and
newspapers. The articles I found struck a slightly different tone, but with
only vague references to radical activities, except for a Rolling Stone article
that openly linked him to the ELF, stating he was more or less their designated
press agent, tying him in vague terms to sabotage and a fire at Vail’s Blue Sky
Basin expansion project in 1998. A 2003 story in the San Diego paper touched
briefly on a possible connection between Epstein’s articles in
Earth First!
Journal
and the subsequent firebombing in that town of over two hundred
condominium units. The
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
noted that similar
rants preceded the Street of Dreams fire in Echo Lake that destroyed four newly
built mansions in 2007. The reporter quoted an unidentified FBI agent as saying
that it was now routine to step up security at facilities mentioned by Epstein
on his website.

That would be quite a
list. Epstein's weekly rants against the construction or expansion of power
stations, resorts, amusement parks, and housing developments went back over
fifteen years. Oddly, links to the past eight months of articles were dead,
linking only to an empty page. Maybe he was on vacation or taking the cure in
Switzerland. But, why were the old links still good, while the current ones
were inactive? Was some sort of ‘direct action’ about to take place? Maybe
Epstein wanted to put some distance between himself and the act.

He had a particular hard
on for ski resorts in the Rockies and Sierras. Boyd had mentioned his place in
Colorado was at a resort called Spanish Mountain. I searched for it, getting
mostly benign PR stories and offers for condo rentals. It was located in the
town of Purchas, and there were two brief wire service pieces about a fire in
October at a nearby resort called The Retreat at Diablo Canyon. That would have
been about the time Ken disappeared, but according to the stories this fire was
an accident, started by a welder’s torch and quickly extinguished.

The withdrawals of cash,
the gold digging girlfriend, the mysterious environmental crusader; it all
pointed towards Ken being involved with the darker side of the environmental
movement. That might explain his dropping off the grid. Perhaps Jack Epstein
could enlighten me, but before that, I needed to know more about him than I
could learn from the Internet.

I got on the phone and
changed my return flight to the following morning. Then I placed a call to the
one person I knew who could help me with inside information on Epstein. That
is, if she was still talking to me.

At Sea-Tac the next
morning, I was boarding the flight back to Newark when I heard my name
announced over the public address. I asked the gate attendant to direct me to
the legendary white courtesy telephone. The nearest open one turned out to be
one gate over.

I picked up the
receiver, which buzzed briefly.

“May I help you?”

“Nick Craig. You paged
me?”

“Yes, Mr. Craig, we have
an urgent call for you. Please hold.”

That surprised me. I
hadn't told anyone I was taking this plane. It was probably Raviv. He was a
devious bastard, and probably keeping track of me. Maybe they had something
already from the hard drive, but it was not yet 11:00 AM in Brooklyn. Even if
the overnight package had been delivered, would they have had time to examine
it?

Time dragged and still
no one came on the line. I checked my watch. Nearly five minutes had passed and
I didn't want to miss that plane. Then the line clicked dead. Whatever it was
couldn’t have been that urgent. I replaced the receiver and went back to my
gate, where the herd had thinned. When I got to my seat there was barely enough
overhead space for my carry on. I ordered a Bloody Mary and settled in.

Thanks to a brisk
tailwind and the bullshit time they build into the schedule, the plane landed
only thirty minutes late, not bad for that time of the year. I took the Air
Train to the airport station and caught the next train to Newark, where I had
arranged to meet an old friend for dinner. Karen Shultz was an FBI agent whose
specialty was domestic terrorism. I was hoping she could fill me in on Mr.
Epstein, but she had sounded distant and noncommittal on the phone.

When the doors opened at
Newark Penn Station, I swam like a salmon through the commuters flowing onto
the already crowded train. The struggle continued down the steps to the street.
I was going the wrong direction for that time of day.

I went out the rear door
of the station into the Ironbound District, which is one of Newark’s few bright
spots, vibrant and busy. Named after the train tracks that once encircled the
neighborhood, it has been a traditional jumping off place for immigrants since
the nineteenth century, starting with Germans and Poles. Once each wave of newcomers
made their money and educated their children, they moved on to greener pastures
and the next demographic rolled in to start the process again. Today’s
Ironbound has a very Latin flavor, with Portuguese speakers dominating, but the
Spanish influence remains strong, particularly where cuisine is concerned. I
was meeting Karen at one of my favorite restaurants, Fornos of Spain.

The sun was already
down, but white Christmas lights on the lamp posts and the tree in Peter
Francisco Park lent a cheery, festive air. I crossed over Ferry Street and used
the bar entrance, leaving my carry on at the coat check.

My dining companion was
in the largest of the ground floor dining rooms, where the tables were already
filling with the usual mix of locals, politicians, and commuters. Karen knew I
liked the gunfighter seat, facing the entrance, and had taken it anyway,
another sign she was angry with me. We had not seen each other in many years,
and there were new lines in her pleasant, big-featured face. I realized she must
be well into her forties now. She had on a dark, well-tailored business suit
over an open neck blouse. Her only jewelry was a gold cross on a necklace and a
thin gold wedding band. She looked as harmless as your high school volleyball
instructor, but I knew she could shoot the head off a match at fifteen yards
with the Sig Sauer tucked behind her right hip. She was tough, smart and a good
cop. There was not much left to say after that.

“Thanks for coming,” I
said.

She didn't get up, so I
bent down and pecked her on the cheek.

“You're lucky it was
here. I can’t resist this place,” she said, coldly, as I took my seat.

“Karen, I am very happy
to see you. Why the attitude?”

“That's nervy. We don't
hear from you for years, and suddenly you call, out of the blue and needing a
favor?”

Thankfully, at that
moment, the waiter came by for a drink order. I looked at Karen.

“Pitcher of sangria?”

“To start.”

“That's my girl.” I said
to the waiter, “We'll have a pitcher of the red.”

Another waiter appeared with
a loaf of freshly baked bread, some butter, and a cruet of olive oil. Behind
him was another server, bearing garlic bread.

“I hope you don't mind,”
I said, tearing off a piece of bread. “I'm starved.”

“They don't feed you in
first class anymore?”

“Didn't eat it. I knew I
was coming here.” I chewed the piece of bread.

“We heard you were back
in New York a few months ago,” she said, still cool. “It was nice to know you
were still alive.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't
think. I mean, how do you suddenly go back into your friends’ lives? Besides,
I'm not sure I'm really ready.”

“Most people got over
it, Nick. They got on with living.”

“I'm working on that.”

She thawed a little. “It
is good to see you, though. You look well.”

“I spent a lot of time
in the sun, got a lot of exercise. You'd be surprised how relaxing life is off
the grid.”

“I can only imagine.”
She cocked her head, looking at me appraisingly. “The gray temples are a
distinguished touch.”

“Gee,” I said, with mock
indignation, “have you put on weight?”

She laughed. Our lead
waiter returned, stirring a plastic pitcher of iced sangria with a wooden
spoon. He poured us each a glass and set the pitcher down on the table.

“Thank you,” I said to
him. “I know what I’m having. Karen?”

“Oh, hell, just get me
the same thing I had last time we were here, if they still have it.”

To the waiter I said,
“We’ll have two Mariscada Fornos, please.”

He collected the menus
and left. I looked at Karen. She was toying with her glass, looking into it.

“What's going on over
there?”

“There were rumors about
you,” she said.

“What sort of rumors?”

“Nothing substantial.
When you suddenly resigned from Customs and disappeared, some people did some
checking.”

“That's not exactly
kosher.”

She smiled
half-heartedly. “So we found out. One agent ended up in Omaha.”

“Ah, the dark side of
the moon.”

“There were some
whispers, talk of a special unit being formed, but after the push back, no one
speculated anymore. We assumed you went undercover.”

“You know what happens
when you assume, Karen.”

She looked at me
intently. “Where have you been, Nick?”

I sipped my drink. “If I
told you, you wouldn't believe me.”

“Try me.”

“Well, for the past few
years, I've been caddying.”

That stopped her. She looked
as if she had swallowed something funny. “Say what?”

“Caddying. You know,
carrying golf bags for wealthy people and helping them improve their game.”

“How? You’re a lousy
golfer.”

“Why does everyone enjoy
telling me that?”

“Sorry. Okay, where?”

“Florida in the winter,
and up here in the spring and summer, mostly at Trump out in Bedminster.”

“And you survived at
that?”

“Hey, you'd be surprised
what some people will pay for a good caddy. I can read a green like nobody's
business. I was in demand, baby.”

She sat back, shaking
her head in amazement. “Is that how you met Raviv Peled?”

“I've caddied for him,”
I said, hoping she didn’t notice I hadn't exactly answered her question.

“And now you are a PI?”

“Kind of. Raviv requires
all his operatives to have the license. Something to do with bonding and
liability.” I sipped a little sangria. “Lower than caddy, you think?”

She laughed. “You should
come back, Nick.”

“The government?”

“Yes.”

“No way. Too much
politics, not enough crime fighting.” I was ready to change the subject.
“What's going on with you? You’ve got that ‘I’m off to somewhere’ look.”

She gave me a rueful
glance. “Am I that easy to read?”

“I used to get that look
myself sometimes.”

“I know.” She leaned in
and lowered her voice a little. “Detached duty overseas. Can't say where.”

“Doing what?”

“Interrogator. Seems the
jihadist bad guys are a little intimidated by women that don’t wear burkas or
take any shit. Keeps them off balance.”

“And ya smell nice, too.
How’s Tom feel about you trespassing on his turf?” Tom was her husband, also a
special agent, but focused on external threats.

“He’s mainly concerned
about getting reacquainted with his right hand while I am away.” She shook her
head at the thought of the male animal and his needs. “The War on Terror
inconveniences us all.” Abruptly, her face changed. “Oh God, Nick. I’m sorry, I
wasn’t thinking.”

I smiled, reaching
across the table to pat her hand.

“Come on, Karen. I know
what you meant.”

“It’s just that we were
all so worried, Nick, the way you just disappeared. All those years, no one
knew whether you were dead or alive.”

“I was working some
stuff out.”

She shook her head,
looked down at her glass. “I miss her so much. I can only imagine how it is for
you.”

“Enough,” I said, as gently
as I could. I took a big swig of sangria. A waiter appeared and refilled my
glass. I grinned at Karen. “See why I like this place?”

Karen took the hint.
“It'll do,” she said, raising her glass.

We both drank, I think,
to absent friends. Then our waiter descended upon us, presenting us with a
large salad of greens and red onions, dressed with oil and vinegar and a
sprinkling of coarse sea salt. Karen and I helped ourselves to generous
portions.

“So why the interest in
Epstein?” she said.

“It's this missing
persons case I'm working on.”

While we finished our
salads, I brought her up to date on everything, and my theory about Ken Boyd's
possible involvement with eco-terrorism. By the time I'd finished, the waiters
were clearing the salad plates and using a small metal blade to rake up the
bread crumbs I'd managed to scatter everywhere.

“Seems pretty thin,” she
said, when I was done.

“Anorexic, but it's all
I've got. Besides, you could have told me it was thin over the phone.”

She nodded, and took a
drink. Again, a waiter magically appeared and refilled it from the pitcher,
which was close to empty now.

“Better get another,”
she told him.

As he moved off, more
servers appeared bearing two metal tureens of Mariscada, a platter of seasoned
yellow rice, and a plate of homemade potato chips. I gallantly waited for Karen
to spoon some rice onto her plate. Then it was my turn. I took two large
spoonfuls and ladled a helping of the seafood stew over them. For the next few
minutes, nothing was said as we dug into our meal.

Finally, Karen paused to
refill her glass from the new pitcher. “Let's say, just two friends talking
here, nothing official, but those reporters were on the right track, although
it might be better to describe Epstein as a dispatcher or, I don't know, air
traffic controller, rather than a mastermind.”

“How so?”

“He makes connections,
passing on one group or individual to another, and always through additional
cut outs. The two never meet; never even have to know who the other person is.
Hell, I'm not even sure Epstein knows many of the people he works with. He
earned his stripes in the anti-war movement back in the 60's and 70's, working
with the SDS and Panthers. He saw the mistakes those groups made and corrected
them.” She took a drink. “The KGB could learn from the way this network is
organized, if you can even call it that. They aren't structured in the way
we’re used to with spy networks or terrorist groups. Sometimes it’s almost dumb
luck that one of these 'direct action' plots gets off the ground.”

“How does it work when
it does work?”

“Epstein identifies a
target, or has it identified for him by some interested party. He writes
articles, ginning up the faithful. We suspect there may be actual instructions
in some of the online articles. In the old days it was probably a basic code,
but now we suspect he’s gotten more sophisticated, hiding information in JPEG
pixels, for example, but we haven't been able to prove it. Anyway, somehow a
loose collection of die hards comes together, generates a plan and, poof, an
SUV dealership goes up in flames or lab animals get set loose.”

“They’ve got to be based
somewhere. You don’t just drive up to a target in the Scooby van.”

“There’s often a local,
someone living in the target area, not involved in the act, but sympathetic,
who provides reconnaissance, photos, videos, sometimes a safe house. We assume
Epstein mines his list of subscribers and someone watches them for a while,
then approaches with an offer to contribute to the cause.”

“The enabler.” I put my fork
down. “Someone like this Roger character. What do you know about him?”

“That name hasn't come
up, but your description fits someone we've heard about.” She smiled. “He uses
different names each time. We call him the Lone Ranger, because he just seems to
pop up out of nowhere, organize a raid or protest, and then disappear. When
things fall apart, and we manage to catch some people, he's never one of them.”

“Why do you think it's
him?”

“Your description.
Blonde, good-looking kid, brown eyes.” She pointed at her neck. “The scar.”

“So agitators like
Roger, organize the true believers after Epstein works them up into a frenzy.
They find foot soldiers to do the dirty work and useful idiots like Ken to
finance the operation, but they manage to keep their own hands clean.”