Evidence (20 page)

“What
the hell was this girl into?”

“She
knew Backer years ago. If he was into bad stuff, she’d be a good choice to
gather info.”

“Problem
child becomes an undercover Fed?”

“Or
her problems got her into a situation where she needed to trade favors. I’d
look into major eco-vandalism in the Pacific Northwest during Backer’s years on
the road.”

“She’s
finking on Backer and screwing him? Gives a whole new meaning to undercover.”

“That
part could still be chemistry,” I said. “Good technique on her part, too, given
Backer’s proclivities.”

“Guy’s
into blowing stuff up then becomes an architect and learns to build stuff.
Don’t tell me Freud didn’t have a word for that.”

Moe Reed stuck his head in. “Someone to see you, Loo.”

“Better
be important.”

“FBI
important?”

“Depends
what they have to say,” said Milo. But he was up in a flash.

A
short, solidly built, dark-haired woman arrived moments later. “Lieutenant?
Gayle Lindstrom. I was referred by a mutual friend.”

Gray
pantsuit, black flats, molasses accent with an edge. Maybe northern Kentucky or
southern Missouri. Fair skin and blue eyes were clear, her chin was prominent
and square.

“Nice
to meet you, Special Agent Lindstrom.”

Lindstrom
grinned. “My mom always told me I was special. Reality’s a little different.”
Her bag was as large as Ricki Flatt’s. Black leather, authoritative straps and
buckles.

“Mutual
friend,” said Milo. “Now who might that be?”

“Yesterday,
he was Hal. Today?” She shrugged.

“You
guys love that, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Top-secret
clandestine hooh-hah.”

“Only
when it gets the job done.” She studied me. “We need to talk in private,
Lieutenant.”

“This
is Dr. Delaware, our psychological consultant.”

“You
have your own profiler now?”

“Better,”
said Milo. “We’ve got someone who knows what he’s doing.”

“Looks
like I caught you on a bad day,” said Lindstrom.

“Not
hard to do.”

She
offered me a cool, firm palm. “Nice to meet you, Doctor. No offense but I need
to speak to Lieutenant Sturgis in private.”

Milo
said, “That’s not how it’s gonna be.”

A
long, whispered phone call later, and I was authorized.

Gayle
Lindstrom peered into Milo’s office. “Kind of cozy for three.”

Milo said, “I’ll find us space.”

“I
like Indian food, Lieutenant.”

He
glared at her.

Lindstrom
said, “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

“Not
hungry.” He marched up the corridor.

Lindstrom
said, “Oh, well,” and followed.

Back
to the same interview room. I wondered if it ever got used for suspects.

Gayle
Lindstrom sniffed the air.

Milo
said, “This is as fresh as it’s gonna get. I’m busy. Talk.”

Lindstrom
said, “Enough icebreaking, guys. Don’t coddle me ’cause I’m a girl.”

Coaxing
a smile out of Milo. He hid it with the back of his hand. Yawned.

“Okay,
okay,” she said. “What do you know about eco-terrorism?”

Milo
said, “Uh-uh, this isn’t going to be some theoretical discussion. You want what
we know, you better fill in the blanks. Desmond Backer’s lost decade smells
real bad. Doreen Fredd was a naughty girl who ended up as either a confederate
or your informant. Go.”

Lindstrom
nudged her bag with one foot. “I’m here because the Bureau figured it was only
a matter of time before you figured out some of what’s going on.”

“Some?
Don’t swell my head.”

“If
you knew all of it you wouldn’t be trying to reach Hal. Who, by the way, can’t
help you. He’s Homeland Security, so he’s concentrating on people with dark
skin and funny names. So is the Bureau, for that matter, which is part of the
problem. Before 9/11, we were geared up to spend serious time and money on
locally grown lunatics who, in my humble opinion, pose just as serious a danger
to public safety as some guy named Ahmed.”

“Everything
stopped to look for Ahmed.”

“We’re
just like you, Lieutenant. Chronically underfunded with our hands out to
politicians who have the attention span of gnats on
crack.
The hot topic of the moment gets the appropriation and everything else gets
shoved to the bottom shelf. Eco-terrorists have committed hundreds of violent
acts, with plenty of fatalities. We’re talking nasties who believe humanity’s a
plague and have no problem spiking trees to mutilate loggers. Fanatics who burn
down other people’s houses because they don’t approve of the square footage.
Nothing’s happened on a grand scale yet, and they’ve got the secret sympathy of
some mainstream environmental groups who condemn violence but continue to wink
and nod. But my judgment is, it’s only a matter of time before the country
regrets not dealing with the problem.”

“Desmond
Backer was a serious eco-terrorist?”

Lindstrom
toed her bag again. “It’s a delicate situation. Not for me personally, We’re
talking events that precede my tenure with the Bureau.”

She
unclasped the bag, pulled out lip balm, twisted her mouth into a disapproving
little bud and lubricated. Basic delay tactic. I’d learned a whole bunch of
them, working as a psychologist.

Milo
said, “Lost my script, what’s my next line?”

“The
overview I’m about to give you, Lieutenant, is based on summaries of files
transferred to me by predecessors who’ve been transferred.”

“They
get transferred to Ahmed. But you’re dealing with homegrown naughties no one
cares about.”

Gayle
Lindstrom’s half smile would have intrigued da Vinci.

Milo
said, “You don’t play well with others, so you’re on timeout.”

She
laughed. “Let’s just say I’ve been assigned to look into years of eco-crimes and
write reports unlikely to be read. My instructions are to concentrate on the
Pacific Northwest, because that’s where fuzzies and trees tend to inspire the
most passion. That led me to your homicide victims. Desmond Backer and Doreen
Fredd met in Seattle. He grew up there, and she’d been sent to a group home for
problem girls. She utilized legitimate passes from the home as well as illicit
exits to associate with Backer and his friends.”

“Climbing out the window,” said Milo.

“Or
just sneaking out the back door, the place wasn’t exactly super-max lockdown.
Like many teenagers, Fredd and Backer and their friends appear to have filled
some of their free time with various vegetative hallucinogens, alternative
music, video games. They also spent time engaged in apparently wholesome
activities such as hiking, camping, environmental cleanups, volunteer wildlife
rescue. Unfortunately, some of that may have been a cover for arson and other
acts of vandalism.”

“Were
they ever arrested?”

“Insufficient
evidence,” said Lindstrom. “But their proximity to several trashed homesites is
revealing.”

“What
exactly do you have on them?”

“What
the local
police
had on them was word-of-mouth. Then, a dead boy.”

“They
killed someone?”

“Not
directly, but they have moral culpability.” Out came his pad. “Name of the
victim?”

“Vincent
Edward Burghout, known as Van. Seventeen when he burned to death inside an
unfinished mansion in Bellevue, Washington. By now, you’ve probably heard of
Bellevue because it’s where high-tech zillionaires are building castles. Back
then, that had just started and it was basically a nice, low-crime suburb of
Seattle. One of the first techie-monarchs to see the potential of lakeside
living bought ten acres and started building a twenty-thousand-square-foot monstrosity.
It had gotten as far as the framing the night Van Burghout sneaked in and set
several fires. He destroyed a good part of it but also immolated himself. We—my
predecessors—found his technique especially interesting. Have you ever heard of
vegan Jell-O?”

“Sounds
disgustingly healthy.”

“Not
if you’re made of wood,” said Lindstrom. “Or flesh and bones. It’s basically
homemade napalm—soap and petroleum triggered by a delayed ignition device. Any
idiot can get the recipe off the Internet or in one of those treasonous
loony-tracts put out by the
paranoid press.
Fortunately, few idiots actually go as far as to whip the stuff up, but over
the years we have had incidents and the mortality rate is high, often to the
perpetrators. You’re talking a highly incendiary concoction and if your timer’s
off, you’re toast. Or in Van Burgh-out’s case, crumbs. There was nothing left
of the kid, they I.D.’d him because he’d gotten teeth knocked out playing
basketball and part of an upper bridge survived the blast.”

She
fooled with the tube of lip balm. “Mr. High-Tech collected insurance, donated
the land to the city for a park, moved to Oregon, and built an even bigger
monstrosity on a thousand acres.”

“Everyone
walks away happy,” said Milo. “Except Van’s parents.”

“Who
pointed fingers at Van’s friends. Maybe because they couldn’t accept their son
being a solo pyromaniac. But that doesn’t make them wrong.”

I
said, “Van was the victim of bad influences?”

“Exactly,
but like I said, there was logic to that. Van’s grades were barely passing and
the local law got a clear picture of him as impressionable. But they got
nowhere and called the Bureau in. That’s how the Bureau came to acquaint itself
with Desmond Backer and Doreen Fredd and their pals.”

“How
many pals?”

“The
Burghouts gave the locals four names in addition to Van: Backer, Fredd, a boy
named Dwayne Parris, a girl named Kathy Vanderveldt. We tried to talk to them,
as well as to their teachers and friends.”

“Tried?”

“These
were middle-class kids with oodles of parental and community support, so we got
no direct access, everything was filtered through lawyers. We’re talking
upstanding folk, well respected in their community, claiming their kids were
angels.”

I
said, “Doreen’s parents stepped forward?”

“No,
she was the exception. Her parents were drunks, living out of state, seemed
barely in touch with what Doreen had been doing. Also, Doreen was gone by the
time we began investigating.”

“Yet another rabbit,” said Milo.

Lindstrom
said, “Sure, we got suspicious about the timing, but splitting was her habitual
pattern and everyone we talked to said they couldn’t imagine Doreen involved in
anything violent. Just the opposite, she was passive, gentle, into poetry, blue
skies, green trees, little cutie-pie mammals. The folks at Hope Lodge—the
home—had nothing bad to say about her, either. Poor Doreen was a victim of
family dysfunction, not a wild girl.”

I
said, “Did they change their minds when they found out she’d been sneaking out
to meet up with the others?”

“Not
according to what I’ve read, Doctor. My predecessor described the people
running the place as ‘idealists.’ Which is Bureau code for stupid, naïve
do-gooder. We were able to get a warrant for Doreen’s room because a lot of
Hope Lodge’s funding came through government grants. Unfortunately, nothing
funny showed up there. And we brought in dogs, the works.”

Milo
said, “No warrants for the others?”

“Not
even close. We went judge-shopping but the one we thought might work with us
said he wouldn’t authorize a ‘witch hunt.’ We put out a nationwide alert for
Doreen, placed the other kids under surveillance for a couple of months. It
came to nothing, there were no more fires in Bellevue, or anywhere else in the
Greater Seattle area. We moved on.”

“But
at some point you found Doreen and managed to turn her.”

Lindstrom
pinched her upper lip. Balanced the lip balm tube between two index fingers.
“Is this the point where I say, ‘Oh, Sherlock!’ and go all wide-eyed?”

Milo
said, “Why else would you be here, Gayle?”

Lindstrom
removed her gray suit jacket. Underneath was a red tank top. Square shoulders,
thick but firm arms. “It’s kind of dry in here, don’t you think? Must be your
A.C. Could I trouble you for some coffee?”

Detective-room
brew has the refreshing tang of roofing tar and a meth-like ability to scrape
the nerves raw.

Special
Agent Gayle Lindstrom downed half a cup without complaint, rubbed her eyes,
stretched and yawned and stretched again. Milo goes through a similar act when
he’s faking casual. Lindstrom needed more practice.

Taking
another sip, she finally gave the expected grimace, set the cup aside.

“Yes,
Doreen finally surfaced. I had nothing to do with it but it still makes me
cringe.” Reaching for the cup, she deliberated another swallow, decided against
it. “Nothing the Bureau did pulled her in. Her own stupidity did.”