Deviations (12 page)

“How do you mean?”

“Some of the things he said didn’t add up. Like
when we asked him if he’d ever been to Lake Hollow—you know, the Montana
Patriot Front—“

“I’m familiar with them.”

“So we asked him if he’d ever been there, and he
says he’s seen it on the Internet, which doesn’t square with a bunch of
articles he’s published, which put him out there doing research.”

“You know,” Nick said, “since he writes about
these groups, it’s quite possible he has been there, doing research. These
groups are pretty open to researchers. They believe that all publicity is good
publicity. You know, if people just understand what they’re up to, everyone
will love them and sign up.”

“So we’re asking him what he knows about the
Montana Patriot Front, and he’s telling us what a sleazeball this Christopher
Barry is, how he’s a kinda penny-ante fraud guy, no record of violence. Then he
drops this comment about how he thinks the group might be violent. We were
wondering whether that meant he knew something about them or just wanted us to
scratch our heads for a while.”

“Hmm, that’s odd,” Nick said. “I’ve done quite a
bit of research on Christopher Barry and the MPF, and I’ve never seen anybody tie
them to any violence. You two thinking they might be involved in the Weston
case?”

“We’re not thinking anything, Nick,” I said. “But
it’s possible. Them being the local Nazi group. At this point, we’re just
trying to figure out what kind of game Willson Fredericks is playing.”

“Anything else he said that’s bothering you?”

“We did some research, turned up some things we
don’t know quite what to do with.”

“Such as?”

“I looked at a bunch of videos from the Montana
Patriot Front channel on YouTube. Obviously, I don’t know as much about these
groups as you do, so maybe I’m way off, but it seems to me there’s some real
knuckle-draggers out there.”

“What specifically did you see on those videos?”

“Like I said, it may be nothing, but one of the
speeches said some of their guys have carried out operations, and a lot of talk
about how we have to go out and kill blacks and Jews and Muslims and Mexicans.”

“I know what you’re referring to, Karen,” Nick
said, nodding his head. “That stuff is repulsive. But there’s a kind of
adolescent macho side to these groups. They live off of donations from mainstream
citizens who think the country’s gone to hell. The men, in particular, like to
grunt and curse and act like they’re going to step in because the government
isn’t taking care of business. But by and large, it’s just talk. Another thing:
these patriot groups get into piss fights with each other to see who’s more
aggressive. Chances are, you see these groups putting videos up on the Web,
they’re not doing anything but strutting around. What about you, Ryan, you see
anything you want to talk about?”

“I was telling Karen, in his articles I saw this
name popping up: Benjamin Connors?”

“That’s Connors with a C?” Nick shook his head.
“Doesn’t ring a bell.” He jotted down the name on a legal pad.

“This Benjamin Connors provides a lot of
information to Fredericks about the Montana patriots, but I can’t identify him.
No job, no location, no publications. It’s like Fredericks made him up in order
to get some quotes to put in his articles.”

Nick said, “I don’t know anything about Fredericks,
but it’s possible he’s just cutting corners with his scholarship.” He paused, a
frown on his face. “What do you want to do?”

I said, “One more thing we already did. We
interviewed Cynthia Brandt, the university attorney.”

Nick was easing back into his chair. “Why’d you go
at her?”

“Since our interview with Willson Fredericks had
raised a number of questions about whether he was being candid with us, and
since we’d seen these other things about the Montana Patriot Front that had us
thinking they might be involved, we thought it might be worthwhile to talk with
Cynthia Brandt to see if she would authorize us to look at his email.”

“What did she say?”

“She treated us like we were kinda stupid. She
didn’t seem curious about what case we were working on, which was unusual. As
soon as she heard we were following up some leads related to Fredericks and the
Montana Patriot Front, she tells us she can explain that: see, he writes about
them, so no problem. Like we hadn’t figured out that he’s a professor so maybe
he writes stuff, like we hadn’t done any research, hadn’t interviewed
Fredericks. Nothing. Like we were just two dipshit detectives who pulled our heads
out of our asses just to make it easier to walk over to her office and waste
her precious time.”

Ryan said, “She gave us a song-and-dance about how
we couldn’t see his email because it’s his property and there wouldn’t be
anything incriminating on it anyway because he’d erase any emails.”

“That’s absurd,” Nick said. “Any attorney representing
a university knows exactly who owns what. She knows that the
university—actually, the state of Montana—has access to his work products. He
has no reasonable expectation of privacy. Plus, she knows that any service
provider, from two kids in a basement right up to Comcast, authorizes
reasonable searches by law enforcement.”

“What do you make of her saying that there
wouldn’t be anything incriminating on the server?” Ryan said.

“That’s a little bit on the ignorant side of the
bell curve, but I’ve seen smart people say that before.”

I said, “Nick, her message was clear: ‘How can I
not
help you?’ When we tell her we need to look at Fredericks’ email, she tells us
she’s gonna bring our request to some board next week, which I guess means
they’re gonna chew it over for a month or so. Bottom line: it’s not gonna
happen. Which pisses me off.”

Nick said, “You see it the same way, Ryan?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay,” Nick said. “Let me talk with the chief. If
we agree we want to see Willson Fredericks’ email, we’ll set it in play. You
want to look at anyone else on campus?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Ryan, does Fredericks
work with any other faculty here on campus when he writes about the Montana
patriots?”

“Not unless this guy Benjamin Connors is really another
faculty member.”

“We might want to go at Willson Fredericks one
more time,” I said, “to see if he’ll tell us what’s going on there. But we’ll
wait to hear from you about the emails.”

“Yeah,” Nick said, standing up. “If it was just up
to me, I’d go for the court order in a heartbeat. But I’m here more as a
consultant. I’m not here to take over your case. Besides, it’s smarter if we
don’t telegraph to these guys that the feds are involved.”

“Because federal penalties are higher?”

“That’s right. We can get better intel if we don’t
stir things up. They get frightened, they pull back. But it’s also a matter of
inter-agency cooperation. If the feds ride into town and start throwing our
weight around, it pisses you off, and next time you won’t be so willing to call
us. That’s a lose-lose. We want to work through your chief. He’s an experienced
cop. He knows a big part of his job is community outreach. In a small city like
this, where everyone is connected with everyone else, he has to be careful
about how the department is perceived. When the chief goes up before the City
Council or whatever it is each year with a budget request, he doesn’t want it
to be payback time.”

“You think we’d get the authorization, I mean, if
the chief is on board?”

“That’s my guess. The chief might want to talk
with the university president first. Maybe the guy doesn’t want a court order
at all. Or he might be fine with a limited court order to look at only this one
professor’s emails, which I think would be easy to get. We take a quick look at
Fredericks’ email, the president knows whether he’s a serious scholar or a
time-bomb that could blow up at any moment. There’s no down side for the university:
the professor is clean, nobody even knows about the search. He’s dirty, the
university takes credit for discovering a domestic terrorist on its payroll.
You see what I’m saying?”

“Got it,” I said. It was good to be working with
this guy. He can think through the politics of this stuff at a much higher
level than I can.

Chapter 11

We spent the rest of the
day at headquarters. We never did hear from Cynthia Brandt, the university
attorney, but I didn’t really expect to. Corelli and the chief were working out
the email access. The lawyer had probably already forgotten me and Ryan.

I left for home at five, spent an hour making
dinner. I can’t cook and never took any interest in it. But I’m trying to make
a point of actually cooking, rather than, say, nuking a frozen dinner. Or drinking.
I need to force myself to be more aware of what I’m doing, and cooking seems to
be as good a way as any. So I’d bought some real food: a potato, some
asparagus, and a couple of lamb chops. Good thing about cooking is it’s kind of
complicated. You have to prepare the food: wash the vegetables, trim the fat
off the meat, that kind of thing. And, apparently, there are also seasonings or
sauces or things you can prepare and put on the food before you cook it so you
don’t have to shovel on the salt and pepper afterwards to keep it from tasting
like shoe. You have to use separate pots and pans, figure out how long to cook
each thing, and calculate when to start them. All of this makes it less
convenient to lie on the couch, the bottle of JD on the coffee table, while you
balance the glass on your stomach, watching the contours of the ice shift
around in the glass and pondering how shitty your life has become. And if you
don’t get buzzed, you’re much less likely to pass out by nine or head over to
Callahan’s to get nailed by a stranger. Yes, I’m getting into cooking.

* * * *

“Talk to me after you read
these. –Nick” was the note on top of the paper-clipped pages in the two
identical manila envelopes that Ryan and I found on our desks the next morning.

The first page was a printout, in old-style
computer font, of the traffic on Willson Fredericks’ account at Central Montana
State University for the last two months. There were 19 messages in his New
Mail folder, 1,429 in Trash, and 235 in Sent.

Most of the emails looked routine: questions from
students about homework assignments, requests to set up appointments to meet
with him, invitations to propose papers for professional conferences, corrections
to some article of his that was going to be published later that year.

But someone had used a yellow highlighter on about
a dozen emails from a handful of patriot groups, some of which I recognized.
There were newsletters, announcements of rallies, and press releases for
members appearing on local talk radio or new YouTube videos.

“Okay, these emails highlighted in yellow,” I said
to Ryan, “I guess they make sense.”

“You mean that these groups are spamming
Fredericks because he’s on their mailing list?”

“Yeah. He writes about them. This is his research.
But what’s with these highlighted in red?”

“The red ones don’t have any subject lines,” Ryan
said. “And they’re all to or from the same account: [email protected].”

“They’re printed out in the stack,” I said. We
started to read through the thin set of emails between Willson Fredericks and
BC98956. The first one was this:

To: Willson Fredericks

From:

Subject:

The
party will proceed as scheduled. No gatecrashers are anticipated. Would
appreciate three helpers from your neighborhood to assist with preparations and
cleanup.

The second one was sent to Fredericks nine days
later. This one, too, had no subject line, no greeting, and no name of the
sender:

Many thanks for your assistance with
preparations. Party was a big success, covered in local paper and TV.

The third one was this:

To:

From: Willson Fredericks

Subject:

Glad
to help. I’ve got at least six people who are ready and eager to do additional
work, including one team that specializes in cleaning up spills after
particularly lively parties.

I did
read the article online about the party. Excellent job. Property damage might
have been minor, but it keeps the message out there.

I’ll
phone tonight to discuss details of the next party.

Ernst

There were a half-dozen more, all using kid code
to refer to operations that Willson Fredericks had participated in or offered
to help with. I dropped the stack of printouts onto my desk and looked up at
Ryan. He had already finished reading. He stood up, his expression grim.

“Where’re you going?” I said.

“Nick’s note says see me after you read these.”

“Sit down, Ryan. I want to talk to you first.”

“Okay.” He sat down at his desk.

“I just want to make sure I understand what’s
going on here.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do we know from the emails in red?”

“What I’m seeing,” Ryan said, “is that Fredericks
is writing back and forth with this BC person about operations.”

“Yeah, I got that. I mean, what exactly are we
seeing here? Why aren’t these guys using disposable phones?”

“There’s no completely secure medium,” Ryan said.
“With a throw-away phone the feds can’t trace your name and address, but they
can intercept the transmissions out of the air. If they were listening for
anti-terrorism and just happened to pick up some domestic chatter, they could find
you and grab you. Besides, a lot of people mistakenly think that email is
secure. Every year a bunch of corporate execs get in trouble because they write
stuff they shouldn’t write on their own company’s email system. A lot of people
think Delete deletes it.”

“What do you make of the fact there’s no subject
line on the emails?”

“That means nothing. Lot of people don’t bother
with it. Maybe these two guys think things written in the subject line get more
attention, so it’s one fewer piece of data that can be flagged.”

“And the cheesy code words? What is it,” I said,
looking down at the emails, “‘party preparations’ and shit like that?”

“Drawing on my months of experience as a
detective,” Ryan said, “I would conclude that these two are okay with using cheesy
code words.”

“Thanks, Sherlock,” I said. “And Fredericks signing
off as Ernst? Who’s that supposed to be?”

“I would guess Ernst
R
öe
hm
,” Ryan said. “Remember, the gay Nazi
leader who Hitler had killed in the Night of the Long Knives?”

“You see Fredericks identifying himself as a
Nazi?”

“No, but I could see him using Ernst as a code
name when he’s talking to one of the patriots. It’s an in-joke to him, since
he’s gay, and it’s Nazi enough for the patriots because it sounds German.”

“What do you see in the username [email protected]?”

Ryan said, “Only that he’s smart enough to use email
and sign up for a free Google account.”

“But he didn’t have to give Google accurate
identifying information, did he?”

“That’s right, he didn’t.”

“The string of numbers mean anything?”

“That almost ninety-nine thousand people who
wanted to use the initials BC got there first.”

“And one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“We might be getting a little closer to Benjamin
Connors,” I said.

“Maybe. Or he likes the cartoon strip BC. Or he
thinks he’s the precursor to Jesus Christ.”

“So there’s nothing you can get from these
printouts that can help us track him—I mean, without going through Fredericks?”

“Not that I can see. If we were online, not just
looking at the printouts, we might be able to get something from the routing
information, which would tell us who his Internet service provider is, which
would point us to him.”

“What do you mean ‘might be able to see’? You mean
he might be outside of the U.S.?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Ryan said, “but that’s
true. What I meant was there could be a number of reasons we couldn’t identify
him. He could be using a public computer, like one in a library. Or he could
have an anonymous remail program, headquartered in Europe or someplace, that
scrubs off the routing information. Or his service provider could use dynamic IP
addresses instead of static ones.”

“English?”

“A static address would identify your computer.
Only one computer in the world has that address. A dynamic address is one that’s
available at that moment. It’s like taking a number at the deli counter. One
time you’re number fourteen. Another time you’re number three. It doesn’t
identify you.”

“So with the information we have here we can’t
identify BC, right?”

“Right. And even if we were online on Fredericks’ email,
we probably wouldn’t be able to identify BC.”

“But maybe the professor would be willing to help
us in our investigation,” I said.

“I think maybe that’s what Nick Corelli would like
to discuss with us.”

* * * *

“Come in.” Nick’s face was
somber as me and Ryan maneuvered into our little chairs in his tiny office.
“You got those printouts. Good,” he said. “What do you think?”

I looked at Ryan.

He gestured for me to speak.

“Looks like Willson Fredericks is corresponding
with at least one guy we ought to be looking at for the Dolores Weston case.”

Nick raised his eyebrows as if to invite me to say
more, but I didn’t.

“Okay, there’s at least that. Ryan, what do you
see?”

“What Karen says. Fredericks is on the mailing
list for a number of these patriot organizations, and he’s got some emails back
and forth with someone named BC. They seem to be talking about operations,
although there aren’t any details for us to figure out who BC is or what those
operations are.”

Nick said, “So you two are seeing that Fredericks
is in a little deeper with these patriot groups than he let on, but we’re not
sure exactly what his role is. And we’re interested in this guy BC. You’re
thinking BC might be this guy Benjamin Connors you mentioned, Ryan? The one
whose name shows up in Willson Fredericks’ articles but you couldn’t identify?”

Ryan said, “Yes, we think that’s a real
possibility.”

“Okay,” Nick said, “how do you want to go
forward?”

“Seems to me,” I said, “we want to try to track
down BC, if possible without tipping Fredericks that’s what we’re doing. If we
can’t get to BC on our own, we lean on Fredericks. That sound right to you,
Ryan?”

“Absolutely,” he said, nodding.

“That seem okay to you?” I said to Nick.

“Sure,” he said. “How do you want to try to find
BC?”

“First thing,” I said, “do we have access to
Fredericks’ emails?”

Nick looked confused. “I printed out the ones I
highlighted in yellow and red. Aren’t they in the packet I gave you?”

Ryan said, “Yes, we got the printouts, but do we
have access to his account online? Do we have administrative rights to log on
now?”

Nick shook his head. “No, we just went in on
campus, printed the log and downloaded the ones I gave you. What else did you
need?”

“It’s probably nothing,” Ryan said, “but it might
be possible to see something from the routing information that would identify
BC’s service provider. But if he knew what he was doing, he would’ve been able
to cover his tracks.”

“So we don’t have access right now, Nick?” I said.

“I could try to arrange it, if you think it’s
promising.”

“I was kinda surprised when we got the envelopes
from you. I was expecting to hear that you and the chief had talked it over
with the university, then you’d gotten the court order, then we’d go on over
there and start looking around on their system.” I just left it like that.

After a few moments, Nick said, “I talked it over
with the chief, he phoned the university president, explained that we wanted to
get in and get out, very quiet, and be out of his hair.”

“And the president said okay to that?” I said.

“The chief promised we’d be less than an hour, and
we were able to do it during the day so we didn’t need to bring in a university
IT guy after hours, which might arouse suspicion.”

“You did the search yourself?” I said.

“No.” He smiled, then the smile disappeared
instantly. “I’m not a techie. I brought help.”

“Just so we don’t spend time tracking down stuff
you’ve already tried, did you get a chance to look for matches between crimes
and those operations mentioned in the emails between Fredericks and BC?”

“I thought about that and did a little searching,
but I didn’t come up with anything.”

“How’d you do that?” I said.

“I reached out to a couple of FBI contacts who
keep track of hate crimes. I focused on Montana and this whole region since
Fredericks mentioned that he might have some people, so it’s probably not a
thousand miles away. Problem is it can take a while for the police or the feds
to determine whether an incident is a hate crime and for it to be entered into
a government database as such.”

“So, bottom line,” I said, “you didn’t have any
luck linking up the operations mentioned in the email with reported events.

“That’s right,” Nick said. “I think you’re going
to have to lean on Fredericks a little more.”

“You said the university president okayed us
looking at his email, so you didn’t have to get a court order?”

“Yeah, why?” Nick said.

“Just trying to think through how best to go at
Fredericks.”

“I think it would be best if he didn’t know we got
his emails. That way, he won’t make a stink by going to the president—or going
to the student newspaper or anything like that. The less he actually knows
about what we’ve got, the more likely we can keep the lid on this without
alerting BC.”