Deviations (8 page)

“The mechanism of death was almost certainly massive
bleeding into the brain caused by the head trauma. It would have shut down all
her systems. Manner of death: homicide. Time of death? That one’s tricky. We
didn’t put the body on the table until around 3
pm
yesterday, but from core temperature, rigor, and livor, my
guess would be sometime between 8
pm
and midnight the previous day.”

“Okay, thank you, Dr. Breen. You’ll get the
detectives your report?”

“End of the day, the latest.”

“Good. And Robin, you’ll stay in communication
with Seagate and Miner about the DNA and any other forensics?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“All right,” the chief said. “This is priority one. Thank
you, Robin.” The chief nodded to them, then turned to me and Ryan. “Let’s do
it.”

* * * *

The Chief looked up from
his desk. “Got something already?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. “And you’re not gonna
like it.”

The chief motioned for me and Ryan to sit. “What
is it?”

Ryan said, “Karen and I looked at the photos of
Senator Weston for a while, trying to figure out what was carved on her chest.”
He slid a piece of paper across the chief’s desk.

The chief’s brow furrowed as he looked at the
photo. I’d used a pink highlighter to trace the contusions. He looked up.
“What’s 1488?”

Ryan looked down and read off a piece of paper.
“The symbol 1488, sometimes written 14 slash 88, refers to one of two different
fourteen-word slogans. One of them is, “We must secure the existence of our
people and a future for White Children.” The other is, “Because the beauty of
the White Aryan women must not perish from the earth.”

The chief’s expression was grim. “And what’s the
88?”

“It’s an eighty-eight word passage from
Mein
Kampf,
volume 1, chapter 8.”

“Just give me the main point.”

“The main point,” Ryan said, “is that everything
we do is to be judged according to whether it advances the existence and reproduction
of our race.”

The chief rubbed his chin. “Shit.” He looked at
me.

“I gotta agree.”

“I’m going to make some calls. You two might want to
start learning about the patriot movement.”

* * * *

“Know what I was thinking?”
I said, tapping my fingers on my desk. “Remember on the Arlen Hagerty case, we
talked to my friend Carol Freeman at the university?”

“Yeah, I remember, she filled us in on Dolores
Weston’s relationship with Henley Pharmaceuticals.” Ryan was already on the
university Web site. He wrote her number on a slip of paper and handed it to me
across our desks.

I punched in the number. “Hello, Carol? Karen
Seagate.” We did ten seconds of how-ya-doing’s. “You know much about neo-Nazis?
You know, the patriot movement?” I hit Speaker.

“A little bit. Why, what’s it to you? You got a
case?”

“No,” I said, smiling, “I’m thinking of getting a
master’s degree.”

She laughed. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m going back to school. That’s my story, and
I’m sticking with it.”

“All right,” she said, sighing. “I’ll figure it
out on my own. No, I’m not the one to talk to. But there’s this squirrely guy
in History, Willson Fredericks, you should be talking to. He’s been here a
hundred years, written a bunch of books on all the Nazis—and I think he’s got a
recent one just on the patriots.”

“Squirrely as in he won’t be straight with me?”

“No, not that. He’ll tell you the truth. Just
personally squirrely. But he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Great. Thanks a lot, Carol—”

“And what case did you say you were working on?”

“Talk to you later, Carol.”

Ryan was already on the professor’s site. “This
guy Willson Fredericks is kind of a big deal on militias and the patriot
movement. Three books on the movement: 1991, 1999, and 2010. A whole lot of
articles—the Holocaust, history of fascism, the militias, domestic terrorism,
the new patriot movement—everything we’re talking about. He’s got speeches at
conferences, served on the boards of history organizations.” He looked up from
his screen. “He’s our guy.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do some research, then
tomorrow we have us a chat with the professor.”

Chapter 7

At the end of the shift,
Ryan headed home. I decided to stay at my desk. Too many ways to get in trouble
at my house. There was an AA meeting close to headquarters at eight o’clock. I
decided to buy a sandwich from the machine, then kill some time till the
meeting.

I learned real fast that the patriots are all over
the Internet, and they love making videos. Thousands of homemade videos of
morons shooting their semi-automatics and grinning at the camera. Skinheads
shouting about how the tree of liberty will be watered with the blood of
patriots as they fight to defend your rights. Lots of black screens with white
letters spelling out how the president and his jackbooted thugs are THIS VERY
MINUTE planning the next terrorist attack. Many different recordings of the
Battle Hymn of the Republic. That’s definitely their favorite tune. Second
place goes to a soundtrack of boots marching, which works well with photos and
videos of Nazi storm troopers.

One thing these patriots need to work on is what
they really think about the Holocaust. There are dozens of videos with guys
ranting about how the Holocaust never happened, mostly because the so-called
gas chambers didn’t have the right kind of piping or the whole thing was just
bad hygiene, which is how Anne Frank died—it was typhus and probably her own
fault but certainly not the fault of the German troops who were doing the best
they could with all those people in such tight quarters. And anyway there’s no
evidence that there were concentration camps in the first place.

But then there are hundreds of videos showing the
warehouses bursting with the eyeglasses and the teeth with gold fillings, and
the piles of bones stacked to the ceiling, and the living skeletons in the
striped concentration-camp uniforms, their eyes bugging out of their sunken
faces, looking blankly through the barbed wire. And the long trenches
overflowing with thousands of naked corpses, their arms and legs all snapped and
sticking this way and that, dead from the gas because it was cheaper than
bullets. All of this showing, of course, what the president and the rest of the
New World Order are planning to do to the true patriots.

Yes, these guys definitely need to sit down at a
swastika-shaped table and figure out what the hell they think. The Holocaust:
Happened? Didn’t happen? Will definitely happen soon? Good thing? Not such a
good thing?

I was starting to sink deeper and deeper, starting
to think maybe a small drink or four would smooth out some of the jagged black
edges, when I stumbled on the best video. It was a photo montage of the
president wearing a full Nazi field uniform, with brown shirt, jodhpurs, and
high, shiny black leather boots. He was carrying a riding crop. These photos
weren’t like those cheesy posters that numbskulls carry at street protests,
where someone used a Sharpie to draw a Hitler moustache. No, these were
professional-quality Photoshopped images, which was appropriate because the guy
wanted the world to know that the president isn’t just
like
a Nazi, he
actually
is
a Nazi, and these photos of him prove it. Personally, he
convinced me. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense: after a long day
of taking our guns away, riding roughshod over our God-given freedoms, and
trampling our Constitutional rights, the president pours himself a drink, gets
funky, and slips into a Nazi uniform, complete with a swastika armband. I mean,
wouldn’t you?

I Googled “Montana patriots” and found the Montana
Patriot Front, which has its own channel, with 137 videos. There was a video
shot from inside what they called the “church” at Lake Hollow, really a log
cabin, crammed with a few dozen folding chairs and a plywood altar. The only
thing churchy about the place was a plastic Jesus on the cross, maybe a foot
tall, hanging on the front wall, looking about as spiritual as it must have
looked on the shelf at Wal-Mart. Painted on the front of the wooden podium on
the altar was a swastika with lightning-bolt arms on it. The swastika was twice
the size of Jesus—just to make sure everyone knew what was what.

A guy walks up to the podium. He’s wearing camo
pants, a brown t-shirt, and a military fatigue jacket. Short, paunchy, with
dark, thin hair combed neat, parted down the middle, he’s fussy and deliberate
as he arranges his note cards. He looks up, adjusting the microphone. “My name
is Thomas McClaren. I’m from Spokane, Washington.” His expression darkens. “And
I’m here to talk with you about a subject that is of crucial importance to all
of us at this gathering. All of the white people of these great United States.
I want to explain to you this afternoon the scientific basis of our cause. Why
the white people of the United States bear an awesome responsibility to cast
down the black people … may I call them
niggers
?”

Whoa. You kiss your wife with that mouth,
motherfucker? I looked at the corner of the YouTube screen. This guy was going
to spew for 14:32. It was a real long quarter hour, but I learned a lot.

Such as that only white people can be Christians.
This seemed to be the most important point because the shithead said it many
times. American white people are the best kind of Christians, but not all
American white people are Christians. Jewish American white people are (of
course) not Christians and are therefore evil. Jewish people are intelligent,
but not in a good way. They are wily. Which is why they grow up to be
wily
Jew politicians
. Although many Jewish people look white, they really
aren’t. It’s not about whether they have white skin. It’s much more complicated
than that. And because Jewish people probably aren’t officially white, they
cannot be the
chosen people.
Who are the real chosen people, the asshole
asked? I got this one right: real white American Christians.

By contrast, black people are always drunk. (When
I was a kid, I was taught it was Irish people, but there must be some new
science.) Black people are officially people, but God made them stupid so
they’d be happy tending the herds. They’re not smart enough to do agriculture.
That’s due to the drunkenness: they can’t plant the seeds in a straight line.
Because there aren’t that many animals for black people to herd today, they
spend most of their time watching Oprah, collecting welfare, and having many,
many black bastard babies.

Muslim people are all A-rabs, regardless of where
they live. They want to kill the chosen people (the true American white
Christians, not the Jews) because they hate us although they like the things we
have and want to have them, too. Mexicans are definitely not white. More than
one Mexican is a
horde of Mexicans
.
Horde
must mean liquid in
Spanish because Mexican hordes either stream across the border or flood the
border. Many Mexicans spend all their time in the parking lot at Home Depot;
others take the jobs that rightly should go to real Americans; and all Mexicans
(like all black people) collect welfare and have many, many (Mexican) bastard
babies.

I also learned that, despite all the uproar about
using the N-word, the following words are still okay to use in a log-cabin
church with a swastika over the door:
nigger, darkie, kike, Jew bastard,
spic,
and
wetback
. These words are not offensive, although they do
cause different reactions in people.

Some people laugh when they hear them. The
laughter means that the person hearing the word is better than the person being
described by the word. The laughter happens because the truth—that some people,
such as drunken black people, would rather watch Oprah than work for a
living—is spoken so rarely that it catches the listener by surprise. It is the
laughter of people who realize that, while it might be politically incorrect to
call a nigger a nigger, it is, unfortunately, true. Black people are niggers.

Other people shake their heads in sadness when
they hear these words. They’re a notch more evolved than those who simply
laugh. They understand that niggers, kikes, wetbacks, and A-rabs represent the
most serious threat facing true white Christian Americans. This threat makes
them sad.

Still other people nod their heads in
determination. They are the most evolved because they understand that some
people have already put down the pen and picked up the sword of righteous anger
to smite those who wish to destroy us, and that the day is drawing nigh for
each and every one of us to strike back in our crusade to rid the world of
Satan’s children so that God’s dominion on Earth can be realized.

When I saw these people on the video, I couldn’t
predict which ones were going to laugh, which were going to be sad, and which
were going to be determined. They were all white people dressed alike, and they
all looked glad they’d driven out into the woods for the weekend speeches,
workshops, target practice, and explosives workshops. When I looked at other
videos from the end of the rally, the people all looked ready to drive back
home because they had to go to work on Monday, pay the mortgage, coach their
kid’s T-ball, and generally get on with things. I couldn’t tell whether anyone
in the audience had already picked up the sword of righteous anger and done
some smiting.

Oh, I learned one more thing: that I still do love
Jack Daniel’s.

* * * *

“Professor Willson
Fredericks. Very prolific scholar.” Ryan had hung up his sport jacket and was
walking over to his desk. He looked like he had slept eight luxurious,
dream-free hours, eaten a balanced, nutritious breakfast, hugged and kissed his
baby and his wife, put his ear to his wife’s big belly to hear the next baby
gurgling, and driven in to headquarters, tapping his fingers to an oldies
station while thinking about how we were going to get whoever killed Dolores
Weston.

Pretty much the same for me. After watching some
Montana Patriot Front videos, I had blacked out, coming to around eleven, which
gave me time to stagger into the final AA meeting of the day and get my damn
card signed. Running on four hours’ sleep, I stumbled into work this morning a
couple minutes early, just before Ryan. “And what did you learn?” I said.

“Well,” Ryan said, “Fredericks is super smart,
works real hard. Writes a couple of articles a year, half on a World War II era
subject, the other half on the patriot movement today.”

“And he write anything that’s gonna help us with
Dolores Weston?”

“I don’t know, but he’s pretty tight with the local
group, the Montana Patriot Front.”

“Yeah, I discovered them last night.”

“I read three of his articles that said he was at
Lake Hollow a number of times, doing interviews and conducting ‘ethnographic
research.’”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s what sociologists and anthropologists do.
They put themselves in an environment and study the culture. You know, who
talks to who, how things get done, the basic values and belief systems, that
kind of thing.”

“You mean, he hangs out with them? Do they know
he’s doing this?”

“I assume so. His articles are all over the
Internet, under his own name. His photograph is all over the university’s Web
site. If he were sneaking into the compound without their permission—which I
don’t think would be easy to do—and they caught him, they’d treat him like he’s
some kind of mole or something. And they don’t like that.”

“Okay, but why would they invite him into the
compound to expose them?” I said.

“It isn’t like he’s uncovering all kinds of dirt
about them that we don’t know. He isn’t talking about how they’re stealing
money, or anything like that. He’s writing academic articles.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Well, one of the articles, he’s comparing the
Montana Patriot Front to a couple of other groups, in terms of how they define
themselves in their charter documents. You know, the mixture of old-school Nazi
philosophy and anti-immigrant thinking. It’s like he’s studying this tribe in
Borneo, comparing it to other tribes.”

“And they’re okay with him writing about them like
they’re a tribe in Borneo?”

“Only thing that makes sense is they think they’ve
got nothing to be ashamed of. He can come and listen and write his articles
that nobody in Lake Hollow is going to read, but what’s the downside? If he
talks about their philosophy, they’re so egotistical they think that helps them
get the word out. Plus, it helps them feel like they’re pulling their weight in
the broader patriot movement. The Montana group is smaller than a lot of the
others, so the articles make them feel like they’re important.”

I wasn’t sure I was buying Ryan’s theory. Hard to
imagine these guys thinking they look like anything other than morons who’ve
been dropped on their heads couple too many times, but I guess the definition
of being crazy is that you’re absolutely certain you sound perfectly reasonable—and
that everyone else is crazy. “Anything else you get off those articles?”

“One other thing. Over and over, Fredericks cites
some guy named Benjamin Connors as a source. So I looked him up. Everybody else
he cites—even the crackpots who say the Holocaust never happened—they’ve got
titles and affiliations. They work for bogus think tanks or they’re professors,
but they’ve got names and jobs, and they write things and attend conferences.
This guy Benjamin Connors—I can’t find any evidence that there really is
someone named Benjamin Connors. And when Willson Fredericks cites him in his
articles, he never cites anything Connors has written. He just lists it as
‘personal communication.’”

“I spent some time on YouTube last night—watching
the Montana Patriot Front channel.”

“You see Fredericks on one of the videos?”

“No, didn’t see him there, but there was this
video of a speech in their log cabin they call a church. It was pretty scary.
There’s some twisted dudes out there.”