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RICH AND I and the rest of the SFPD counterterrorism task force thundered into the bomb-cleared house.
It actually looked as though a bomb had gone off; clothing and garbage and bedding were strewn everywhere. After a second look I realized this was not explosive fallout. This was frat-house living.
Niles called me into a ground-floor bedroom where two of the suspects and a naked woman were rolling around on the bed and floor, crying and moaning. Sergeant Mal Reigner, Vice, cuffed the two males to the bed and, after covering her with a blanket, Flex-Cuffed the young female by the wrists and took her out to his cage car.
The two other boys were in the living room, both on the floor, sobbing and cursing. The flashbang had disabled their equilibrium and scared the hell out of them. Making this a good time to separate and question them.
Conklin took the one who appeared to be Elverson, the former chem major, and I grabbed Yang, the computer guy, and set him down in a tattered chair. His nose was running. His eyes were red. He looked pitiful.
I said, “Mr. Yang, you’re under arrest—”
“What did I do?”
I said, “You’re under arrest for threatening communications.”
“What? What is that?”
“For putting out a terror message. It’s a federal offense.”
“I didn’t do anything like that. You’re crazy.”
“Mr. Yang. Listen to me before you start claiming your innocence. I’m Sergeant Boxer. I am with the SFPD, working with Homeland Security. I’m arresting you for blowing up Sci-Tron—”
“What?”
“Or for saying you did. That’s threatening communications, specifically disseminating the video claiming credit for the GAR attack on Sci-Tron.”
“I didn’t—”
“That video has been traced to a computer inside this house. That’s why I’m reading you your rights.”
This twenty-two-year-old was watching and listening, but from the look in his eyes I couldn’t be sure that he was following me.
I called out to Inspector Ronnie Burke, a good guy in Robbery I’d known for a couple of years, and asked him to witness my conversation with Andrew Yang while I recorded it on my phone. I wasn’t repeating the Connor Grant confession/no-confession error twice.
Burke leaned against the wall and I showed Yang my phone. I pressed Record.
I said my name, and the date, time, and address, and then said, “Andrew Yang, you have the right to remain silent. Do you understand?”
He said, “Say it again.”
I complied. And then, “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand?”
After I took him through his rights and he answered that he understood them, I asked him to tell me what part he’d had in the bombing of Sci-Tron.
He shook his head no, while casting his eyes toward Neil Elverson, who was being half dragged out of the house in cuffs.
“Please take me seriously, Andrew. One of your friends, or maybe that young lady, is going to cut a deal with the police and confess to this crime in exchange for lighter time.
“If I were your mother, I’d tell you that the one who talks first wins. You should listen to me. I’m telling you the truth.”
CHAPTER 22
DILLON MITCHELL WAS a fit, fifty-two-year-old internet cult figure, operating as a member of GAR, who went by the name Haight. He lived in and podcast from a former bicycle factory in Dogpatch, a neighborhood on the eastern shore of San Francisco.
The open-space building had a tin ceiling and twenty-foot-high walls, with a catwalk halfway up the walls that wrapped around three sides. At one end was a computer studio, which was where he was sitting now.
Powerful industrial ceiling fans blew a benign breeze over the platform bed on wheels and the wide-plank floors below.
