AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It had been one of the worst cases of his career. Hell, maybetheworst. The Tucson Bomber had targeted children. There was nothing worse than holding the body of a dying child in your arms.
Until he faced the fifteen-year-old boy who had committed those horrific acts and saw nothing in his eyes. The kid had no soul, no remorse, no joy, no sorrow. He was empty inside. His only emotion was excitement when he watched things explode.
And no one, not even Catherine, could understand why a fifteen-year-old boy from a good, middle-class family would put a bomb in an elementary school. The fatalities could have been so much higher, but thirteen dead was thirteen too many.
Kara would understand.
He pushed the thought from his head. Yes, Kara would understand. She understood even what he didn’t say, and at times the silence between them was as calming as their deeper conversations. He should talk to her...just to reconnect. As soon as they were assigned this case, she’d physically and mentally stepped away from him, and he already missed her. He understood why—they were working a case, she was on his team, and they needed to keep their relationship on the down-low.
He just didn’t want to. And that would get them both in trouble.
“I’m here, Matt, if you want to talk,” Catherine said.
“I know. Thank you.” But he didn’t want to talk about it. To Catherine—or even to Kara. Sometimes, the past needed to stay in the past.
“Let’s focus on this case,” Matt said. “Michael is still in Seattle with ATF, analyzing the bomb fragments. They already identified the explosive as C-4—hard to get, tightly regulated, easy to work with. Tracing the explosives is a top priority, and Michael is pushing ATF on that.”
Agent Michael Harris had been Matt’s first hire onto the Mobile Response Team. He was a former Navy SEAL who had an exemplary military record, and Matt had helped recruit him into the FBI when he retired from active duty. He was Matt’s key field agent here because of Michael’s expertise with munitions. He understood ATF in-speak and would cut through all the bullshit so Matt didn’t have to. One thing Matt excelled in was delegating, which was why he picked the best of the best for his team, each agent with a different specialty.
“Will Michael be here tonight?” Catherine asked.
“Fifty-fifty. He serves us better riding ATF. Jim is talking to the ME about the victims,” Matt added. Jim Esteban was a forensics expert who Matt had recruited away from the Dallas Crime Lab. He’d met Jim several years ago at a joint training session at Quantico and they’d been friends since. No one could analyze a crime scene like Jim. He was the equivalent to a full team of forensic scientists. “We should have a solid forensics report before the end of the day to help re-create the explosion. I have Kara interviewing witnesses and the family of the survivors. I’ll put one of the officers with her, which should help speed up the interviews. Ryder will retrieve Neil Devereaux’s personal files and computer, since Neil was obsessed—Tony’s word, not mine—about a Washington cold case.”
“The Mowich Lake drownings?”
Mowich Lake was in the Mount Rainier National Forest, several hours southeast of the San Juan Islands. The case was one of Neil’s last before he’d transferred to DC, more than a decade ago.
“Yes. Neil was convinced the boys were murdered, but there’s no evidence of that. Tony sent him the FBI files on the case, which was open-and-shut.” Matt would assign the second SJSO deputy to Ryder Kim. Ryder was an analyst, not an agent, and Matt wanted him protected.
Matt turned to walk back to the sheriff’s department.
“Are you okay, Mathias?”
He glanced at his old friend. “Yes. I’m okay, Catherine.”
The old demons would stay in the past. He’d solved the Tucson Bomber case and he would solve this one.
When Matt and Catherine arrived back at the sheriff’s station, the sheriff, John Rasmussen, greeted them. The sheriff’s department doubled as the courthouse and housed a small jail, but inmates were generally taken across the strait to Yakima County for any detention that lasted longer than a few days.
San Juan Island had fewer than seven thousand permanent residents—half the population of the entire county, which was confusingly called San Juan Islands County—though there were nearly twice as many people here now, at the height of the tourist season. That made Matt’s job doubly hard. Was the explosion the work of a visitor or a resident? It would be far too easy to plan an attack and escape via water up to Canada, which was closer than the mainland of Washington State. Virtually everyone had a boat, and between the inhabited and uninhabited islands, there were plenty of places to hide out, especially in the warm summer months.
“Your man Kim has set up the conference room. It’s all yours,” John said. “Anything you need, you let me know.”
“You mentioned on the phone last night that the charter company had received threats. Do you have those here?”
The first priority was to determine the target of the attack, whether West End Charter was the target, or one of the individuals on the boat.
John walked over to the tallest stack of folders on the table. It was more than a foot high.
“I took the liberty of prioritizing the threats. My office has looked at all these cases as they came in, and most of the threats were verbal assaults. But the red cases—I flagged those—the biggest threat is from a group called Island Protectors, IP for short. They have a variety of causes, some pretty good, some way out there. They’ve been critical of West End Charter for years, but it all came to a head two years ago when a damaged boat leaked oil into a protected inlet. The EPA and the state environmental review commission investigated, determined that it was an accident. A valve on the fuel tank had been recalled and West End had twelve months to retrofit their fleet. They were in the process, hadn’t gotten to that particular boat. West End paid for the cleanup, paid a fine, decommissioned the boat, took all others off-line until they were retrofitted, and were cleared by both federal and state regulators. Cost the company a pretty penny, but they complied. Yet IP hasn’t let up. Their ultimate goal is to get rid of all gas-and diesel-powered boats.”
“Isn’t that most boats?” asked Catherine.
The sheriff nodded. “Kayaks and rowboats aren’t going to get you across the channel quickly, that’s for sure, and not when the weather is inclement. If Island Protectors gets what they want, it would kill the tourism industry. Sightseeing, whale watching, and fishing tours are the bread and butter for our summertime businesses, and West End is the largest charter boat company here.”
“Any specific person issuing the threats?” Matt asked.
“The signed letters have lower priority, in my opinion,” said John. “The leader of Island Protectors is Donna Bell, and she had a long op-ed in the paper a few months back, but never sent anything to West End directly, at least under her name. I’ve known her most of my life—we were in school together. Good people, though we don’t always see eye to eye on things. She’d never condone something like this.” He waved his hand toward the photos on the whiteboard of theWater Lilywreckage.
