Black Fall Read online

  “A glitch.” I can see the wheels turning in Gerald’s mind. “Well, thanks.”

  “No problem,” Hopkins replies as we head for the door.

  “What’s going on?” I ask Gerald when we’re back in the hall.

  “Maybe I should have said something to Hopkins. I guess I’ll e-mail him.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t need to actually be able to send an e-mail to use an e-mail account to communicate. If their system just monitors what’s sent and received, then it’s seriously flawed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Want to see a magic trick?” he asks with boyish enthusiasm.

  “What do you got?”

  He types something on his phone, then hands it to me. “See my e-mail account? Check the Inbox and the Sent folder. Just remember what you see.”

  There’s just a bunch of departmental e-mails. “Okay?” I hand him back his phone.

  “Okay, take my word on this, I’m going to do something, but I can’t tell you what just yet. I want you to give me a word. Any word.”

  “Like ‘aardvark’?”

  “Perfect.” Gerald taps something into his phone.

  A moment later I get a text on my phone from Jennifer. It says: aardvark.

  “I don’t get it,” I reply.

  Gerald shakes his head and hands me his phone. “Look in my Sent folder and my Trash.”

  I do. There’s nothing there. “Did you erase it from the Trash?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then how did you e-mail Jennifer?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Text? Another app?”

  He shakes his head. “I just used my e-mail account.”

  “Is this some techy hacking thing?”

  “No. I can teach you in two seconds.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Can I just remember the moment I stumped the Amazing Jessica Blackwood?” He’s trying to suppress a smile.

  “If you don’t tell me soon, I’ll give you a bruise to help memorialize the moment.” I’m not mad at him, just eager to find out what’s going on.

  “No need to get rough. You’re very scary when you’re frustrated. I gave Jennifer my account password, but I never sent her anything.”

  “You just used your Draft folder,” I blurt out, suddenly getting it.

  His smile fades as I steal his thunder. “Yes. I wrote ‘aardvark’ in a draft e-mail and then Jennifer erased it.”

  “So Winter could be talking to people all he wants. All they need to do is just read what he saves in his Draft folder then erase it.”

  “Terrorist cells were using this trick to bypass e-mail sniffers. They just needed the password to communicate.” He looks back toward the office. I can tell he feels a little guilty for not telling the marshal. “Should we go back?”

  I think about this for a moment. “Let’s tell Ailes first. I’m afraid they might close this off before we have a chance to exploit it.”

  “You mean monitor what he’s saying?”

  “Exactly. If you’ve broken an enemy code, it’s a good idea not to let them know you did so. You want them to keep talking.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Link

  “And you think he’s still running the Red Chain?”

  Ailes’s voice echoes over the speakerphone in our car, which is still parked in the visitor lot at the federal penitentiary.

  “Maybe. Gerald found a little exploit in the prison e-mail system.”

  “Odd for a Luddite to be that technologically savvy,” Ailes replies.

  I’ve been thinking the same thing. He doesn’t seem like the hacker type, but who knows what hobbies he decided to pick up behind bars.

  “His rejection of electricity didn’t stop him from using batteries in his letter bombs. Either way, he couldn’t wait to tell us he knew Devon.”

  “Doesn’t that seem a little weird?” asks Ailes.

  “Maybe. But he’s quite full of himself. He wants to cut some kind of deal.”

  “That sounds more desperate than in control.”

  “Maybe he’s sick of prison. Or he’s bullshitting. Either way, he knew Devon at one point.”

  “Yes, that’s interesting.” Ailes goes silent. I can hear him tapping on his keyboard. “Okay. Against my better judgment, but speed is important, can you make a side trip?”

  “Where to?” Gerald asks.

  “A halfway house about an hour away from you. Belinda Cole. She’s under federal supervision.”

  Yesterday Ailes was adamant we hurry back to the office. Now he has us running a side trip. “Okay. What’s her story?”

  “Belinda Cole, formally Belinda Winter. She’s Ezra’s ex-wife,” he explains. “She was given a light sentence for her involvement in his mail-bombing case.”

  I flip through my printouts. “How could I have missed that?”

  “The prosecutors probably gave her a sweetheart deal. She was tried separately.”

  Peculiar. Ezra never mentioned her once. That’s more than suspicious.

  The superintendent, a middle-aged woman with a distrustful stare, greets us at the door of the apartment complex where the halfway house is located. It’s near a truck stop and a row of motels. Down the street, children kick a ball around a sad playground with a broken swing and rusted monkey bars.

  After we show our badges, she lets us inside. The first floor of the house has portraits of Jesus, with varied tortured expressions, on virtually every wall. Gerald and I avoid exchanging raised eyebrows over the décor.

  “Belinda,” she shouts upstairs. “You have visitors.”

  Belinda Cole is sitting in a chair near an open window, reading a Bible. She turns around to greet us, but stays seated. Her curly hair has streaks of gray, and with her reading glasses she looks like a hippie librarian. A silver crucifix dangling from her neck is her only jewelry.

  “Hello,” she says in a friendly manner. There’s no trace of concern in her voice. She’s probably used to court-ordered visits. “Have a seat.” She directs us to the bed pushed against the side of the wall.

  The room is small, barely large enough for the bed, a small dresser, and a writing desk. It feels like a transient motel room. When Gerald and I sit down, a metal spring squeals in protest.

  She stares at me for a moment, ignoring Gerald. I sometimes get this from people who’ve seen me in a newspaper or online. “You’re not from the US attorney’s office, are you?”

  “No. We’re with the FBI. I’m Agent Blackwood, and this is Agent Turner.” I almost call Gerald by his first name.

  He takes out his notebook and pretends to be not fully engaged in the conversation, even though he’s watching everything.

  “How may I help you?” she asks, with the earnestness of someone talking to a parole board.

  “Two things. First, you must be aware of the Peter Devon predictions.” With all the coverage on the news, it’d be impossible not to know. “We were wondering if you had any connection to him?”

  “Me? No. I’ve never met him. What makes you think I have?” She sounds surprised, maybe a little too much so.

  “Your ex-husband.”

  “Ezra?” she says dismissively. “Ezra said I knew Devon?” She takes off her glasses and searches my face. “Why on earth would he say that?”

  So far she’s acting entirely consistent with someone who testified against her spouse for a lighter sentence. “No. Let me clarify. He said he knew Devon.”

  “I see.” She nods in recognition. “Of course he did. I’m sure the two could have met. I may have met him once, but I don’t remember. You meet so many people, hard to remember them all. Of course, Ezra being Ezra, he would tell you he was best friends with Stephen Hawking or Mahatma Gandhi if he shared a time zone with them once.”

  “You’re saying he exaggerates?”

  She rolls her eyes. “That’s being polite. Lies is another word for it. Ezra is downright messianic. Lord knows he had
me believing him for the longest time. I take full responsibility for my actions. But Ezra, he sure could tell you a tale or two.”

  “What do you know about Black Fall?” I ask.

  “That nonsense? Only what I see on the news. If I have to hear any more about that, I’ll jump out the window.” There’s something almost rehearsed about the way she says this, almost as if she’d expected the question.

  “And the Red Chain?”

  Her face slackens and she touches her crucifix. “Better left in the past.”

  “You’re saying it’s no more?”

  “Ezra is the last remaining member I know of.”

  “Nobody from them has contacted you?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “As far as I know, they are all gone.”

  “They? How many were there? What were they?” All my research so far has amounted to very little. Even the case against Winter just mentioned it in passing. There was no conspiracy charge or mention of collaborators other than his wife.

  “It’s just a name, really. Ezra used to hold these meetings and people would drift in and out. It was nothing more than that. Just a few people who shared the same concerns about the environment, civilization, and the like. Not much else.”

  “Just meetings?” I can tell she’s not being as forthcoming as she could be.

  “We had a big house a while back, outside of Boston, and a farm in Michigan. We tried the commune thing. My ex-husband spent more time trying to screw any young thing that came through the door. It didn’t last.”

  “And the letter bombs? That was just you two?”

  “That was Ezra,” she says adamantly. “When I found out, I tried to stop him. But he could be persuasive. I thought they were only going to scare people. I didn’t know we were going to hurt anyone!”

  I casually flip through my notes. “They killed an engineer and blinded another target’s wife,” I say, watching her reaction.

  She grasps her crucifix again and touches her other hand to the Bible in her lap. “That was wrong. Don’t think me an awful person. At the time, Ezra explained it to me like it was some kind of cruise missile diplomacy. When the president sends a Tomahawk into a Middle Eastern country, we accept a certain amount of collateral damage. Every army base has secretaries. Every palace has innocent maids and janitors. I know it’s wrong to think that way. But I was in a different space then. Ezra’s way of looking at the world was . . . persuasive.” She lifts her hand from the Bible to her heart. “There’s not a moment that goes by that I don’t think about those poor people.” Eyes to the sky. “And I know my judgment is coming.”

  She’s told us as much as we’re going to get using this line of questioning. I have to put her on the defensive, so I glance up from my notes and ask bluntly: “Did you have your religious conversion before or after federal agents placed you under arrest?”

  Her eyes narrow. “Sometimes we need a wake-up call.”

  Gerald blinks.

  I may have pushed her too much. I change my tone to one that’s more matter-of-fact. “We don’t want to keep you. Just another question. How did you choose the victims?”

  “Pardon me?” she replies.

  “For the letter bombs. How were they chosen?”

  “I don’t know,” she shrugs, maybe exaggeratedly. “I think Ezra would just read a name in the paper or a magazine and decide that person needed to be taken out of the equation.”

  “Equation?” asks Gerald, looking up from his notes. He’s been watching her as intently as I have, and I can tell he’s curious about something.

  “A figure of speech,” she says sharply.

  On my phone I scan the e-mail Ailes sent me about her. “It says here you have another four months to serve. What’s next for you?”

  “Someplace with a lot of trees and few people. Where I can pray and live in peace.” She’s trying to project as warm and friendly an image as possible. I’m not sure if it’s an act for us.

  I notice a photograph, of a man holding a fishing rod next to a cabin, on her desk. “A friend of yours?”

  “Just someone who writes me encouraging letters.” She picks up the photo and stares at it for a moment.

  “A former member of the Red Chain?” I ask.

  She lets out a laugh. “Lord no.” She sets the photo back down, but curiously tilts the frame away from us.

  It could be nothing. She might just want a clean break, but I’d love to know who the man is. I get a text message from Gerald, who’s sitting less than a foot away: distract her.

  He’s thinking the same thing. I stand up and go over to the window. “That’s quite a view you have here.” I point to the playground in the distance. Children are chasing a soccer ball around, yelling and laughing. “Does the noise bother you?”

  She has to move from her seat to see where I’m pointing. Out of the corner of my eye I spot Gerald reach out a long arm and snap a shot of the photo with his phone.

  “No. Not at all. I quite like the sound of children. Ezra and I . . . well,” her voice softens. “We never had kids.”

  Her eyes show the sadness of a woman who knows she’s past the point in her life where that’s going to happen. This may be the first genuine thing I’ve heard her say.

  I feel a little numb myself. I could be in that same position one day. I sometimes joke that I don’t need children to look after me when I get older, because I’ll have Amazon Prime.

  Now that I’m thirty, it’s not as funny to me as it used to be.

  Once we’re back in the car, Gerald shows me the photo he secretly took. There’s nothing familiar about the man. He looks clean-cut and in his midfifties. It’s the kind of image you’d use on a dating profile. “I’ll run it through an image database.”

  “Alright. I’ll ask the marshals if they have a log of her contacts. Maybe we should check back with the halfway house superintendent when Cole isn’t around.”

  “You think she’s still involved with the Red Chain?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure whose benefit that act was for. If she was up to something serious, I’m not sure why she’d stick around here. It’s not like she can’t just walk away.”

  “She did seem to be less than forthcoming about the Red Chain. She went from it being just a few meetings to admitting they had a compound with people living there full time,” Gerald points out.

  “True. Sounds like she wasn’t too happy with how that turned out. She seemed very eager to put Ezra under the bus. Maybe she was just jealous about the commune thing.”

  “Maybe. But there’s no reason to believe the free love only flowed toward Ezra,” Gerald says with a smirk.

  “Point taken.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Force Majeure

  “I know things are kind of hectic, but Kylie and I would love to have you over soon,” Gerald says, somewhat hesitantly, halfway back to Quantico.

  Kylie is his new girlfriend. Well, newish. They’ve been seeing each other for six months now. She seems a little more adult than the college-age girls he usually dates. I guess my boy is growing up.

  Should I be bothered that this is the second dinner “intervention” I’ve received in as many days? “That would be great,” I reply, then return to replaying our conversations with Ezra and Belinda in my head.

  “Maybe next week?”

  “Let me check a couple things.”

  “Things are busy. I know. But Jessica, you got to have your own moments.”

  My own moments. I can’t even imagine what Gerald would say if I told him about the moments I have been stealing away for. “That would be nice.”

  “Great. It’ll be just me, Kylie, and a few friends.”

  “How few?” I smell a setup about to take place. Every now and then someone takes pity on me, or decides to settle a grudge with some available male, and attempts to arrange a blind date. It has a tendency not to turn out well.

  Nadine, a fellow agent, once forced me to list what I was loo
king for in a mate. She’d read it through, then shaken her head.

  “You described yourself, Jessica.”

  I can barely live with myself, so how can I expect anyone else to?

  “It’ll be an odd number,” says Gerald, sensing my anxiety. “Don’t worry.”

  My phone rings, saving me from the awkward situation.

  It’s Jennifer, with an unusual sense of urgency in her voice. “We need you guys to head to DC. Ailes and I are on our way there too.”

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “Bolivia. They lost at least three hundred people. Devon has everyone in overdrive.”

  “So now it’s a real FBI case?”

  “It is, since his latest video says there’s going to be rioting in DC, New York, and other major world capitals. Ailes wants you to make a case for the connection to the Red Chain.”

  “Whoa? That’s just a thought. I’ve only got the thinnest proof.”

  “We need something,” she says desperately.

  Don’t we all.

  I take my seat next to Ailes and Jennifer in a large FBI conference room. Thirty people are arranged around the long table. Several different divisions are here.

  At the far end of the room, an agent is walking through a presentation of what happened in Bolivia. Someone calls him McAllister when they ask a question. I scan the hastily prepared document sitting in front of me and learn that he is a forensic meteorologist who helps us understand how weather affects crime scenes. With his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, he resembles a harried weatherman as he shows us aerial photos of the flooding and video of dead bodies drifting down an engorged river like rag dolls.

  I feel nauseous. This was my case. This was my responsibility.

  I don’t know what more I could have done. But maybe that’s the problem. I didn’t really try. I took Devon for a joke. I saw through the gimmick on the first video, and thought it was just a hoax. Now people are dead. Lots of people. He said it would happen. It did.