La Rosa led in the Homicide Detail meetings where they sat around and talked about social networking sites as valuable new tools to reach the public in investigations. All of which Raveneau agreed with, though he didn’t think it meant he needed to sign up for Facebook or anything else. But sooner or later, they’d have a serial killer tweeting about kills and taunting them. He didn’t doubt that or that tips would come that way, but he had no interest in following the musings of a media celebrity, sports star, or journalist turned blogger.
‘I don’t know why but I think this could be important,’ la Rosa said, and he knew she meant it. She rarely made statements like that, something he admired about her.
Fine either hadn’t gone to bed last night or they had just awakened him. He looked puzzled then surprised, and then affected greater surprise and Raveneau guessed he was already in his head writing about the visit. It took him a moment of blinking in the sunlight standing in his doorway, looking a little like an owl he headlined as. But he adjusted fast.
‘If you’d called, I would have had coffee ready. My wife is a coffee freak. She’s an investment banker and up very early. She buys the best coffee. I was about to make some when you knocked. I usually write late into the night. Why am I getting a surprise visit from two homicide inspectors?’
‘We’re sorry we woke you up,’ la Rosa said.
Raveneau wasn’t sorry.
‘Any takers on coffee?’ Fine asked.
‘Sure,’ Raveneau said, and remembered he forgot to bring the Kona from Hawaii to work with him to take to Celeste.
Fine showed them the room where he wrote his blog and it wasn’t a back closet cubbyhole that he made his start in. It was more like a library with a couple of big-screen TVs and several computers. He pointed at chairs.
‘I just about live in this room. Sorry about the crumbs on the table.’
‘We have those at our office too,’ Raveneau said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘I’ll go get the coffee going.’
The chairs were leather, a type la Rosa called man-club style. They were comfortable and Fine’s life looked very comfortable, though la Rosa told him Fine paid his dues as a journalist and started the blog in desperation after his newspaper downsized him. Now the blog had strong advertising support. Still, being married to someone in the financial arts couldn’t hurt.
He looked at la Rosa. ‘Is it what you pictured?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Nicer?’
‘Very nice.’
The decision to be a cop is a decision to be middle class. It meant you could never be sure about the future. Fire and police pensions were about to get cut, if not this year, next year. California’s unfunded pension funds were a five hundred billion dollar time bomb and San Francisco had its own problems. Fine didn’t appear to have those problems. He returned carrying a tray with a modern, insulated silver coffee pot and three chipped mugs to keep it casual.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’
‘Sorry we surprised you,’ la Rosa said. Raveneau who couldn’t think of anything to be sorry about didn’t say anything.
‘So what can I do for you?’
‘We’re part of an investigation that you wrote about yesterday,’ la Rosa said. ‘It’s a joint investigation with Federal agencies, but we’re very much a part of it.’
‘Are you here to ask for my source?’
‘We’re here to talk with you about your source,’ she said. ‘As I think you’re aware, this is a very significant threat.’
‘I don’t understand. You’re homicide inspectors. It’s a terror plot investigation.’
Raveneau believed there was a larger truth in the continuing polarization of politics in the country. Access to information tied into privilege. Fine was among the privileged, yet at the same time Fine obviously prided himself on his empathetic connection to the underprivileged and downtrodden. He wrote his belief in democracy with those threads and Raveneau figured Fine couldn’t help but notice right now that before him were two of the middle class. Not lower class but still they were probably pretty good stand-ins this morning. La Rosa’s clothes were from Target. His shoes cost less than the slippers on Fine’s feet. Fine’s desk alone was at least a ten thousand dollar sculpture of glass and steel.
‘It’s a complex and organized plot,’ Raveneau said. ‘We followed a lead in a homicide investigation and came into it from a different angle.’
Fine turned to him.
‘I understand FBI teams were sent to Pakistan. Is that true?’
‘It might be true, but I think they were probably doing just what the plotters wanted.’
‘You do?’
Raveneau nodded. Fine held Raveneau’s gaze then looked at la Rosa again. Raveneau knew from la Rosa’s tutorial that Fine graduated from Stanford, worked in New York then Washington for many years before returning to the Bay Area. He built his blog when competition was still thin and the postings sporadic. He brought a competitor’s discipline hardened from years of deadlines.
‘Who is most at risk?’ Fine asked, and la Rosa was ready. ‘We don’t know but we do know from the weapons where the real casualties will be.’
That was like soft-pitching him one to hit out of the park. ‘On the street?’
‘Yes.’
Fine leaned forward and poured himself more coffee. ‘Anybody else?’
‘I’m good,’ Raveneau said and then, ‘How much do you know about the bomb threat?’
‘If I tell you am I putting my source at risk?’
‘No.’
‘Not even if the source is inside your department?’
‘It’s not.’
‘That’s true, but how could you possibly know that?’
‘No one in our department would care about a shakeup at the FBI. But another federal agency might and someone within that agency might have personal ambitions that could jeopardize our chances. I’m not talking about the public being alerted and aware. Frankly, I’m for that.’
‘So am I, Inspector.’
‘Your source must be too.’
But that wasn’t necessarily the case and Fine seemed to acknowledge that.
‘There’s a point,’ la Rosa said, and paused, her lips briefly pursed, ‘a point where information can be useful to the plotters.’
‘You’re not going to try to sell me that old saw, are you?’
‘Worse,’ Raveneau said. ‘We’re going to tell you this time it’s different.’
‘How?’
‘There’s no proof and you can’t print it, but you could ask your source if there’s any chance of this. We’d like you to ask and gauge the response.’
‘OK.’
‘Your source will dismiss the idea but we see a pattern that suggests the plotters are getting help from inside law enforcement. That doesn’t mean it is local help.’
‘And you say my source will dismiss that?’
‘I’m betting he or she will.’
Fine looked down at his coffee and Raveneau got the feeling Fine’s source might not be local.
‘You are asking me to say something I can’t say credibly. I can tell you my source is very bright and if I throw out an idea like this that I can’t possibly know about, I’m going to get questions. I may lose my access.’
‘Don’t lose your access.’
‘What’s it to you?’
