“Testing for the stuff isn’t what concerns me, Lindsay. Why kill him like this, when a tenth of this dosage would’ve done the trick?”
I saw where Claire was going. Whoever killed them had studied both victims. Both murders had been planned, set up. And the killer possessed weapons of widespread terror.
We are inside your homes, your workplaces… They were telling us, We have this stuff. We can deliver ricin in massive quantities if we want to. “Jesus, they’re warning us, Claire. They’re declaring war.”
Chapter 28
We called in everyone now. The Metropolitan Medical Task Force. The Bureau of Public Safety. The local office of the FBI. We weren’t talking murder any longer. This was terrorism.
The trail for the missing au pair had gone cold. Jacobi and Cappy had come back empty after passing her photo around the campus bars across the bay. One thing did pan out, though: the article Cindy put in the Chronicle on X/L. With news crews plastered all over their offices and the threat of a subpoena, I got a message from Chuck Zinn that he wanted to deal. An hour later, he was in my office.
“You can have your access, Lieutenant. In fact, I’ll save you the trouble. Mort did receive a series of e- mails in the past few weeks. The entire board did. None of us took them very seriously, but we put our internal security team on it.”
Zinn unbuckled his fancy leather case and placed an orange file on the table and pushed it across. “This is all of them, Lieutenant. By date received.”
I opened the file and a shock resonated through my system.
To the Board of Directors, X/L Systems:
On February 15, Morton Lightower, your CEO, sold 762,000 shares of his company stock totaling $3,175,000.
On that same day, some 256,000 of your own shareholders lost money, making their net return –87% in the past year.
35,341 children of the world died from starvation.
11,174 people in this country died from disease that were deemed “preventable” with proper medical care.
That same Wednesday, 4233768 mothers brought babies into conditions of poverty and hopelessness across the world. In the past 24 months, you have sold off almost $600,000,000 of your own company stock and purchased homes in Aspen and France, returning nothing to the world. We are demanding contributions to hunger and world health organizations equal to any further sell-offs. We are demanding that the board of X/L, and the boards of all companies, see beyond the narrow scope of its expansionist strategies to the world beyond, which is being crushed by economic apartheid.
This is not a plea. This is a demand.
Enjoy your wealth, Mr. Lightower. Your little Caitlin is counting on you.
The message was signed, August Spies.
I skimmed through the rest of the e-mails. Each was more belligerent. The menu of the world’s ills more grievous.
You’re ignoring us, Mr. Lightower. The board has not complied. We intend to act. Your little Caitlin is counting on you.
“How could you not turn these over to us?” I stared at Zinn. “This whole thing might have been prevented.”
“In retrospect, I understand how this must appear.” The lawyer hung his head. “But companies receive threats all the time.”
“This isn’t just a threat.” I tossed the e-mails back on my desk. “It’s extortion, coercion. You’re a lawyer, Zinn. The reference to his daughter is a blatant threat. You came in here to deal, Mr. Zinn. Here it is: This doesn’t get out. The name on these e-mails stays between us. But we send in our own team to ascertain where they originated from.”
“I understand.” The lawyer nodded sheepishly, handing over the file.
I skimmed over the e-mail addresses. Footsy123@ hotmail.com. [email protected]. Both signed the same. August Spies. I turned to Jacobi. “What do you think, Warren? Can we trace these?”
“We already put them through our own investigation,” Zinn volunteered.
“You traced them.” I looked up, shocked.
“We’re an e-traffic security company. All of them are free Internet providers. No user billing address. Nothing needed to open an account. You could go to the library, the airport, anywhere there’s an open-access online terminal and open one yourself. This one was sent from a kiosk at the Oakland airport. This one from a Kinko’s near Berkeley on University. These two, from the public library. They’re untraceable.”
I figured Zinn knew his stuff and was right, but one thing did jump out at me. The Kinko’s, the library, the real Wendy Raymore’s apartment.
“We may not know who they are, but we know where they are.”
“The People’s Republic of Berkeley,” Jacobi said, and sniffed. “Well, I’ll be.”
Chapter 29
I stole away for a quick lunch with Cindy Thomas. Dim sum at the Long Life Noodle Company in Yerba Buena Gardens.
“You see the Chronicle this morning?” she asked, a pork dumpling sliding off her chopsticks as we sat on a ledge outside. “We lowered the boom on X/L.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I won’t be needing you to run a follow-up.”
“So, now it’s your turn, right, to do a little rhythm for me.”
“Cindy, I’m thinking this isn’t going to be my case much longer, especially if anything leaks out to the press.”
“At least tell me”—she looked at me solidly—“if I should be feeling these two murders are related?”
“What makes you think they’re related?”
“Gee,” she chortled, “two big-time businessmen murdered in the same city two days apart. Both of them ran companies on the wrong side of the headlines lately.”
“Two totally different MOs.” I held my ground.
“Oh? On one hand, we have a greedy corporate high roller sucking off tens of millions while his sales are going to rot; the other’s hiding behind a bunch of high-priced lobbyists trying to screw poor people. Both are dead. Violently. What was the question, Linds? Why do I think they might be related?”
“Okay.” I exhaled. “You know our arrangement? Absolutely nothing gets into print without my okay.”
“Someone’s targeting these people, aren’t they?” She didn’t mean the two already dead. I knew what she was saying.
I put the noodle container down. “Cindy, you keep your ear to the ground across the bay, don’t you?”
“Berkeley? I guess. If you mean pitching in with a couple of ‘real-life success’ pep talks in Journalism 403.”
“I mean under the radar. People who’re capable of causing trouble.” I took in a breath and looked at her worriedly. “This kind of trouble.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. She paused, then shrugged. “There is stuff happening over there. We’ve all become so used to being part of the system, we forget what it’s like to be on the other side. There are people who are growing … how should I put it … fed up. There are people whose message just isn’t getting
