And he was startled to see that he’d gotten friend requests.
“Wild,” he said out loud, looking at his computer screen. He clicked on his friends list, and OK’d the requests. And then he went to Naomi and Kate’s pages, and befriended them both. He wasn’t sure why, and it was probably a bad idea to befriend someone you thought you might have broken up with. But his friend list was looking pretty pitiful.
He saw that Shorty had already added Janet, so he added a few others from work, starting with Angie. And he added Tim Brandt. Did Stan Warren have a FB page? Sure enough, the FBI agent did. And so did Rodriguez — a lot of kid soccer pictures — and Joe Dunbar who apparently was into craft beers. Then he discovered he could look at someone else’s friend list and befriend their friends. Lindy had a whole host of interesting friends. He added a few he knew. And Angie knew almost everyone at the Examiner, it seemed.
By midnight, Mac felt like he was connected to half of Seattle.
When he got up to go to work, he quickly checked his Facebook page, and did the tasks Shorty had listed for him. He might have to adjust when he did that check-in, he thought as he ran into the Examiner building. He wasn’t about to get up 20 minutes earlier to look at Facebook — not when he had to be at the office at 6 a.m.
He made his calls, then saw he had a call from Rodriguez and called him back.
“You best get out here,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve got another one.”
“Another what?”
“Another white desk jockey. And this one didn’t run away from his arsenal. He’s got hostages.”
Mac jotted down the address, told Janet, and headed out to an address in Magnolia. Too bad he hadn’t called while he was still home, Mac thought grumpily, the address was maybe two miles from his house. A hostage situation in Magnolia?
The house was a craftsman style home, much like the last one. It was a style of house that Seattle was famous for, but were increasingly hard to find. Mac assumed this desk jockey had real money or had inherited the house. If you wanted a Magnolia address these days, you lived in a condo.
Mac wasn’t the first reporter on the scene either. A local TV reporter was set up to do a live report with her cameraman. And the Times reporter was there too. Mac scowled. How had they known and he hadn’t? And then he saw Seth Conte, his evening counterpart, and realized the Examiner had known.
“So, you can take over, and I can go home?” Seth asked.
“Yeah, but file something with Janet,” he said. “We have a photog here?”
Seth gestured with his head toward the house, and sure enough Mac spotted Angie’s fuchsia hair streak. Jesus, did the woman ever go home?
“Seen Rodriguez?”
Another head gesture, and Seth was gone. Mac followed his gesture toward a cluster of suited cops. Interesting how you could take a cop out of the uniform, but he still looked like a cop, Mac thought.
“Lieutenant?” he said from a few feet away.
Rodriguez broke away from the cops he was talking to.
“So, what’s the story?” Mac asked.
“Dunbar has been talking to some of those people on the list,” Rodriguez explained. “And he called this guy late yesterday. No biggie, he thought, and moved on down the list. And then about 2 a.m. the neighbor calls 911 with reports of shouting and then a gun shot. So, cops get out here, he’s holed up with an arsenal Joe described in his notes as 100 plus, and screaming that the cops are coming for his weapons, and that the police state has begun. Neighbor says he’s got a wife and daughter, and they’re probably inside.”
Mac grunted. Another story with kids, he thought, and not first time he thought how much he hated these stories.
“No history of mental instability?” Mac asked.
Rodriguez shrugged. “We’ve never had a call to this house before. They own the place, lived here 10 years. Like the others he has a white-collar job downtown. Upper level management at a bank.”
Mac pulled out his phone. He logged into Facebook successfully without Shorty’s cheat sheet. “Name?”
“Cabot Williams,” Rodriguez said. “I hate people with last names for first names.”
Mac ignored the extra commentary. Lots of things Mac hated about people. Their names were rarely one of them. He searched Facebook for the man and found him.
He scrolled through his posts from the last 10 hours, the chronicle of a man losing touch with reality. He read the responses to his initial post of being called by the police. And one struck him.
“It’s begun,” said a man who called himself MLK4whites. Mac snorted. Racist fuck. “Prepare yourselves.”
Lieutenant?” Mac said. “You need to see this.”
Rodriguez looked at the posts on Williams’ page. And he swore. “Damn it,” he said.
Mac pulled out the list of names that Dunbar had given him yesterday. He had wanted to wait until his page looked a bit more authentic, but hell with that now. He typed in another name. Then another.
“It must have meant something to Williams,” he muttered, looking. Williams was on George Martin’s unit list. He checked the other names there. Bingo.
“You’ve got eight men who went into the hills with Martin,” Mac said. “His unit? Wilderness training. Williams was one of them. Three others are posting similar shit. They’re freaking out because of Dunbar’s calls, and this MLK4whites guy is encouraging it.”
Mac frowned at his phone screen. He needed to set up his laptop. “I need to use my laptop for this,” he said. He looked back at his car.
“Sit in the police car there,” Rodriguez said. “I’ll even let you in the front seat for a change.”
“Funny,” Mac said. He sat in the seat facing out the door. He couldn’t bring himself to close it. Rodriguez grinned, but he
