The bigger screen helped. He could open more than one screen, and track the men across accounts. Sensei? He wondered. Where was he? Martin had said to do a search for him. He did. Hundreds, maybe thousands. He frowned. How good were the search tools? Not good, he found. He looked at his watch. Maybe he could catch Shorty before he went to class.
“What?” Shorty snapped. “I’ve got five minutes.”
“I’m at a hostage situation. He’s one of the names the cops were questioning last night. He’s freaked out and is posting on Facebook about the coming police state. Incited by a guy with the handle mlk4whites. I want to find this Sensei guy Martin and Malloy referred to. But Facebook’s search is for shit,” Mac said rapidly and concisely.
“Shit, Mac,” Shorty said. “Give me 15 to get the kids started on some math exercises, and I’ll call you back.”
“Mac?” Rodriguez said. “Who are you talking cop stuff to?”
“About 300,000 readers daily,” Mac said with an eye roll. “Seth was here. He’s probably filed a story, and TV Barbie over there has been going live for an hour. And you’re worried because I’m asking Shorty to do better data mining than I can?”
Rodriguez ran a hand over his head, and sighed. “Not used to this, being-on-the-same-side shit.”
Mac laughed. “Think about how I feel.”
Mac walked along the police line, looking. The SWAT team was in place. He noted two snipers in key locations, figured there was probably a third he hadn’t spotted, given the way the house was configured. An ambulance was idling down the street. And the EMTs were leaning against the back of their rig, talking about nothing much, Mac figured, based on other nights, other stakeouts.
His phone rang, and he picked up. “OK,” Shorty said. “I logged in as you. Are you near your computer?”
“Give me a minute,” he said, as he turned back to the police car and set up his laptop and hotspot again. He didn’t leave his things unattended, not even in a police car.
Especially not in a police car.
“Give me the names you know,” Shorty said. “You could have given them to me yesterday.”
“Wanted the account to have been live for a few days first,” Mac said. “But that shit has flown.”
Shorty grunted. “OK, found him. The Sensei these guys seem to know is at this Facebook address. And that mlk4whites dude? He follows him too. My guess? He may be an alias for the Sensei, but that’s gut not fact. I don’t have time to look into it until this evening. That help?”
“Hope so,” Mac said. “Thanks, man.”
Shorty dropped the call.
Mac logged into Facebook, found the Sensei Shorty had identified, and turned his laptop around so that Rodriguez and Dunbar could see the guy. “Run him,” Rodriguez told Dunbar. He nodded, and headed off. Rodriguez watched him go.
“It’s got him fucked up a bit,” Rodriguez said. “But shit, who knew a man would go off like this from a simple inquiry?”
“He didn’t go off from the inquiry, Lieutenant,” Mac said slowly. “He went off at the urging of this MLK4whites dude. Look at the timing of the posts. This guy was laughing about the call from cops. ‘If they only knew,” he says. But then the MLK4whites gets on there. He posts. Someone else posts in response, and then you get an echo chamber effect going. And this guy cracks first.”
“First?”
“There will be more,” Mac predicted grimly. “MLK4whites wants them to crack. I’m not sure why. Maybe trying to replicate the Bundy standoff in Nevada?”
Rodriguez grunted.
“Lieut, there’s someone at the door of the house,” a uniformed officer came up to the car. He handed him a bullhorn.
“Hello?” it was a woman’s voice, quavery and afraid.
Rodriguez dropped the megaphone, and approached closer. “Ma’am? What’s happening?”
“My husband? He’s afraid you’re coming for him. For his guns,” she said. “I tried to tell him, they’re all legal but he says it won’t matter.”
“Are you all right? Your neighbor heard a gunshot,” he said, pitching his voice to carry, but no louder.
“No, no, no one is hurt,” she said. “I’m just afraid. He’s got a lot of weapons in here, and a lot of ammunition.”
The man behind her said something, and she paused to listen.
“And he says C4? He’s got C4.”
“OK,” Rodriguez said, nodding his head. “That’s OK. Ask him what he needs from us to calm things down?”
“He wants you to go away,” she said, but she was shaking her head no, not even aware of it, Mac guessed. He grabbed a pen and paper and wrote a note to Rodriguez: shut down Wi-Fi to the house!
Rodriguez nodded, and gestured to another officer, who looked at the note, and went off to make a call.
Mac wasn’t even sure you could shut down Internet access anymore, but it was worth a try. Because some bozo was trying to agitate the man.
“Ma’am?” Rodriguez said. “What else can we do?”
“He says if you’re still here he’s going to shoot me or our daughter,” she said. She was crying. “Cabot? What is going on with you? You’ve never talked like this before!”
Rodriguez closed his eyes as if he was in pain. Mac watched him. He knows, Mac thought. He knows this isn’t going to end well.
Rodriguez motioned with his hand for people to start moving away. Uniformed officers drove the squad cars out of sight. A couple of others moved the onlookers away from the house, clearing the sidewalks on both sides of the street.
“Ma’am what is your name?”
“Vicki,” she said, barely loud enough to hear.
“And you got a daughter? What’s her name?”
“Clara,” she said. “She’s 9.”
“I’ve got a 9-year-old,” Rodriguez said. “A boy. About time for him to go to school. Clara getting ready for school too?”
“She’s eating breakfast,” Vicki said, her voice a bit stronger. “I’ll need to leave soon to take her to school.”
She turned her head to listen to her husband. “Of course, she’s going to school, Cabot,” she said firmly. “And if you’re not going
