“Jesus, Shorty!” Mac said, appalled.
“Just do it, Mac. Think of it as the calls you make for police blotter every morning.” Shorty was sounding increasingly frustrated. Mac reverted back to the discussion of Sensei.
“So, Sensei? How is he getting his message out?” Mac asked.
“Newsletter,” Shorty said promptly. “I can see the sign-up form on his feed. That’s a good strategy. Move it off the site completely. You sign up, he delivers an email to you — and however many there are on his list, no way to tell that either — in your email box. It’s the number one marketing tool that people are playing with right now.”
“So, sign me up for it,” Mac said.
“You can do it when you log in tonight,” Shorty said. “They’ll want your email address, and you have to confirm it from your email. Don’t use your work email either.” He paused. “Mac? Do you have another email?”
Mac thought for a moment. “No?” he said doubtfully. “And if I do it’s so old I don’t remember a password. Oh! I would have had one at Western, but that ends when you graduate.”
There was silence. Mac waited.
“OK, now you have one,” Shorty said with disgust. “It’s MacDavis at gmail.com. The password is your first name, and your year of birth. Change it when you log in.”
Mac grunted, but he wouldn’t change it. It was a good one, and only Shorty would know what it was. “Thanks,” he said, then realized it was going to be one more thing online he’d have to check regularly. Damn it, he thought.
“So, Sensei? A player I haven’t met? Or didn’t know I met,” Mac said. “Or someone who isn’t even local?”
“I think he’s local,” Shorty said. “When he posts it is consistent to this time zone. So somewhere on the West Coast. He’s more educated than MLK4whites is, more sophisticated in his persuasion techniques. So that puts him in the I-5 corridor, somewhere between Salem, Oregon and Bellingham, Washington. Given the explosive growth in constitutional sheriffs and now these militia wannabes? I’d say he’s in our area. Could be in a college town in eastern Washington, I suppose. Spokane? I downloaded his posts now that we’re followers, and I’m doing a content analysis. It’s still running. But I’m looking for place references so we may have a lead soon.”
Mac knew generally what Shorty was talking about, and he really didn’t want to get a more technical explanation. Then don’t ask, he told himself, because he’ll tell you. For hours.
“Can you do a content cross analysis with MLK4whites?” he asked.
“Yes, and I’ll set that up to run overnight,” Shorty replied. “The program I use is good, but it’s slow. And if I get impatient, it crashes, and I have to reboot and start over.”
Mac snorted. He knew people like that.
“So, do you have other names? What other men have you talked to about this?” Shorty asked.
Mac considered that. “Head of the Northern Cascades National Parks,” he said. “Guy named Edward Peabody. He hates Norton. Might look at all the rangers, they’re probably on the website. The wilderness trek guy Ken Bryson. Pastor of that church Daniel Nielsen — spelled with an e. Sheriff deputies? One of them got shot at, and the guy who shot at him didn’t even get a ‘bad boy’ from the sheriff. He’s a local gun dealer, who also sells porn, and probably meth. Lucas Jorgensen.”
“OK, I’ll add them in,” Shorty said. “By the way? You’ve now got 120 followers. I followed them all back for you. But I’m not going to keep doing that.”
“Damn 120 followers?” Mac said, startled. “I don’t know 120 people.”
“You do now,” Shorty said. “And 115 of them are men. Someone named Angie followed you — looks like she’s at the Examiner — and Janet. And Kate and Naomi Fairchild both followed you. Shit, Mac, I thought you were ending that.”
“Got an invite to Sunday dinner, didn’t go because of the Skagit trip,” Mac said. Then he changed the subject and told Shorty about his plans to go on the wilderness survival weekend.
“Mac! You do know how risky that is?” Shorty demanded.
“Yeah,” Mac said.
“And you’re taking a woman photog with you?”
“Yup.”
“Do you have a death wish? Why?”
Mac considered that question seriously. “I think we’re headed toward trouble as a country, Shorty. The constitutional sheriffs. The anti-government movement like that Bundy family in Nevada. Now these white managerial types playing at militias and buying into conspiracy theories?” He paused for a bite of sandwich while he thought about what was bugging him.
“And Rodriguez? He’s afraid, Shorty, I can feel it. Afraid of his own colleagues in the police force. Afraid that one day he’s going to call for backup and no one comes. Because he’s seen the white supremacists in operation last fall, and it scares him. Can’t say I blame him.”
“Never thought I’d see the day when you were worried about a cop,” Shorty murmured.
“Yeah, me either,” Mac said.
“OK, then,” Shorty said. “I’ll see what I can pull in from this discussion. I’m going off your account, so you can log on later. Both of us can’t be on it at the same time — well, shouldn’t be. But I’ll worry about that. You just need to get on there. Post a bit about your trip north. Did you say you got shot at?”
“I think it was just a shot to scare us off, the ranger probably more than me,” Mac said. “There wasn’t a second shot, and quite frankly we were sitting ducks. Bottom of a ravine. Everywhere was higher ground.”
“Huh,” Shorty said. “Post something about it. I want to see what the
