“Is everything all right?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
We shut the door to my office behind us, and Cindy removed a piece of paper from her knapsack. It looked like e-mail.
“Sit down,” she said. She put the page in front of me and sat next to me. “Read.”
One look at Cindy’s eyes and I knew this wasn’t good.
“It came in my morning e-mail,” she explained. “I’m listed on the Chronicle website. I don’t know who it’s from. Or why they sent it to me. It’s just that I’m a little freaked right now.”
I started to read. Don’t ask how we got your name or why we’re contacting you…. The more I read, the worse it got. We are prepared to kill one prominent bloodsucking pig every three days…. I looked up.
“Keep reading,” Cindy said.
I looked back down and read the rest of the page. I was trying to decide if it was real. I reached the bottom, and knew that it was.
August Spies.
My chest was building up pressure. Suddenly, it was clear where all this was headed. They were holding the city hostage. This was a statement of terror. The G-8. Their target. It was scheduled for the tenth—in nine days. The finance ministers of the top industrial states around the world would be in San Francisco.
“Who knows about this?” I asked.
“You and me,” Cindy said. “And them.”
“They want you to publish their demands,” I said. “They want to use the Chronicle as a soapbox.” I was thinking of all the possible scenarios. “This is gonna make Tracchio shit.”
The countdown had already started. Every three days. Today was Thursday. I knew this e-mail had to be turned over. And once I did, I knew it would no longer be my case. But there was something I needed to do first.
“We can try and trace the address,” Cindy said. “I know a hacker—”
“It won’t lead anywhere,” I said. “Think,” I pressed her. “Why did they contact you? There are plenty of other reporters at the Chronicle. There’s got to be a good reason.”
“Maybe because my byline’s on the story. Maybe because I have roots in Berkeley. But that was ten years ago, Lindsay.”
“Could it be someone from back then? Someone you knew? That asshole Lemouz?”
We looked at each other. “What do you want me to do?” Cindy finally asked.
“I don’t know….” They had made contact. I knew killers enough to know that when they want a dialogue with you, when there’s anything you can do to put off the next grisly act, you talk.
“I think I want you to answer it,” I said.
Chapter 39
EVERYTHING SEEMED to be pointing to across the bay. The sources of the Internet messages. Where the Lightower baby was found. Lemouz. Wendy Raymore’s pilfered ID. The clock was ticking. A new victim every three days…
I was tired of waiting for things to come to me. A swarm of FBI agents had descended on the Hall, tracing, dissecting, analyzing Cindy’s message. It was time to take it to them, whoever was responsible for these outrageous murders.
Jacobi and I called on Joe Santos and Phil Martelli, two Berkeley cops who headed up the Street Intel Unit. Santos had been around since the sixties—Robbery, Homicide, one of those old-line veterans who had seen it all. Martelli was younger, out of Narcotics.
“Basically, you’ve got every shitbag outfit going operating in the Free Republic,” Santos said with a shrug. He popped a Mento. “You got your BLA, IRA, Arabs, free speech, free trade. Everybody with an axe to grind—and an axe—is over here.”
“Word is,” Martelli added, “we got some nasty riffraff from Seattle drifting down here to make some mayhem for the G-8 meeting, all those big economic geniuses, those world-beaters.”
I brought out the case file, grisly photos of the Lightower town house and Bengosian. “We’re not looking for a bunch of sign wavers, Phil.”
Martelli smiled at Santos. He got it. “Other day,” he said, “we got this undercover outfit staking out some SOB who’s been creating a nuisance about PG and E.” Pacific Gas and Electric. Our utility robber barons. Since Enron, there wasn’t a person in California who didn’t feel he wasn’t being ripped off, and he was probably right.