3rd Degree Part 4

Chapter 79.

KIDS HAD BEEN DRINKING from a water fountain at the Red-wood City Elementary School. They got sick.... Those were the first chilling words that we heard.Every heart in the room slammed to a stop at the same time. 8:42. Within seconds, Molinari was patched through to the princ.i.p.al of the school. A decision was made to evacuate it immediately. Claire, who had strapped on a headset, was trying to get through to the EMS vehicle carrying the kids who had gotten sick.Never before had I seen the most capable people in the city so utterly panicked. Molinari carefully instructed the princ.i.p.al: "No one touches the water until we get there. The school has to be cleared right now."He ordered an FBI team on a copter down to Redwood City. The toxicology expert was hooked right into our speakers."If it's ricin," he said, "we're going to see immediate convul-sions, ma.s.sive broncho-constriction, with intense, influenza-like symptoms."Claire had gotten patched through to the school nurse. She identified herself and said, "I need you to carefully describe the symptoms the children are showing.""I didn't know what it was," a frantic voice came back. "The kids were suddenly weak, showing signs of severe nau-sea. Temperatures were almost a hundred and four. Abdomi-nal pain, throwing up."One of the emergency copters had already gotten to the school and was circling, relaying film from above. Children were rus.h.i.+ng out of the exits, guided by teachers. Frantic parents were arriving on the scene.All of a sudden, a second report crackled over the air-waves. A worker had collapsed at a construction site in San Leandro. That was on the other side of the bay. They didn't know if it was a heart attack, or something ingested.As we tried to follow up, a news flash broadcast came over one of the monitors: "Breaking news... In Redwood City, the local elementary school has been evacuated after chil-dren were rushed to a nearby hospital, having collapsed, showing signs of violent sickness, possibly related to a toxic substance. This, on top of broadcast alerts of possible terror-ist activity today...""Any more reports of illness from the school?" Molinari spoke into the phone."None yet," the princ.i.p.al replied. The school was com-pletely evacuated. The helicopter was still circling.Suddenly a doctor from the ER gave us an update. "Their temperatures are one oh three point five to one oh four," the doctor reported. "Acute nausea and dyspnea. I don't know what's causing it. I've never had experience with this sort of thing before.""You need to take immediate mouth and nasal swabs to determine if they were exposed," the toxins expert was instructing. "And chest X-rays. Look for any kind of bilateral infiltrates."Claire cut in. "How are the pulmonary functions? Breath-ing? Lung activity?"Everyone waited anxiously. "They seem to be function-ing," the doctor reported.Claire grabbed Molinari's arm. "Listen, I don't know what's going on here, but I don't think this is ricin," she said."How can you be sure?"Claire had the floor. "Ricin attacks through a necrosis of the vascular cells. I saw the results. The lungs would already be starting to degrade. Also, ricin has a four-to-eight-hour incubation period, does it not, Dr. Taub?" she asked the toxi-cology expert on the line.The expert begrudgingly agreed."That means they would've had to have been exposed during the night. If the lungs are symptom-free, I don't think it has anything to do with that water. I don't know if this is some kind of staph attack, or strychnine.... I don't think it's ricin."The minutes pa.s.sed slowly as the doctors in Redwood City ran through the first series of diagnostic tests.An EMS team was already on the scene in San Leandro. They reported that the construction worker there was having a heart attack and had been stabilized. "A heart attack," they repeated.Minutes later, Redwood City reported back. A chest X-ray showed no deterioration of the lungs in any of the children. "The blood work showed traces of staphylococcal entero-toxin B."I watched Claire's expression."What the h.e.l.l does that mean?" Mayor Fiske demanded."It means they've got a severe staph infection," she said, exhaling. "It's serious, and it's contagious, but it's not ricin."

Chapter 80.

THE RINCON CENTER was full at noon. Hundreds of people chatting over lunch, scanning the sports pages, rush-ing around with bags from the Gap or Office Max. Just relax-ing under the enormous plane of water that fell from the glittering roof.The pianist was playing. Mariah Carey. "A hero comes along..." But no one seemed to notice the music or the player. h.e.l.l, he was awful.Robert sat reading the paper, his heart beating wildly. No more room for talk or argument, he kept thinking. No more waiting for change. Today he'd make his own. G.o.d knows, he was one of the disenfranchised. In and out of VA hospitals. Made crazy by his combat experience, then abandoned. That was what had made him a radical.He tapped the leather briefcase with his shoes, just to make sure it was still there. He was reminded of something he had seen on TV, in a dramatization of the Civil War. A run-away slave had been freed and then conscripted to fight for the North. He fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the war. After one, he happened to spot his old master, sh.e.l.l-shocked and wounded among the Confederate prisoners. "h.e.l.lo, ma.s.sa," the slave went up to him and said, "looks like bottom rail's on top now."And that's what Robert was thinking as he panned the unsuspecting lawyers and bankers slopping down their lunch. Bottom rail's on top now....Across the crowd, the man Robert was waiting for stepped into the concourse - the man with the salt-and-pepper hair. His blood came alive. He stood, wrapping his fingers around the case handle, keeping his eyes fixed on the man - his target for today.This was the moment, he told himself, when all the fancy speeches and vows and homilies turn into deed. He tossed down his newspaper. The area around the fountain was jam-packed. He headed toward the piano.Are you afraid to act? Are you afraid to set the wheel in motion?No, Robert said, I'm ready. I've been ready for years.He stopped and waited at the piano. The pianist started up a new tune, the Beatles: "Something." More of the white man's garbage.Robert smiled at the young red-headed dude behind the keyboard. He took a bill out of his wallet and stuffed it in the bowl.Thanks, man, the pianist nodded.Robert nodded back, almost laughed at the false cama-raderie, and rested his briefcase against a leg of the piano. He checked the progress of his target - thirty feet away - and casually kicked the briefcase underneath the piano. Take that, you sons of b.i.t.c.hes!Robert started to drift slowly toward the north entrance. This is it, baby. This is what he'd been waiting for. He fumbled through his pocket for the stolen cell phone. The target was only about fifteen feet away. Robert turned at the exit doors and took it all in.The man with the salt-and-pepper hair stopped at the piano, just as the Professor said he would. He took a dollar bill out of his wallet. Behind him, the eighty-foot column of water splashed down from the ceiling.Robert pushed through the doors, walked away from the building, and depressed two prea.s.signed keys on the cell phone - G-8.Then the whole world seemed to burst into smoke and flame, and Robert felt the most incredible satisfaction of his entire life. This was a war he wanted to fight in.He never saw the flash, only the building wrenching in a rumble of concrete and gla.s.s, doors blowing out behind him.Start the revolution, baby.... Robert smiled to himself. Bottom rail's on top now....

Chapter 81.

THERE WAS A LOUD SHOUT in the Emergency Command Center. One of the guys manning the police frequency yanked off his headset. "A bomb just went off at the Rincon Center!"I turned to Claire and felt the life deflate out of me. The Rincon Center was one of the city's most spectacular settings, in the heart of the Financial District, home to government agencies, business offices, and hundreds of apartments. This time of day, it would be jammed. How many people had just died?I wasn't waiting around for police reports to call in the damage or casualties. I ran out of the Emergency Command Center with Claire a step behind. We hopped in her medical examiner's van. It took about fifteen minutes for us to race downtown and fight our way through the maze of traffic, fire vehicles, and bystanders crowded around the stricken area.Reports coming over the radio said the bomb had gone off in the atrium, where it would be busiest at noon.We ditched the van at the corner of Beale and Folsom and started to run. We could see smoke rising from the Rincon a couple of blocks away. We had to go to the Steuart Street entrance, running past the Red Herring, Harbor Court Hotel, the Y."Lindsay, this is so bad, so bad," Claire moaned.The first thing that hit me was the blunt cordite smell. The outside gla.s.s doors were completely blown away. People sat on the sidewalk, coughing, bleeding, slashed by explod-ing gla.s.s, expelling smoke out of their lungs. Survivors were still being evacuated left and right. That meant the worst was inside.I took a deep breath. "Let's go. Be careful, Claire."Everything was covered with hot black soot. Smoke stabbed at my lungs. The police were trying to clear some s.p.a.ce. Fire crews were dousing sporadic blazes.Claire knelt next to a woman whose face was burned and who was shouting that she couldn't see. I pushed past them, farther in. A couple of bodies were crumpled in the center of the atrium near the Rain Column, which continued to pour water into a pond built into the floor. What have these people done? Is this their idea of war?Experienced cops were barking into handheld radios, but I saw younger ones just standing around, blinking back tears.In the center of the atrium, my eye fell on a mangle of twisted wood and melted wire - the remains of what looked like a piano. I spotted Niko Magitakos from the Bomb Squad crouched next to it. He had a look on his face that I will never forget. Something terrible like this, you pray it will never come.I pushed my way over to Niko."The blast site," he said, tossing a piece of charred wood in the piano pile. "Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, Lindsay. People were just having lunch here."I was no bomb expert, but I could see a ring of devasta-tion - benches, trees, burn smears - the location of the casualties blasted out from the center of the atrium."Two witnesses say they saw a well-dressed black male. He left a briefcase under the piano and then split. My guess, it's the same work as the Marina case. C-4, detonated elec-tronically. Maybe by phone."A woman in a Bomb Squad jacket came running up, hold-ing what looked like a fragment from a blown-apart leather case."Mark it," Niko instructed her. "If we can find the handle, maybe there'll even be a print.""Wait," I said as she started to walk away. What she had found was a wide leather strap, the piece that closed over the top of a briefcase and buckled into the clasp. Two gold letters were monogrammed into the strap. AS.A sickening feeling rose up inside me. They were f.u.c.king with us. They were mocking us. I knew what the letters stood for, of course.A.S. August Spies. My cell phone went off and I grabbed it. Cindy was onthe line. "Are you there, Lindsay?" she asked. "Are you okay?""I'm here. What's up?""They took credit for the bombing," she told me. "Some-body called it in to the paper. The caller said he was August Spies. He said, 'Three more days, then watch out!' He said this was just practice."

Chapter 82.

BY LATE AFTERNOON it finally caught up with me that I hadn't gotten even an hour's sleep for the second night in three days.I also started to feel that I was missing something impor-tant about the case. I was sure of it.I called Cindy and Claire together. I'd been so focused on finding Hardaway, I'd missed something else.Claire had spent the day in the morgue with the grim task of trying to identify the victims of the Rincon Center blast. There were sixteen dead so far, and more to come, unfortu-nately. She agreed to meet for a few minutes across the street at Susie's, our familiar corner table.The minute I hit the street on the way to Susie's, I could feel the anxiety, see it on faces. Claire and Cindy were wait-ing for me inside."The note about Jill is the key." I told them my latest the-ory as we sipped our tea."The note said she was part of the state," Claire said, looking puzzled."Not that one. Cindy's e-mail. It said, 'This one wasn't like the others....' ""This one was personal," Cindy finished it off."You're thinking Jill had some personal contact with this guy?" Claire blinked. "Like what?""I don't know what I'm thinking. Just that each of these victims was chosen precisely. None of the killings have been random. So what led them to Jill? They tracked her. They cased her home and picked her up. Lightower, Bengosian... Something tied Jill to the two of them.""Maybe one of her cases?" Cindy shrugged. Claire seemed unconvinced.There was a lull in the conversation. We looked around. The silence brought us all to the same place. The empty seat at the table."It's so strange to be here," Claire said, letting out a breath, "to be doing this, without Jill. To be talking about her.""Jill's gonna help us," I whispered.I looked at both of them. A renewed sparkle was in their eyes."Okay," Claire said, nodding, "how?""We're going to look over her old cases," I said. "I'll try and get someone on Sinclair's staff to pitch in.""And we're looking for what exactly?" Cindy narrowed her eyes."You got the e-mail. Something personal," I said. "Just like this case is for us. Look at the faces in here, and out on the street. Somebody has to stop these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, these murderers."

Chapter 83.

BENNETT SINCLAIR hooked me up with Wendy Hong, a young prosecutor in his department, and with April, Jill's a.s.sistant. We requisitioned Jill's casework over the past eight years. All of it!It was a mountain of paperwork, wheeled up from the law morgue in large laundry-style pushcarts and stacked in Jill's office in columns of thick, bound files.So we started in.By day, I still ran the investigation, trying to close in on Hardaway. But at night, and every other available moment I could find, I went downstairs and plowed through the files. Claire pitched in. So did Cindy. Deep into the night, it seemed Jill's light was the only one left on in the Hall.This one was personal. The phrase rang in our ears.But we didn't find anything. A lot of people's time wasted.If there was a connection to August Spies in Jill's life, it wasn't in her files. Where was it? It had to be there somewhere.Finally, we loaded the last of the files to go back to the morgue."Go home," Claire said to me, exhausted herself. "Get some sleep." She struggled up and pulled on her raincoat. She placed her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. "We'll find another way, Lindsay. We will."Claire was right. I needed a good night's sleep more than anything in the world, other than a warm bath. I had staked so much on this.I checked in with the office one more time, then, for the first time I could remember, packed up to head home for some sleep. I got in the Explorer and started heading down Brannan for Potrero. I stopped at a light. I was feeling totally empty.The light changed. I sat there. I knew inside that I wasn't going home.I jerked a right when the light changed, and headed out on Sixteenth toward Buena Vista Park. It wasn't as if any bril-liant idea flashed into my brain.... More like a lack of any-thing else to do.Something connected them. I was sure of that much. I just hadn't found it.There was a single patrol guy guarding Jill's town house when I pulled up. Crime scene tape blocked the stairs to the landing.I ID'd myself to the young officer at the door, who was probably happy for the diversion at this time of night. I stepped inside Jill's house.

Chapter 84.

A REALLY CREEPY FEELING came over me that this might not be something I should be doing. Walking around the home I had been to so many times, knowing Jill was dead. Seeing her things: a Burberry umbrella, Otis's food bowl, a stack of recent newspapers. I was overcome with a sense of loneliness, missing her more than ever.I went into the kitchen. I leafed through some loose things on an old pine desk. Everything was just as she'd left it. A note to Ingrid, her housekeeper. A few bills. Jill's famil-iar handwriting. It was almost as if she were still there.I went upstairs. I walked down the hall to Jill's study. This was where she did her work, spent a lot of her time. Jill's s.p.a.ce.I sat down at her desk. I smelled her scent. Jill had an old bra.s.s lamp. I flicked it on. Some letters scattered on the desk. One from her sister, Beth. Some photos: her and Steve and Otis at Moab.What are you doing in here, Lindsay? I asked myself again. What are you hoping to find? Something signed by August Spies? Don't be a fool.I opened one of the desk drawers. Files. Household things. Trips, airline mileage statements.I got up and stepped over to the bookshelf. The Voyage of the Narwhal, The Corrections, stories by Eudora Welty. Jill always had good taste in books. Never knew when she found the time to read these things. But somehow she did.I bent down and opened a cupboard under the shelf. I came upon boxes of old pictures. Trips taken, her sister's wedding. Some went back as far as her college graduation.Look at Jill: frizzy hair, thin as a rail, but strong. They made me smile. I sat on the hardwood floor and leafed through them. G.o.d, I miss you.I saw this old accordion-style folder, wrapped tightly by an elastic cord. I opened it. Lots of old things. What it con-tained surprised me. Letters, photos, newspaper clippings. Some report cards from when Jill was in high school. Her parents' wedding invitation.And a file stuffed with newspaper clippings. I leafed through them. They were mostly about her father.Her dad was a prosecutor, here and back in Texas. Jill told me he used to call her his little Second Chair. He'd died just a few months before, and it was clear how much Jill missed him. Most of the articles were on cases he had worked on or appointments he had received.I came upon an old yellowed article. The source sur-prised me.San Francisco Examiner. September 17, 1970.The headline read PROSECUTOR NAMED IN BNA BOMBING CASE.The Black National Army. The BNA was a radical group back in the sixties. Known for violent robberies and armed a.s.saults.I scanned the article. The prosecutor's name sent a chillracing down my back. Robert Meyer. Jill's father.

Chapter 85.

AN HOUR LATER I was stabbing at Cindy's front doorbell. Two-thirty in the morning. I heard the locks turn, and the door slowly cracked open. Cindy was staring at me in a long Niners s.h.i.+rt, bleary-eyed. I had probably woken her out of her best sleep in three days."This better be good," she said as she flipped the lock."It's good, Cindy." I shoved the old Examiner article in front of her face. "I think I found out how Jill's connected to the case."Fifteen minutes later we were bouncing along the dark-ened, empty streets of the city in my Explorer, down to the Chronicle's office on Fifth and Mission."I didn't even know Jill's father worked out here," Cindy said, then yawned."He started here, out of law school, before he moved back to Texas. Right after Jill was born."We got to her cubicle at about three A.M. The lights in the newsroom were dimmed, a couple of young stringers man-ning the overnight wires, caught playing video bridge."Overnight efficiency audit," Cindy said to them, straight-faced. "You guys just failed."She wheeled herself in front of her screen and fired up the computer. She plugged a few search words into the Chronicle's database: Robert Meyer. BNA. Then she slapped the ENTER key.Several matches popped up on the screen right away. We plowed through a lot of unrelated articles of antiwar and BNA activity in the sixties. Then we found something.PROSECUTOR NAMED IN DEADLY BNA RAID CASE.A series of articles from September 1970.We scrolled back from there, and bingo! FEDS, POLICE RAID BNA STRONGHOLD. FOUR DEAD IN SHOOTOUT.It was in the days of the sixties radicals. Constant protests over the war, SDS riots on Sproul Plaza in Berkeley. We scrolled through several articles. The BNA had robbed a few banks and then a Brink's truck. A guard, a hostage, and two cops were killed in the robbery. Two BNA members were on the FBI's list of Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.We scrolled through whatever the Chronicle had on file. A BNA hideout was raided the night of December 6, 1969. The Feds had surrounded a house on a quiet street in Berkeley based on a tip from a CI. They came in, guns blazing.Five radicals in the house were killed. Among the dead were Fred Whitehouse, a leader of the group, and two women.There was one white kid shot dead in the raid, a student at Berkeley. From an upper-middle-cla.s.s background near Sacramento. Family and friends insisted he didn't even know how to fire a gun. Just an idealistic kid caught up protesting an immoral war.No one would say what he was doing in the house.William "Billy" Danko was his name.

Chapter 86.

A GRAND JURY was convened to investigate the shootings at the BNA hideout. Nasty charges were hurled left and right. The case was given to a rising prosecutor in the D.A.'s office. Robert Meyer. Jill's father.The jury at the trial found no evidence of any police mis-conduct. Those who were killed, the police argued, were among the FBI's most wanted, though the description seemed a stretch for Billy Danko. Federal agents paraded a cache of guns confiscated in the raid: Uzis, grenade launchers, piles of ammo. A gun was found in Fred Whitehouse's hand - though sympathizers claimed it had been planted."Okay," Cindy said wearily, and pushed back from the screen, "where do we go from here?"The database referred to an article from 1971, a year later, in the Chronicle's Sunday news magazine."You got a morgue downstairs, don't you?""Yes, we do. Downstairs. A morgue."It was now close to four A.M. We flicked on a light in the morgue, and there was nothing but row after row of metal shelves filled with mesh and wire bins.I frowned, deflated. "You know the system, Cindy?""Of course I know the system," she replied. "You come in here during normal working hours and you ask the guy sitting at the desk."We split up and roamed the dark, crammed corridors. Cindy wasn't exactly sure if the files went back that far; what we were searching for might only be on film.Finally I heard her shout, "I found something!"I wound my way through the dark rows, following the sound of her voice. When I found Cindy, she was hauling down bundled old issues of the magazine supplement in large plastic bins. They were labeled by year.We sat on the cold, concrete floor, side by side, barely enough light to read by.Still, we quickly found the article the database had referred us to. It was an expos t.i.tled "What Really Happened to the Hope Street Five."According to the writer, the local police had fabricated the whole crime scene to get rid of the insurgents. They had been tipped off by an unnamed CI. It was a ma.s.sacre, not an arrest. Supposedly the victims were sleeping in their beds.A lot of the article was focused on the white victim in the raid, Billy Danko. The FBI had claimed he was a Weatherman and tied him to a bombing at a regional office of Raytheon, a manufacturer of weapons. The article in the Chronicle con-tradicted most of the FBI's facts about Danko, who did seem to be an innocent victim.It was four in the morning. I was getting frustrated, angry.Cindy and I seemed to fix on it at the same time.The court proceedings. It was brought out that the BNA and the Weathermen used code names when they contacted one another. Fred Whitehouse was Bobby Z, after a Black Panther who was gunned down. Leon Mickens was Vlad - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Joanne Crow was Sasha, a woman who had blown herself up fighting the junta in Chile."You see it, Cindy?" I looked at her in the thinning light.The name that Billy Danko had chosen for himself was August Spies.Jill had shown us the way.

Chapter 87.

THE LIGHTS WERE BLAZING in Molinari's office - the only lights on in the Hall at six A.M.He was on the phone when I went in. His face brightened into what I took as a worn smile, pleased but exhausted. No one was getting any sleep these days."I was just trying to a.s.sure the chief of staff," he said, signing off the phone and smiling, "that we weren't the secu-rity equal out here of, say, Chechnya - with larger bridges. Tell me you have something, anything."I pushed across the yellowed, folded article I had found in Jill's study.Molinari picked up the article, PROSECUTOR NAMED IN BNA BOMBING CASE. He scanned it."What was it you called them, Joe? Radicals from the six-ties who you said are still out there, who never surfaced?""White rabbits?" he said."What if it wasn't political? What if there was something else motivating them? Or maybe it's partly political, but there's something else?""Motivating what, Lindsay?"I pushed across the last article, the Sunday magazine sup-plement, folded to the part about Billy Danko's code name, circled in bright red: August Spies."To get back in the game. To commit these murders. Maybe to get some kind of revenge. I don't know everything yet. There's something here, though."For the next few minutes I briefed Molinari on everything that we had - right up to the prosecutor Robert Meyer, Jill's father.Molinari blinked gla.s.sily. He looked at me as if I might be crazy. And it sounded crazy. Whatever I had was flying in the face of the investigation, the p.r.o.nouncements of the killers, the wisdom of every law-enforcement agency in the country."Just where do you want to go with this, Lindsay?" Moli-nari finally asked."We've got to find out whatever we can about the people in that house. I'd start with Billy Danko. His family was from Sacramento. The FBI has files on what happened, right? Department of Justice, whatever it is. I need to know every-thing the Feds know."Molinari shook his head slowly back and forth. I realized I was asking for a lot. He closed his eyes for a second and leaned back in his chair. When he opened them I saw the faintest outline of a smile. "I knew there was a reason I missed you, Lindsay."I took that as a yes."What I didn't know" - he pushed back his chair - "was that it was due to the likely prospect we're both going to have some time on our hands after we're removed from our jobs.""I missed you, too," I said.

Chapter 88.

SAN FRANCISCO WAS IN A PANIC the likes of which I had never seen before. The news stories never seemed to stop. Meanwhile, where the h.e.l.l were we? Not close enough to the killers, I was afraid.My whole theory depended on finding some way to make the other victims fit in with the current murders. I was cer-tain there was a connection.Bengosian was from Chicago. That seemed a long shot to tie in. But I remembered Lightower had gone to Berkeley. His CLO had told us that when we were up at Lightower's com-pany after he was killed.I placed a call to Dianne Aronoff, Mort Lightower's sister, and caught her at home. We talked and I found out that her brother had been a member of the SDS. In '69, his junior year at Berkeley, he had taken a leave of absence.Nineteen sixty-nine was the year of the Hope Street raid. Did that mean anything? It just might.About one o'clock, Jacobi knocked on my window. "I think we found your guy Danko's father."He and Cappy had started with the phone book, then matched up the address with a local high school. Danko's father was still in Sacramento. Same address as they had lived in back in 1969. A man had answered when Cappy called. Hung up as soon as the inspectors had brought up Billy Danko's name."There's an FBI office down there." Jacobi shrugged. "Or?""Here" - I jumped up, flipping him the keys to the Explorer - "you drive."

Chapter 89.

IT WAS ABOUT TWO HOURS on Highway 80 any way you cut it to Sacramento, and we kept the Explorer at a steady seventy-five over the Bay Bridge. An hour and fifty minutes later we pulled up in front of a slightly run-down fifties-style ranch. We needed a win here, needed it badly.The house was large but neglected, a slope of faded lawn and a fenced-in lot in back. Danko's father was a doctor, I recalled. Thirty years ago, this might've been one of the nicest houses on the block.I took off my sungla.s.ses and knocked on the front door. It took a while for someone to answer, and I was feeling impatient, to say the least.Finally an old man opened and peered out at us. I could see his nose and sharp, pointed chin - a resemblance to the picture of Billy Danko in the Chronicle magazine."You the idiots who called on the phone?" He stood there, regarding us warily. "Of course you are.""I'm Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer," I said. "And this is Homi-cide Inspector Warren Jacobi. Do you mind if we come in?""I mind," he said, but he swung the screen door open any-way. "I've got nothing to say to the police if it concerns my son, other than accepting their full apology for his murder."He led us back through musty, paint-chipped halls into a small den. It didn't seem that anyone else was living with him."We were hoping to ask you just a few questions regard-ing your son," Jacobi said."Ask." Danko sank himself into a patchwork couch. "Bet-ter time to ask questions was thirty years ago. William was a good boy, a great boy. We raised him to think for himself, and he did, made choices of conscience - the right ones, it was proven out later. Losing that boy cost me everything I had. My wife..." He nodded toward a black-and-white portrait of a middle-aged woman. "Everything.""We're sorry for what happened." I sat on the edge of a badly stained armchair. "No one's here to cause you more distress. I'm sure you're familiar with what's been going on in San Francisco recently. A lot of people have died there."Danko shook his head. "Thirty years later, and you still won't let him rest in peace."I glanced at Jacobi. This was going to be a tough go. I started in talking about Jill, how we had found the connec-tion between her father and the raid on the Hope Street house. Then how one of the other victims, Lightower, also had a connection to Berkeley and the student revolts."Don't mean to tell you your job, Inspectors" - Carl Danko smiled - "but that sounds like a lot of crazy suppo-sitions to me.""Your son had a code name," I said, "August Spies. August Spies is the name that's being used by the people who are doing these killings."Carl Danko snorted derisively and reached for a pipe. He seemed to find all of this humorous."Do you know anyone who might be involved?" I pressed. "One of Billy's friends? Maybe someone's been in touch with you lately?""Whoever is doing it, G.o.d bless him." Carl Danko cleaned out his pipe. "Truth is, you've wasted your time coming out here. I can't help you a lick. And if I could...I hope somehow you can understand why I might not be so dis-posed to help the San Francisco Police. Now please leave my house."Jacobi and I stood up. I took a step toward the door, pray-ing for some kind of epiphany before I got there. I stopped at the picture of his wife. Then I noticed a photo next to hers.It was a family shot.Something caused me to focus on the faces.There was another son in the photo.Younger. Maybe sixteen. A spitting image of his mother.The four of them smiling, not a care on what seemed a pleas-ant, sunny day in the distant past. "You have another son." I turned back to Danko. "Charles..." He shrugged. I picked up the photo. "Maybe we should talk to him. Hemight know something." "Doubt it." Danko stared at me. "He's dead, too."

Chapter 90.

BACK IN THE EXPLORER, I called in to Cappy. "I want you to run the background on a Charles Danko. Born in Sacra-mento, 1953-54. Possibly deceased. That's the best I have. And go back as far as you have to go. If this guy's dead, I want to see the death certificate to prove it.""I'll get on it," Cappy said. "Meanwhile, I got one for you. George Bengosian, Lieutenant. You were right, he did get a pre-med degree from the University of Chicago. But that was after he transferred there from Berkeley. Bengosian was there in 'sixty-nine.""Thanks, Cappy. Great work. Keep it up."So now we had three - Jill, Lightower, and Bengosian - who were tied to the murderous police raid on Hope Street. And the code name August Spies linked to Billy Danko.I didn't know what to do with it yet. As Danko said, it was all a bunch of suppositions.While Jacobi drove back to the city, I finally dozed for a bit. It was my first solid sleep in three days. We got back to the Hall about six. "In case you were wondering," Jacobi said, "you snore.""Purr," I corrected. "I purr."Before heading back to my office, I wanted to check on Molinari. I ran upstairs and squeezed myself into his office. A meeting was in progress. What was this?Chief Tracchio was sitting at his desk. So was Tom Roach from the FBI. And Strickland, who was in charge of the G-8 advance security."Lightower was there," I announced, barely able to hold back my excitement. "At Berkeley - at the time of the BNA raid. George Bengosian was, too. They were all there.""I know," Molinari said.

Chapter 91.

IT ONLY TOOK ME A SECOND. "You found the FBI file on the BNA?""Better," Molinari said. "We found one of the FBI agents who was in charge of the raid on Hope Street."William Danko was a card-carrying member of the Weathermen. You can be sure of it. He was sighted casing the site of the regional offices of Grumman, which were bombed in September of 1969. His code name, August Spies, was picked up in monitored phone traffic of known Weathermen lines. The kid was no innocent, Lindsay. He was involved in murder."Molinari pushed forward a yellow legal pad filled with his handwriting. "The FBI had begun following him about three months before the raid. There were a couple of others involved out of the Berkeley cell. The FBI was able to turn one of them, use him as a CI. It's amazing how the threat of twenty-five years in a federal prison puts a crimp in a promis-ing medical career.""Bengosian!" I said. A rush surged through my veins. I felt validated.Molinari nodded. "They turned Bengosian, Lindsay. That's how they got to the house on Hope Street that night. Bengosian betrayed his friends. You were right - and there's more.""Lightower," I said expectantly."He was Danko's roommate," Molinari replied. "The school cracked down on students active in the SDS. Maybe Lightower decided it was time for a semester abroad."And one of the FBI agents who led the raid, who went inside the house that morning, he got promoted. Spent his twenty years in the Bureau, retired right here in San Fran-cisco. His name was Frank T. Seymour. Name ring a bell?"Yeah, it rang a bell, but it didn't fill me with exhilaration. Just a sickening feeling.Frank T. Seymour was one of the people killed in the blast at the Rincon Center.

Chapter 92.

IT WAS NIGHT NOW and Mich.e.l.le liked the night. She could watch the Simpsons, reruns of Friends. Laugh a bit, like before everything had started, like when she was a kid in Eau Claire.They'd had to ditch the Oakland apartment where they had lived for the past six months. Now they'd moved into Julia's house in the Berkeley flats.And they couldn't go out much anymore. The situation was too tight. Sometimes on TV she saw a photograph of Mal, except the news reports called him Stephen Hardaway. Robert had moved in, too. It was the four of them now. And maybe Charles Danko would show up soon, too. Supposedly, he had the final plans, the endgame, which Mal promised would blow everybody's mind. It was huge.Mich.e.l.le turned off the TV and went downstairs. Mal was hunched over the wires, tinkering with the new device, the latest bomb. There was a plan, he said, how they were gonna get this baby inside. Just being in the same place with the d.a.m.n thing freaked her out.She crept up behind him. "Mal, you want something to eat? I can fix you something.""You can see I'm working, Mich.e.l.le." More of a snap than a reply. He was soldering a red wire into a wooden table leg that she knew encased the blasting cap.She put a hand on his shoulder. "I need to talk with you, Mal. I think I want to leave."Mal stiffened up from the bomb. He pulled the lenses off his head, wiped the sweaty hair off of his face."You're going to leave?" Mal said, nodding in her face, as if he found this amusing. "And you're going where? Hop on a bus and go home? Back to Geewhizconsin? Enroll in Gee-whizconsin junior college, after blowing up a couple of kids in the big city?"Tears started in Mich.e.l.le's eyes. Telltale signs of weakness, she knew. Dreaded sentimentality."Stop it, Mal.""You're a wanted killer, honey. The cute little nanny who blew up her kids. Did that slip your mind?"Suddenly she saw it clearly. Lots of things. That even if they did this job, this last one, Mal would never go away with her. When she closed her eyes at night she could see the Lightower kids. Sitting around at breakfast. Getting dressed for school. She knew she had done terrible things. No matter how much she wished otherwise, Mal was right, there was nowhere for her to go. She was the murderous au pair. She always would be."Now come on," Mal said, suddenly gentler. "As long as you're here, you can help me, baby. I need that pretty finger of yours. On that wire. You remember, nothing to worry about."He held up the phone. "No juice, no boost, right? We're gonna be heroes, Mich.e.l.le. We're gonna save the world from the bad guys. They're never ever going to forget us."

Chapter 93.

ONE A.M., but who could sleep?Molinari came into the squad room. I was watching the wires with Paul Chin. He looked at me and sighed. "Charles Danko."He tossed a green folder on the desk across from me. It was marked PRIVILEGED INFORMATION, FBI. "They had to go deep in the cold files to find him."I felt my blood rush. My skin p.r.i.c.kled. Did this mean we were close to finding him?"He went to the University of Michigan," Molinari said. "Arrested twice for disorderly conduct and inciting to riot. Picked up in New York in 1973 for illegal possession of rearms. A town house he lived in there just blew up one afternoon. Here one minute, gone the next.""Sure sounds like our boy.""He was being sought in connection with a bombing of the Pentagon in 1972. An expert in explosives. After that town house blew in New York, he disappeared. No one knew whether he was in the country or out. Charles Danko's simply been missing for thirty years. No one's even chasing him.""A white rabbit," I said.He laid out an old rap sheet dated 1974 and a faxed black-and-white FBI wanted poster. On it was a slightly older ver-sion of the boyish face I had seen in the family photo at the Danko house."There's our man," Molinari said. "Now how the h.e.l.l do we find him?"

Chapter 94.

"LIEUTENANT!" I heard a loud knocking on my gla.s.s.I bolted up. My watch read 6:30 A.M. I must have dozed off waiting for Molinari to report with more news on Danko.Paul Chin was at my door. "Lieutenant, you better get on line three. Now...""Danko?" I blinked myself awake."Better. We got a woman from Wisconsin who thinks her daughter is tied up with Stephen Hardaway. I think she knows where she is!"In the seconds it took to knock the sleep out of my brain, Chin went back to his desk and got a backup recording going. I picked up the phone."Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer," I cleared my throat and said.The woman started in as if she had left off in mid-sentence with Chin, her voice upset, maybe not too educated. Midwestern."I always told her something with this smart-a.s.s guy didn't add up. She said he was so brilliant. Brilliant, my a.s.s... She always wanted to do good, my Mich.e.l.le. She was easy to take advantage of. I said, 'Just go to the state school. You can be anything you want.'""Your daughter's name is Mich.e.l.le?" I picked up a pen. "Ms....?""Fontieul. That's right, Mich.e.l.le Fontieul."I scribbled down the name. "Why don't you just tell me what you know?""I seen him, you know," the woman recounted. "That fel-low on TV. The one everybody's looking for. My Mich.e.l.le's hooked up with him."Course his name wasn't Stephen then. What'd she call him on the phone? Malcolm? Mal. They drove through here heading out west. I think he was from Portland or Was.h.i.+ng-ton. He got her into this 'protesting' thing. I didn't even understand half of what it meant. I tried to warn her.""You're sure this was the same man you saw on TV?" I pressed."I'm sure. Course, his hair's different now. And he didn't have no beard. I knew -"I interrupted. "When was the last time you spoke to your daughter, Ms. Fontieul?""I don't know, maybe three months. She always called. She'd never leave her numbers. This last time, though, she sounded a little strange. She said she was really doing some good for once. She comes out and tells me that I raised her well. That she loved me. I was thinking, maybe she'd got her-self knocked up is all."All this matched. What we knew about Hardaway and the description we'd gotten from the owner of the KGB Bar. "Do you have any way to contact your daughter? An address?""I had some address, I think it was maybe a friend's. I got this P.O. box. Mich.e.l.le said I could always send something there if I needed to. Box three-three-three-eight. Care of Mail Boxes, Etc., on Broad Street, Oakland, California."I glanced at Chin, both of us scribbling at the same time. The place wouldn't open up for a couple of hours. We'd have to get the FBI out to her in Wisconsin. Get a photo of her daughter. In the meantime, I asked if she would describe her to me."Blond. Blue eyes." The woman hesitated. "Mich.e.l.le was always pretty, I'll grant her that. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. She's just a kid, Lieutenant."I thanked her for coming forward. And I told her I'd make sure her daughter was treated fairly, if she was mixed up in this, which I had no doubt she was."I'm going to put you on with another officer," I told her, "but before I do, I need to ask you one more thing." A thought had crept into my head, going back to that first day. "Did your daughter have any breathing ailments?""Why, yes," she said, pausing, "she always did have asthma, Lieutenant. Been carrying around a puffer since she was ten years old."I looked at Chin through the gla.s.s. "I think we just found Wendy Raymore."

Chapter 95.

CINDY THOMAS headed into work on the Market Street bus, same as every morning, but that day with the gnawing premonition that something was going to break soon. One way or the other. August Spies had promised as much.The BART was crowded this morning, standing room only. It took two stops for her even to find a seat. She took out her Chronicle as she did every morning and scanned page one. A shot of Mayor Fiske, flanked by Deputy Director Molinari and Tracchio. The G-8 meetings were still a go. Her story, on the possible link to Billy Danko, was the right-hand column above the fold.A girl with cropped, dyed red hair in overalls and a cro-cheted sweater moved close by. Cindy looked up; something about her struck her as familiar. The girl had three earrings in her left ear and a barrette in the shape of a sixties peace symbol in her hair. Pretty, in a waiflike way.Cindy kept one eye on the route, which she knew just from the stores on Market Street. The man next to her got up at Van Ness.The girl in the overalls squeezed into the seat beside her. Cindy smiled and turned the page. More articles on the G-8 thing. The girl in the overalls seemed to be reading over her shoulder.Then she met Cindy's eyes. "They're not going to stop, you know."Cindy smiled halfheartedly; conversation wasn't some-thing she needed before eight A.M. This time the girl wouldn't let her gaze go."They're not going to stop, Miss Thomas. I did try. I did like you said, and tried."Cindy froze. Everything inside her seemed to come to a stop.She looked into the girl's face. She was older than she had seemed - maybe mid-twenties. Cindy thought to ask how she knew her name, but then in that same instant, it all came clear.This was the person she'd been talking to on the Internet. This was the girl who had a hand in killing Jill. Possibly, the au pair."Listen to me. I snuck out, they don't know I'm here. Something terrible is going to happen," the girl said. "At the G-8 meeting. Another bomb. Or worse. I don't know exactly where, but it's gonna be big, the biggest one. A lot of people will die. Now you try to stop it."Every muscle in Cindy's body tensed. She didn't know what she should do. Grab her, shout, stop the bus? Every law-enforcement agent in town was looking for this girl. But something held Cindy back. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked."I'm sorry, Miss Thomas." The girl touched Cindy's arm. "I'm sorry about all of them, Eric, Caitlin. That lawyer, your friend. I know we've done some terrible things.... I wish I could undo them. I can't.""You've got to turn yourself in." Cindy stared at her. She glanced around, petrified that one of the other pa.s.sengers would hear. "It's over. They know who you are.""I have something for you." The girl ignored her pleas. She pressed a folded-up piece of paper into Cindy's hand. "I don't know any way to stop it now. Except this. It's better if I stay with them. Just in case the plans change."The bus came to a stop at the Metro Civic Center. Cindy unfolded the paper the girl had given her.She read: 722 Seventh Street Berkeley."Oh my G.o.d," Cindy gasped. The girl was telling her where they were hiding.Suddenly the girl was standing up, heading for the exit. The rear door hissed open."You can't go back there!" Cindy hollered.The girl turned, but she kept walking."Wait!" she shouted. "Don't go back there."The girl seemed surprised, and lost. She hesitated for a second. "I'm sorry," she mouthed. "I need to do it this way." Then she hurried off the bus.Cindy leaped up as the doors closed, yanking the cord, shouting to the driver to open them again. It was an emer-gency! By the time she jumped out onto the platform, Mich.e.l.le Fontieul had disappeared into the early-morning crowd.Cindy got on the phone to Lindsay. "I know where they are! I have an address."

Part Five

Chapter 96.

THE LARGEST a.s.sAULT TEAM in the city's history was building up around the run-down white house at 722 Sev-enth Street in Berkeley. San Francisco SWAT details, Berkeley and Oakland contingents, federal agents from the FBI and the DHS.The area was completely blocked off from traffic. Neigh-boring houses were quietly cleared one by one. The Bomb Squad was readied. EMS vans were pulled into place.A gray Chevy van had pulled into the driveway twenty minutes earlier. Somebody was home.I was able to station myself close to Molinari, who was in phone contact with Was.h.i.+ngton. A Special Operations cap-tain, Joe Szerbiak, was in charge of the a.s.sault team."Here's what we do," Molinari said, kneeling behind the barricade of a black patrol car maybe thirty yards away from the house. "We make one call. Give them a chance to surren-der. If they don't" - he nodded to Szerbiak - "it's yours."The plan was to shoot in tear gas canisters and force whoever was in the house out. If they came out cool, mean-ing voluntarily, we would force them to the ground, pick them up."And if they come out hot?" Joe Szerbiak asked, putting on his bulletproof vest.Molinari shrugged. "If they come out shooting, we have to take them down."The wild card in the siege was the explosives. We knew they had bombs. What had taken place at the Rincon Center two days before was in the front of everybody's mind.The a.s.sault team was readied. Several marksmen were in place. The team that was going in a.s.sembled inside an armored van, ready to swing into place. Cindy Thomas was with us. A girl inside seemed to trust her. Mich.e.l.le. Who might be Wendy Raymore, the au pair.I was nervous and agitated. I wanted this over. No more bloodshed, just over."You think they know we're out here?" Tracchio surveyed the house from behind the hood of a radio car."If they don't," Molinari said, "they're about to." He looked at Szerbiak. "Captain," he said with a nod, "you can make that call."

Chapter 97.

INSIDE 722 SEVENTH STREET, everyone and everything was going crazy.Robert, the vet, had grabbed an automatic rifle and was crouched below one of the front windows, sizing up the scene outside. "There's an army out there! Cops everywhere I look!"Julia was screaming and acting like a crazy woman. "I told you to get out of my house! I told you to get out!" She looked toward Mal. "What are we going to do now? What are we going to do?"Mal seemed calm. He went over to the window, peeked through the curtains. Then he headed into the other room and came back wheeling a black case. "Probably die," he answered.Mich.e.l.le's heart seemed to be beating a thousand beats per second. Any moment, armed, uniformed men could burst in. Part of her was gripped with fear, part was ashamed. She knew she had let down her friends. Ended everything they had fought for. But she had helped murder women and chil-dren, and now maybe she could stop the killing.Suddenly the phone rang. For a second everyone turned, eyes fixed on the phone. The rings were like alarm bells going off."Pick it up," Robert said to Mal. "You want to be the leader. Pick it up."Mal walked over. Four, five rings. Finally he lifted the phone.He listened for a second. His face didn't register fear or surprise. He even told them his name. "Stephen Hardaway," he said proudly.Then he listened for a long time. "I hear you," he answered. He put down the receiver, swallowed, and looked around. "They say we have this one chance. Anyone who wants to leave, you'd better go now."The room was deathly quiet. Robert at the window. Julia, her back pressed up against the wall. Mal, finally seeming shocked and out of answers. Mich.e.l.le wanted to cry that she had brought this upon them."Well, they ain't putting their hands on me," Robert said. He picked up his automatic rifle, his back to the kitchen door, eyeing the van parked in the driveway.He winked, a sort of silent farewell. Then he yanked open the door and ran out of the house.About four feet from the van he raised the gun, squeezing off a long burst in the direction of the police. There were two loud cracks. Just two. Robert stopped in his tracks. He spun around, a surprised look on his face, crimson stains widen-ing on his chest."Robert!" Julia screamed. She smashed the barrel of her gun through the front window and started shooting wildly. Then she was hurled backward and didn't move again.Suddenly a black canister sailed through the front win-dow. Gas started to leak out. Then another black canister. A stinging, bitter cloud began to envelop the room, clawing at Mich.e.l.le's lungs."Oh, Mal," she cried. She looked toward him. He was standing there, no fear on his face now.In his hands he held a portable phone."I'm not going out there," he said."I'm not, either." She shook her head."You really are a brave little girl." Mal smiled.She watched him punch in a four-digit number. A second later she heard a ring. It came from the suitcase.Then a second ring.A third..."Remember" - Mal took a breath - "no juice, no boost. Right, Mich.e.l.le?"

Chapter 98.

WHEN THE HOUSE BLEW we were crouched behind the cover of a black-and-white, barely a hundred feet away.There were bold orange flashes as the windows exploded. Then the house seemed to lift off its foundation, a fiery cloud ripping the whole thing apart through the roof."Get down!" Molinari yelled. "Everybody down!"The blast hurled us backward. I took Cindy, who'd been standing next to me, down to the ground, s.h.i.+elding her from the force of the blast and the shower of debris.We lay there as the searing gust lifted over us. A few cries of "Holy s.h.i.+t" and "Are you all right?"Slowly, we got back up. "Oh, G.o.d... ," Cindy groaned.Where a second ago a white clapboard house had been standing, now there was only smoke, fire, and a crater of blown-out walls."Mich.e.l.le," Cindy muttered. "Come on, Mich.e.l.le."We watched the fire rise as the wind whipped the flames. No one came out. No one could have lived through such a blast.Sirens started up. Frantic radio transmissions filled the air. I heard cops shouting into walkie-talkies: "We have a major explosion at seven twenty-two Seventh Street....""Maybe she wasn't in there." Cindy shook her head, still staring at the devastated house.I put my arm around her. "They killed Jill, Cindy."Later, after the fire crews had doused the blaze to smoking cinders and the EMS teams were going around tagging the charred remains, I sifted through the debris myself.Was it over now? Was the threat gone? How many were in there? I didn't know. It looked like four or five. Hardaway was probably dead. Was Charles Danko in there, too? August Spies?Claire had arrived. She was kneeling over the covered bodies, but the parts were burned almost beyond recognition."I'm looking for a white male," I told her, "about fifty.""Best I can tell, there seem to be four of them," she said. "The black male who was shot in the driveway. Three others inside. Two of them female, Lindsay."Joe Molinari came over to me. He'd been giving Was.h.i.+ng-ton an update on what had just happened. "You okay?" he asked."It's not over," I said, nodding at the tagged mounds."Danko?" He shrugged. "The medical people will have to tell us that. In any case, his network is gone, his cell. The device, too. What can he do now?"Amid the wreckage, I spotted something - a barrette. There was something almost funny about it. I reached down and picked it up."Voice of the people be heard," I said to Molinari, holding out the barrette.There was a peace symbol on it.