“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 herself 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. Michelle 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. “Michelle 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 glass. “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 crocheted 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 something 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 passengers 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 God,” 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 emergency! By the time she jumped out onto the platform, Michelle 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 assault team in the city’s history was building up around the run-down white house at 722 Seventh 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. Neighboring 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 Washington. A Special Operations captain, Joe Szerbiak, was in charge of the assault 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 surrender. 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, meaning 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 assault team was readied. Several marksmen were in place. The team that was going in assembled inside an armored van, ready to swing into place. Cindy Thomas was with us. A girl inside seemed to trust her. Michelle. Who might be Wendy Raymore, the au pair.