“This makes me unhappy,” I said.
“I have to tell you something else. When Rasha and I sat up on the big red rocks and had our wine and cheese, he cut that cheese with a sharp-looking folding knife. Very deftly. Then he served the wine in two silver goblets with calligraphic engraving on them. They were in his saddlebag with the food and wine, wrapped in white napkins. They looked old. Maybe passed down through his family. Nice. When I got the threat letter, the writing on those goblets rushed into my mind, and the way he used the knife. And rushed in again when I got this note from Rasha. Roland, I get people. I know right from wrong and good from evil. So if Rasha wrote that threat, I’m the most wrong-assed I’ve ever been about anybody in my life. But still...”
I let my vision track back and forth between the two R’s. Let the letters blur, then squinted them back into focus. Subtle differences, but my first and persistent reaction was: same writer.
“Have you communicated with him since you got the threat?”
“Hell no. Where are you going to start, Roland?”
“Where you probably should have.”
“You know a local FBI agent?” she asked.
“We worked the federal counterterror task force together. Before I went private.”
San Diego FBI special agent Joan Taucher would curse me — a former San Diego County sheriff’s deputy who should definitely know better — for contaminating the letter and the thank-you card. But Lindsey had beaten me to most of it. The contamination, that is.
More important, Special Agent Taucher would want to interview Lindsey. Lindsey could refuse, up to a point. That’s why she’d come to me. And Taucher would briefly tolerate me — as a conduit. But I could run interference between Lindsey and the feds for only so long, and I’d never known Joan Taucher to show much patience.
If I had won any leverage at all with Joan Taucher, it was knowing that she was a woman possessed.
And that Lindsey might be holding a piece of what possessed her.
“Brandon Goff know about Rasha?”
“No. Roland, am I just one giant fuckup?”
“You’re not giant at all.”
She set her hands over mine and looked out at the spangled pond.
3
Special agent Joan Taucher had an athlete’s build, lithe but solid. Short white hair, bangs to her eyebrows. Some years ago, I’d seen an article and pictures of her in an amateur MMA fight. She looked lean, muscle-plated, and lethal. A winning record. She’d filled out some since then. Whether wearing her fighting garb or a trim gray suit like she did today, her facial expression remained constant: humorless and unconvinced.
Her shake was very firm and her hand notably cold, as I remembered. “Nice to see you again, Joan.”
“Of course it isn’t. That was quite a shootout on your property up in Fallbrook last year. Helicopters and escaped mental patients and everything.”
“One helicopter and one patient,” I said.
“Made you famous again for another day or two. You do have a way of getting into the news.”
More than I like. A long story, that — the helicopter and who was flying it and why — and Taucher of course knew most of it. What she didn’t know was how close her own federal government had come to killing innocent people in my very home. No one, except those of us who were there that day, really knows that ugly truth. Sometimes the truth has to step aside so life can go barreling along.
“Do you miss the MMA fighting?” I asked.
“No. Even then I was too old for that nonsense. It was supposed to be fun, anyway. You boxed, right?”
“One pro fight a long time ago.”
“One. Well.”
“It taught me the value of survival.” I’ll always remember looking up at that ref and those lights and realizing I could beat the count, get up and keep fighting, and maybe find a way to win. Or I could stay where I was and live to fight another day.
She drummed her fingertips on her desktop. It was glass-covered and pin-neat. Taucher had light brown eyes and went heavy on the makeup. Always heavy on the makeup, I remembered. Just a hint of anger in those eyes now. “So what’s this about a death threat against someone you know?”
“These are copies,” I said, setting the handwritten threat and the typewritten envelope on her desk. I’d made them in my office just two hours earlier, along with copies of the thank-you card and envelope. I’d also printed out a four-year-old article and picture of Rasha Samara from the Las Vegas Sun newspaper.
Taucher’s Joint Terrorism Task Force office was a sixth-floor corner in an older downtown building, formerly a bank. Good views west and south — the Embarcadero, cruise ships at dock, the bow of the USS Midway jutting into the harbor from behind a row of restaurants.
While she studied the photocopied death threat, I studied her office walls. Every single square inch had a face on it. Floor to ceiling, left to right. Part of the ceiling, too. I figured that was where the new ones went. I could barely spot the doorknob and light switches. The pictures were mostly of Middle Eastern men and a few women, most of them dark, young, and unsmiling. Most in Western clothing, many in varying Middle Eastern attire — Arabian, Persian, Turk. Scores of them. A clear push-pin positioned top-center in each. Curled at the edges. Some wallet-sized, some larger. Some were police booking mugs. Others taken inside homes. Some had been shot outside, with law enforcement vehicles in the backgrounds. Most were stills extracted from video, grainy and vague. Not just scores of them, I thought, turning around to see the back side of Taucher’s office door plastered with more. Hundreds.
“Who is Lieutenant Lindsey Rakes and how did you get this?”
“She’s a friend and former tenant. She lives in Las Vegas now. She overnighted it to me.”
A skeptical consideration. Taucher had no doubt noted the postmark, estimated the day of arrival, and come up with barely enough time for an overnight delivery to me. I skeptically considered her in return.
“Is Rakes law enforcement?” she asked.
“Former lieutenant, U.S. Air Force. She flew drone missions out of Creech. She operated the sensors.” Joan Taucher’s eyes locked on to mine as if acquiring a target. I told her what years Lindsey had flown, and what little I knew about her missions.
She sat back and stared at me for a long beat. “That makes this threat more than just interesting.”
“I thought so, too.”
“I take it very seriously,” she said. “Even if it runs contrary to the current terror model. No group affiliation. No political message — jihadi or other. In fact, the opposite — he says personal. The letter claims no credit and is not intended for the public. It wasn’t Tweeted, Facebooked, Snapped, or posted on any social or media network I watch — and I watch them like a hawk. Instead, this threat was sent discreetly to its target. Privately. Almost intimately. Islamic State has threatened specific former U.S. military personnel with death. Of course they have. However, this letter was composed by an English speaker — very rare for foreign terrorists. And it was handwritten by someone with knowledge of Arabic-style calligraphy — a relatively unusual skill in the U.S. But if you put those last two elements together, you come up with Caliphornia. As in Californian. As in caliphate. As in terror. As in our worst nightmare — homegrown actors with outside sponsors. We call them homegrown violent extremists, HVEs.”
“He says vengeance.”
“Right,” said Taucher. “So what did she do to this guy?”