One Through the Heart (19 page)

‘Give us ten minutes. We’re close but we’ve got to talk our way in now.’

‘I didn’t say they’ve lost him. They think he’s in his apartment still and they’ll send an agent up to his apartment if they need to. You don’t need to go there.’

‘He’ll be gone. It’s his excuse to move.’

‘Then that’s another reason you and Elizabeth can turn around.’

‘This is them. This fits. This was what the wind talk was about and it may have been why Lindsley wanted to drive up the mountain before we brought him in. They were never going to get enough radioactive material. This is what they had planned all along. We need to find Lindsley right now.’

Raveneau looked over at la Rosa showing her homicide star and talking to a pair of California Highway Patrol officers. He heard their questions and could tell they were about to be waved through, but still said to Coe, ‘Get two agents to go up now and knock on his door. They can knock on every door on the apartment floor and be concerned citizens. Lindsley won’t know. Let’s find out now if he’s still there.’

‘We’ll do that if we need to. I’m going to let the surveillance team make that call.’

After Coe hung up, Raveneau said, ‘They don’t know where he is. It’s like a refugee camp out here. It’s chaos.’

They were waved through now and Raveneau drove slowly past the police units and the high school and through the first stoplight where the wind gusted so hard the stoplight swayed back and forth. Smoke was like a thin fog in their headlights. It wasn’t too thick yet, but was enough to make la Rosa cough.

‘We’ll be a long time getting out of here,’ she said. ‘We may want to do what Coe suggested.’

‘We’re almost there.’

‘And what if he’s not there?’

‘Then it’s a manhunt in an evacuation.’

They got closer and then went past and Raveneau couldn’t tell if Lindsley’s car was there. It had to be. A bullhorn on a police car slowly passed them and made clear the evacuation was mandatory, cutting in front of them, blocking their way, telling them to turn around. And that was fine because they were past the apartment now. They made the U-turn the officers wanted, nosing their way into the stream of traffic and a hundred yards later making a right into the apartment lot.

But before they left the car and went up to check, Coe called back.

‘There are new fires, fourteen of them, and one that’s now burning on Mount Diablo with multiple simultaneous ignitions similar to this Tam fire. I’m being told that seven of the new fires are in the East Bay Hills and they’re spreading very quickly.’

‘We’re headed into the apartment building. I’ll call you,’ Raveneau said and broke the connection. He turned to la Rosa. ‘There are fourteen new fires and they’re going to overwhelm the fire departments. If this wind keeps up, a lot of houses will burn. People will die. Let’s go see if he’s there.’

A
flustered and frightened apartment manager came straight at them. He shook his head and said everyone was out and he was leaving soon. He wore a fluorescent orange coat that came down to his thighs and carried a sixteen-inch flashlight. Raveneau slowed him down and got him to go upstairs with them. After they got no response knocking on Lindsley’s door, the manager unlocked it. He called, ‘Mr Lindsley, Mr Lindsley.’

‘Could be hurt,’ Raveneau said, and moved inside with la Rosa. He called Coe when he was sure Lindsley was gone, and then told the manager, ‘We’re going to be a minute or two. We’re OK. We’ll pull the door shut when we go.’

With the smoke, sirens, confusion and an evacuation under way it was believable Lindsley had slipped away. Raveneau stared at the line of cars and the fog-like smoke that colored the early sun a brown-gold as Coe continued to insist that Lindsley was probably still there in the building. Coe had the surveillance team on another line and they were sure he hadn’t left.

Two agents on the FBI surveillance team came upstairs a few minutes later. The apartment manager was still there and Raveneau described the young woman with Lindsley on his last visit here. The manager recognized the description and led Raveneau down the corridor and then knocked on her door. When there was no answer he unlocked it, but it was empty as well.

‘He walked away,’ Raveneau said, and texted Lindsley. He sent a second text, this one to Alan Siles: ‘
Let’s talk.
’

Raveneau got back on the phone with Coe after the FBI agents went downstairs with the apartment manager. ‘We’re not going to find him,’ Raveneau told Coe. ‘Are we covered if your agents search his apartment with our help?’

‘They need to be in the apartment.’

Raveneau could hear the agents coming back up. He looked out the street window as Coe gave him a fire update and saw that the cars parked on the street and in the lot below were beginning to get a coat of white ash.

‘There are fatalities,’ Coe said. ‘An elderly couple trapped in their house in the Oakland Hills. That fire has already burned twenty-two homes. Between them they’ll burn hundreds of homes.’

The white ash probably meant they were in the path of the fire and Raveneau didn’t need any convincing. If the winds didn’t let up, it would burn its way down the mountain and could easily get here. With the strong winds, tanker planes might not even be able to fly. Later today the fire could reach Mill Valley. He got off the phone and as the two FBI agents returned he and la Rosa and the agents searched Lindsley’s apartment, knowing as they did that by tomorrow the apartment building might be gone.

Soon after they started they learned that two major fire lines up on the mountain had merged and that all of the homes and along the ridge and the Mountain Home Inn were gone. Winds were still gusting to sixty over the summit. On some roads the smoke was too thick to drive through and new fires were starting well ahead of the main fire line as glowing embers were carried and scattered by the wind. The Tam fire took its first victims while they were still in the apartment. Nine died in five cars that were trapped on a narrow street trying to get out when an ember generated fire grew rapidly and swept down the slope above where the cars were blocked by a fallen oak that had toppled in high winds. The fire burned nearly horizontal with flames reaching one hundred fifty feet as it came over the crest and started down on this side.

A firefighter came upstairs. ‘OK, folks, time to go.’

‘We’ll be down in a few minutes.’

‘My orders are to get you out now.’

‘The man who lives here may know how these fires started. You need to give us a few minutes more, and I never told you what I just said.’

‘Five minutes. I’ll wait here with you.’

R
aveneau found the book he was looking for hidden behind others in a wood bookcase left of windows facing the street. It was slim with an orange cover and was one of two hundred printed after Ann Coryell’s death. In the circles Lindsley traveled it was hallowed. Compiled inside were unedited original essays, a series of blogs, and excerpts of the fabled thesis of Ann Coryell. It was put out by a small press that appeared, published it, and vanished again all in 2004, the year her body was identified. Raveneau learned of it then but didn’t try hard enough at the time to get a copy.

One theory was that Lash financed it and someone else put it together, but Lash denied it and Raveneau believed him, especially after he plagiarized her for one of his books. The true publisher was still a mystery. There was no title on the book, no name of author on the spine or cover. This copy was thin and faded. Raveneau opened to the cover page and read, ‘
The Writings and Teachings of Ann Coryell, De Haro Press
,’ and then closed it and hurried through the rest of the search.

He stayed with the bookcase and both agents undid the bedroom, emptying a closet, stripping blankets and sheets, then lifted away the mattress. They walked a desktop computer and a laptop down to their vehicle.

The firefighter said, ‘Time’s up.’

Raveneau turned to the couch and pulled off beige cloth covered cushions and found only loose change, a handful of quarters and dimes, a paper clip and cap for a pen tucked back in the cracks along with plenty of dirt.

The firefighter’s voice got deeper and louder. He rapped his knuckles hard on the door frame. ‘Let’s go!’

Raveneau stalled and did one last check as la Rosa moved out into the corridor. He checked the small kitchen. When he turned the firefighter was right there, yellow coat and helmet, and Raveneau nodded. He followed him. He checked his phone, read the text messages. Mt. Diablo fire out of control. More dead in the Oakland Hills. New fire in San Bruno. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock, less than eight hours since the Tam fire started and the governor was declaring a state of emergency and the smoke was so thick that commercial air traffic was being re-routed.

‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ the firefighter asked, though he didn’t turn around to do it.

His boots clumped on the stairs, and Raveneau said ‘no.’

As they crossed the Golden Gate, Coe called. ‘I understand you found the book you’ve talked about. Can you bring it here on your way in?’

‘I can but I’d rather not stop.’

‘We’d like to get it from you now.’

Coe’s message was the fires were terrorist acts until they knew otherwise.

‘We’ll bring it to you.’

Outside the FBI Field Office, Raveneau double-parked. La Rosa stayed with the car and Raveneau rode the elevator up. The Feds wouldn’t have found the book and they wouldn’t do any more than thumb through it now, so it was a complete waste of time delivering it but he didn’t begrudge the Bureau anything.

They did all the heavy lifting on terrorism investigations after 9/11. Other agencies provided information. Other agencies watched. Raveneau forgave the Feds their regulation haircuts and tight smiles and pronounced stares as if their seriousness made them better investigators. He forgave the task force meetings with folded chairs and power point talks that droned on, and forgave the chain emails, the eternal ‘Reply to All’ that beat the life out of a day.

He knew a police captain who kept bees and viewed the FBI culture as analogous to a beehive. The bees were the agents who went out every day, but were never allowed to make decisions on their own. They flew home to the hive every night and reported to the drones who were called SACs and ASACS. The Director was the queen.

‘Letting you help search the apartment was like asking a shoplifter to help stock a store,’ Coe said, meaning it to be a joke though it fell flat this morning.

Raveneau flipped through the remaining pages of the book and found a few had handwritten notes in the margins before he handed it to Coe. He asked, ‘Can you copy and scan these for me this morning?’

‘Is that Lindsley’s handwriting?’

‘I don’t think so. I’m not good at comparing handwriting but his isn’t even close. If you read these notes, they’re sharp critiques. They’re dismissive and disdainful. Maybe it’s Albert Lash’s and Lindsley on one of his visits to Lash’s house decided to take the book. I’ll call Lash’s sister today. With the fires I may be able to change her mind.’

‘If she does we’ll send a couple of agents with you.’

‘You’ve got your hands full this morning. Make those copies for me. I’ll talk to you later.’

T
he SFPD website went down first. Raveneau figured that would worry some fraction of the public and make an equal group happy. But not long after that they lost the ability to access any police databases on their computers. When that happened Raveneau and la Rosa left the office and rode up to the top floor and then climbed the stairs to the roof.

They weren’t alone. Others had made their way up and there was a post-earthquake feel as strong gusts swept the roof. The burn smell was sharp and pungent and across the bay the fires looked, if anything, stronger and larger, dark smoke billowing then flattening, tongues of flame visible as a house caught or a stand of trees. Overhead the sun was a bloodshot eye.

By early afternoon more was understood about the incendiary devices. The first remnants were recovered from the Tam fire not far from the junction of the Fairfax-Bolinas Road and Highway 1. Raveneau leaned on another old friend, Bill Staten, an arson investigator who had left SFPD four or five years ago and now consulted for insurance companies.

Staten picked up in the first ring. ‘Knew I’d hear from you.’

‘What are these devices?’

‘Think of high quality accelerant in a plastic drinking bottle like you might carry on your bike, if you ever exercised which you probably still don’t.’

‘I walk.’

‘Extending out of it is a high quality underwater fuse. Taped to the bottle is a cheap electronic timer and a reliable igniter to light the fuse. With this wind and the dry conditions that’s enough, because when the accelerant ignites it’ll give you six to eight feet in height and four in width. Not for long, but it’ll burn very hot, real hot, and I was surprised they found anything worthwhile. I think what probably happened was the wind was so strong that it moved the fireball with it right away. Dry as things are right now, eight to ten seconds is enough to start tinder burning. Five minutes in the brush well-started, but the real engine is the wind. Whoever started these was thinking wind and counting on what we usually get in the fall. They just happened to catch a very strong cycle.’

‘What have you seen?’

‘I saw the remains of one the incendiary devices this morning and the thinking is they’re all the same at all of these fires. They’re cheap and easy to make. They’re portable. It could be one person but with this many locations distributing them works better with a pair, one getting out of the car and one driving. They probably scouted locations and were ready when the time came. One guy gets out with the device and goes up the slope. Five minutes later he’s back in the car, or maybe he uses his cellphone and another driver picks him up.’

‘You’re assuming it’s the threesome we’re looking for?’

‘Me? No, not me, I’m not making any assumptions. This accelerant evaporates very easily and at low temp so you don’t distribute these until you’re ready, and in this case that seems to be as they knew the wind was rising. You go out with a map and make the rounds as the wind is coming up. They’ve got preset timers. That’s why Mount Tamalpais went up all at once and maybe they’ve done their homework. Could be they know what departments will respond and where and the timing with the next ignitions was built around that. You know they’re not even trying to fight the Diablo fire right now other than to keep it out of the populated areas. It’s burning its way up the mountain. There are no crews available to stop it.’