Raveneau told her about the drive with Nate Brooks but was having trouble communicating what was bothering him. It was the way he was wired. If you asked him he would tell you he was about facts, motive, and opportunity, but la Rosa knew that just wasn’t so. Raveneau stressed the rational gathering of information, but often was very intuitive in how he solved cases.
‘Brooks took me down to the Ferry Building to watch the light rail pass by with the President, the mayor, and a US senator riding along. With him narrating I could almost see their faces. It ended with Brooks holding his coffee cup from the bottom with his right hand, kind of balancing it there as he leaned back against the door of his car and said the Secret Service had more records on Krueger than the personnel file he was authorized to show me. He said I wouldn’t get anything out of the file but advised me to keep digging.’
‘What does he want in return?’
‘Not clear, but he wants to be kept in the loop with Ortega’s team and any contact I have with Mark Coe.’
‘He knows you aren’t going to agree to that.’
‘Sure, he knows.’
‘So why is he asking?’
‘He’s saying he wants to communicate. He’s worried. He can tell I’m bothered by what we found and he wants information anywhere he can get it. He’s casting a wider net than he would otherwise.’
‘He sounds to me like a guy unraveling. How much pressure is he under?’
‘Plenty.’
‘Is he angry?’
‘Maybe, but more frustrated than angry. I think he feels somewhat powerless. I understand that. You look at those bomb casings and your imagination just runs.’
‘Why don’t you stay here and figure out what Brooks is after and I’ll go to Hawaii.’
Raveneau smiled and was usually quick with a comeback but not today. La Rosa read that as him being focused on the Krueger investigation and this Hawaii trip, yet at the same time still very disturbed by the discovery of the bomb casings. She thought this whole walk was really about the bomb casings. She didn’t really believe he was concerned about Brooks.
‘Talk to me about Hawaii,’ she said.
‘I’ll be looking for anything I can learn about Jim Frank or anyone who knew him. He may even be there just waiting to talk. I’m going to find where Frank lived and I hope to find people who knew Krueger.’
They reached the corner of Seventh and waited for the light to change. Raveneau looked out at the traffic going by as he spoke.
‘The Secret Service ruled out Marlin Thames as a suspect back in ’89, but I borrowed a photo from him today and have asked for the FBI’s help getting it enhanced. I don’t think it’s him. It’s almost certainly not, but it needs to get looked at. That’s something I won’t tell Brooks, yet I couldn’t tell you why.’
‘You don’t trust him.’
‘It’s not that, it’s more that I don’t want to have to trust him.’ He turned to her. ‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him.’
‘Then what is it you’re picking up?’
‘He’s telegraphing that he’s not happy with the Secret Service. He’s telling me things he says he’s not authorized to tell me, but it feels like he’s trying to steer the Krueger investigation. I feel like I’m being led down a path.’
‘What’s he asked for?’
‘He asked about transcripts I read at the FBI. Coe showed me transcripts on the condition I not talk to anyone, though I told him I would share what I learned with you.’
Raveneau told her now about a Utah banker named Garner and the man code named Jericho who in a wiretap transcript was negotiating to buy weapons from an officer at a US military base.
‘A base here in the US?’
‘Kentucky and the Feds think it’s a small group selling, maybe as small as two officers. But that makes me think of something I heard on the radio a few days ago. Someone did a study or a little fact checking as a reality test; it might have been a professor in Boston. What he did was look at brigadier generals and the number of people in their families who were in the military and compared that to Congress. He did the same with Congress. The generals had one hundred eighty family members who were in the military. All of Congress had a total of ten. One can say, so what, but I think it says a lot about the drift the country has taken. We’re already politically polarized. What if we run into a crisis with the national debt and that’s coupled with a confrontation somewhere in the world? We could get to a point where our military steps in to stabilize the country. But what if there’s a group out there that wants that to happen?’
‘This is so unlike you.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you think there’s a larger plot already in motion?’
‘They’re only showing me bits and pieces and no I don’t believe there’s some grand plot. But there is something happening and it has something to do with the right conditions being in place.’
‘Is that what’s bothering you?’
‘I’m fine.’
So now he was going to close up on her. Sometimes she wished she had a simpler partner, but never for long. Raveneau had a way of making things happen. If he got stuck he went sideways. He did what you expected and did it again, and then something completely different.
‘You wanted to walk and talk and tell me what’s bothering you.’
‘It’s not that something in particular is bothering me. It’s more like the way you know it’s going to rain in the minute just before it does. I’ve never seen anything like these bomb casings before. But there they were and I don’t know if we stopped a plot or if we just got a glimpse of part of one. That’s what Brooks is wigging out about.’
‘And you’re afraid he’s right.’
‘He could be and I’m not sure what we can do. Yeah, that’s part of what’s bothering me. I’m not sure what we can do. We can make contingency plans, form task forces, have meetings and plan, but we’re better off being lucky. Finding those bomb casings was luck.’
‘I think it’s something more.’
‘It was luck.’
‘Then stay lucky.’