Apparently, the Gleed files suggested, this hadn’t sat well with some more radical environmentalists, who thought that Earth First! had lost its cojones. Earth First!’s new stance caused several spinoff organizations such as the Earth Liberation Front, the Rain Forest Network, and the ridiculously named Monkey Wrench Gang. Mercy wasn’t involved enough to know if these groups were just fronts for Earth First!’s activities or if they were legitimate entities unto themselves, but she did know that Gleed had gone after them with a passion. The Monkey Wrench Gang had claimed responsibility for at least three acts of arson not only in the United States, but in the Amazonian rain forest as well, firebombing trucks and trailers owned by logging companies that paid dues to Gleed’s Free Enterprise Alliance. Gleed had used political pressure to instigate arson investigations against a number of individuals in these loose organizations.
This, obviously, was where Mercy’s radar started to beep. It didn’t take a Robbery Homicide detective to establish a motive: pro-business advocate investigates violent environmental activists, who murder him in retaliation.
Her biggest obstacle wasn’t the linkage: it was the attitudes of other investigators. The word eco-terrorist sounded like a Doonesbury joke or a Rush Limbaugh tag. Every investigator with every agency, from the FBI to the LAPD, considered environmental activists to be vegetable-eating tree-huggers, which in their minds meant they were pacifists. The only group that seemed to understand clearly what these groups were capable of was the Free Enterprise Alliance. But Mercy’s problem was that the FEA was hardly impartial — they had plenty of reason to make the eco-terrorists look as evil as possible. Mercy had lucked out when Gleed’s investigators turned her on to an environmental activist who actually was a tree-hugging pacifist. He went by the name of Willow.
And that’s who Mercy decided to call.
“Hey,” Willow said in a casual, familiar voice.
“How’d you know who was calling?” Mercy asked. Her cell phone was ID restricted.
“I didn’t. I just always answer the phone that way.”
The first time Mercy had spoken with Willow, she thought she’d have to run him in on a narcotics charge. But she soon realized that he wasn’t doped up — he always talked and acted like he was stoned.
“Willow, I struck out again.”
“That sucks,” he said casually. “Those guys are a bunch of tight asses, aren’t they?”
“You have no idea.” The truth was, Mercy was pretty tight-assed herself, but for some reason Willow had taken a liking to her, so she played to his expectations as much as possible. “I can’t get anyone to believe that an eco-terrorist would plan something big for the G8 summit.”
Silence. Willow apparently didn’t understand that this was his cue to contribute to the conversation.
“What do you think they might be planning, Will? I need something to go on.”
“Man, I don’t know,” said the informant. “I told you I never liked their vibe. I stopped hanging with them a long time ago. I just heard from a friend that they were getting all postal and working themselves up, and that they were talking like the G8 was going to be jacked up.”
This was about as far as Mercy had gotten last time with Willow. If he’d been her sole indicator, she wouldn’t have given him a second thought. But since Gordon Gleed had been murdered for hearing the same information (at least that was her theory), she had to assume there was some truth behind it, if she could ever find the specifics behind Willow’s vaguery.
Mercy decided it was time to stop playing softball with him. “Willow, I need to know who told you, and I need to know now.”
“I told you, that’s not cool with me. I’ve taken a vow against violence but I’ve also taken a vow against ratting out my friends.”
“Well, your two vows are officially in conflict. If you don’t put me in touch with someone who knows what’s going on, then you’ll as good as help cause whatever violence happens. So tell me—”
“Man, you are starting to sound like—”
Mercy pulled a piece of paper out of her files, checking his address. “Tell you what, you’ll tell me in person instead. I’m going to be at your house in ten minutes.” She cut the connection. Mercy grabbed her purse and stood up, then, at the last minute, picked up her desk phone and rang the dispatcher. “Roll a unit to 16150 West Washington,” she said. “Occupant is a male Caucasian, twenty-six years old, five feet six, brown hair, approximately one hundred sixty pounds. He’s not to go anywhere until I arrive.”
Jack buttoned his shirt back on as the techs left with a vial full of his blood.
“If he’s trying to tail me, I’ll lose him,” he said to Chris. “Better yet, I’ll catch the tail and get information.”
Jamey Farrell appeared in the doorway, pushing her dark hair back from her face.
“That was fast,” Chris Henderson said, impressed.
“Oh, we’re not nearly done,” Jamey said in a voice mixed with pride and annoyance. “But I wanted to update you. We did a first run on anyone we considered primary, including all of our liaisons to other agencies, the FBI surveillance teams at the Federal Building, and all of us.”
“Us?” Nina barked, sounding offended. “You ran checks on us?”
Jamey shrugged. “SOP,” she said, which was shorthand for “standard operating procedure.” “You’re clear, by the way,” she said with a smile. “And so is everyone else. Not even a hint of anything that might suggest contact with al-Libbi. You’d expect clear records, of course, but there’s not even a remote possibility. No one worked on anything that would put them close. No overseas assignments, no connections with intra-departmental groups that worked in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Israel.”
“How far back?” Chris asked.
“Three years,” Jamey said. “No sense in going farther, since most agents on the list were on other assignments prior. The G8 is a big deal, but we’re talking about local surveillance here. Everyone being used on this is domestic, or at least pulled from areas that are not terrorist-related. We wouldn’t even be involved if it weren’t for—” She looked at Jack.
“Yeah, I get it,” he said. “If it weren’t for me. But so far it looks like I was right. How about vacations?”
Jamey raised her hands in an expression that said, Everyone takes a vacation except you. “Sure, vacations. The Bahamas, Costa Rica, the Amazon rain forest. But no one vacationed in Iran.”
“We need to check on everyone’s contacts for the last year. See if there’s a link to their vacations with any movements of al-Libbi.”
Jamey Farrell rolled her eyes. “Jack, you’re asking for—”
“This asshole threatened my daughter!” Jack yelled. He felt pressure swell up inside him, like an angry sea rolling up under an unsteady boat. He realized that he’d been bottling up his anger at being assaulted and violated; he had focused on solving the problem. But now, at a pause in the crisis, he found his anger overwhelming him. “I don’t care what I’m asking for. Just do it!”
“Jack.” Chris Henderson’s voice was calm. He had the sort of presence that calmed passionate men like Jack, because they knew Henderson had faced the same darkness they had faced. “We haven’t been able to track al-Libbi’s movements that accurately, or we’d have picked him up.”
“Is there any chance there is no informant?” Nina asked. “This guy was bluffing about tracking you, maybe he was bluffing about everything.”
Jack waved the suggestion off. “He knew who I was. He knew I was tracking him. He didn’t read that in the L.A. Times.”