NINETEEN
The captain who oversaw the bomb squad told Hagen, ‘No way, it’s not going to happen.’ Raveneau was close enough to overhear. He refused to send Juan Garcia, the ex-Army technician alone.
Raveneau mouthed, ‘Let me talk to him,’ and Hagen stared hard at him before saying, ‘I’m going to put Inspector Raveneau on the line.’
When Raveneau brought the phone to his ear Captain Dixon asked, ‘Raveneau, are you ever going to fucking retire?’
‘I’m waiting you out. You go, and then I’ll go.’
‘What would I do every day?’
‘You’d do the same thing you do now, you’d sit around.’
Dixon laughed. Raveneau didn’t know him well but they liked each other.
‘Here’s the problem we’ve got,’ Raveneau said. ‘We’ve discovered what look like bomb casings and we don’t want to alert the owner yet. We need to keep this very quiet. We need a discreet look at them.’
‘Are you staying well away from them?’
‘We are.’
‘You need to get everyone out of the building. What’s the address again?’
Raveneau gave it to him and kept talking.
‘We can’t risk our suspect finding out we’ve discovered this.’
‘We have a very clear protocol, Ben, and I think everyone in the department knows it, you included.’
‘I understand, but we can’t risk the word getting out. If you can’t send him and give us a look and an opinion, we’ll go at it a different way.’
‘No, don’t call the Feds, we’ll get down there. Don’t touch anything and we’ll come in as quietly as we can.’
‘It’s plywood that’s been moved around with a forklift. It rode here on a lumber delivery truck. It can’t be that sensitive. Look, I’ll email you a photo of what we’ve got. I’ll do that right now.’
Ten minutes later Dixon called back, saying he was sending Garcia, the Hurt Locker guy.
While they waited Raveneau made a call to a friend who worked for a company called Shelter Products up in Portland. He figured if there was anyone who could trace where the plywood came from it was Ridge Taylor. He got through to Taylor and after the hellos said, ‘I can’t tell you why but I need to know. I’ve got an order and a delivery tag number. We can fax to you and I can tell you what’s stamped on the wood.’
No one told a joke better than Taylor, but he was quiet and serious as Raveneau went back and forth with him. Shelter Products sold point-to-point. They sold lumber as it was still rolling on a train. They sold into any number of states and after they were clear on the forty-two pieces of finish grade larch he asked Taylor about Branson Trucking, thinking they might know who to call if they didn’t know anything directly.
‘Why don’t I put you through to Hutton and let him tell you. Your plywood came out of a plant in British Columbia. Here’s the address and phone number.’
Taylor gave him that and a website, then put him through to Kurt Hutton. Hutton asked, ‘Are you building a wooden jail?’
‘No, and I can’t talk but I need to know anything you can tell me about Branson.’
‘I can tell you they appeared out of nowhere about four years ago with lower prices than anybody. The CEO, if you want to call him that, was somebody we did business with and he ran into hard times and went under. I don’t know when he connected with the investor money behind Branson. He’s not really the type to go out and find money like that, but obviously he did.’
‘If they’re less expensive why don’t you use them?’
‘They did do some hauling for us, but they couldn’t possibly have made money at the prices they charged us and it was hurting others we work with. They’ve got a good idea with their website though. On the website is a truck and you click and drag and as you load the truck it gives you the weight and you punch in the destination and it gives the hauling price.’
‘I’ve been to it.’
‘With their prices they had to be cutting corners other ways, so we backed away.’
He thanked Hutton as Hurt Locker showed up. He was probably no more than twenty-five but with a quiet walk and manner that made Raveneau remember his son. He watched how Garcia approached the casings and studied them. Ten minutes later he straightened, turned, and looked at them.
‘You’ve got yourself some pretty slick IED casings, except that they don’t look very much like improvised explosive devices. You’ve got four Cadillacs, depending on who puts them together from here. Anyone of these would make one hell of a bomb. See how the nose is shaped, directs the blast.’
He fixed on Raveneau.
‘These are some seriously bad dudes and they aren’t one-off deals. They’re producing them. This is one scary thought.’
‘What would one of these do to a cable car?’
‘Oh, I think you’d be looking for pieces and parts four blocks away.’ He paused. ‘You want to find the bomb maker like right now, pronto.’
TWENTY
Raveneau moved his car so the bomb sniffing dogs and the X-ray robot could enter through a loading bay. Still, you couldn’t fool the street. The neighbors quickly noticed the vehicles and a couple of people walked up to ask what was going on.
But nothing more was discovered and the X-ray was negative on anything else hidden in the plywood. Hurt Locker Garcia operated the X-ray robot. He determined the casings weren’t booby-trapped and removed them slowly. After that, the only metal the robot picked up were the screws sandwiching the plywood together. Garcia nodded at Raveneau’s guess the end pieces threaded on after the explosive was inside.
Other than Garcia no one touched them and Garcia wore gloves. A CSI team was on its way here and the hope was they’d pull something off them that would help.
Raveneau asked Garcia, ‘They looked heavy when you picked them up.’
‘They are. They’re some sort of alloy.’
Raveneau took photos and then stepped back as the CSI crew arrived and tried to figure out how to approach this. Meanwhile, Raveneau, Ortega, and the canine crew helped load the X-ray robot back into the van. When the bomb squad left Ortega called a meeting in Khan’s office. He wanted to caucus on how to proceed. One idea was to restack the plywood, reband the unit, and set up surveillance cameras before turning the building over to Khan. Raveneau favored that idea but disagreed with Ortega over bringing in the FBI.
‘You’ve got to bring them,’ Raveneau argued. ‘There’s really no choice.’
‘Raveneau, you know as well as I do what’s going to happen. They’ll trample our murder investigation. By noon they’ll have a press release out saying they’re working a significant terrorism investigation in San Francisco. The murders here will become a sidebar. They’ll tuck Khan away somewhere. We can wait a few days.’
‘I know who to call.’
‘Who?’
‘Mark Coe.’
‘I don’t even know him.’
‘You’ll meet him today. You’ll be able to work with him.’
Hagen jumped in. ‘Couldn’t disagree more,’ he said, and they continued on like this, but knew the call was going to get made. Ortega would have cut this debate off awhile ago if it wasn’t. Half an hour later, Ortega asked for Coe’s cell number.
Thirty-five minutes later Coe and two other agents were in the building looking at bomb casings. More calls got made and a bomb expert an hour and a half down the coast at Fort Ord got in his car. Another boarded a plane in LA. With Coe there Raveneau stepped back. He listened to Ortega sketch out his video surveillance idea.
‘We’re going to pull the crime tape anyway. We can put the bomb casings back in their nests, reband the plywood, give him the building back and watch what he does. His attorney keeps telling us his client will lose his business and they’ll sue if we don’t let him back in here soon.’
Raveneau knew Coe couldn’t decide on his own. He’d have to call his ASAC at a minimum. That call got made now and late in the afternoon Raveneau left the building to buy a banding tool and steel tape at a lumberyard. A clerk showed him how to use it. When he got back to Sixteenth Street he called Celeste to let her know he was going to be late.