“Better be important.”
“FBI important?”
“Depends what they have to say,” said Milo. But he was up in a flash.
A short, solidly built, dark-haired woman arrived moments later. “Lieutenant? Gayle Lindstrom. I was referred by a mutual friend.”
Gray pantsuit, black flats, molasses accent with an edge. Maybe northern Kentucky or southern Missouri. Fair skin and blue eyes were clear, her chin was prominent and square.
“Nice to meet you, Special Agent Lindstrom.”
Lindstrom grinned. “My mom always told me I was special. Reality’s a little different.” Her bag was as large as Ricki Flatt’s. Black leather, authoritative straps and buckles.
“Mutual friend,” said Milo. “Now who might that be?”
“Yesterday, he was Hal. Today?” She shrugged.
“You guys love that, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Top-secret clandestine hooh-hah.”
“Only when it gets the job done.” She studied me. “We need to talk in private, Lieutenant.”
“This is Dr. Delaware, our psychological consultant.”
“You have your own profiler now?”
“Better,” said Milo. “We’ve got someone who knows what he’s doing.”
“Looks like I caught you on a bad day,” said Lindstrom.
“Not hard to do.”
She offered me a cool, firm palm. “Nice to meet you, Doctor. No offense but I need to speak to Lieutenant Sturgis in private.”
Milo said, “That’s not how it’s gonna be.”
A long, whispered phone call later, and I was authorized.
Gayle Lindstrom peered into Milo’s office. “Kind of cozy for three.”
Milo said, “I’ll find us space.”
“I like Indian food, Lieutenant.”
He glared at her.
Lindstrom said, “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”
“Not hungry.” He marched up the corridor.
Lindstrom said, “Oh, well,” and followed.
Back to the same interview room. I wondered if it ever got used for suspects.
Gayle Lindstrom sniffed the air.
Milo said, “This is as fresh as it’s gonna get. I’m busy. Talk.”
Lindstrom said, “Enough icebreaking, guys. Don’t coddle me ’cause I’m a girl.”
Coaxing a smile out of Milo. He hid it with the back of his hand. Yawned.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “What do you know about eco-terrorism?”
Milo said, “Uh-uh, this isn’t going to be some theoretical discussion. You want what we know, you better fill in the blanks. Desmond Backer’s lost decade smells real bad. Doreen Fredd was a naughty girl who ended up as either a confederate or your informant. Go.”
Lindstrom nudged her bag with one foot. “I’m here because the Bureau figured it was only a matter of time before you figured out some of what’s going on.”
“Some? Don’t swell my head.”
“If you knew all of it you wouldn’t be trying to reach Hal. Who, by the way, can’t help you. He’s Homeland Security, so he’s concentrating on people with dark skin and funny names. So is the Bureau, for that matter, which is part of the problem. Before 9/11, we were geared up to spend serious time and money on locally grown lunatics who, in my humble opinion, pose just as serious a danger to public safety as some guy named Ahmed.”
“Everything stopped to look for Ahmed.”
“We’re just like you, Lieutenant. Chronically underfunded with our hands out to politicians who have the attention span of gnats on crack. The hot topic of the moment gets the appropriation and everything else gets shoved to the bottom shelf. Eco-terrorists have committed hundreds of violent acts, with plenty of fatalities. We’re talking nasties who believe humanity’s a plague and have no problem spiking trees to mutilate loggers. Fanatics who burn down other people’s houses because they don’t approve of the square footage. Nothing’s happened on a grand scale yet, and they’ve got the secret sympathy of some mainstream environmental groups who condemn violence but continue to wink and nod. But my judgment is, it’s only a matter of time before the country regrets not dealing with the problem.”
“Desmond Backer was a serious eco-terrorist?”
Lindstrom toed her bag again. “It’s a delicate situation. Not for me personally, We’re talking events that precede my tenure with the Bureau.”
She unclasped the bag, pulled out lip balm, twisted her mouth into a disapproving little bud and lubricated. Basic delay tactic. I’d learned a whole bunch of them, working as a psychologist.
Milo said, “Lost my script, what’s my next line?”
“The overview I’m about to give you, Lieutenant, is based on summaries of files transferred to me by predecessors who’ve been transferred.”
“They get transferred to Ahmed. But you’re dealing with homegrown naughties no one cares about.”
Gayle Lindstrom’s half smile would have intrigued da Vinci.
Milo said, “You don’t play well with others, so you’re on timeout.”
She laughed. “Let’s just say I’ve been assigned to look into years of eco-crimes and write reports unlikely to be read. My instructions are to concentrate on the Pacific Northwest, because that’s where fuzzies and trees tend to inspire the most passion. That led me to your homicide victims. Desmond Backer and Doreen Fredd met in Seattle. He grew up there, and she’d been sent to a group home for problem girls. She utilized legitimate passes from the home as well as illicit exits to associate with Backer and his friends.”
“Climbing out the window,” said Milo.
“Or just sneaking out the back door, the place wasn’t exactly super-max lockdown. Like many teenagers, Fredd and Backer and their friends appear to have filled some of their free time with various vegetative hallucinogens, alternative music, video games. They also spent time engaged in apparently wholesome activities such as hiking, camping, environmental cleanups, volunteer wildlife rescue. Unfortunately, some of that may have been a cover for arson and other acts of vandalism.”
“Were they ever arrested?”
“Insufficient evidence,” said Lindstrom. “But their proximity to several trashed homesites is revealing.”
“What exactly do you have on them?”
“What the local police had on them was word-of-mouth. Then, a dead boy.”
“They killed someone?”
“Not directly, but they have moral culpability.” Out came his pad. “Name of the victim?”
“Vincent Edward Burghout, known as Van. Seventeen when he burned to death inside an unfinished mansion in Bellevue, Washington. By now, you’ve probably heard of Bellevue because it’s where high-tech zillionaires are building castles. Back then, that had just started and it was basically a nice, low-crime suburb of Seattle. One of the first techie-monarchs to see the potential of lakeside living bought ten acres and started building a twenty-thousand-square-foot monstrosity. It had gotten as far as the framing the night Van Burghout sneaked in and set several fires. He destroyed a good part of it but also immolated himself. We-my predecessors-found his technique especially interesting. Have you ever heard of vegan Jell-O?”