“In that regard, this is more like chess than football. It’s sometimes hard to tell how close the victory is just by looking at the board. The move/countermove nature of this investigation makes ‘predicting’ a fool’s endeavor.”
“Is there any progress?”
“Only in the elimination of certain people or groups as suspects, but the list of potentials is so long it doesn’t make a dent. Besides, all you need to do is find the right one. That can happen in the next minute or years from now. There is no way of knowing.”
“When is your next report to the president?”
“I report to him every day.”
“Personally?”
“Yes, whenever possible.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I suppose.”
“May I come along?”
Hiccock was a little thrown, “That seems like a silly question. You can check with Naomi, but my instinct says, ‘No way!’”
“You’re probably right.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“Off the record?” Carly prodded. “Where will you meet with the president?”
“I’m afraid that ever since the attacks the location and schedule of the president is a national security issue. I cannot divulge anything about his plans on or off the record. But don’t you know that?”
“I am sorry. You’re right. It’s just that this is all so new to me.”
“Why would you want to know that?”
“My next question was to ask if I could interview you tomorrow, and I was hoping that might be right after your meeting with the president.”
“Oh, I don’t want any more publicity than I already have, thank you.”
“Can I call you tomorrow and just get a quote?”
“Sure… but I’ll have to call you. I’ll be on the road.”
“Fine. Now can we go back on the record?”
“Why not?”
The evening lasted 45 minutes more and ended with a handshake and separate cabs. Hiccock didn’t know if he was relieved or perturbed. Somewhere deep down in his maleness, he wanted something to help offset the slight nudge that he felt over Janice having a date and being out there, living her life. As for Carly, at an intellectual level he knew he was playing with fire. Especially since the only time he’d gotten burned on this job was when he got too close to the press. Now he was dining with it!
As he got into the cab, he wrote the night off as a pleasant enough diversion and totally harmless.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Although a five-man team would normally do this kind of preliminary surveillance of a suspect, the full compliment of agents on this case was a straight result of the director of the FBI being intimately involved with this operation. Scuttlebutt had it that he had some issue with the president and wanted to make sure the bureau cracked the case in short order. All the stops were pulled. Terrance Johansen, the original suspect, turned out to be totally unaware and unconnected to the e-mails that originated from a temporary online account created with his credit card. It required a federal court judge ordering the Illinois ISP to release those billing records.
Suspicion fell on the current target, Bernard Keyes, when the bureau painstakingly deconstructed Mr. Johansen’s credit card life. Every transaction, every purchase in every store, and every salesclerk still working or fired had their background combed and analyzed. It all came up a dead end, until Terrance recalled, in his sixth interrogation, about having a problem with the May Company.
It concerned a credit he was seeking on a dress his wife had purchased but never wore to their son’s graduation from medical school. She had brought the dress back to the store, but the credit to his American Express card never went through. After many frustrating phone calls, mostly navigating through automated customer service, he finally reached a human being who simply told him to write a letter including all the facts and pertinent information. She would personally see to it that the credit was applied to his account.
The FBI spent two days with Doris Welch, the assistant comptroller of the May Company. They investigated her husband, Wilbur, with the thought that he might have appropriated the number. But again, nothing out of the ordinary arose. Of course, the first thing the agents asked for was the letter. It was ultimately found in the company archives at the end of the second day. It was of little physical evidentiary value because it had been exposed to scores of fingers, each leaving a set of prints or a partial. Still, everyone who could have possibly touched it was printed, as the FBI forensic lab went “by the numbers.” The letter was torn and crumpled. When questioned, Doris finally remembered that the envelope had been ripped and resealed at the post office, now inferring a new potential suspect.
The chain of evidence took a new turn. Not having the original envelope was a bad break. Ever since the anthrax cases, the post office had become very serious regarding opcodes being stamped on every piece of mail that went through the system. Those codes would have told the FBI exactly what path the letter traveled. Without those imprinted telltales to go on, finding the route of the letter from Johansen’s home to Doris Welch’s office involved three distinct possible courses, each one implicating many postal employees. Although the scope of the investigation jumped to hundreds of individuals, the task actually became easier. As postal employees, they were known entities, with fingerprints and closer tabs kept on them than random citizens.
The trick, of course, was not to arouse suspicion among the postal workers. “Friendlies” were identified at the highest level of management. Again, military service records were the best place to go. The bureau looked for former officers who had distinguished themselves. There were no guarantees, but any police work had to make certain assumptions in order to move ahead. Three supervisors were found to have good military service records in the nine suspected places where the letter could have been opened. They were contacted surreptitiously by SACs. Those special agents in charge personally met with each one and made the call that, first, these supervisors were not suspects themselves and, second, that they could be trusted with a certain degree of information. These men having been military commanders and serving in the chain of command made the agents’ tasks easier. Their cooperation was as good as any cop in the world could expect. All three concurred that the highest possibility of a piece of mail being damaged was in the handling that occurred “in the house,” as they called it. Although not impossible, once the piece was routed and sorted, it was hand-delivered and the chance of damage reduced significantly with the personal touch of letter carriers. In addition, if the envelope was sealed in a clear plastic tape with lettering on it, this also boded well for the damage to have happened in the house, since carriers didn’t carry reseal tape.
Manual sorting and machine sorting being the essence of the postal system, the investigation focused on these choke points of mail flow. A letter got from here to there by someone or some machine deciding that it went into this pile or that. Twelve people were identified as highly probable to have come in contact with the Johansen letter. The date of the letter and the “date received” rubber-stamped at the May Company eliminated four people from the list because it traversed the system midweek and therefore excluded those on weekend shifts. Two more fell from the list, one on vacation and one on sick leave that week. That left six people in three substations covering two shifts. The Sumpterville and Hattings offices were eliminated after nothing in the personnel files or supervisor interviews pointed to anything suspicious. However, the Parkersville station had the “Dip Shit,” his supervisor’s name for a man that fit the profile — a real nonachiever, given to rants and rages against the machine, literally. His supervisor and coworkers all acknowledged the fact that he was bitter and harbored much anger toward everything. Thus, Bernard Keyes became the insect under the huge microscope that was the FBI.