Shoreline Read online

  She had remembered this time to wear her sneakers.

  The office was in chaos.

  “Nora, where the fuck have you been?” Pete demanded. “I was about to come see if you were dead or something.”

  “I’m so sorry, I never turn the phone off and I just…”

  “Picked the night of our biggest case to do it?” His eyes were incredulous.

  “Sheila’s pissed?” Nora asked tentatively, her stomach twisting into knots.

  “Sheila’s too busy to be anything right now, but she will eventually remember she should be pissed at you.”

  Anna was on her phone and talking to Maggie simultaneously. Every phone in the office seemed to be ringing. Nora felt lightheaded with a combination of regret and anger at herself. She immediately balled that anger up and transformed it into fury at Ben. Somehow this was going to be his fault.

  “What happened?” she demanded.

  “We got a claim of responsibility. And then a murder right on its heels.”

  Nora laid a hand on the nearest desk. “No.”

  Pete nodded. “It’s been insane.”

  “Claim of responsibility from whom?”

  “White supremacist patriot group, sent out a very scary webcast.” He typed on his keyboard and a face filled his screen. “Gabriel Baker. Who is apparently actually a truck driver. But he happens to be calling for Armageddon.”

  Nora stared at the face of a middle-aged white man, pale blond hair, tanned skin, neatly-trimmed facial hair. “Demands?”

  Pete shook his head. “So far he’s demanding we pay attention. Wants our illegitimate government to step down; wants to expel all foreigners and non-Christians from the country. He sent it to all the news stations and so half the night was spent trying to convince them not to air it and start a panic.”

  “Who was the victim?” she asked Pete, her eyes scanning the room, trying to deduce information from the level of chaos.

  Peter’s face was grim. “Judge Bernstein. Seventy-one years old. Federal judge. Drive-by shooting. He was returning to his house after a dinner out. Just got out of the car when he was nailed. Wife sustained no injuries.”

  “Don’t tell me motorcycles.”

  “Okay. Motorcycle. Eyewitness saw one guy driving, one guy shooting.”

  “Semi-automatic assault rifle?”

  Pete was nodding.

  “Backpacks?”

  “Good question but no. If it was the same crew, they’ve dropped them off somewhere.”

  “Where was it? Close by?”

  “West Sixth Street,” Pete said, pointing behind Nora’s head in a rather useless gesture.

  In the neighborhood. Nora shook her head. The murder rate in Erie was assessed quarterly instead of daily. People often didn’t lock their cars or even their doors in some neighborhoods. Nora herself had taken to leaving a spare key behind a crumbling brick on her front porch so she could run unencumbered. No one had threatened her—not once. Not even any of the grizzled homeless men who occupied Perry Square at night. To gun down an elderly judge on Erie’s nicest block … She shook her head.

  “Leads?”

  “No! No leads.” Pete ran vexed fingers through his hair, a deep frown on his face. “They disappeared just like the others did. And I’ve spent the whole night trying to trace the IP address on the webcast and it was completely fucking impossible. All we can say for sure is that the Pennsylvania militia movement is alive and well and way more tech savvy than we previously assumed.”

  “How long you been here, buddy?” Nora asked, forcing herself to be and sound very calm.

  “All night, Nora. I was just getting into bed when the call came through.”

  “Okay, then I’ll call it a stroke of good luck that one of us got some rest. Show me the reports and then go curl up in the Room of Requirement. And do not drink any more coffee. You look like you just walked out of a crack house.”

  He looked at her askance.

  “All wild-eyed. Got the crazy hair,” she added. As though to answer his unspoken accusation, she pointed to herself and said, “Philly PD. I’ve seen things, brother.”

  He smiled despite himself, then showed her all the info on his laptop, printing up the most recent police and coroner’s reports. Then he went into the storage room, saying the words, “Ten minutes,” over his shoulder.

  Pete had just vanished when Anna and Sheila both walked into the cubicle.

  “Nice of you to join us, Nora,” Sheila practically spat at her. Looking up from Pete’s laptop screen, Nora could see the stress etched across her face, and it scared her slightly more than images of men on motorcycles.

  She tried to convey how badly she felt without sounding melodramatic. “I’m so sorry—”

  “Later, later,” Anna said quickly. “We have a new issue to deal with. Where’s Peter?”

  “New issue?” Nora asked, rising.

  “Yes, there’s been an abduction.”

  Nora looked from one face to the other. “Really?”

  Sheila looked furious. “Of course, really,” she hurled, as though Nora’s response were the stupidest possible thing anyone could have said. “April Lewis, the first black councilwoman Erie’s had.”

  Nora blinked, thinking rapidly. “Details?”

  “She didn’t come home last night,” Anna said. “The family got a call. They’re very wealthy, so they were tempted to pay the ransom right away without contacting us. But when they heard about the judge’s murder this morning, they finally called it in.”

  “Who did they think they were going to pay?” Nora asked.

  Anna checked her notes. “The call they got was very short. It said to leave 1.5 million dollars in unmarked bills in a couple of trash cans in Perry Square.”

  “These things usually go into bank accounts—it’s a very old-school ransom request,” Sheila observed.

  Anna shrugged. “I guess we’ve seen how they feel about banks.”

  “Cell phone or landline?” Nora asked.

  “Hmm?” Anna asked.

  “The call came in to a cell phone or a landline?” she repeated.

  “Oh, no, a landline. Where’s Pete?”

  “Sheila!” Maggie’s voice somehow managed to clear the forest of other sounds in the office. “Sheila: TV.”

  All three women swiveled their necks to see Vance Evans filling the screen, an air of gravitas infusing his carefully powdered features.

  “Oh, no…” Anna murmured. “We begged him to hold off until we could determine if this group was legit.…”

  “NBC News regrets to share with the general public the video, sent last night, detailing the agenda of a local militia—”

  “I am going to fucking kill him. I am going to fucking kill that man!” Sheila’s shouting drowned out Vance Evans. “He’s going to set off a fucking city-wide panic—” Then, she interrupted herself to yell, “Maggie! Get me Washington on the line and call in the CIRG.…”

  Sheila’s eyes shone with rage. She turned to the agents. “Conference room!”

  * * *

  “Wake up, Peter,” Nora said, crouching next to him.

  He rolled over, squinting. “That cannot have been ten minutes,” he whined.

  “Well, it was close. We need you.”

  Cursing, he came to a sitting position on the vinyl loveseat. He rubbed desperately at his eyes, trying to make them focus, then followed her to the conference room where Anna had already called up the webcast.

  Anna glanced at them and then back at the screen. As the conference room door was closing, Nora overheard Sheila shouting through the closed door of her office. Her voice was a full register higher than Nora had imagined it could go.

  “You’re so fucking bored with broadcasting about Ox Roasts that you’re willing to terrify the public and publicize for terrorists?”

  Pete looked a question at Nora.

  “NBC went ahead and broadcast the webcast. ‘Breaking news.’”

  “Fuck. Fuck
ing idiots,” he said.

  “That’s apparently Sheila’s take on it,” Nora said.

  Anna nodded to Nora. “You didn’t hear this yet. I guess we’ll be getting to know this video inside and out.”

  She pressed play on the remote in her hand.

  They all remained standing around the conference table, waiting for Gabriel Baker’s words.

  “The Jewish judiciary is strangling the vision of our president. If we wait any longer for real change, it will be too late. We thus declare open warfare against all enemies of traditional Aryan values. With the fourteen acts of violence that will come, we begin the task that we must accomplish. We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

  Pete leaned against the wall then ran his fingers through his hair.

  Nora felt her whole body slacken. She, too, found herself leaning against the wall for support.

  “You recognize it?” he asked softly.

  She nodded.

  “Fourteen, huh?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “We have been growing, my brothers and sisters. And now it is time to act. We welcome our fellow militia members to join us. We open our hearts and our doors to like-minded preservers of tradition. The time for radical action is now. The time to banish fear is now.…”

  Anna regarded Pete. “This bullshit is supposed to be regional. What’d you do, Pete, import it?”

  “Oh, come on, Anna. There are more Confederate flags flying off of Girard pickup trucks than back in South Carolina,” he snapped.

  Nora noted that when he was angry his Southern accent intensified exponentially.

  Sheila burst in, slamming the conference room door behind her. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly and she was clutching her BlackBerry, her tablet, a legal pad, and three different pens. Taking her place at the head of the table, Sheila asked, “What’s the story with the number fourteen? Is there something important about that?”

  Reluctantly, all three of them sank into seats around the table. Pete and Nora let Anna explain. “Fourteen is a white supremacist symbol, very current in alt-right discourse. There are fourteen words in that slogan, maybe the most popular slogan for the movement—the one about securing the future for white children.”

  Sheila’s lips pursed hard against this news, her frown lines deepening. “Fourteen acts of violence…”

  “Four down,” Anna said softly.

  Pete frowned. “Four?”

  Sheila said tersely, “There’s also been an abduction. City councilwoman. Black woman.”

  “You think it’s important that she’s black?” asked Anna.

  “Now I do,” said Sheila.

  “The bank guard was black?” Pete asked.

  There was a general nod of confirmation. Nora was starting to feel desperate for tea.

  “Preliminary evening means what’s coming today can only be worse, right?” Pete asked.

  Both Anna and Sheila looked at him. Sheila looked slightly queasy.

  Pete seemed lost in thought, though. He was rapping his knuckles on the table, saying, “I didn’t think there was a significant armed militia presence in Pennsylvania. I knew Michigan, Ohio—”

  Anna chimed in, ticking off on her fingers, “West Virginia, Washington State, even Minnesota…”

  Pete said, “After Obama took office there was an eight-hundred-percent increase in anti-government patriot groups. With all the energy generated by the last election, there are well over three thousand out there now. Some three hundred of them classify as militia. They got on high alert, thinking they’d have to take back the country after a ‘rigged’ election. Money was rolling in to fundraising sites—a lot of it was through the Dark Web but a lot was pretty brazen, out in the open. The alt-right was suddenly awash in money and firepower. Hard to redirect.”

  “What changed?” Nora said. “Why are they materializing now?

  “Someone must have decided change wasn’t coming fast enough.”

  “But Erie? Here?”

  “Sure, why not? We had one of the biggest flips in history, right? Hold on to that anger, wait for something to get better. If nothing improves, well, Roar on the Shore, sister,” said Pete. “Noise, bikes, white folks doin’ their thing. At the very least, it’s good cover.”

  Anna shook her head rapidly. “There’s never been a problem with Roar on the Shore before,” she said. “The worst that’s happened is public urination or a few bar fights. People come to shop and swap and show off.”

  “And dance,” said Pete. “White Snake came last year.”

  Sheila nodded, looking at Nora but not looking at her. “We need to identify the catalyst. Let’s look at this thing a minute together.”

  “Can Maggie make a transcript for us so we can parse it bit by bit?” Anna asked.

  Sheila hesitated. “I hate to lose time like that but let’s ask her.”

  The let’s in this case meant that Anna needed to go do it if she wanted it done. Anna rose and went to talk to Maggie.

  The TV meanwhile had gone back to the local “breaking news” newscast. Vance Evans was busily gathering public reaction.

  The cameras had headed out into vendors’ alley along Perry Square. A heavily bearded man was standing outside one of the Harley-Davidson kiosks. The small amount of flesh visible on his face glowed pink with sunburn. A skull and crossbones bandanna crowned his head, pulled tightly across his forehead and knotted in the back.

  “Nobody defiles Roar on the Shore, man,” he was saying.

  Vance Evans asked him, “What is the mood among the festival-goers?”

  “You mean the bike rally, right? It’s not a festival, man.”

  “I mean those attending Roar on the Shore,” said Vance patiently, a look of patronizing interest cemented across his tanned features. Belatedly the screen ran the interviewee’s name: Jerry Walsh of Fredonia, New York.

  “People are pissed, man. People look forward to the Roar all year round, man. This is a peaceful gathering of people who love to ride. I can’t see no bikers doing that. Blowin’ up a bank. The Roar is beautiful, man. Keep that terrorist shit outta here.”

  The live broadcast couldn’t bleep out the expletive.

  Evans asked him, “What do you think of the broadcast from the Pennsylvania Patriots? Does the message of revolution resonate with you?”

  “I think that’s bullshit, man,” Walsh said. He gestured at the shiny bikes in the kiosk. “The Harley Revolution is the only revolution I’m interested in.”

  Vance Evans walked to the next kiosk, where a woman with a shock of gray curls and, in Nora’s opinion, alarmingly tight blue jeans stood, pale blue eyes swimming with tears. She was unpacking her goods—dream catchers, hand-painted leather jackets, hair clips with attached eagle feathers, and a variety of knick-knacks—in preparation for the 11 A.M. opening time.

  “By this time last year I’d made a thousand dollars. Now nothing! That madness happened right at opening! And now look, look at the streets—it’s like a wasteland.”

  Vance Evans turned back to the camera. “And that’s the word from the street. Mr. Baker will have to work much harder to convince these frustrated bikers that the mission and message of the Pennsylvania Patriots warrant disrupting this all-important week with violence and bloodshed.”

  Nora and Pete looked from the screen to each other.

  “Play the video again while we’re waiting for the transcript,” Anna said, coming back in. “It’ll take a while.”

  Gabriel Baker liked to clench his fist and hold it aloft. He also liked to use big words, although Nora, ever averse to big words, felt as though he occasionally stumbled over them.

  “Most of the message is recycled, right?” Pete said, rubbing his hand over his beard. His laptop was open and he was tapping phrases into the Google taskbar to see if they had come from other sources.

  “Yes and no,” murmured Nora. “The Order. Anti-government stuff. But there’s other stuff. Stuff I
didn’t see in class.”

  Sheila looked lost. Anna explained, “The Order is a white supremacist terrorist group. Guy named David Lane was its best articulator. Can you pause it, Pete?” she asked.

  Baker had just said, “Diversity is code for white genocide.”

  Anna nodded. “Yes, this is also classic Order stance.”

  “Do we have a new David Lane on our hands?” Sheila was asking.

  They each considered this.

  “Lane was a thug,” said Pete, eyes riveted on his laptop screen. “I don’t have anything on Gabriel Baker; not yet, anyway. We can run an extensive search but I have nothing matching so far.”

  In the background, Baker was still speaking.

  We must disavow our liberal bedazzlements and relearn the meaning of fear. Only the stupid know no fear. Not fearing our enemies is the ultimate form of stupidity. Refusing to rise up and reclaim the future for our own white children is self-annulment. If these mud-peoples will not take the necessary step of deliverance through self-annihilation, then let us unburden them. If all of us rise, then no one can imprison us. If our ruler can not purge our material soil of foreigners, those who would unseat their masters and presume to rule, those who lack art, who lack history, whose gods are their own and who defile Nature as unpleasant freaks, wholly and forever disagreeably foreign, forever creatures of a sick twilit moral code … then we must extend the righteous hand of aid to this leader for whom we had had such high hopes. For even under his eye, those who would destroy us flourish.

  Nora snapped her fingers, recognizing a catch phrase.

  But Anna was already nodding.

  “Mud-peoples—that’s straight out of the Christian Identity lexicon,” she said.

  Sheila tapped her pen on the table, waiting.

  “Christian Identity is a spinoff of British Israelism,” Anna supplied. “They incorporate very racist, very anti-Semitic interpretations of the Bible. Anyone not created when God created whites is lumped in with the beasts of the field, and so any non-white is a ‘mud person.’”

  Nora suddenly perceived that each person in the room was carefully refusing to glance at her caramel-colored skin. She drummed her fingers on the tabletop, enjoying their discomfort.