The Third Brother Read online

  44

  AFTER A CUP OF COFFEE AND A GLANCE AT the paper the next morning, I threw on a shirt and jogging shorts, laced up my shoes, and lumbered down the street to Schiller Park, where I dodged real runners, cyclists unaware of city biking laws, and dog walkers—including the two Kevins and their pugs—as I circled the park for forty-five minutes, give or take a knee pain or two.

  The evening before had given me a lot to think about, and that wasn’t even counting the way it ended under the romantic glow of a sodium-vapor lamp in the restaurant parking lot. Reviewing the twists and turns of Abdi and Barbara’s situation over beers with Helene had brought to bear the similarities in the cases I’d somehow become entangled in. Namely, Ohio’s very own white supremacists and the extremists of Islamic fundamentalism. Similarities, but—as with the story of Ronald McQuillen at Maple Ridge High—any connection?

  I was walking the last two blocks up Mohawk to my house when Abukar Abdulkadir called, panic in his voice.

  “I need help. Someone is outside my apartment.”

  “Someone like who?” I thought of the mask-wearing kidnappers.

  “People in big black cars. They are watching my window.”

  “Stay inside,” I said immediately. “If they knock on your door, cooperate but keep your mouth shut.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I skipped a shower, dressed, and got into my van. I called Freddy Cohen on the way. I made it to Abdulkadir’s parking lot in less than twenty minutes. I walked straight to his door without looking left or right. On cue, I heard a car door open and slam shut and my name called before I put fist to door.

  “Hayes,” Cindy Morris said, striding toward me with fire in her eyes. Hell hath no fury like a government agent scorned. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m in the market for a north-side chalet. There a law against that?”

  “There is now.” She turned and waved in the direction of a pride of black Ford Explorers. Several more doors opened and shut. She turned back to me.

  “You need to step aside.”

  “Right of free assembly.”

  “On public property,” she snapped. “As you well know.”

  “I—”

  “Spofforth,” Morris said in a voice just shy of drill sergeant with a gut ache. “Assist Mr. Hayes in getting out of my way. If he resists, arrest him.”

  “On what charge?” I demanded.

  “First-degree dumbass,” she said, but something in her voice had changed, and I could tell she was seriously angry.

  Spofforth approached—we’d met before, on a side street in a subdivision, where he waited like a linebacker ready to upend me—but push never came to shove. The apartment door opened a moment later and Abukar Abdulkadir stood before us, arms by his side.

  Morris addressed him by name.

  He nodded, misery clouding his eyes.

  “I need to ask you to come with me.”

  “You’ve got this all wrong,” I said.

  “Stay out of it,” Morris said.

  “You’re making a big mistake.”

  “And you’re making an even bigger one if you don’t get out of my face in the next three seconds.”

  I did as I was told. Abdulkadir looked at me sadly.

  “Nabadeey, Andy,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “Goodbye.”

  IT TOOK A CALL from Cohen to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and some high-stakes negotiating with Cindy Morris, but eventually I was allowed to retreat from the field of battle with most of my civil liberties intact. I was driving back down Agler Road when I was interrupted by a call from Bonnie.

  “It’s what I was afraid of,” she said. “You’ve got a serious virus problem.”

  “I do?”

  “You get all that information about phishing I send you, right? The ways to protect yourself?”

  “I’m very careful,” I protested. “I learned my lesson after a Nigerian prince offered me two million pounds.”

  “Don’t even joke about that. My friend’s aunt lost $4,000 in one of those scams. You’re sure you haven’t communicated with Barbara Mendoza electronically?”

  “Positive. Until recently, talking to her in person was hard enough.”

  “No clicks on suspicious links?”

  “None. Promise.”

  “Opened any files from people you didn’t know?”

  “Files?”

  “Word documents. PDFs. Spreadsheets. Anything like that.”

  I thought about it. Anything fitting that category came from either Burke Cunningham, or more recently Freddy Cohen, or Kym and Crystal. I was about to answer in the negative once again when I thought back to the parking lot escapade.

  I said, “Ronald McQuillen? The militia hunter I told you about?”

  “What about him?”

  “He sent me a PDF about an outfit called the 1776 Sentries. But it was just a simple document. A history of the movement.”

  “When?”

  “Couple weeks ago.”

  “OK. I’m going to check that out.”

  She called back twenty minutes later, just as I arrived at Cunningham’s office, ready to brief him and Cohen on Abdulkadir’s arrest.

  “You might want to give that guy a call.”

  “Why?”

  “That document had an.exe file attached to it. That’s where your virus came from.”

  “Really?”

  “Do you trust him? Because that’s a little sophisticated.”

  “I suppose.” Maybe. Possibly? “He’s been helping me with the two guys I chased away in the parking lot.”

  “How’d you find him?”

  “I didn’t. He found me. He called, after it happened, told me his suspicions.”

  “How’d he know about you?”

  I was getting a bad feeling about this. “The way the rest of the world did, I guess. Saw me on the news.”

  “You may want to check him out a little further. Something’s not right here.”

  I thought of Helene’s story of McQuillen’s visit to Maple Ridge High. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m starting to get that impression.”

  I hung up and walked to Cunningham’s door and waited for LaTasha to buzz me in. Could things get any stranger? Ronald McQuillen hacking my computer as I recovered from challenging two guys who may have been connected to Abdi Mohamed’s disappearance? Highly unusual coincidence indeed. And not one I needed to deal with right at the moment. Because if we’d been running out of time before, Abdulkadir’s arrest had pushed the clock hands about as close to midnight as they could get.

  45

  MCQUILLEN ANSWERED HIS DOOR WITH a frown two hours later, blinking at the daylight and clutching a bottle of his ubiquitous Mountain Dew like a dog zealously guarding a rawhide chew toy. Today’s T-shirt bore a picture of Darth Vader and the caption “Who’s Your Daddy?”

  “You know what time it is, right?”

  “Time to talk.”

  “I’m barely awake.”

  “I don’t think that’s a disqualifier.”

  Reluctantly, he stepped back and let me inside. “So what can I do for you?”

  Standing in the cramped hallway, I told him what Bonnie had uncovered, the PDF and the infected.exe file.

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So? You hacked my computer, didn’t you?”

  “Get lost,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  “Maybe not on Planet McQuillen. But we do things differently here in the real world. Which reminds me.” I went over what Helene told me about his talks to student government classes.

  He took a swig of the soda and tried to blink the sleep out of his bloodshot eyes. His hair and beard jutted out in odd directions, as if no longer subject to gravity. He looked like a folksinger who’d been dragged from his bed by the Ohio Grassman. He turned and walked farther into the house.

  “Follow me.”

  WE WERE SEA
TED IN the Garden. Lights on various computers and routers and monitors blinked not much more frantically than cockpit controls on takeoff. On the TV the BBC was reporting a thwarted suicide bomber truck attack in Paris. I turned down the offer of my own two-liter Mountain Dew bottle. McQuillen shook his head with a look of surprise when I asked about coffee, as if I’d raised the possibility of traveling to Jupiter’s third moon. Instead I sipped tap water from a plastic Columbus ComicCon cup as I unveiled my indictment.

  When I finished, he said, “I don’t have anything to do with Abdi Mohamed.”

  “Oh really? So it’s just a coincidence his counselor was hacked around the same time you were at the high school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you also denying you went after my computer?” I said, making no effort to hide my frustration. I looked around the Garden, wondering how Bonnie would fare mano a laptop with McQuillen.

  “That’s irrelevant at this point. What you’re talking about with the Evil Twin attack is much more—”

  I sat back and folded my arms.

  “Fine. Be a baby. It was research, OK? Pure and simple.”

  “Research? About what? The bills I owe? My attempts at online dating?”

  “Your accounting is pretty shitty, I have to admit. I’ve got a couple software programs I could recommend. And I’d steer clear of ‘Melissa in Dayton’ if I were you. But in this case, I’m talking about the guys who rolled you in the parking lot. The Bowdens. That’s why I called you to begin with.”

  “In order to hack me? You couldn’t have kissed me first?”

  “I didn’t know you, beyond what’s out there in the news, which isn’t always flattering, just FYI. I have no idea if you would have told me what I needed to know. Or if you’d even know what was important.”

  “So you decided just to invade my privacy instead?”

  “I’m fighting a war here, Hayes. I’ve got to take certain precautions. Hurt feelings don’t concern me. And it’s not like I messed with your files. I only care about things you came across that could help me understand what these alt-right twits are up to next.”

  “You’re paranoid, is what I think.”

  “Am I?” He glanced at the framed newspaper clipping about his father’s murder.

  “With all due respect, yes. But putting that nuttiness aside, why hack Abdi Mohamed? And his counselor? What do they have to do with any of this?”

  “I told you, I didn’t do that.”

  “Why should I believe you? You were at his school.” Something occurred to me from my conversation with the Lumberjack Man barista at Scarlet & Gray Grounds. I asked him if he’d ever visited the coffee shop.

  “Do I look like someone who visits coffee shops?”

  “They have soda. Artisanal—you could broaden your horizons.”

  “They’re broad enough, thank you.”

  “If you insist. Mind if I take your picture?”

  “Yes.”

  “Too bad,” I said, whipping out my phone and snapping a couple frames.

  “Hayes—”

  “I’ll keep these off Instagram if you behave. I just want to check something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’ll let you know. Back to the school—”

  “I did that as a public service,” he said, clearly angry now. “I didn’t charge—did the principal tell you that part? I speak all the time. Trying to get the message across.”

  “What message?”

  “The one I’ve been trying to get through your thick skull for two weeks. I don’t care about Islamic extremists or whatever. I mean, I care, but it’s not what I do. I’ve got my hands full dealing with these homegrown wackos. It’s like I told you before. We’re shitting our pants over brown-skinned guys in robes when we’ve got just as many true-blue Americans sitting around in trailer parks with more guns than an artillery unit in Vietnam and ten bags of fertilizer around back they’re trying to figure out what to do with. And believe me, they’ve got plenty of targets to choose from.”

  46

  I TOOK A DRINK OF MY WATER. “THEN WHO?” I said.

  “Who what?”

  “Who hacked Abdi Mohamed and Barbara Mendoza?”

  “I have no idea. But Evil Twin is sophisticated,” McQuillen said. He brushed his hair out of his eyes. I noticed for the first time what appeared to be crumbs of toast in his beard. “Go over the scenario again.”

  Reluctantly, I explained what Bonnie theorized, about the hacker gaining access to Barbara Mendoza through an attack on Abdi at Scarlet & Gray Grounds.

  “They did their homework, whoever it was,” McQuillen said. “Assuming they didn’t just stumble onto the counselor’s secret, someone had the smarts to check her out. But who would know the two of them were close, other than someone at the school?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It was a good move, especially if she’s as vulnerable as you’re saying. Because who’s she going to tell? It isolated her even more. Well, at least until you stumbled along.”

  A calculated effort to leverage a secret. It made sense, as much as I hated to admit it. After all, chasing secrets was at the heart of everything I’d encountered in the past few days. Barbara Mendoza and her undocumented niece. Abdi’s relationship with Faith Monroe. Abukar Abdulkadir’s efforts to help Abdi pay for books. The midwife and her babies . . .

  “Hayes.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Did you hear what I just said?”

  “No.”

  “I said I could run up the street to Panera and get you some coffee. If you think you’re going to be here a while.” From the look on his face, I could tell that playing three-on-three hoops in the hot sun with some 1861 Copperheads would have been more appealing to him.

  I shook my head. “I can’t stay. I need to find square one and dust it off.”

  He didn’t bother disguising his relief. “I’m sorry about the hacking. Nothing’s going to come of it, I promise.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I take a wait-and-see approach.”

  We were passing through the living room when I remembered our conversation the day before, after my trip to Brenda’s Books ’n Things.

  “What about it?” he said impatiently.

  “You started to say something about the way the midwife got paid, before I had to take the other call.”

  “Oh yeah. I’m not sure how big a deal it is.”

  “Try me. I’m not taking anything for granted at this point.”

  He put his hand on the back of the couch. “It’s just that some people may have paid her in cash, but not Derwent.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He rarely if ever used money—American money. He claimed U.S. currency wasn’t legitimate. He’d figured out how to do small-scale minting and made these special coins. Probably from the gold he took down in the Brink’s job.”

  “Coins like what?”

  “Here. I’ll show you.”

  We walked back into the Garden. He rooted around in a file drawer. “Ah,” he said after a moment. He pulled something out and handed it to me. A gold coin, a little thicker and a little bigger in circumference than a Kennedy half dollar. On one side was imprinted what appeared to be a rainbow over a ship beached on a mountaintop.

  “Noah’s Ark?”

  “Good. At least you didn’t flunk out of Vacation Bible School.”

  I turned the coin over and examined three figures in a freshly plowed field. The man on the left was kneeling, his hand on his heart as if mortally wounded. The man on the right was about to walk out of view, his head in his hands like someone weeping. The man in the middle was lifting his arms up to the sky with his fists clenched. I looked at McQuillen and shook my head.

  “It’s a lot tougher. That’s Abel on the left, just after Cain struck him. Cain’s on the right, walking out of the garden. In the middle—”

  “The third brother. Seth.”

  “You got it.”

&n
bsp; “This was Derwent’s currency?”

  “He used it as much as possible. It’s real gold, so it has value. He was hoping to create an entirely new monetary system, based on him. No ego issues there. Of course, most people just pawned them for cash.”

  “Wonder if Brenda Renner did.”

  “Who knows? But I’ll tell you this much. If she told you Derwent paid her in cash for delivering babies, she’s lying. He wouldn’t touch the stuff.”

  47

  I PULLED INTO THE PARKING LOT AT Scarlet & Gray Grounds half an hour later. The business was nearly empty, with only a couple twenty-somethings working on laptops, a guy reading the Dispatch, and two Somali ladies having coffee while their kids played in chairs beside them. I spied Lumberjack Man behind the counter. He was pouring hot water into a silver, single-cup coffee filter cone perched atop a mug with the concentration of a man performing eye surgery. I approached and reminded him of the previous visit.

  “The guy I was looking for. Is this him?” I showed him my phone and the picture of McQuillen.

  “Nah,” the barista said, reluctantly pausing in his task. I detected a hint of derision in his voice at the sight of McQuillen’s wild appearance. By contrast, the barista’s beard was a trim rectangular shape like something you’d see in a tale told with hieroglyphs, with his bun coiled as firm and tight as a lacquered doorknob.

  “You sure?” But even as I asked I realized in my heart I believed McQuillen when he said he hadn’t visited the shop.

  “I don’t remember him. The guy I was telling you about was more”—he paused, considering—“more, I don’t know, Amish-ey.”

  “Amish-ey?”

  “You know. The whole beard with the upper lip shaved. Bible-ey.”

  “Bible-ey.”

  “Yeah. He definitely stuck out. I mean, we get all kinds in here. But it’s a lot of high school kids or ladies like that”—he nodded in the direction of the Somali women. He returned to his pour. “My manager made a joke about looking for a buggy.”

  “Did he have a laptop? A computer of some kind?”

  He removed the cone filter and gazed admiringly at the black brew in the mug. The coffee looked and smelled to me like the Folger’s French roast I’d had that morning at home, but I didn’t admit as much.