Canaan Camp

Chapter Thirteen

The Oregon "Trail"

       

Norwood, Missouri, June 8

          Trooper Rusty Talbot ducked though the doorway into the old service bay.  His flashlight picked out women's clothing arranged on the oil-grimed floor as if laid out on a bed in preparation for getting dressed.  He played the light around the musty room expecting to see a bare leg or arm protruding from beneath the abandoned service station's debris.

           "Tell me again why you stopped here," he said over his shoulder to the old fellow fidgeting behind him.

           "Them underthings out on the door.  They was like a flag, you know.  When I looked in that there window I seen something laying on the floor.  I was afeared it was a person, so I pushed on the back door and, since it wasn't locked, I come in and found that there."

           "Did you touch anything in here?"

           "No, sir.  What do you think it's all about?"

           "Maybe kids pulling a prank," said the trooper absently as he moved slowly into the room.  "Stay where you are and don't touch anything."

Bending down he shined the light onto the corner of a laminated card barely visible beneath the sleeve of the blouse.  Carefully he used a pen to lift the fabric enough to examine the object.  The smiling face was one of the most natural-looking driver's license photos he had seen.  The name on it was Jacqueline Benson.

 

Willamette Freemen Compound, Oregon, June 9 1:30 AM

          The car halted at the bottom of the hill, flashed its brights twice in rapid succession, and then once more before proceeding up.  When the window slid down, the only mildly curious guard leaned down to check in the returnee.  A hand grabbed his tunic and pulled him forward as a knife neatly slid into his exposed neck.  A flick of the wrist, and Paget released his hold.  Mutely, the sentry dropped his flashlight and fell gurgling to the ground.  Paget turned off the lights, but left the motor running.  He grabbed the feebly moving man's ankles and dragged him behind the guardhouse where he took the key ring and went back to his car, pausing only to kick dirt over the dark pool of blood.  Within two minutes of arriving he was inside the compound with gate locked behind him.

          Satisfied that no one had seen him arrive, he followed the road up to the headquarters building by the light of the moon.  Driving past a cluster of buildings at the top of the hill, he pulled up to the open door of the equipment shed.  A quick flick of headlights revealed plenty of room, so he pulled into the pitch-black shadows and turned off the ignition.  He got out and eased the door shut.  It seemed to take forever for the interior of the car to darken.

          Only HQ was lit.  He went toward it thinking that a real military installation would never have only two people awake at night, but then again he these were play soldiers.  He peeked through the window, almost laughing aloud when he saw see who was pulling CQ.  He rapped out three solid taps on the doorframe, SOP at the compound.  Footsteps approached and then the door opened to reveal the bur-headed silhouette of Beuler was framed in the light like a shadow.

153.

          "What the hell are you doing here?" he blurted in surprise.

           "Just this," said Paget, thrusting as his blade entered just below the rib cage seeking the man's heart with its tip.

          Beuler deflated comically, and Paget pushed the weakly struggling man backward, following him in.

           "Of all nights for you to be pulling CQ, huh?" he said as the man fell to the concrete floor.

          Paget took two quick steps and kicked him in the face. 

           "You strutting little prick," he said softly.  "You want to play soldier?  How do you like the real game---the one where you end up KIA?"

          He delivered a second and final kick to the dying man. 

          Paget laughed as he remembering Beuler's ridiculous lectures to the collection of flabby dimwits who fancied themselves soldiers.

           "All that crap about facing down the government.  Last stand, Captain?" he asked as he nudged Beuler's body with his foot.  "No blaze of glory for you.  Too bad the stuff you took has to go to waste."

          He bent to look into the dead man's staring eyes.  He and Beuler had been polar opposites.  The Captain was way less than he tried to appear.  Paget let people misjudge him on purpose.  He loved the look in their eyes when they realized their mistake.

           "Even if you were serious, you were an idiot.  You don't die for a cause.  You make other people die for your cause," he said aloud, enjoying the sound of his own voice.

          Not until that moment did the idea occur to him.  It should have.  Thinking about it would have made his long drive a lot more enjoyable.  He had planned a quick in and out, just long enough to establish his presence in the northwest.  Now he saw something bigger.

          Impatiently he yanked out the middle drawer of the desk, inadvertently spilling its contents onto the floor.  Cursing, he rummaged around for the keys.  Nothing.  Next he tried the top right hand drawer, but found it locked.  He considered using his knife to jimmy it, but the heavy wooden desk looked too well made, and he didn't want to risk breaking the blade.

           "Come on.  Where did you put key?" he said as he kicked the body again.  "Minute men got to be able to get their guns when Uncle Sam comes calling."

          Paget stared at the wall, trying to imagine the workings of  Beuler's military mind.  Two wild-eyed portraits stared back at him from framed pictures draped with black bunting.  One was some confederate general, the other, an intense, curly-headed man with an unkempt short beard and dark-rimmed glasses.

154.

          "You're his hero," he said to the more contemporary photo.  "Where the hell would he put the key?"

          As soon as he voiced the question, it came to him. 

           "Of course," he said, kneeling to rip open Beuler's shirt.

          He took the key, and dropped the broken chain on the dead man's chest.

Inside the right hand drawer, he found a neatly fitted plywood board with a labeled grid of keys arranged on a schematic of the compound.  Paget took the key marked Ordinance and slipped outside.  Flattened against the wall in the deep shadow cast by a full moon, he counted slowly to thirty, keeping his eyes moving so as to pick up any surreptitious movement before setting off.

          The ordinance building was nothing more than an army shipping crate sized to fit the bed of a deuce and a half, the military's two and half ton truck.  Its large padlock worked easily, but its rusty hinges creaked loudly enough to wake the dead, but no one responded with challenge and no lights came on.  Paget slipped inside the pitch-black container.  Cursing at his failure to bring a flashlight, he struck his lighter to examine the interior.  Flickering light reflected from the well-oiled surface of row upon row of semi-automatic rifles standing in wooden racks along the sides.  That the weapons were of various design and manufacture revealed that it was no real military arsenal.

           "Not one mini-14," he said aloud.  "You got rid of all the stuff we took down in Arkansas."

          He laughed at the thought that the ferocious militia spoiling for a fight with the government should worry about getting caught with stolen property as he saw what he was looking for in the back corner secured by a chain welded to the sides of the connex.  A backbreaking trip up the hill winded him and cursing.  He paused a moment to catch his breath.

           "Damn!  This commando crap is hard work, Beuler," his whispered.  "You didn't tell us that."

          He didn't get back to the highway until four o'clock.  Making sure to travel exactly at the speed limit he took 207 toward Mitchell.  He'd had no sleep since leaving Canaan so he decided to spend the day in Eugene before setting out on the long trip back.  He wondered with some amusement how long the freemen would sit on it before they reported the murders.  His fingerprints were all over the place, so an Oregon manhunt was just a matter of time.  Then he wondered if the idiots even would report the deaths.  It would be just like the idiots not to, and that would make his whole trip for nothing.  He checked into a motel and went to sleep worrying about it.  

 

Cottage Grove, Oregon, June 10

          Paget finally rolled out of bed at noon and turned the TV to the local station to see if his work had made the news yet.  He turned up the volume and went to shave during the local news.  There wasn't a word.  He cursed the idiots when he realized that they had been afraid to report the murders.  He checked out, went to a bar, and spent the remainder of the day nursing beers and watching local sports programming, his frustration growing as the time continued to pass without the expected newsbreak.  He finally decided he could delay returning no longer.  Things back at Canaan could be falling apart on him.

 

Blue Creek

          His first day of serving summons made Richard appreciate the night shift.  Whether he encountered outrage boiling near the threshold of violence, shocked indignation bordering on disbelief, or dull acceptance engendered by familiarity, he found it dismal duty.  He quickly adopted an impersonal but informative manner and tried to get each encounter over as soon as possible.  The ones that bothered him the most were the habitual losers who showed no reaction at all.  To them, the court system was no great shakes.  It, like jail time, though not pleasant, was just part of their lives.

155.

            He trudged into the cool gloom of the office with three undelivered subpoenas.

           "Got a dental match for your girl, Carter," said Shug grimly as he walked to the counter where the log sheets were kept.

           "Was she local?"

           "No.  A student at Fayetteville, name of Jacqueline Benson.  Her mother reported her as missing on May 20^th."

          Shug held the report up to the light and squinted through his bifocals.  "Her mother, Irma Hanford of Lexington, Missouri, became worried when her daughter failed to arrive for an expected visit." 

          He put the report down and continued from memory.  "The Fayetteville police are questioning her boyfriend.  Seems the two of them planned to hitchhike to her mother's so she could introduce him.  He says they got into an argument and he went back to campus leaving her at a gas station on 112.  Claims he hasn't seen her since.  Folks down there aren't real satisfied with his explanation, but he doesn't have ready access to a car, and has no connection with this area as far as anyone can tell, so it doesn't look to me like he did it."

          Richard nodded.  "And the chances of him killing two women and leaving their bodies here too isn't real likely," he said.

           "You wouldn't think so, but anything's possible," said the sheriff.  "The only reason they're interested in him is he's all they got."  He shook his head wearily.

"She went on without him, I imagine.  Why would a girl smart enough to go to college decide hitchhiking alone was a good idea?"

           "Fayetteville and here," said Richard.  "Paget did it.  I know he did."

           "Why not?" said Shug with a bitter laugh.  "He did everything else.  I tell you what, Carter.  When you find him, you arrest him for it."

           "Boss, he killed two people there just before she disappeared.  If he is the one, then bringing her body here has to mean he's staying here."

           "I can't fault your logic, but where could he be staying and where did he get his transportation?"

           "I'm leaning toward a vacation cabin.  He could have killed an outsider or be holding one the way he held the woman over at Elsinore.  Where would I get a list of property owned by non-residents of the county?"

           "County records won't have that in any neat list.  You'd have to get addresses where property tax assessments are sent."

          Richard thought about how much time it would take to check each place out once he got the list.

 

Oregon, June 10

          A little after midnight, Paget stopped for gas and a leak.  As he headed for the bathroom, a slender girl blocked the aisle as she bent to examine a selection of gum placed below knee height.  She shot him a challenging glance when she noticed him staring.  He felt like slapping her upside the head with the Beuler's forty-five, but brushed by without reacting.

156.

          "Like I got no right to look," he muttered as he stood at the urinal thinking about her.

          Are they born like that, or do their moms teach him to treat guys like that? he asked himself.  The better they look, the more they throw in your face.  Try to take ‘em up on what they're offering, and they slam the door in your face.

           "Bends over like that, and then gives me that look."

          She was flashing a smile to some geek kid at the register when he came back out.  A big black kid stood just behind her, and to Paget's amazement, they two of them left arm in arm.  At the car he leaned in for a kiss.

          She gives me that look while she's giving it up to some nigger! he fumed.

          The sight of bloated pink lips sucking on the white girl's mouth made him shudder in revulsion.  When she got in and cranked the engine, the booming base of a rap song shook the quick stop windows.  His hand went to the forty-five beneath his jacket as he went toward the door, picturing himself running out and firing through the windshield.

           "Sir," called out the clerk.  "I think you forgot to pay for your gas."

           "What?" said Paget, turning.

          The pimply-faced kid stood uncertainly behind the register, obviously uncomfortable with having to assert himself.

           "You forgot to pay, I think."

           "Oh yeah," said Paget, reaching for his wallet as squalling tires drew his attention back outside.

          The bitch had bulled her way into heavy traffic.

           "No sense at all," muttered Paget as he handed over a twenty.

           "Oh, that's just Kristin," said the kid.  "She's kind of in a bad mood tonight, but she's really nice once you get to know her.  So's Tyrone."

           "Tyrone?" said Paget sarcastically.  "Now would that be the coon she was letting suck on her face?"

           "That's the . . . uh . . . her boyfriend," said the kid awkwardly.  "He's uh . . ."

           "Real nice, right?"

           "Here's your change, Sir," said the clerk, trying to extricate himself from the unpleasant situation.

          Paget snatched the money and turned to go.

          That's exactly what was wrong with this country, he said to himself disgustedly.  Women and niggers run everything while white men act like that damned wimp behind the counter. 

           "Calm down, Bobby Lee," he told himself as he slid behind the wheel.  "Can't sweat the small stuff.  You got bigger problems.  Like the damned freemen not telling the police.  Are all white men lily-livered?"

          The sudden certainty that the freemen would wimp out topped off his frustration.  He threw open the door and walked back into the quick stop.  The kid stared wide-eyed when he reentered.  Paget smiled reassuringly.

           "Sorry, I went off on you, kid."

           "That's okay."

          Paget nodded toward the surveillance monitor cycling through shots of the store and pumps.  He saw his own face and smiled.

           "That thing take very good pictures?" he asked.

157.

           "I guess so," said the boy.

           "Good," said Paget, leisurely taking the pistol from his pocket, and in one motion, swinging it around to point directly at the boy's chest.  The stunned clerk gaped uncomprehendingly.  Paget put a round in his chest, and after he collapsed, came around the counter to put two more into at point blank range.  Then he opened the register and scooped out the large bills.

 

Blue Creek, June 10

          Richard sat on the porch intermittently sipping at his cold coffee and reading Tanner's profile again.  It began with a disclaimer because the victim profile was incomplete since the second victim had yet to be identified.  Further limiting the certainty of the profile was the poor condition of Jacqueline Benson's body, which precluded reconstruction of her murder.

          Tanner described the perp as an organized and experienced white male in his late twenties or early thirties---the generic serial killer preying on white women.  But he also thought that if the second (unidentified) victim turned out not to be a high-risk victim, then the killer was socially adept, with considerable persuasive powers, and would be respectable in appearance, well groomed, neatly clothed, and would be driving a well-maintained, perhaps conservative vehicle.

          That fits with what we know about Benson, he thought, putting aside the profile and picking up the copy of the Fayetteville report Tanner had sent them.

          She may have hitched a ride with an unknown man, but she wasn't in the habit.  She didn't have a particularly high-risk lifestyle for a college student---just the opposite.  She was discriminating in her social contacts and didn't frequent " wrong" places.  She drank only moderately.  Until she had gone with the killer (if she did) accounts have it that she had demonstrated uncommon good sense.

          So it seemed to Richard that Tanner had described a perhaps naive, but not reckless, coed.

           "You are up early this morning."

          Jill stood barefooted and dressed only in her terry cloth robe.

          He nodded perfunctorily and turned back to the file.

           "When did you come home?"

           "What?  Oh, around one or so," he said distractedly.

           "I went to the doctor yesterday," she said.

          Uh huh," he replied absently as he turned a page to check something he didn't quite understand.

158.

           Jill placed her hands on his shoulders, kneading at the tension.  "He says everything is normal . . . just fine."

           "Good," he said, placing his hand over hers in a token gesture while he continued thinking about Benson, trying to divine what must had taken place between her and Paget at the service station.

          The whole purpose of a profile was to know why something happened so that you could know who your perp was.  Even though he was sure he already knew who it was, Richard found himself still wanting to learn the why.

          What possessed you to get in the car with him?  What did he say to overcome your good sense?  When did you realize what was happening? he wondered, barely taking notice of the fact that Jill was no longer massaging his shoulders.

          Richard gulped the last of the cold coffee, feeling the gritty grounds gather on the back of his tongue.  He chewed them thoughtfully before ejecting them the way a smoker rids his lips of unwanted tobacco shreds.

          It didn't feel right.

          The different ways he killed them indicated that Paget had a more complicated view of women than he first suspected.  Richard tried to imagine how Paget felt about women in general, and how he differentiated them.

          You think some are worthless, and that makes you angry.  You see others as innocent which . . . makes you angrier?  That's it.  They're the ones that really enrage you.  That's why you spend so much time with them.  You want to totally destroy them---but not before you make them pay.  The others are just throwaways.  They don't matter.

          He thought about Paget's "preferred victim," as Tanner phrased it.

          Riepe and Benson were both young and pretty.

          Remembering the yearbook citation for the Riepe girl, he picked up the information on Benson.  Both girls had been popular, athletic, and smart.  Riepe had belonged to the National Honor Society, and Benson carried a four-point average.  Both girls were the complete package.  Completely intimidating?

           "I think that's it, Jill," he said turning back, eager to hear her opinion of his theory.

          She was no longer on the porch.  Going inside to find her, he noticed the unnatural silence.  Before he got to the front door he knew that he would find her car gone. 

          Angry again, he said to himself, mildly annoyed.  It's probably the hormone changes.  She's strong.  She'll be able to take everything in stride once she adjusted.  I guess I can put up with a little crankiness until then.

159.

          "Maybe picking her up for lunch would improve her mood," he said.

          But his mind had already returned to Paget, and by the time he got to the courthouse he had forgotten about taking Jill to lunch.

 

Willamette County, 8:10 AM

          Rookie deputy Wayne Parsons parked on the wrong side of Dodd's Spring Road, nose to nose with the plateless, flatbed truck the crank call had taken him from breakfast to check out.  It had a tarpaulin thrown over something in the back just as the call had said it would.  He got out and threw aside the tarp, eager to get the joke over with.  Dull eyes stared through him.  A crusty brown stain discolored the man's neck and shirt.  It finally sank in that the "stain" was dried blood.

          After throwing up, he pulled the tarp back into place, and called it in, glad that police procedure spared him the necessity of examining the scene more minutely before trained help arrived.  He sat in his cruiser and turned on the air conditioning, but he could neither rid himself of the smell or the sight.  There was always a first time and he would get used to it and become hardened if he stuck with the profession.

 

          Sheriff Bob Holland stopped twenty feet back and across the road from the truck, wincing at the hot pain low on his left side, his ulcer acting up again.  He hobbled stiffly across the road, trying to loosen up his arthritis.

           "Knee acting up again, Sheriff?" asked the department's criminalist, coming forward to meet him.

          He grunted in confirmation.  "What have we got?"

           "Two vics.  Lividity and rigor give us a twenty-four to thirty-six hour window for the killings.  Both were left for several hours on their backs.  The one with the slit throat was dragged through dirt by his feet.  The other has a single, deep stab wound under the left side of the rib cage.  The slashed one bled out, but not on the truck."

          The sheriff nodded impatiently.  "There was a note?"

160.

           "I'll get it," the deputy said, ducking into the crime scene van. 

          He emerged a moment later with a clear plastic bag.  Inside was a single sheet of typing paper.  Holland donned wire-rimmed glasses and tilted back his head, centering the note in fish scale lenses.

TO THE COUNTY SHERIFF:

THE WILLAMETTE FREEMEN HEREBY TURN OVER EVIDENCE OF A CRIME COMMITTED ON OUR SOVEREIGN NATION BY ROBERT LEE PAGET.   THESE TWO CITIZENS WERE MURDERED BY SAID INFILTRATOR.  WE ARE NOT REQUIRED BY COMMON LAW TO REPORT THIS INCIDENT AND NOTHING CONTAINED IN THIS COMMUNIQUÉ SHOULD BE CONSTRUED AS EITHER DE JURE OR DE FACTO RECOGNITION OF THE ILLEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OR THAT OF OREGON.  WE ALSO ASSERT OUR RIGHT TO HUNT DOWN AND BRING TO JUSTICE THIS MURDERER WHEREVER HE MAY BE.

ON THIS TRUCK ARE THE BODIES OF THESE BRAVE MEN, PRIVATE JEREMY C. GREEN AND CAPTAIN CHARLES R. BEULER.  THEY WERE KILLED IN ACTION ON THE NIGHT OF JUNE 8-9 BETWEEN TEN PM AND FOUR AM THEIR BODIES ARE ALL THE EVIDENCE YOU NEED TO PROSECUTE THE CASE.  OUR ACTIONS IN SUPPLYING THIS EVIDENCE SHOULD IN NO WAY BE CONSTRUED AS ANYTHING OTHER THAN A COURTESY TO THE LOCALLY ELECTED AND LEGALLY CONSTITUTED AUTHORITY OF THE COUNTY.  IT IS GIVEN BY OUR FREE WILL IN CONSIDERATION FOR THE SAFETY OF THE LOCAL INHABITANTS.  THIS MESSAGE IS SENT MERELY AS A COURTESY.  IT IS IN YOUR INTEREST AND IN THE INTEREST OF THE CITIZENS YOU WERE ELECTED TO SERVE AS WELL AS OUR OWN THAT THIS MAN BE APPREHENDED. 

BE ADVISED THAT NO ONE WILL BE ALLOWED ON OUR SOVEREIGN TERRITORY AND ANY ATTEMPT TO FORCE ENTRY WILL BE MET WITH DEADLY FORCE AS IS OUR RIGHT. 

FURTHER COMMUNICATION IS UNNECESSARY.

END OF COMMUNIQUÉ

COLONEL FRANKLIN TREECE

COMMANDANT AND PRESIDENT

WILLAMETTE FREE NATION

           "What are we going to do?" asked the deputy when he was sure his boss had finished the "communiqué."

           "Contact representatives of the illegitimate governments.  Sure hope that doesn't upset Commander Treece."

 

 161

 

FBI Field Office, Little Rock, Arkansas, 11:30 PM

                   Tanner hit freeze.

           "That's Paget," said his ATF colleague.  "Right after this, he killed the clerk, but it's just off camera.  This killing spree---what's the motive for this one?  Or does motive even figure into it with spree killers?"

           "Always a motive," said Tanner distractedly.  "Just sometimes not even the killer knows what it is.  Maybe he was just short of money and ticked off.  Maybe it didn't go the way he wanted at the militia compound."

           "Well, this shows that he was out there---that the freemen didn't just pull his name out of the air.  How long do you think he's been there?"

           "Maybe since Fayetteville," said Tanner.

           "We need the militia to talk to us which is not too likely since they're the clowns who pulled off the Marked Tree gun robbery and we won't get into their compound until they're rid of the stolen weapons.  There's not any chance that they're still hiding him, is there?  I mean, it doesn't make any sense, but it is a possibility I guess."

           "No," said Tanner.  "They're too shook up.  They're doing handstands to convince themselves that they're not really cooperating the federal government, but they're screaming for help."

           "But they're still lying like dogs.  Before they cut their phone line, Treece told the sheriff up there that Paget had never been a member of the militia, but we have a former member who says Paget was a member."

          Tanner picked up a large folder containing all that was known about the Willamette Freemen.  He'd studied it from cover to cover.  He weighed it in his hand tentatively.

           "Despite the size of this thing, what we really know is pretty thin," he said.

           "Up until now, they were just your run of the mill secessionist group, hardly anything to get to worked up about.  We monitored their arms purchases and they were scrupulous about obeying the laws.  If there were illegal purchases, we didn't get a whiff.  There were just a lot more potentially interesting groups to concentrate on."

           "Maybe Marked Tree was their first out of channels requisition," suggested Tanner.

           "Maybe not.  The reason I flew down was to get your take on what Paget might do---what his potential for violence is."

           "He's a psychopath who likes to kill women, but doesn't blink an eye at killing men," said Tanner, sensing there was more to the question than he knew about.  "Why are you more interested in Paget than the freemen?"

           "Beuler was actually Daniel Tyler."

          Tanner's head came up.  "You're sure?"

162.

          "Unless he had a finger transplant."

          Tanner shook his head in disgust. 

          "How long have you guys known that Tyler was a member of that militia group?"

           "We didn't.  The militia kept him out of sight---for good reason."

           "What's it been?  Five years since he disappeared from Umatilla?  Gary, that's just not that far away from the Freemen compound.  Didn't someone think to look there at the time?  I mean, I remember how hot everyone was to get their hands on him.  And tell me how that all just fades away after only a few years."

           "The thing everyone got worked up about was not that he disappeared, but he was a civilian contract employee, not military, so he wasn't AWOL or a deserter.  Later they discovered that a couple of artillery rounds were missing, which caused a real scramble until it was determined that they'd already been defused and the nerve agent drained away."

           "Yeah, and presumably incinerated.  I remember how relieved everyone was about that.  Please tell me that wasn't just misinformation to avoid a panic."

           "We think that if he took anything at all, it was just the metal casings."

           "Think?"

           "There were discrepancies in the inventory records.  The serial numbers of the missing projectiles were on two different lists, one for weapons scheduled for decommissioning and another for those already decommissioned."

           "So which list was correct?"

           "We're not sure."

           "If those were fully operational rounds what could someone who knew what he was doing do with them?" asked Tanner.

           "If he could lay his hands on a 105 howitzer and had the training, he could lob a couple of nasty surprises about anywhere he wanted to.  Failing that, he could rig booby traps to disperse the stuff."

           "How about removing the nerve agent and releasing it more quietly, like the Japanese subway thing?"

           "The people who should know say that's a long shot.  They say it would take some very expensive equipment to transfer the stuff safely.  Anyone who tried handling Sarin with jerry-rigged equipment would probably be committing suicide.  At the very least, they would need a HAZMAT suit.  The stuff's so volatile that if any escaped it would kill anyone in the vicinity.  Remember the sheep kill when the stuff drifted off the proving grounds at Dugway?"

          Tanner nodded.  The incident was basic grist for the anti-CBR people, and with good reason.  There were tons of nerve agents and even pre-World War II mustard gas squirreled away in various government storage facilities awaiting incineration.  Leaks (always termed small and no danger to the public) were constantly occurring.

           "And," continued the agent, "even if he got it safely transferred, he still wouldn't be out of the woods.  This particular batch was pretty old.  After awhile it starts to degrade and creates a caustic substance that eats away at the container.  That's why just storing the old stuff isn't an option.  Chemical weapons treaty or not, we had to start destroying older stock anyway."

163.

           "So do they or don't they have that stuff in their compound?"

           "We have to assume they do.  And we have to assume that Tyler knew what the hell he was doing."

           "That's probable cause.  Go get it."

           "Not so simple.  We don't need another Waco.  The place is surrounded, and we've cut off access.  It's a siege, but we're not going in with guns blazing.  They might kill themselves, but not with our help."

           "At least the place is pretty isolated.  There shouldn't be any danger of collateral damage."

          Tanner shifted in his chair as an uncomfortable idea came to him.  "The storage facilities also have nerve gas in containers, don't they?  Could some of those be missing too?"

           "That we don't have to worry about.  Those containers are called one-ton containers for an obvious reason:  they're big---and, no, none of them have been misplaced---on the inventory sheets or otherwise."

           "I just had this picture in my mind of someone wheeling a gas bottle into a federal office building or maybe Congress.  If some nut were willing to commit suicide, it could happen."

           "But you think you got it covered?"

           "They're not going anywhere, but pressure's building.  The smart thing to do is sit tight, but the state boys want to investigate the homicides, we'd like to inventory their weapons, and the military wants to find out about the Sarin.  I'm sure the militia is feeling the heat too.  Which brings me to the reason I came out here:  in your opinion, what are the chances that they'll use it on themselves?"

           "Mass suicide?  If you had a messianic leader, there'd be a chance, especially if you push him," said Tanner carefully.  "But---and I'm just speaking in generalities here---I'd need an in-depth psych profile to even make a good guess.  I don't think these guys would off themselves just to make a point.  Militias are into the here and now, not the hereafter like the nut in Waco.  The problem is, in a situation like this you can't just guess."

          The phone rang.  Tanner's ATF colleague listened, nodded, and then muttered his agreement before hanging up.

           "They're still refusing to let us in," he said.

           "Surprise, surprise."

           "They say we should find Paget---that we have no authority on their sovereign territory."

           "Is the media on it yet?"

164.

            "Only the juicy murder spree part.  Great prime time ratings fodder."

           "I know you want to keep this under wraps, but don't take any chances by provoking them.  We can't have a release killing a bunch of unsuspecting civilians."

           "Tanner, I've been arguing that we should just wait them out.  If I had my way we'd just put razor wire around the place, and rename it the Willamette Federal Penitentiary."

           "Fine unless someone in Washington gets a case of let's-see-some-results."

           "I think they've got better sense.  Anyway, it looks like maybe we caught a break on this one.  Paget may have actually helped us recover the nerve gas."

          Tanner wasn't so optimistic.  In his experience things went unexpectedly wrong more than unexpectedly right.  The universe was perverse that way.  Momentarily he worried that Paget may have taken the Sarin with him.

           No, not his thing, he decided.  He likes things up close and personal.

           "At least now you know where your boy's been the last month and a half," said the ATF agent.  "But right now he's back burner.  When it's all over out there, we can concentrate on him. 

           "Yeah," said Tanner softly.  "Can't be wasting our time trying to track down a guy who's only killed seven people this month."