Blood Trail - C. J. Box [61]
by Klamath on Wed Sept 07 02:02:12 AM PST.
Re: Re: I Had A Dream.
In my dream, it would definitely take place in the reddest of the Red States, both in terms of politics and the color of blood. Hit ’em where they live, is what I think.
by Wolverine on Wed Sept 07 03:37:26 AM PST.
Re: Re: Wolverine Dreams.
Although IT’S ONLY A DREAM, I am absolutely charged up by the pure boldness of the vision. While none of us advocate violence or criminal acts in any way, WE CAN DREAM, TOO.
Please contact me off-line, Wolverine. MAYBE I CAN TALK YOU DOWN.
by Klamath on Wed Sept 07 03:55:12 AM PST.
BREWER SAID, “This exchange took place two weeks prior to John Garrett’s death near Lander. Obviously, Klamath came to his senses at the end there and tried to cover his enthusiasm for the concept. And by the next day, the entire thread had been pulled from the Forum page. Luckily, my tech guys had somehow automatically archived it during the night so we have it. Did you note the reference to gambling? Gamblers use poker chips.”
Joe was suddenly wide awake, his mind spinning.
“Obviously,” Brewer said, “we don’t have enough to make any charges or even a serious accusation at this point. But when we saw this we wanted to trace the IP address of Wolverine and see if we could find him. That was beyond our expertise, so we turned to our brothers in law enforcement who are proficient in this kind of thing,” he said, gesturing to Portenson, who was now smoldering.
“I’ll take it from here,” Rulon said, “since it is now three-twenty-five and my friends in the press are clamoring to take a chunk out of me just outside the door.”
The governor pushed his face across the desk as if it were a balled fist, aiming it at Portenson. As he spoke, his voice didn’t rise so much as get harder-edged, until he was biting off his words and spitting them out, flecking the top of his desk and Brewer’s file with moisture.
“So my DCI takes the information to the FBI just down the street, where we get absolutely stonewalled. In the meantime, another innocent man, Frank Urman, gets butchered, which leads to three more deaths last night in a clusterfuck and a severed head mounted on a wall. Finally, we get our entire congressional delegation on the same line this morning and pressure is applied by them on Homeland Security to such a degree that Mr. Portenson and his pals have to talk to us. And when they do, we find out they’ve been monitoring Mr. Klamath Moore and his followers for months because they’re considered to be potential domestic terrorists, and they even have a man on the inside! And while we won’t accuse the FBI of being an accessory to murder since they didn’t know all we knew—”
“Oh, come on!” Portenson shouted. “We were doing our jobs! We couldn’t blow our undercover investigation for an office that leaks like a sieve!”
“We can say to the press out there,” Rulon continued, “without equivocation, that if the FBI had cooperated with us when we first asked for cooperation we might not be here today.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Portenson seethed. “We had no idea this Wolverine person was going to start killing people—and we still don’t know it was him. We have no idea who Wolverine is. We don’t even know if he’s in this country. The IP address he used was from one of those Internet kiosks in the Atlanta airport, so we can’t trace him. You’re speculating and trying to point the finger at us.”
Rulon nodded his agreement.
“Who do you have on the inside?” Joe asked Portenson.
“Oh,” the agent replied, deflated, “some guy. I can’t give you his name. But we asked him a couple of weeks ago to see if he could figure out who Wolverine is. He’s working on it, but he doesn’t know yet.”
“We need his name,” Joe said. “I need to talk with him.”
“Not a chance,” Portenson said. “We’re in