Page 24 of Flash and Bang
Jarrett finally nodded and blew out a breath. “The truth is, we think the event at Miramar has a religious aspect that can’t be ignored.”
Thayne cringed, waiting for the laughter he expected from the two FBI agents. It didn’t come. Instead, the two FBI agents exchanged wary glances.
“You mean because of that note that was sent to the base operations office?” Snow asked, sounding like the question was more of a conclusion than a question.
“Yeah. Wolfe and I have been lookin’ into that but like I said, we just got here.”
“Since we’ve been tracking this militia and the leader is a dude calling himself Reverend James, the religious bent to the notes actually makes sense in a way. If one of his followers is a religious kook, it would track with the notes being some sort of warning that Doomsday is coming or something of the like,” Snow said. “The thing is, we’ve been looking but this guy really stays under the radar. He seems to use word of mouth to get his message out because our cyber division can’t find an image of him on the Internet. Their best guess is, Reverend James is a ghost which doesn’t help us at all.”
“Ghosts don’t blow people and kids up,” Jarrett said.
Terraciano and Snow shook their heads.
“No. They fuckin’ don’t,” Terraciano said.
Thayne nodded, feeling a little better about their theory. The puzzle pieces seemed to be coming together just a little bit more. “As long as you don’tthink we’re crazy about the religious aspect, do you think the Bureau could look into the possibility of incidents in other regions where notes were left behind? It wouldn’t necessarily have to be an explosion. The terrorist might have started with other crimes—I don’t know—something smaller.”
“The way a serial killer starts out by killing small animals and pets?” Terraciano asked. “Yeah, that makes sense. We’ll check.”
“Thank you,” Thayne said.
“As soon as you hear something about the analysis of the explosives, will you let us know what you found?” Special Agent Snow asked.
Thayne smiled, happy the agents didn’t think he and Jarrett were off their rockers for following the religious angle. He nodded. “Of course. We’ll be happy to share. Keep us updated also?”
“We may have to since you both seem to know what you’re doing,” Terraciano admitted, albeit almost grudgingly.
“Thanks,” Jarrett said. “Another thing. If you could see what the FBI has on explosions of fireworks nationwide that they may have dismissed as accidents, that would be helpful. We plan on interviewing the rest of the Mason crew but it mightbe real interesting if there were other crimes of the same type that we can tie to them or this Reverend James and his followers. We’ll check within the Southern California region as well, but it might be helpful to see if there’s a serial using fireworks as a weapon and disguising it as an accident.”
Snow shook his head. “If there’s a serial killer using fireworks as a method of killing, it would be one I haven’t heard of, but we will talk to the Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico.”
“We really appreciate that,” Thayne said. He looked over at his partner, thinking how happy he was that at least Jarrett had made the overture to the FBI and how glad he was they’d taken him and Jarrett seriously about the note. Now the ball was in their court. He and Jarrett would do what they needed to do but at least they were all on the same page.
****
They finished up their lunch meeting with the two FBI agents, feeling that at least they’d made some headway. If Greg Mason had purchased fireworks from the smugglers, it just showed how dangerous the unregulated fireworks really were. Neither Jarrett nor Thayne believed that Greg Masonknew how dangerous they were, if he had done that. Mary Mason seemed to be honestly mourning the loss of her husband and neither Greg nor Mary had ever had trouble with the law before. Mary had been convincing but Jarrett knew that sociopaths could easily fool others by hiding their true emotions. God knew, Jarrett had met enough of them in his time. He was convinced the sociopaths he’d met had no conscience at all which just allowed them to be truly evil without even trying. As they got into the Jeep to head back to the hotel, Thayne’s phone rang.
“Wolfe,” he said.
“Hey, Sarah,” Thayne said, glancing over at Jarrett. “Let me put you on speaker so Evans can hear you too.”
Jarrett watched Thayne press a button on his phone and place it on the console as Jarrett drove toward their hotel.
“Hi, Evans,” Sarah said sweetly. “I’ve done some follow-up on the stuff you asked me about this morning, guys.”
“Hi, Connor. What did ya find out?” Jarrett drawled.
“Well, a couple things. First of all, I looked into any and all reports of fireworks mishaps whichmight have missed our radar in our division.”
“Okay,” Thayne said.
“So, what I found was that most of the mishaps were small accidents which occurred when folks, usually teenagers or kids, suffered burns or other injuries to their hands and fingers caused by the mishandling of fireworks. In one case, a guy stood on two chairs over a skyrocket and had a friend set it off while he filmed it for YouTube, causing burns on his genitals when the rocket was launched up his shorts,” she snorted.
Jarrett grinned over at Thayne. “A Darwin award winner,” he muttered as Thayne laughed.
“What an idiot,” Thayne said. “So what else?”
“There was one incident during the Chinese New Year parade in LA’s Chinatown earlier this year where someone sent up a lantern with exploding fireworks. They shot down into the crowd and hurt some folks. We had an investigator assigned to the case but she determined that no further investigation by the ATF was warranted because the injuries were relatively minor and she concluded it was an accident and not set off to intentionally hurt anyone. Since there was no arrest, a special agent was never assigned the case.”