Jeff Abbott: Trust Me

‘So far this evening my masculinity, my patriotism and my intelligence have all been called into serious question.’ Luke shrugged, let a smile play across his face. ‘Then the ones I pretend to agree with, I have to get them talking to see if they really are interested in violence.’

‘The troublemaker, as always.’ Henry flicked a smile. ‘So you’re continuing to get a lot of responses.’

‘Fifty per cent more than when I started back in November. I think it’s the anonymity of the net; people express themselves a lot more strongly. And these people, they’re looking for others to reinforce their views. So the anger, the perceived injustice, ratchets up, higher and higher.’

‘How much data do you have so far?’

Luke glanced at a screen. The most interesting and extremist ravings on the websites and forums were scanned, copied and uploaded into a database. ‘Close to ten thousand comments now, from roughly six thousand individuals, over the past four months.’

‘Wow.’

‘It’s weird. I feel like a cop who pretends to be a thirteen-year-old girl luring the old perverts. But instead I’m trying to draw out the next Timothy McVeigh, or the next Madrid bomber, the next al-Qaeda wannabe here in America.’

‘You really think some of them are that dangerous?’

‘Look at today’s batch.’ He pulled up a comment from the day’s database. ‘Not surprising a lot of them are anti-government.’ Let’s start fresh. End their lifetime appointments; kill all the judges.

‘Now, maybe this guy’s just venting, maybe he’s harmless. It’s the first time he posted, I have to wait and see if he amps it up. If he does, then he’s a possibility to follow.’

Henry rubbed at his lip. ‘Prod him harder. See what else he says.’

‘Here’s one from one of my more consistent correspondents,’ Luke said. ‘ChicagoChris. He’s on a number of discussion boards for anarchists…’

‘Organized anarchists. I love the concept,’ Henry said.

‘… and he loves to talk about eco-terrorism.’ Luke hit a button and a long series of comments made by ChicagoChris over the past few days rolled up the screen: Burn every McMansion to the ground, that’s the start. A serious attack on a gated community would send a message. Don’t kill people, warn them first, but level the houses. Sabotage the construction equipment. Get busy to save the Earth. People who destroy the earth deserve whatever bad stuff happens to them. Killing our environment is akin to the greatest murder ever committed. I blame the oil and construction companies. I know those guys, what they’re like when the attention isn’t on them, and they’re scum. Kill them, kill all of them, and there would be change. A change is in the wind, I know it. It’s coming, fast. I want to be a part of the storm of change.

‘He’s a charmer,’ Henry said.

‘And he believes every word he says. He emails me a lot, through the boards. I’m his new best online friend. And he’s not just crazy, Henry, he’s focused. That’s what’s scary.’

‘You said in last month’s report you think he’s one of the most likely to go violent.’

‘Yeah, he’s promising.’ Luke made a face. ‘But crazy.’

‘I’m not interested in the crazy ones. I’m interested in the committed ones. There’s a big difference.’

‘I can’t really diagnose these people, I can only catalog their comments. I hope this is enough data for your research.’ Looking at all the hate made him tired. ‘For your client.’

Henry heard the stubborn question in Luke’s voice. ‘I told you, I have to keep my client confidential.’

‘Let me guess. It’s the government. They want to watch these people, make sure they’re only hot air and not actually acquiring weapons or putting bombs on buses or targeting politicians.’

‘I can’t say. But I know my client will be extremely pleased with your work.’

Luke said, ‘I’m surprised you don’t trust me. You always have.’

‘And I always will. But the client set very specific parameters for me. If you worked for me full-time, were officially on the payroll, then maybe…’ Henry gave a shrug, a half-smile.

‘I’m not a think-tank kind of guy.’

‘Please. We’re academics, just in nicer suits,’ Henry said. ‘Let me guess. You would like to get a paper out of this data yourself. Maybe the foundation of a doctoral dissertation.’

Luke nodded. ‘Yes. I would. But I respect that you hired me to do the research. It’s your data, not mine.’

‘Luke. I understand why you’re driven to dissect the minds of those who think violence is a solution to every problem.’ The silence between them felt suddenly awkward. ‘But understanding why violence happens, that’s the puzzle that can never be solved. And it won’t bring your father back.’ Henry cleared his throat, looked at the picture of Luke and his father. His lips narrowed and he bowed his head slightly, as if under a weight.

Henry was a giver of speeches, and his phrases worked at podiums, not at dinner tables. He’d spent so much time with his books and found his family so late in life that Luke had gotten used to his step-father’s well-meant but flat-footed phrases. ‘I know. But I would hope this research would find the next asshole who wants to kill innocent people for a cause.’ Luke didn’t look at Henry. He didn’t look at the photo of his father, the one decoration on the fireplace mantel. A photo of Warren Dantry and Luke, age seven, holding a freshly caught bass, dripping from a Virginia lake. He could remember the smell of the clean fish, the scent of the pines, the warm sun against his skin, his father’s quiet laughter. A happy memory of a rare time with his dad, long before evil in the form of a cold-blooded airplane mechanic named Ace Beere stole his father away from him. Evil that Luke felt compelled to understand.

Reading Ace Beere’s rambling, incoherent suicide note – left at the airport hangar after he had killed Luke’s father and several others – had fueled Luke’s desire to understand the psychology of the violent mind. I did it because God said I must, the only way to get my pride back, to strike back at my employer and I had to pick a flight to kill and since they were professors, they were useless to society, no one will miss them. Rambling garbage, but inside the long letter there must have been the seed of an answer, a cogent reason why. Luke had never found it.

‘Tell me this,’ Luke said. ‘Your client. Whoever it is, they want to find nascent terrorists before they move from ideology to violence. This isn’t just a fancy profiling project.’

‘Luke. Identifying terrorists is far bigger than simply drawing out the disaffected on internet forums.’

‘But we already know that plenty of extremists connect through the internet. If we could narrow in on them, discourage them before they take those final steps, make the choice of violence unappealing or impossible…’ Luke got up from the computer, went to the window. ‘Any of these people might be harmless or be a time bomb. Ten thousand comments, hundreds of people, but I can’t prove any of them will turn terrorist. Really, the next stage of the project should be to follow them, to see if there are ways to convince them that violence isn’t an option.’

‘You’ve done a fantastic job, and my client will sift through all the data. You never know, maybe you did find the next McVeigh or the next person who’d mail anthrax to Congress or decide to take up the mantle of al-Qaeda. But you’ve spent so much time on it; I’m starting to think this is an unhealthy obsession.’

‘No. I want to finish the project. But.’

‘But what?’

‘The mail accounts I had to set up – the emails make clear that these people all think that I’m ready to join their battle… I’m worried they might find me. Even though I post from different addresses, use a bunch of fake names. I could be traced if someone tried hard enough.’