CHAPTER 30
That is the whole trouble with being a heretic.
One usually must think out everything for oneself. Aubrey Menan
“What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until Monday?” Trey asked Toby as he walked into Sullivan’s entrance hall on Saturday morning.
“You, Tad and I are going to solve a mystery. Did you bring your electronic notebook and all of the notes you made during the investigation?”
“Just like you asked me to,” Trey answered.
“Good, the coffee and Reeves’ donuts are on the counter in the kitchen.” Toby said. “Help yourself and then come into the living room. This may take awhile.”
Trey walked into the kitchen, poured himself some coffee, picked up a donut, and said hello to J. Edgar. He then headed toward the living room, stopping briefly in the entrance hall.
“I haven’t seen these before. Are these photos of your family?” Trey called to Toby.
“Don’t they look like me?” Toby answered.
“They sure do,” Trey said. “This skinny guy in the suit is a dead ringer for you. And this couple here with the baby. Is that you? You’ll never be able to disown this family. You all look too much alike.”
“Your right,” Toby replied, while smiling at Tad. “I’ll never be able to disown them.”
When Trey reached the living area, he greeted Tad and sat down on the couch across the coffee table from the video/communications monitor.
“What I am going to show you is probably going to shock you, but something very strange is going on and we need to find out what it is,” Toby explained.
With that introduction, Toby put up the photo that he and Tad had seen the previous evening.
“Who does that look like to you?” he asked Trey.
“I don’t know. Who is it?”
Toby showed the same photo with the beard removed and the hairstyle changed..
“Recognize him now?”
“I’ll be darn. It looks like Tony Giordano,” Trey said.
“According to the guy who sent me these photos- and the time and date stamp- they were all taken before the bomb exploded at the Smithsonian Metro Station,” Sullivan answered. “Do you have in your notes anything that refers to when Giordano arrived at the Mall that morning?”
Trey said the name Giordano and the date of the Mall bombing and all of his notes relating to Giordano on that date appeared on his screen. “I put down something about Giordano being in the neighborhood when the bomb exploded.”
“That’s what I remembered, too,” Toby said.
“I do, too,” Tad agreed.
“Which means what?” Trey asked.
“I don’t know, yet,” Toby said. “It’s just one piece in our puzzle, but it is a piece that raises a lot of questions about the entire investigation.”
“Like what?” Trey asked skeptically. “Maybe Giordano had been working undercover at the Mall earlier, which is why he was in the neighborhood...or maybe that’s not even him in the photo, just someone who looks like him.
“Possibly, but if it is him, wouldn’t he have likely told us that he was there wearing a disguise?” Toby asked. “There are a lot of unanswered questions. Let’s look at some other puzzling things.”
“Such as?” the skeptical partner asked.
“Such as the fact that Giordano did not ask the Smithsonian folks for any surveillance photos from inside any of the buildings,” Sullivan said.
“I remember that, too,” Trey said, “but what of it? He obviously didn’t think they were important.”
“Why wouldn’t’ they be important? The only reason they wouldn’t be important to him is if he knew that the person responsible for the bombings had never gone inside,” Toby conjectured.
“And another thing,” Tad asked after taking a sip of coffee. “Why did Giordano just happen to be in Savannah when the bomb exploded there?”
“He explained that,” Trey said. “He was attending the St. Patrick’s Day celebration.”
“That’s right, he did say that,” Toby agreed, “but he also said that he attended because his mother’s side of the family was Irish. It’s amazing what you can find on the Net these days, and among those things in Giordano’s case is a newspaper article about his family being fourth generation Italian-American on both sides- which I admit proves nothing, but is interesting.”
“And, something else he said in Savannah also puzzles me,” Sullivan continued. “When he was describing the bombing, he said something like, ‘almost no one was hurt that wasn’t the specific target of the terrorists.’ How would he have known who the targets of the terrorists were?”
“Surely, you’re not accusing Giordano of being involved with these bombings?” Trey asked.
“No, at least not yet,” Toby answered while chewing on a blueberry donut. “We may have some evidence that points to him having opportunity in two of the bombings, but we have no motive and, as yet, no means. So, let’s don’t focus on Giordano. Let’s just focus on things about the investigation that- given all we know now- seem out of place. For example, the three witnesses who all saw three Muslim guys, two with a beard and mustache and one with a mustache only.”
“What abote them?” Trey asked.
“Look at these,” Toby said as he put photographs of the Latino delivery man, the green-faced St. Patrick’s Day reveler and the bearded homeless man at the Smithsonian on the video screen. Do you see anything interesting about them?”
“Not really,” Rawlings responded. “I do recognize two of them as being people we interviewed- and the guy with the green face as the one the guys in Savannah talked to.”
Then Toby performed his photo magic. He removed the mustache from the Latino, removed the green makeup and green hair from the St. Patrick’s Day reveler and removed the beard from the homeless man. “What do you see now?” he asked.
Trey studied the photos for a moment. “Well I’ll be darn- they look amazingly similar,” he said.
“I think it is the same person,” Toby responded. “If you will look at your notes, I think you’ll see that they all gave almost identical descriptions of the three mysterious Muslims. That is something that almost never happens among three eye-witnesses.”
“You mean that this guy was planted to make us look for three Muslims?” Trey asked in disbelief.
“And to bolster what Desert Dan and Drake were telling us,” Toby answered, “and there is more.”
“Like what?” Trey asked.
For example, the prayer rugs in the house near Leesburg.”
“What abote them?” asked Trey.
“Look in your notes and tell me what you recorded about them,” Toby responded.
Trey called up the appropriate section of his notes. “Let me see. Here it is. I said that there were three prayer rugs near the front window.”
“That’s how I remembered them, too,” said Toby, “and then when I looked at this photograph I took, it dawned on me that the evening sun was shining on the front door when we went in, which means…’
“That no real Muslims would have put prayer rugs facing west,” Tad said excitedly. “Mecca is almost due east of Virginia.”
“That’s what I thought,” Toby said.
“Maybe they were just confused,” Trey argued.
“Maybe,” Sullivan said, “or maybe they never existed. Did anyone except the alleged package delivery guy ever see them?”
“Someone rented that house,” Rawlings said.
“Yes, someone did, which brings me to another small thing,” said Sullivan. “Do either of you remember when Drake contacted Tad to investigate who leased the house?”
“I am almost certain that he called me from the car on the way to the house,” Tad answered.
“And what did he ask you?” Toby queried.
“I think he asked me to contact the rental agency to find out who had rented it,” Tad answered.
“And you found out that the sheriff’s sister was the agent, right?” Toby asked.
“That’s right,” she replied.
Again, a small thing,” said Toby, “but how did Drake know that an agency was involved or did he just guess? A lot of houses are rented by the owners without an agent, and yet he didn’t say anything about trying to contact the owner.”
“Come on, Sullivan, you’re really reaching now,” Trey interjected. “Everything you have mentioned can easily be explained.”
“I’m willing to admit that some of it might be explained away,” said Sullivan, “but there is something else that might be a little more difficult to explain away.”
“And what is that?” Trey asked.
“The suitcase that I took to Savannah was a Christmas present that I had never used before,” said Toby.
“So?” Trey asked after taking the last bite of his donut.
“Well, when we got to the hotel, the suitcase had a white powder all over it, and it dawned on me later when I became suspicious of Giordano that the powder could only have gotten on the suitcase in the airplane or in the back of Tony’s SUV. And so yesterday I took it to a friend who can analyze such things and, you guessed it, it was the kind of fertilizer used to make bombs.”
“I admit that is more substantial,” said Trey, but I’m still not convinced.
“Okay,” said Toby, “but wait until we’ve discussed everything that seems even slightly strange. Then, we’ll add it all together and see if it amounts to anything.”
“Fair enough,” Trey said, “but I need some more coffee and another one of those darn donuts.”
“I’ll get them for you,” Tad said. “I’d like some more, too.”
“Thanks,” Trey responded, and then talking directly to Toby, he said, “Can we try to discuss these things in some kind of logical order, such as chronological- instead of artistic- order? It’s hard to make any sense out of these random bits of information.”
“Loosen up, Trey. Things in life- and investigations- aren’t always organized. Let’s continue brainstorming and then we’ll try to arrange the pieces of the puzzle in the proper order.”
”I’ve got something else,” said Tad as she returned with the coffee and donuts. “It’s the names of the suspects. Toby, you remember how that bothered me at the time.”
“What abote the names?” Rawlings asked.
Tad explained how two of the names indicated that one of the men was from India and another from Afghanistan, and yet all three were said to be from Iran. “How do you explain that?” she asked.
“I can’t,” Trey said, “but it might have just been some incorrect information given to Desert Dan.”
“True, but there is another problem, and that is the photo of the suspects,” Toby said as he brought the photo up on the large video screen. “Here is the photo, and here is a close-up of each of the faces,” he said as he brought up another image. “If you take away the facial hair and look very closely at each of the faces, you’ll notice that the noses are identical on two, the eyes on two and the jaw lines on two. What makes them look different is the facial hair and shape of the hair on the heads. If we take this photo to an expert, I’ll bet almost anything he’ll tell us that it was digitally created.”
“And since you mentioned Desert Dan,” Sullivan continued, “wasn’t it convenient how he consistently provided us with just enough information to keep us searching for Muslim terrorists although no one ever saw them? And when we finally asked Drake to let us see the evidence, there was a mysterious bombing on the Mall with no fatalities and no apparent target.
“I admit that all of these things are a bit strange,” Trey agreed, “but I don’t see that they prove anything. After all, the FBI forensics experts saw all of the evidence and concluded that the three suspects died in the West Virginia mine.”
“Ah, yes, the forensics experts,” Toby said as if he had been waiting for this statement. “Don’t you mean the forensics expert- singular? How do we know that anyone besides Henry Nelson ever saw the evidence, and why didn’t anyone on the taskforce- during a three months investigation- ever see a single piece of evidence? Have you ever been involved in an investigation in which all of the physical evidence was held so tightly? It’s like there were two different investigations going on- one by Drake, Giordano and Nelson and the other by everybody else.”
Trey looked puzzled. “I don’t disagree that it was an unusual investigation, but I don’t see how all of these bits and pieces add up to anything except that it was a strange investigation. What would be the motive for Giordano or Nelson to fabricate evidence or be involved with bombings?”
“I admit that’s the difficult part, but I have a theory,” Sullivan said as he picked up a newspaper article off the coffee table and handed it to Trey.
“What’s this?” Trey asked as he looked at the article.
“It’s a list printed four months ago of all 100 senators and how they were expected to vote on the Christian Republic amendment,” Toby explained. “You’ll see that at the time, the amendment was projected to lose by four or five votes.”
“So?” Trey asked. “What’s that got to do with terrorist bombings?”
“Well, you will also notice that the two senators who were killed in the bombings were opponents of the amendment and Senator Stevens, who would normally have been sitting at the location of the Cathedral bomb, is also an opponent,” Sullivan continued.
“That could very well have been coincidence,” Rawlings said.
“Maybe, but look at this chart that I made,” Toby said with a sense of urgency. “I have listed all of the opponents of the amendment four months ago and put next to them the political party of the governor of their states and guess what?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Trey said.
“In only three cases was the governor of the state a member of the Christian Democratic-Republican Party,” Toby continued explaining.
“So, what does that mean?” Trey asked, obviously frustrated with the whole explanation to this point.
“Okay, to get to the point, it means that out of the original 38 opponents of the measure, only three came from states having governors who were likely to replace them with proponents of the amendment should anything happen to them,” Sullivan said. “And guess which three- Senators Morgan of Virginia, Madison of Oklahoma and McIntyre of Arizona. Is it just coincidence that two are dead and one is gravely ill?”
“But what about Stevens?” Tad asked. “Why was he a target?”
“Same reason,” Toby suggested. “I think it is much more than just coincidence that the governor of his state, who is not a supporter of the amendment, was almost killed, making the lieutenant governor, who is a supporter, the acting governor.”
By now, Trey was beginning to see the big picture, and it was one that he did not find very pretty.
“I cannot believe you are implying that supporters of the Christian Republic amendment had anything to do with these bombings. No real Christian that I know would ever do such a thing.”
“Okay then Trey, you take all of the bits of information that we have discussed and tell me what they add up to,” Toby said. “I’m open to any other explanations.”
“Are you actually suggesting that Drake, Giordano and Nelson were involved in the bombings?” Rawlings asked. They are all devout Christians. In fact, they are all members of the Society of Saints.
“What other explanation could there be?” Tad asked. “Why was Giordano at the site of the Mall bombing before it occurred? Why were he and Nelson always Johnny-on-the-spot to seal the crime scene and take the evidence away? And why was there always one convenient witness at each of the crime scenes- probably the same witness at all three scenes?
Trey responded very defensively. “You both would like nothing better than to have Christians blamed for this, wouldn’t you? In fact, how do I know you aren’t working with some feminist or libertarian group to sabotage the Christian Republic amendment by raising doubts about the investigation?”
Toby saw that Tad’s face was turning the shade of an Irishman’s nose after several hours in the pub, so decided to respond before she could.
“Trey, I know this is hard for you, and I’m not asking you to take my speculation as fact,” he said. “I just want you to review your notes carefully, consider the things we’ve raised and come to your own conclusion. And I suggest that you do so quickly, because if I’m correct about this, Senator Stevens is still in grave danger.”