3rd Degree

Chapter 91

It only took me a second. “You found the FBI file on the BNA?”

“Better,” Molinari said. “We found one of the FBI agents who was in charge of the raid on Hope Street.

“William Danko was a card-carrying member of the Weathermen. You can be sure of it. He was sighted casing the site of the regional offices of Grumman, which were bombed in September of 1969. His code name, August Spies, was picked up in monitored phone traffic of known Weathermen lines. The kid was no i

Molinari pushed forward a yellow legal pad filled with his handwriting. “The FBI had begun following him about three months before the raid. There were a couple of others involved out of the Berkeley cell. The FBI was able to turn one of them, use him as a CI. It’s amazing how the threat of twenty-five years in a federal prison puts a crimp in a promising medical career.”

“Bengosian!” I said. A rush surged through my veins. I felt validated.

Molinari nodded. “They turned Bengosian, Lindsay. That’s how they got to the house on Hope Street that night. Bengosian betrayed his friends. You were right—and there’s more.”

“Lightower,” I said expectantly.

“He was Danko’s roommate,” Molinari replied. “The school cracked down on students active in the SDS. Maybe Lightower decided it was time for a semester abroad.

“And one of the FBI agents who led the raid, who went inside the house that morning, he got promoted. Spent his twenty years in the Bureau, retired right here in San Francisco. His name was Frank T. Seymour. Name ring a bell?”

Yeah, it rang a bell, but it didn’t fill me with exhilaration. Just a sickening feeling.

Frank T. Seymour was one of the people killed in the blast at the Rincon Center.

Chapter 92

It was night now and Michelle liked the night. She could watch the Simpsons, reruns of Friends. Laugh a bit, like before everything had started, like when she was a kid in Eau Claire.

They’d had to ditch the Oakland apartment where they had lived for the past six months. Now they’d moved into Julia’s house in the Berkeley flats.

And they couldn’t go out much anymore. The situation was too tight. Sometimes on TV she saw a photograph of Mal, except the news reports called him Stephen Hardaway. Robert had moved in, too. It was the four of them now. And maybe Charles Danko would show up soon, too. Supposedly, he had the final plans, the endgame, which Mal promised would blow everybody’s mind. It was huge.

Michelle turned off the TV and went downstairs. Mal was hunched over the wires, tinkering with the new device, the latest bomb. There was a plan, he said, how they were go

She crept up behind him. “Mal, you want something to eat? I can fix you something.”

“You can see I’m working, Michelle.” More of a snap than a reply. He was soldering a red wire into a wooden table leg that she knew encased the blasting cap.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “I need to talk with you, Mal. I think I want to leave.”

Mal stiffened up from the bomb. He pulled the lenses off his head, wiped the sweaty hair off of his face.

“You’re going to leave?” Mal said, nodding in her face, as if he found this amusing. “And you’re going where? Hop on a bus and go home? Back to Geewhizconsin? Enroll in Geewhizconsin junior college, after blowing up a couple of kids in the big city?”

Tears started in Michelle’s eyes. Telltale signs of weakness, she knew. Dreaded sentimentality.

“Stop it, Mal.”

“You’re a wanted killer, honey. The cute little na

Suddenly she saw it clearly. Lots of things. That even if they did this job, this last one, Mal would never go away with her. When she closed her eyes at night she could see the Lightower kids. Sitting around at breakfast. Getting dressed for school. She knew she had done terrible things. No matter how much she wished otherwise, Mal was right, there was nowhere for her to go. She was the murderous au pair. She always would be.

“Now come on,” Mal said, suddenly gentler. “As long as you’re here, you can help me, baby. I need that pretty finger of yours. On that wire. You remember, nothing to worry about.”

He held up the phone. “No juice, no boost, right? We’re go

Chapter 93

One A.M., but who could sleep?

Molinari came into the squad room. I was watching the wires with Paul Chin. He looked at me and sighed. “Charles Danko.”

He tossed a green folder on the desk across from me. It was marked PRIVILEGED INFORMATION, FBI. “They had to go deep in the cold files to find him.”

I felt my blood rush. My skin prickled. Did this mean we were close to finding him?

“He went to the University of Michigan,” Molinari said. “Arrested twice for disorderly conduct and inciting to riot. Picked up in New York in 1973 for illegal possession of rearms. A town house he lived in there just blew up one afternoon. Here one minute, gone the next.”

“Sure sounds like our boy.”

“He was being sought in co

“A white rabbit,” I said.

He laid out an old rap sheet dated 1974 and a faxed black-and-white FBI wanted poster. On it was a slightly older version of the boyish face I had seen in the family photo at the Danko house.

“There’s our man,” Molinari said. “Now how the hell do we find him?”

Chapter 94

“Lieutenant!” I heard a loud knocking on my glass.

I bolted up. My watch read 6:30 A.M. I must have dozed off waiting for Molinari to report with more news on Danko.

Paul Chin was at my door. “Lieutenant, you better get on line three. Now…”

“Danko?” I blinked myself awake.

“Better. We got a woman from Wisconsin who thinks her daughter is tied up with Stephen Hardaway. I think she knows where she is!”

In the seconds it took to knock the sleep out of my brain, Chin went back to his desk and got a backup recording going. I picked up the phone.

“Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer,” I cleared my throat and said.

The woman started in as if she had left off in mid-sentence with Chin, her voice upset, maybe not too educated. Midwestern.

“I always told her something with this smart-ass guy didn’t add up. She said he was so brilliant. Brilliant, my ass … She always wanted to do good, my Michelle. She was easy to take advantage of. I said, ‘Just go to the state school. You can be anything you want.’”

“Your daughter’s name is Michelle?” I picked up a pen. “Ms…?”

“Fontieul. That’s right, Michelle Fontieul.”

I scribbled down the name. “Why don’t you just tell me what you know?”

“I seen him, you know,” the woman recounted. “That fellow on TV. The one everybody’s looking for. My Michelle’s hooked up with him.

“Course his name wasn’t Stephen then. What’d she call him on the phone? Malcolm? Mal. They drove through here heading out west. I think he was from Portland or Washington. He got her into this ‘protesting’ thing. I didn’t even understand half of what it meant. I tried to warn her.”

“You’re sure this was the same man you saw on TV?” I pressed.

“I’m sure. Course, his hair’s different now. And he didn’t have no beard. I knew —”

I interrupted. “When was the last time you spoke to your daughter, Ms. Fontieul?”