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  “There,” Shorty said. “One macho, cop-loving Marine in place.”

  Mac grunted. Shorty walked him through the basics of Facebook and gave him his login codes. “You need to log in several times a day,” he informed Mac. Mac was appalled and it probably showed, because Shorty laughed. “And you need to comment on others posts and post things yourself. You can’t just repost things you like.”

  “OK,” Mac said, after he successfully logged in himself. It wasn’t rocket science, after all. Every schmuck on the planet had figured out how to use it.

  Shorty was smoking a joint while he worked. He offered it to Mac. Mac took a hit, and it helped.

  “What’s got you all up tight?” Shorty asked finally. “This story?”

  “The story is bugging me a bit,” he admitted. “But....” He shrugged, and Shorty handed him the joint again. Mac inhaled slowly and let it soothe him.

  “Kate,” Shorty guessed.

  Mac knew Shorty liked Kate. But he had been vocal that he thought Mac was going to get hurt — sooner or later.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I think we broke up,” Mac admitted. “I thought they were being welcoming. Turns out they were trying to convert me. And I’m never converting.”

  Shorty raised one eyebrow. “Did you discuss a compromise like Episcopalians?”

  Mac laughed. “I don’t even know enough to know what Episcopalians are,” he said. Well, he did, but why were they a compromise? “But, turns out Kate thinks being gay is a sin, and Lindy makes her uncomfortable.”

  “And she’s not told you that before?”

  Mac shook his head. Yeah, that was the bigger problem, he thought. She — all of them — had been hiding their feelings from him, in hopes of snaring him in? How would that work? Sooner or later he’d realize that their acceptance was a fraud. “Yeah, I don’t get how that works,” he admitted. “Do they think conversion can be based on lies and not fall apart when the person finds out?”

  “Cults flourish all the time,” Shorty pointed out. “Not saying they’re a cult. But people get sucked in, and they start to believe things they would have sworn they never would have believed. Look at you. Would you have believed a year ago anyone could make you stop saying fuck? Stop thinking it? I mean that’s a small thing. But the big stuff works the same way.”

  Mac shrugged. He had to admit no one had managed to clean up his language before. And many had tried. But these people made him want to clean it up. To fit in. To please Kate.

  “Big stuff like celibacy,” Shorty added.

  OK, Mac acknowledged. That was a bigger thing. And he’d adjusted to that too. He was almost embarrassed at how deep in he had gotten. Changes to his lifestyle? He could deal.

  “But Lindy,” he said simply.

  Shorty nodded. Lindy was like an additional aunt to him. Just not short and brown like the rest of them.

  “You think you broke up?” he asked. “Just think?”

  “I’ll see if I get an invite to Sunday dinner,” Mac said ruefully. “If I do? I guess I still have breaking up ahead of me. If I don’t? Then maybe we have.”

  “Shit, Mac,” Shorty said with disgust. “Breakups should involve shouting and tears, and even a thrown plate or two so everyone knows it’s over, and everyone is relieved.”

  Mac laughed shortly and held his hand out for another hit.

  By the time Mac got home, he was feeling mellow. Enough so that he checked his Facebook feed as Shorty had told him to — he’d written it all down for him as a matter of fact. Login name and password, followed by check-in times, how to like something — “I am not going to use a heart symbol,” Mac had said in horror. And a kissy heart? What the hell was that? — how to repost. He even gave Mac some quotas to meet so he’d look like a real person.

  Shorty might know him too well, Mac thought amused, as he used his cheat sheet to see what was going on.

  And he was startled to see that he’d gotten friend requests.

  “Wild,” he said out loud, looking at his computer screen. He clicked on his friends list, and OK’d the requests. And then he went to Naomi and Kate’s pages, and befriended them both. He wasn’t sure why, and it was probably a bad idea to befriend someone you thought you might have broken up with. But his friend list was looking pretty pitiful.

  He saw that Shorty had already added Janet, so he added a few others from work, starting with Angie. And he added Tim Brandt. Did Stan Warren have a FB page? Sure enough, the FBI agent did. And so did Rodriguez — a lot of kid soccer pictures — and Joe Dunbar who apparently was into craft beers. Then he discovered he could look at someone else’s friend list and befriend their friends. Lindy had a whole host of interesting friends. He added a few he knew. And Angie knew almost everyone at the Examiner, it seemed.

  By midnight, Mac felt like he was connected to half of Seattle.

  When he got up to go to work, he quickly checked his Facebook page, and did the tasks Shorty had listed for him. He might have to adjust when he did that check-in, he thought as he ran into the Examiner building. He wasn’t about to get up 20 minutes earlier to look at Facebook — not when he had to be at the office at 6 a.m.

  He made his calls, then saw he had a call from Rodriguez and called him back.

  “You best get out here,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve got another one.”

  “Another what?”

  “Another white desk jockey. And this one didn’t run away from his arsenal. He’s got hostages.”

  Mac jotted down the address, told Janet, and headed out to an address in Magnolia. Too bad he hadn’t called while he was still home, Mac thought grumpily, the address was maybe two miles from his house. A hostage situation in Magnolia?

  The house was a craftsman style home, much like the last one. It was a style of house that Seattle was famous for, but were increasingly hard to find. Mac assumed this desk jockey had real money or had inherited the house. If you wanted a Magnolia address these days, you lived in a condo.

  Mac wasn’t the first reporter on the scene either. A local TV reporter was set up to do a live report with her cameraman. And the Times reporter was there too. Mac scowled. How had they known and he hadn’t? And then he saw Seth Conte, his evening counterpart, and realized the Examiner had known.

  “So, you can take over, and I can go home?” Seth asked.

  “Yeah, but file something with Janet,” he said. “We have a photog here?”

  Seth gestured with his head toward the house, and sure enough Mac spotted Angie’s fuchsia hair streak. Jesus, did the woman ever go home?

  “Seen Rodriguez?”

  Another head gesture, and Seth was gone. Mac followed his gesture toward a cluster of suited cops. Interesting how you could take a cop out of the uniform, but he still looked like a cop, Mac thought.

  “Lieutenant?” he said from a few feet away.

  Rodriguez broke away from the cops he was talking to.

  “So, what’s the story?” Mac asked.

  “Dunbar has been talking to some of those people on the list,” Rodriguez explained. “And he called this guy late yesterday. No biggie, he thought, and moved on down the list. And then about 2 a.m. the neighbor calls 911 with reports of shouting and then a gun shot. So, cops get out here, he’s holed up with an arsenal Joe described in his notes as 100 plus, and screaming that the cops are coming for his weapons, and that the police state has begun. Neighbor says he’s got a wife and daughter, and they’re probably inside.”

  Mac grunted. Another story with kids, he thought, and not first time he thought how much he hated these stories.

  “No history of mental instability?” Mac asked.

  Rodriguez shrugged. “We’ve never had a call to this house before. They own the place, lived here 10 years. Like the others he has a white-collar job downtown. Upper level management at a bank.”

  Mac pulled out his phone. He logged into Facebook successfully without Shorty’s cheat sheet. “Name?”

&n
bsp; “Cabot Williams,” Rodriguez said. “I hate people with last names for first names.”

  Mac ignored the extra commentary. Lots of things Mac hated about people. Their names were rarely one of them. He searched Facebook for the man and found him.

  He scrolled through his posts from the last 10 hours, the chronicle of a man losing touch with reality. He read the responses to his initial post of being called by the police. And one struck him.

  “It’s begun,” said a man who called himself MLK4whites. Mac snorted. Racist fuck. “Prepare yourselves.”

  Lieutenant?” Mac said. “You need to see this.”

  Rodriguez looked at the posts on Williams’ page. And he swore. “Damn it,” he said.

  Mac pulled out the list of names that Dunbar had given him yesterday. He had wanted to wait until his page looked a bit more authentic, but hell with that now. He typed in another name. Then another.

  “It must have meant something to Williams,” he muttered, looking. Williams was on George Martin’s unit list. He checked the other names there. Bingo.

  “You’ve got eight men who went into the hills with Martin,” Mac said. “His unit? Wilderness training. Williams was one of them. Three others are posting similar shit. They’re freaking out because of Dunbar’s calls, and this MLK4whites guy is encouraging it.”

  Mac frowned at his phone screen. He needed to set up his laptop. “I need to use my laptop for this,” he said. He looked back at his car.

  “Sit in the police car there,” Rodriguez said. “I’ll even let you in the front seat for a change.”

  “Funny,” Mac said. He sat in the seat facing out the door. He couldn’t bring himself to close it. Rodriguez grinned, but he didn’t comment.

  The bigger screen helped. He could open more than one screen, and track the men across accounts. Sensei? He wondered. Where was he? Martin had said to do a search for him. He did. Hundreds, maybe thousands. He frowned. How good were the search tools? Not good, he found. He looked at his watch. Maybe he could catch Shorty before he went to class.

  “What?” Shorty snapped. “I’ve got five minutes.”

  “I’m at a hostage situation. He’s one of the names the cops were questioning last night. He’s freaked out and is posting on Facebook about the coming police state. Incited by a guy with the handle mlk4whites. I want to find this Sensei guy Martin and Malloy referred to. But Facebook’s search is for shit,” Mac said rapidly and concisely.

  “Shit, Mac,” Shorty said. “Give me 15 to get the kids started on some math exercises, and I’ll call you back.”

  “Mac?” Rodriguez said. “Who are you talking cop stuff to?”

  “About 300,000 readers daily,” Mac said with an eye roll. “Seth was here. He’s probably filed a story, and TV Barbie over there has been going live for an hour. And you’re worried because I’m asking Shorty to do better data mining than I can?”

  Rodriguez ran a hand over his head, and sighed. “Not used to this, being-on-the-same-side shit.”

  Mac laughed. “Think about how I feel.”

  Mac walked along the police line, looking. The SWAT team was in place. He noted two snipers in key locations, figured there was probably a third he hadn’t spotted, given the way the house was configured. An ambulance was idling down the street. And the EMTs were leaning against the back of their rig, talking about nothing much, Mac figured, based on other nights, other stakeouts.

  His phone rang, and he picked up. “OK,” Shorty said. “I logged in as you. Are you near your computer?”

  “Give me a minute,” he said, as he turned back to the police car and set up his laptop and hotspot again. He didn’t leave his things unattended, not even in a police car.

  Especially not in a police car.

  “Give me the names you know,” Shorty said. “You could have given them to me yesterday.”

  “Wanted the account to have been live for a few days first,” Mac said. “But that shit has flown.”

  Shorty grunted. “OK, found him. The Sensei these guys seem to know is at this Facebook address. And that mlk4whites dude? He follows him too. My guess? He may be an alias for the Sensei, but that’s gut not fact. I don’t have time to look into it until this evening. That help?”

  “Hope so,” Mac said. “Thanks, man.”

  Shorty dropped the call.

  Mac logged into Facebook, found the Sensei Shorty had identified, and turned his laptop around so that Rodriguez and Dunbar could see the guy. “Run him,” Rodriguez told Dunbar. He nodded, and headed off. Rodriguez watched him go.

  “It’s got him fucked up a bit,” Rodriguez said. “But shit, who knew a man would go off like this from a simple inquiry?”

  “He didn’t go off from the inquiry, Lieutenant,” Mac said slowly. “He went off at the urging of this MLK4whites dude. Look at the timing of the posts. This guy was laughing about the call from cops. ‘If they only knew,” he says. But then the MLK4whites gets on there. He posts. Someone else posts in response, and then you get an echo chamber effect going. And this guy cracks first.”

  “First?”

  “There will be more,” Mac predicted grimly. “MLK4whites wants them to crack. I’m not sure why. Maybe trying to replicate the Bundy standoff in Nevada?”

  Rodriguez grunted.

  “Lieut, there’s someone at the door of the house,” a uniformed officer came up to the car. He handed him a bullhorn.

  “Hello?” it was a woman’s voice, quavery and afraid.

  Rodriguez dropped the megaphone, and approached closer. “Ma’am? What’s happening?”

  “My husband? He’s afraid you’re coming for him. For his guns,” she said. “I tried to tell him, they’re all legal but he says it won’t matter.”

  “Are you all right? Your neighbor heard a gunshot,” he said, pitching his voice to carry, but no louder.

  “No, no, no one is hurt,” she said. “I’m just afraid. He’s got a lot of weapons in here, and a lot of ammunition.”

  The man behind her said something, and she paused to listen.

  “And he says C4? He’s got C4.”

  “OK,” Rodriguez said, nodding his head. “That’s OK. Ask him what he needs from us to calm things down?”

  “He wants you to go away,” she said, but she was shaking her head no, not even aware of it, Mac guessed. He grabbed a pen and paper and wrote a note to Rodriguez: shut down Wi-Fi to the house!

  Rodriguez nodded, and gestured to another officer, who looked at the note, and went off to make a call.

  Mac wasn’t even sure you could shut down Internet access anymore, but it was worth a try. Because some bozo was trying to agitate the man.

  “Ma’am?” Rodriguez said. “What else can we do?”

  “He says if you’re still here he’s going to shoot me or our daughter,” she said. She was crying. “Cabot? What is going on with you? You’ve never talked like this before!”

  Rodriguez closed his eyes as if he was in pain. Mac watched him. He knows, Mac thought. He knows this isn’t going to end well.

  Rodriguez motioned with his hand for people to start moving away. Uniformed officers drove the squad cars out of sight. A couple of others moved the onlookers away from the house, clearing the sidewalks on both sides of the street.

  “Ma’am what is your name?”

  “Vicki,” she said, barely loud enough to hear.

  “And you got a daughter? What’s her name?”

  “Clara,” she said. “She’s 9.”

  “I’ve got a 9-year-old,” Rodriguez said. “A boy. About time for him to go to school. Clara getting ready for school too?”

  “She’s eating breakfast,” Vicki said, her voice a bit stronger. “I’ll need to leave soon to take her to school.”

  She turned her head to listen to her husband. “Of course, she’s going to school, Cabot,” she said firmly. “And if you’re not going to take her on your way to work? I’ll need to do it.”

  She listened again. “OK,” she said. �
��I’m sure the officer would take her to school for me, if you want. Bet Clara knows his son, do you think?”

  “I’d be happy to take her, Ma’am,” Rodriguez said gently. Mac could hear him choking up.

  “Hold it together, man,” he said softly, barely any voice at all. Whispers carried. He’d learned that in Afghanistan. “You’re doing good.”

  Rodriguez took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “She ready to go?” He said. “Make sure she’s got her books. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to run home after my boy’s books.”

  Vicki laughed. It was forced, but she did it. “I’ll tell her,” she promised.

  She opened the door wider, and a girl came out, holding a pink backpack. Her mother bent down to hug her goodbye, and the sniper across the street took the shot.

  Clara screamed, and her mother swept her up and ran down the sidewalk toward Rodriguez. Rodriguez was down on one knee and had his service weapon drawn. Mac stepped up, grabbed the woman and little girl, and pulled them to the ground.

  “Shush, now, it’s over,” he said gently, holding them both firmly so they couldn’t get back up. Until someone ascertained the sniper got Cabot Williams, they needed to stay out of the range of fire. “You did a good job, Mrs. Williams,” he said. “A really good job.”

  She sobbed, and Clara was hysterical. “Daddy!”

  “It’s OK, baby,” Vicki said, choking down the sobs for her daughter’s sake. “It’s OK.”

  “Let’s get her out of here,” Mac said, and he started inching backward, slowly moving the two with him. When he could see the ambulance to his left, he gestured to them. An EMT ran in, in a low squat, to help Mac. Another EMT had blankets for the two of them.

  “Thank you, Officer,” Vicki Williams said.

  Mac looked puzzled, then he grinned. “First time that’s ever happened,” he said. “I’m a cop reporter for the Examiner.”