Election Day (John Taylor #6) - Chapter 5

Rochester, New York

It turned out that the professor in New York was actually at a Catholic Seminary in Rochester, which was in upstate New York. It took a few hours to get travel plans set up, thanks to the layers of bureaucratic red tape, which were necessary to go through for the government to pick up the tab, and another few hours before the next available flight was scheduled to go. By the time they landed in Rochester, it was getting later in the day, meaning they needed to rush if they were going to catch her before she left for the day.

Whitaker had argued they should have just called her and asked her to explain things, but Taylor wanted to see her in person. He usually preferred face-to-face interaction if at all possible, since people had all kinds of 'tells' that were much easier to pick up when face to face. While she was just an expert and not actually involved in any crime, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t obfuscate or lie. One of the key things Taylor had learned since he’d started working as an investigator, first by himself and later with the Bureau, was that everyone lies, even when they don’t have to. Everyone has something to hide, and finding out what that was, was often helpful in cracking the case he was working on.

It was almost six by the time they rented a car and found their way to the St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry, which was actually a handful of buildings on the campus of Nazareth College, itself a small private university.

They asked around and were directed to an office in one corner of the largest building that made up St. Bernard's. Taylor raised his hand to knock on the door when a man’s voice boomed through the door.

“She’s here, right now. Why won’t you listen to me?” the voice said, followed by a crashing sound.

Taylor dropped his hand to the doorknob and pushed the door open, his other hand pushing his jacket back and resting on the butt of his weapon. Inside, standing behind a desk was an older woman with grey hair, her hands raised in what Taylor thought looked like a ‘calm down’ motion. She was staring on the other side of the desk, closer to Taylor and Whitaker, fear evident on her face.

The man looked almost homeless, with a mismatched array of clothes and a thick, wiry beard. The thing that Taylor noticed about him most of all were his eyes, when he turned at the sound of the door opening. They were strikingly light blue, and wide with anger and craziness. They reminded Taylor a little bit of the pictures he’d seen of John Brown in history books when he was younger. The broken remains of what looked like a desk lamp were scattered at his feet.

After a second of everyone staring at each other, the man did something that hardly ever happened: he completely surprised Taylor. Although he was clearly startled, he reacted almost instantly, turning away from Taylor and Whitaker to take off running, crashing through the large window.

“Stay with her!” Taylor shouted back at Whitaker as he jumped through the now opened window.

The guy was fast and was halfway across the small green lawn and nearing one of the cross streets that bracketed the college, by the time Taylor made it out the window.

As soon as Taylor hurdled through the window, he took off after the wild-eyed man. The man had to slow down as he approached a row of cars parked along the street, squeezing between an SUV and a pickup truck, allowing Taylor to close some of the ground between them.

Taylor was confused at first why the man didn't immediately speed up as soon as he cleared the cars, as that allowed Taylor to close even more ground - until he noticed a small shiny object fly out of the man's hand and underneath the vehicle Taylor was approaching.

Thankfully for Taylor, his instincts kicked in, saving him from the delay it would have taken him to consciously realize what he had seen. Taylor dug the side of his boot into the ground to slow his momentum as he scrambled away from the car. Taylor had only made it a few feet from the car when the bomb exploded. The explosion wasn't large, but Taylor could still feel the heat from the small fireball. The explosion's concussive blast was enough to slam Taylor to the ground, knocking the wind out of him and effectively ending the chase.

Although he had told Whitaker to stay with the professor, he wasn't surprised when her face appeared above him as he struggled to get air back into his lungs.

“Are you okay?” Whitaker asked, a concerned look on her face.

“Yeah, I'm fine,” Taylor wheezed, still lying on the ground trying to regain his senses. “The guy got away.”

“Yeah, I guessed that from the explosion.”

Whitaker reached down and grabbed Taylor's hand, helping to pull him up from the ground. A cursory once over showed Taylor to be uninjured, except for his pride, with only a few small cuts from flying debris. Had he been much closer things would have been very different.

There was no way the guy could have known that Taylor and Whitaker were going to be there. They hadn't called ahead, and there was no reasonable explanation that the guy would have guessed the FBI would turn up at that moment. Despite that, the man had had a small explosive ready to go at a moment's notice. This said he was either very paranoid or very prepared, either of which made him incredibly dangerous.

Taylor was certain that this was their suspect. The coincidence of a man with a pipe bomb just happening to be there at that moment was too great to discount it. Even with Taylor's bad luck, it was unlikely he would run across a second bomber. While their suspect hadn't been a bomber per se, the homemade device was very similar to something a person with explosives experience would have built.

The first patrol car showed up by that time and Taylor was happy to let Whitaker deal with it. Once she calmed them down and let them know the FBI was in charge, she had them block off the area and made a call to get local agents down to the scene. Whitaker made the decision to leave collecting evidence to the local agents. She’d have to call Joe and have him coordinate it, but they didn’t have a problem getting the leg work started before official orders came in.

That taken care of, they headed back to the professor's office, keen to speak with her now that she was more than just an expert witness. Taylor was surprised to find her still in her office leaning against her desk, looking at the shattered lamp and window.

“Professor Wood, I’m Agent Whitaker, and this is Agent Taylor, with the FBI,” Whitaker said, flashing her badge. “Obviously, we would like to ask you some questions about the man who was just in your office.”

Taylor thought it strange hearing Whitaker refer to him as Agent Taylor. While he did work for the FBI currently, he was not a special agent. That was a title conferred on people who had gone through the FBI academy and had been promoted to that rank. Taylor knew that Whitaker had only said that to keep from confusing civilians who would probably not understand the FBI hierarchy's nuances. While it wasn't a particularly big deal, it still made Taylor feel uncomfortable.

“I heard an explosion. Is Pete okay?” the middle-aged woman asked.

“If Pete is the man who just jumped through your window, then yes he is fine. The sound you heard was from an explosive he threw under a car which almost killed me!” Taylor said.

“I take it you know this man?” Whitaker asked.

“Yes, he was one of my students a long time ago.”

“His name’s Peter?”

“Peter. Peter Hubbard.”

“When you say a long time ago, how long?”

“Almost twenty years. He started here in two thousand, the same year I was hired as an adjunct professor. “

“You knew him well?”

“I guess. He was taking a class I was teaching on early church history and he’d often stay after class to continue talking about the lecture. He was intelligent and incredibly curious. He was … odd, but very smart.”

“What do you mean by odd?” Taylor asked.

“He was just unusual. It’s hard to describe. He’d lock onto something small and just, fall into it. After a week he’d come back and know more about whatever we’d discussed than I did. Of course, looking back his obsessions make sense, but at the time I just thought he was passionate about the subject.”

“What do you mean, looking back?” Whitaker asked.

“He’s schizophrenic. It’s why they kicked him out of the military.”

Whitaker started to ask a question until Taylor reached over and squeezed her gently on the elbow, interrupting her. He knew she would start asking more direct questions about the suspects' mental condition and military experience, since those were the two things that would most likely impact their investigation, but Taylor thought they were missing context.

One of the ways Taylor still differed from Whitaker and the rest of the FBI was his point of view. They could never break out of the cop mindset, fixed on the specifics they needed to close a case. Taylor believed that was short-sighted. One of the reasons why he’d been successful was that he treated an investigation the same way he’d been trained to tackle a mission back in the service. It was important to gather all the intel and get the most complete picture of a situation before moving. In investigations, that meant not just knowing what a suspect was doing and why they were doing it but understanding why the suspect thought they did something. Seeing a situation from their point of view could help him anticipate them in the future.

“Could you just start at the beginning and go through what you know about Peter?”

“I mean, I can’t tell you a lot. I heard from him off and on, but there were years in between. We weren’t friends.”

“Okay,” Taylor said, changing tracks. “You said he was studying theology? Did he graduate?”

“No. He dropped out shortly after nine-eleven. He’d been really affected by it. In hindsight, that should have been one of the first clues of his mental troubles.”

“Why? A lot of people enlisted after nine-eleven. I knew a bunch of guys who dropped out of college to join up. What made it different?”

“He had … ideas about the attack. He wasn’t explicit, but he’d make comments about knowing who was ‘really’ behind the attacks. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but from things he’s said over the years, I think that’s the first time he started with his … obsession.”

“What was his obsession?”

“I’m not a psychiatrist, so I can only tell you about what I’ve seen, but I think that it started as a genuine curiosity about early heretical cults expelled from the church. He was fascinated by all of them, but eventually, he locked in on the Simonians and Ennoians. Neither is well documented, but he read everything he could and even called on some scholars in the field to ask questions.”

“We were given your name by Professor Detmer at Georgetown, who told us that a group called the Ennoians believed that the mother of the angels, or something, was going to bring about revelations,” Whitaker said.

“Yes. It’s not exactly what the Ennoians themselves believed, but it’s where his delusion has taken him. He didn’t pay them a lot of attention in the beginning, which isn’t surprising considering how little information exists about them, but by the time he left to join the military he was starting to really focus on the sect. The next time I heard from him, a couple of years after he left, they’re all he talked about.”

“She was more than just the mother of angels, in their belief. The sect believed she was almost as powerful as God, and greater than Satan since she was just the feminine aspect of God himself. Other than that, yes. Pete was convinced she was behind nine-eleven and all the other ‘bad stuff’ happening worldwide. He believed that was one of the prophesied events in revelations.”

“So, he thinks he’s a warrior of God, or something?”

“I think so. Again, this is just piecing together things from what he’s said and his behavior. Except for one time, a few years ago when he was being kicked out of the military because of his mental illness, he’s never addressed the fact that he was sick. For him, this is all real. I’ve tried to get him help but he flies into a rage when anyone suggests that none of this is real and he’s got an illness.”

“You said he comes back to you to ask questions occasionally?”

“Yes. Maybe because I was his instructor when he started forming his beliefs or maybe because he knew me before the disease set in, he’s decided I’m one of the ‘safe people’ he can talk to about it. He says he has to maintain his ‘mask’ for everyone else, since he can’t tell if they are fallen angels or servants of Ennoia.”

“You said he got kicked out of the military a few years ago, so the whole time between then and nine-eleven he was in the service?”

“Yes, I think so. You have to understand, he wasn’t normally like he was today. He’s normally incredibly controlled. The only reason you’d know something was wrong is if he talked to you about what he called ‘the coming battle,’ which he didn’t do unless he thought you were safe. Honestly, I haven’t seen him worked up like this except shortly before he got kicked out of the military.”

“Do you know where he lives or where we can find him?” Whitaker asked.

“No. Like I said, I only hear from him occasionally, and the last time I saw him in person was three years ago, right after he got out of the military. Normally he’d just call me from wherever to talk about whatever new ideas or theories he had about the Ennoians.”

“If he was that disturbed, why did you keep taking his calls?” Taylor asked.

“At first, he was doing actual research, and I found it interesting. He’d been in contact with several scholars in the field and had even visited some of the archives in Europe where you could find writings from the early ecclesiastical councils. His progression from studying the sect to attempts to prove them right and follow their beliefs didn’t happen until later, and not all at once. By then, I felt a sense of responsibility for him since I’d been the one to introduce it to him.”

“So, you tried to talk him back to reality?”

“It’s crazy, I know. I realized I wasn’t kidding myself and there was no way I could actually make him better, but I felt like I had to try. Plus, he didn’t have any family or anything, and I hadn’t ever heard him talk about friends or girlfriends or anything. I felt bad for him.”

“Did you ever call the authorities about him?” Whitaker asked.

“For what, being crazy? I mean, he was delusional, but he never seemed dangerous and I never heard him threaten anyone. Today was the first time I’ve ever heard him make specific claims matching real people to his delusions. Plus, the military knew he was sick, didn’t they? They kicked him out for his mental illness, so they’d take responsibility for him.”

Taylor couldn’t hold back a snort of derision. Whitaker shot him a look, but Taylor ignored it. The military had a lot of faults, and one of the biggest was how they dealt with soldiers separated from service on a psych discharge. Vet suicides were an epidemic, with thousands ending their lives every year and a huge number of the homeless you see on the street were vets. The army would discharge them, tell them they could go to the VA, and then just walk away. Even the soldiers who were willing to go to the VA for help often didn’t get it. If someone got booted for schizophrenia and had no one to help them when they got home, they weren’t going to get help.

Whitaker handed the professor a business card and said, “If you hear from him again, please let us know right away.”

They left the Professor's office, through the door this time, and headed back outside to check on the crime scene. They had to wait almost an hour for the FBI agents to show up, since they had to drive up from Buffalo, where the closest FBI office was. Again, Taylor let Whitaker take care of it. Considering that the director used her as one of his troubleshooters, or had before Taylor came along, she was well known in the Bureau. Besides, Taylor didn’t do well with the actual logistics of this kind of thing. One of the many reasons he needed Whitaker with him when they got into a big case.

Taylor was partially of a mind to just go back to D.C. and didn’t believe that Hubbard would stick around Rochester. Taylor was certain that the trip had been solely to talk to Professor Wood. He’d already locked his delusions onto Caldwell, and he’d be where she was. Whitaker wanted to stay local, since this was the last place they’d seen him. They had a BOLO out with local and state LEOs, but Taylor didn’t have a lot of hope that would turn anything up. In his experience, any time someone was caught off a BOLO, it was just luck. There were too many people to blend into, and they couldn’t just look at every person on the road. The only time notices worked is when the criminal screwed up and got picked up for something else, and then matched with the notice.

He eventually agreed to stay in Rochester for a little while longer. They needed to start looking into Hubbard. They knew he’d been in the military and while they could get a simple version of his service record quickly, more detailed DOD records and interviews with people who’d served with him would take longer. They could get the wheels to start turning from Rochester, and hopefully have something worthwhile when they got back to D.C.

Since the FBI didn’t have local offices Taylor and Whitaker decided to head to the Kenneth B. Keating federal building, which held the federal courtrooms and a DHS office. Whitaker was able to swing them a conference room to work out of, which was enough to access secure government networks, allowing them to look into Hubbard’s past.

The first thing Taylor did was put in two requests to the DOD, one for a base level review of the service record, and a second one for a full copy of Hubbard’s service record. Usually, the FBI directed the information to the assigned liaison officers, who would vet them, get approvals, and finally send that request to the appropriate points in the chain of command. That took time, sometimes a lot of time if the DOD decided they didn’t want to cooperate. Taylor submitted the information request anyway, since that was the channel to get Hubbard’s full, although probably still redacted, service file.

Fortunately, Taylor knew the military. Taylor had watched both civilians and law enforcement go mad trying to deal with the military, completely flummoxed that nothing worked the way they thought it would. The thing they didn’t understand that any veteran didunderstand was that when dealing with the military, you never ever want to try to reason out why something happened. Veterans knew that there were three ways things could be done. The right way, the wrong way, and the Army way. That saying may have been Army specific, but it applied to all branches of the military. Vets knew that if they just figured out the Army way and ignored the logical way, things would go easier.

In this case, Taylor knew that there was limited information that both next of kin and the general public could access through the office of personnel management under the Federal Information Act. That process usually took time, but that was only because of the volume they received and the general practice of handling requests on a first-come, first-serve basis. That system could be worked around if you got a little cooperation from someone working at the OPM.

While Whitaker did her thing with FBI record searches, Taylor filled out the forms he’d need and then called the NPRC after faxing the documents over. It took him a minute to go through clerks before finally getting to a supervisor.

“Miller,” the man said in a crisp voice that screamed veteran to Taylor.

“Mr. Miller, my name’s John Taylor and I'm hoping to get a little help from you today.”

“What can I do for you Mr. Taylor?”

“I’m looking to get some information on a soldier separated from service several years ago. If you check your fax, you’ll find the SF-180 I sent over. I know you guys have a backlog, but I was hoping for some help getting my request expedited.”

“Mr. Taylor, I appreciate you’re in a hurry, but we have procedures for processing requests.”

“I understand that, but I was hoping you could help me out. I’m with the FBI. We have a dangerous fugitive that previously served, and we need information on him as quickly as we can get it.”

“Why don’t you go through your liaison officer? They’d be able to get you much more information than we could provide you.”

“I have submitted a request to them, but that takes time - time we don't have. You’re a Marine, right?” Taylor asked, guessing.

“I am.”

Taylor thought so; he could smell a Marine a mile away. While all vets shared some similarities, Marines had a very specific way they carried themselves and it came through, even over the phone. Taylor took another educated guess.

“Separated as a Sergeant?”

“Staff Sergeant.”

“Me too, although in the Army. Tenth Special Forces Group.”

“Sergeant Taylor, I appreciate we’re both vets, but I still have procedures.”

He might have said that, but just by addressing him by his rank, Taylor knew he was making progress.

“I know, and I’m not asking you to do anything against the rules. I know you don’t have any regs specifically prohibiting processing requests in an order outside of how they arrived. If you check my SF-180, you’ll see I’m not asking for anything not available under the FOIA. I didn’t include any next-of-kin authorizations, and I wouldn’t be asking if this wasn’t important. I can’t go into detail, but I’ll tell you that the person we’re looking for is already responsible for the death of a Secret Service agent and is a direct threat to one of their protectees.”

Taylor decided to be vague about who the actual protectee was. Unlike Whitaker, Taylor had no problem divulging information from an ongoing investigation, but in this case it was best to leave things vague. When people thought of the Secret Service and protectees, they almost always thought about one protectee specifically, and usually forgot there were other people assigned Secret Service protection. It was in Taylor's best interest to let Miller assume things on his own.

“Why are you requesting this then? Shouldn’t the Secret Service be investigating it?”

“We’re operating a parallel investigation at the request of the protectee. I wouldn’t be asking if this wasn’t important. I need your help, Sergeant.”

There was a pause on the other end and then Miller said, “Stand by your fax, I’ll send something over shortly.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. Sempre Fi.”

“Oorah,” Miller said, and hung up.

“Marines,” Taylor said with a chuckle, causing Whitaker to look up from her laptop.

“What?”

“Nothing, I just get a kick out of Marines. Those guys are a different breed. I should have a very basic service record for Hubbard here, in few minutes.”

“Already? The liaison officers always take forever.”

“I’m not getting it through the liaison officer. I submitted a request to them for his full file, but I didn’t want to wait. We'll get a much-abbreviated file, but it’ll help us get started.”

The fax started churning right after Taylor finished speaking, spitting out several sheets of paper. Whitaker had been sitting next to the fax machine and pulled them off, thumbing through them.

“I’m not sure how helpful this is going to be,” she said, going back and forth between the various pages. “Besides his name and a list of bases he was assigned to, the rest is just codes. The list of bases he was assigned to might be useful, but other than that …”

“That’s only because you don’t speak 'Army,'” Taylor said, reaching over and taking the pages from her. “These are his dates of MOS assignments, this is his salary history, and these are his pay grades. Actually, the least useful thing on here is the bases he was assigned to. For people being deployed, your assigned base might not correlate to where you’re actually fighting. Half the time I was in the Middle East, my sheet would show I was based out of Fort Bragg.”

“Sorry, I don’t speak jarhead.”

“Jarheads are Marines,” Taylor said, giving her a disapproving look. “MOS is military occupational specialty. Basically it’s what your job is in the army. Translator, infantry, Special Forces, armor, and so on. Different  MOSs require different training and have different pay rates.

“That’s still more useful than salary information.”

“You’d be surprised. The Army is incredibly specific in what they pay. Every dollar a soldier gets is based on exactly what the manual says. Suppose he stayed at the same rank and deployed for a span, but you see a boost in his pay for a short period. In that case, he might have been on hazardous pay or getting combat pay, meaning he was actually deployed in a combat zone or doing something worth getting paid extra for. If you look at the grade, MOS, titles, and base information, you can work out what the variations in pay were for.”

“Okay, so what does this tell you?”

“That this guy is really, really dangerous.”

“We knew that.”

“No, we knew he was dangerous, but we haven’t seen what he’s capable of. He signed on as just straight up infantry but was moved to the x-ray program right after boot. That’s crazy rare. Normally, to get in Special Forces, a soldier has to have some experience, usually including either getting jump qualified or getting their Ranger tab. They at least have to be E-3 private or promotable first lieutenant. The problem is, that limits the number of men available to be deployed. The x-ray program is a way to enlist directly into Special forces that lets the Army quickly add recruits when they need it. If they put you right in the x-ray program, then your recruiter saw something they thought was worth taking a chance with. Of course, joining up right before the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, they needed to seriously increase their deployable forces, so there would have been more chances. The thing is, the x-ray program is for people who sign up as that. They have their own training school that combines basic and AIT, that’s advanced individual training. What doesn’t happen is, someone starts basic and then gets moved over to the x-ray program. For that to happen, someone saw something worth putting their neck out for.  Had he flopped, it would have come back on whoever recommended him, so they would have had to be really sure he was worth the trouble.”

“Okay, so he was exceptional and moved into Special Forces. Did you know him?”

“No, but that’s not surprising. He was already five years in when I entered basic, and he was in the Fifth and I was in the Tenth. He moved up through the ranks pretty steadily until twenty-ten, when he transferred to Explosive Ordinance Disposal, which is even more unusual. It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility since he was an 18C. Besides engineering, they basically handled anything that went boom. While possible, I can’t say I ever remember anyone making that jump, however.”

“So, he was in Special Forces then he was in bomb disposal. Explains where he learned to make pipe bombs and that gas envelope thing. We need to talk to the Secret Service and tell them we’ve IDed their subject.”

“I know. I’m just worried they’re going to keep not taking Hubbard seriously. This guy isn’t just trained in explosives. He’s trained to plan meticulously, have layers of contingencies, and to operate in hostile environments outnumbered by the enemy. He isn’t going to be picked up on a random traffic stop or traffic camera. We’re only going to catch him by getting ahead of him.”

“We will,” Whitaker said, although they both knew she sounded more confident than she really was.