Page 76 of Delusional

CHAPTER 93

ALMOST AS SOON as we pulled away from the office, Maggie turned to me and asked, “What’s the latest on Leonard Barr?”

“He’s being arraigned this morning at 10 a.m. The ADA told me I didn’t have to show up. They intend to revoke his probation for when he threw acid on the parking-enforcement officer. That keeps us from having to divulge anything about our investigation.”

“That’s impressive. Are they doing it that way because it’s the smart way or are they doing it because they’re friends of yours and doing you a favor?”

“That’s awfully cynical of you, Agent Chin.” My comment was as playful as her question.

“I see how they treat you in the city. They cut you all kinds of slack. That’s the sort of thing I probably won’t find at the ATF. We’re too spread out to have those kinds of relationships. Plus we get transferred to new jurisdictions all the time. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the chance to develop as many contacts as you. I’m positive I don’t have the patience to do it.”

That made me chuckle. Maggie, like most of the people I knew who were interested in engineering and building things, had a certain disdain for social interaction. On the one hand, I understood. But in my case, having a family as large as mine meant that I was always engaged with people. It was natural for me to develop friendships at work. To meet the clerks at the court or the lab technicians, even some of the local attorneys. And once I’d met and talked to people, I’d always found it easier to come to some sort of an accord.

As we drove, Maggie told me that they’d had some leads regarding Thomas Owens’s family members. “We may have located Owens’s uncle in Baltimore, and a brother in Chicago. We have ATF agents going to both houses now, hoping to find them. Someone will get in touch with us pretty soon.”

We planned to check the other addresses Maggie had come up with until we heard from the ATF agents trying to find Owens’s family.

The first address was a tiny studio apartment in Brooklyn that Owens had rented for a summer while he was doing an internship almost a decade ago. At least that’s how the elderly super remembered it.

The tall man, who appeared to be well into his seventies, said, “Tom was a nice boy. I haven’t seen or heard from him since he moved out eight or nine years ago, but I remember him well. That brain of his, let me tell you, was out of this world! I think he was finishing up his engineering degree and doing some kind of internship around here, but he showed me a way to redirect heating in the building that is so much more efficient, I haven’t had one complaint in all the years since he fixed it. He really was a visionary.”

While Owens had clearly made a big impression on the super, the same couldn’t be said for anyone else at the other two addresses. No one there remembered anything about Owens. Finally, just as we got back into the car after another fruitless attempt at finding someone who remembered Owens, Maggie’s phone rang, with a standard, boring preset ringtone. It was clear she didn’t have kids who constantly changed her ringtone. She answered it, and all I heard was “Okay, okay, good. Tell him to call me in two minutes.”

“What’s up?”

Maggie turned to me and said, “An agent is sitting with Owens’s brother in Chicago. The brother is willing to cooperate with us and knows where Owens was living as of a week ago.”

CHAPTER 94

MAGGIE SAID, “DEVON GREEN, an old classmate of mine from the academy, should be calling us any minute, and we’ll FaceTime with Thomas Owens’s brother. I have his identifiers listed somewhere. His name is Spencer, and I think he’s thirty-six or thirty-seven, a little older than his brother. He’s some kind of financial analyst for a hedge fund based in Chicago.”

I pulled out my notebook and jotted down a few quick thoughts and questions. This could be a really big break in this case. I hoped it would lead somewhere.

Maggie’s iPhone was about five generations newer than mine. The screen on it looked like the screen of a NASA computer. When it rang, she tapped the screen and the image of a young, good-looking Black man appeared.

Maggie said, “Hey, Devon, thanks again for doing this.”

“You owe me, Maggie. You really think an ATF agent in Chicago isn’t already busy twenty three and a half hours a day?”

We all laughed. Maggie tilted the phone toward me and took a second to introduce me to Devon Green.

After we got the basics out of the way, Devon said, “I’m here with Spencer Owens in downtown Chicago. His office has generously given us a conference room. Now that I’ve set it up, I’m gonna let you guys take it away.” Devon moved his own phone, and our view was now of a pudgy white guy with thinning hair.

We introduced ourselves and got a little more information from Spencer, such as his current address and phone number. I did my best to make an assessment of the man over FaceTime. Usually during in-person interviews, I could pick up on everything from nervous tics to fidgety feet. It took a lot of information to make a judgment about someone’s veracity. Much of that information was nonverbal.

“Did they explain why we wanted to speak to you, Spencer?” I asked.

“Agent Green told me that my brother might be involved in a bombing and that you wanted to talk to him.”

“That’s a pretty simplified version but right to the point. Yes, there have been at least two fatal bombings here that we think your brother might have been complicit in. We don’t know for sure who made the latest bombs or who planted them, but we do know there’s a group of individuals who claimed responsibility for the bombing of a police sergeant’s car. They said it was a way to bring attention to tech overreach and the tyranny of local governments. We think the other recent attacks in New York City may be the same group, but there’s been no public statement like what followed the first bombing.”

Spencer looked concerned but didn’t say anything.

I continued: “We don’t know anything for certain. But we have several dead victims and we sure would like to talk to your brother to see what’s going on. I’m sure you’ve seen his YouTube videos.”

Spencer began slowly. “Tom has always had a… different view of things. The whole thing with tech companies and government overreach or whatever… that’s exactly the sort of issue that Tom latches onto. And he is smart. Really, really smart. But his social skills don’t match his practical mathematics and engineering skills in any way. I had to look after him in school.”

“That’s good background, Spencer. We visited the cabin near Millwood. It didn’t look like anyone had lived there in a couple of months.”