I WAS ALREADY accustomed to Maggie Chin beating me into the office. Today was no different. By the time I
came in, she and Walter Jackson were hard at work, squinting at screens in his large office. Papers were scattered on
every surface in there, like a hurricane had blown through it.
I said, “Wow, I feel like a slacker.”
Maggie didn’t even look up. “Then you better get moving to catch up to us.”
“What exactly are you doing?”
“We’re looking through every database and reading every manifesto online that might sound like a crazy bomber
who associates with Leonard Barr.”
That immediately made me think about my conversation with Rob Trilling. I gave them a quick rundown of the
exchange I’d had with my younger partner about Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
Maggie looked sk eptical. “He’d really never heard of the Unabomber?
How old is Trilling?”
“He’s young. I have a pair of shoes older than him. But he’s bright,” Walter Jackson said, coming to Trilling’s
defense. “I think it has to do more with what’s in the news now. So much has happened since the FBI captured
Kaczynski that I can see how most young people might have no idea who he was.”
Walter turned again to his computer screen. “I’m sending you a portion of the list of online blogs and websites that
we’ve been looking through.
Feel free to jump in.”
I grabbed my laptop from my desk and dragged a chair over, joining
Maggie at the long table in Walter’s office. I couldn’t believe the names of some of the blogs. The Anarchist’s
Bible, How to Wreck America, Birthday Cakes and Bombs. It went on and on, even my assigned portion of the list.
I started skimming and quickly felt overwhelmed. I was also distressed. Were there really that many disaffected
people in the world? Did people truly not understand how hard it was for society to function without throwing a
monkey wrench into every possible government program?
We sat there in silence for hours, each of us occasionally bringing up a possibility. Then I stumbled upon a more
professional site called Tech and Society. The masthead of its magazine said they were dedicated to allowing bright
people to express unique ideas. That sounded like a noble sentiment.
One thing I’d learned was the wrong person can turn any good idea into a terrible one.
The site’s list of articles included things like how every election was fixed, why Facebook was the most dangerous
thing since the Third Reich, and how global warming was just a way for certain companies to make a profit off
green technology. Then I saw an article that seemed to echo the exact same complaints Ted Kaczynski had once
made. The writer’s name was Thomas Owens. When I looked at his bio, all it said was that he lived on the East
Coast and had graduated from MIT.
I ran Owens’s name in the NYPD system. Nothing. Then I ran his name in some of the public records aggregators
we used. It looked like he lived north of the city.
When I mentioned the name to Maggie and Walter, Maggie immediately checked the ATF intelligence files while
Walter worked his magic on his computer. It took almost no time at all for Maggie to turn to us and say, “You gotta
see this.”
Walter and I st epped around behind her and watched as she pressed Play on a video on her computer. On the screen
was an old beat-up van, sitting in the woods somewhere. As we watched, the van blew up so violently, there were
almost no pieces of it left in the same spot. It looked like a cartoon explosion.
Maggie showed me another video of a small shedlike structure getting blown to ribbons.
She said, “Someone in our intelligence division copied these off the internet about a year ago. The associated r eport
says they were removed
from You Tube by the user at least five months ago. The name of the poster is Tom84 builder. Some analyst at ATF
associated Thomas Owens’s name with it. That’s all I have.”
I was getting a funny feeling. This was eerie.
Walter Jackson sat up in his chair. “I found a r eport from the Westchester County Police D epartment about a
resident who had an altercation with the county surveyor. The surveyor said that the man threatened him, said he
better never come back on his property...” I said, “Let me guess. Thomas Owens.”
Maggie said, “Looks like we’re going on a road trip.”