Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(15)

Blake said that he didn’t know anything especially interesting about the 1919 site, except that the people who had put it up didn’t know much about creating a website: “It’s crude. There are fifth-graders who could have done it better. They took crappy photos and slapped them on a preformatted form, along with the texts. The texts were ripped off from right-wing websites. They didn’t even bother to change the fonts on the texts they took—they cut and pasted them, so they all look different, which is not a good look, technically speaking.”

Mary Ellen said, “Blake told me something that you might be interested in, but he didn’t want me to tell you. I’ve decided to tell you anyway.”

Blake: “Aw, jeez.” He flopped back on the couch. “Audrey will kill me.”

“We won’t tell Audrey,” Lucas said. To Mary Ellen: “What am I not supposed to know?”

“Blake said that Audrey got excited when they figured out what was going on, and the FBI came around and questioned them. She thought it’d make a great blog entry, pull in a lot of new traffic. The FBI agents asked her not to do that, but . . .”

“She might do it anyway,” Blake said. “Don’t tell her I said so.”

“That could cause some trouble,” Lucas said.

“Yeah, trouble,” Blake said. “Trouble is another word for ‘going viral.’ That’s living the dream. That’s going on Fox News.”

“If you have any influence . . .”

“I don’t know if I have that much. You really don’t want to be standing between Audrey and a TV camera,” Blake said. “I say that, even though she’s a friend of mine.”

“All right,” Lucas said.

Blake: “One more thing. It’s sorta funny. Funny strange, not funny ha-ha.”

“Yeah?”

“When the FBI agents were here, they told me some of what they’d found out. Not a lot, but I asked questions and they answered some of them. They told me they hadn’t been able to break down the website because it was paid for anonymously and it’s run out of Sweden.”

“Is that unusual?”

“No, that’s not unusual, if you know what you’re doing and you want to stay hidden. But this is a really shitty website . . .”

“Thanks for the ‘shitty,’ Blake,” his mother said.

“Well, that’s what it is,” Blake said. “Shitty. Way too bad for somebody who knows enough about what he’s doing to get an anonymous check to Sweden and hire a Swedish ISP to carry the site. You know why he went to Sweden? Because they have strict privacy laws. You’d have to know that, to go there for your ISP. Also, you can get good, free anonymous website formatting software that will let you put together a functional website in a couple of hours, with decent design. But this site looks like it was put together by complete retards.”

Mary Ellen: “Blake!”

“Sorry, but that’s what it looks like,” the kid said. “So, is it an experienced computer guy putting together a retarded website? It looks almost deliberately bad. How is it that somebody who knows enough to go to Sweden, knows how to get the money to them without giving himself up . . . doesn’t know how to make a decent website?”

“An interesting question,” Lucas said. “What do you think about that?”

He frowned. “I dunno. I smell a rat. Something’s not right.” He raked over his bottom lip with his lower teeth, then glanced up at Lucas, and said, “You know, I thought maybe the FBI put the website up, spoofing the Nazis. Getting the crazies to try to get in touch. Then, when everybody freaked out, the FBI figures it screwed up and tries to bury it. Now they can’t admit that they’re behind it.”

“Oh, boy,” Lucas said. He shook his head and said, “You’re a smart kid. Nobody’s said anything like that to me, or even hinted at it . . . but now I’m gonna have to think about it. It would explain some things.”

Blake said he’d done a Google search for 1919, but there were 492 million results—“Really, 492 million”—so that didn’t help. He’d done a follow-up search on the ISP name, the code, and had come up with three neo-Nazi sites that mentioned the ISP, but only in the last few days. There were no older references to it.

Lucas took down the ISPs for the three sites and would look at them later.

As Lucas was leaving, with Anne-Marie waiting to take him out, he handed Blake his card. “If you identify that rat you’ve smelled or something else occurs to you . . . call me.”



* * *



—

LUCAS CALLED WEATHER to tell her about his first day in Washington, then spent the evening reading through the files that detailed the FBI investigation, focusing on those involving Charles Lang. Lang had attracted attention not only for his writings on neo-Nazism, but also because of his contacts, and what some said was his support of the groups.

His support was classified only as “possible” and “likely,” not a sure thing, by agents who’d looked at his bank withdrawals. Lang had, in three separate documented cases, made serial withdrawals of $9,500 from a savings account, which had then been replenished from an investment account. In one case he’d withdrawn a total of $66,500 over five weeks. In the two other cases, he’d withdrawn $38,000 over two four-week periods. That was interesting because cash withdrawals over $10,000 had to be reported to the government and serial withdrawals of $9,500 suggested that Lang was evading that reporting requirement.