Chapter 27.
Just a friendly reminder, this story is 100% fiction, none of it happened, all the people and places are made-up.
Our alert box on the living room table hadn't screeched at us at night in a while. But Sunday night it screamed at 11:57pm, and we were already in bed asleep. The display on the box said: FARGO-ND TERROR +DEAD ELP ASAP F-GEAR.
We didn't have a lot to go on but it sounded serious, since they had a body count already. Usually, when the words 'Terror' and '+DEAD" were used it meant a military grade attack to induce fear and panic in civilians. If you injured innocents (including animals) then (IMO) you were too fucked-up to be walking around free anywhere, that was totally anti-human and it pissed both of us off. I felt a sense of anger in my chest.
We quickly got dressed and within eight minutes David was in the truck in the driveway eager to leave. I activated the house alarm and grabbed the pelican case; he had already grabbed the Batsuit case, and it had more of our street clothes that I grabbed from the hamper.
The drive to ELP went fast. We had to watch our speed in the neighborhood. At the end of the block we turned right onto Hollings Street and left on Hondo Pass which took us to Railroad Drive. Once we got on Railroad Drive it was high speed the rest of the way to the airport. There are two lights on Railroad Drive which we easily run, and three on Airport Road, including the worst one of the bunch which was at Airport Rd at Airway Blvd where we turned onto airport property. The bad part was that is a left turn which is harder to run if there was a car ahead of us.
Since there were several long stretches with no traffic lights we made most of the run rather quickly. Most of the long stretches with no lights were on Liberty Expressway between Fort Bliss, Biggs Field, and the airport. He never just zoomed through them, we always stopped and watched closely then slowly moved across the intersection. We've only been stopped a few times but it's easy to sort out. Most of the city cops that covered the areas around the airport recognized our vehicles and license plate stickers.
We parked in the first empty employee parking spot and ran into the terminal. We didn't call the OD enroute because both of us were busy doing stuff in the truck. I checked the news headlines on the way and found one new headline about an explosion in Fargo North Dakota.
An internet news bulletin said there was an explosion outside a college town bar that killed over twenty people. Someone called police to claim responsibility and said it would happen again unless... Their rationale sounded like delusional religious stuff, we've all heard it before (convert to my religion or die). David said, "Sounds like it was a significant blast to kill that many, unless the bar had tables on the sidewalk."
I added, "And dancing on the sidewalk too," as I continued doing my research.
I read that Fargo borders Minnesota, the state line being the Red River, which winds north into Canada like a wide brown snake. Fargo was a prosperous, clean, working class community with suburbs and a large state university near the airport and along the river. The idea of living that far north kind of turned me off but it's actually a very nice town with lots of stuff to do, except mountain climbing or whale watching.
The jet was soon on the way, and we were flying to an airport north of downtown Fargo, called Hector International Airport; like Omaha, it's near the river. After we got loaded the pilot only spoke once and said about twenty one minutes to wheels down on runway 36. The flight was decent, with minimal turbulence.
After a very nice landing our jet taxied to the North Dakota Air National Guard hangar and we were met by a gray haired man, an older detective who was semi-retired; they'd called him to help with the incident near the university. He said the police chief summoned him with the special phrase, 'all hands on deck,' and said he was told to provide us with all the information the police obtained.
We've learned that when a smaller city called the FBI for help and FBI called us the feds always warned local police...
"Just so you know, when we bring these two in to prevent further loss of life the Rapid Response Team usually locates and kills perpetrators quickly, but you can still investigate the matter for others that may be involved, but the primary suspects are usually dead within 24 hours. And they have total immunity from prosecution too."
Word was out we often killed the perp long before police knew who was involved. David told the old detective that was especially true when lunatics killed innocent civilians, but police could continue the investigation in case there were accomplices. In this case there were likely accomplices, but our mission was killing the perp as soon as possible.
The bombing site and the university were near the airport. We drove south on Albrecht Boulevard to 12th Avenue. There was a row of small shops that catered to the university crowd with good food, alcohol, live bands, and very wide sidewalks. Students could stagger back to the dorms together after an evening at the bars and were never bothered by the cops as long as they stayed under control.
The building on the corner of 12th at Albrecht was the target. A van stopped at the light and witnesses said a man got out and ran southwest into a large parking area behind the three story building. Moments later a huge blast went off that partially collapsed the building. It was a newer structure with a red brick exterior, designed to look like the oldest buildings on campus. It was three stories tall, the ground floor was all retail with five store fronts. Four stores sold food and alcohol but the one on the corner was a very popular bar with seating on the sidewalk and a live band most weekends. Above the stores the 2nd and 3rd floors were small studio size apartments, twenty units per floor.
The old cop that drove us said the area was roped off now but it was well trampled by fire and EMS/Rescue. After the fires were out the police tape went up and that was when the scene was finally secured. He hoped we could still identify the culprit. David looked at me; it was only the oldest cops that used the term culprit these days. We preferred perp; its only one syllable.
He parked one block away; of course it was still dark outside. There were two ladder trucks at the scene but the hoses were off. There was a large crowd of civilians watching the police search for evidence, especially around the remnants of the stolen van. The corner of the building closest to the intersection had collapsed, it appeared to have a brick skin over a wood frame, but the entire corner collapsed and destroyed six apartments too.
We saw young couples still evacuating the upstairs apartments carrying bedding and clothes; the store fronts on the ground level were all damaged but the corner bar was a totally blackened hole. The injured and bodies had been removed to the hospital; we saw lots of police forensics taking photos inside the stores closest to the blast, in case it was actually a murder attempt on a specific person. He said the bomb went off while the band was on break. The bomber would not have been able to effectively flee on foot after 11pm because many young people would have chased after him. This location attracted large crowds during the school year. The blast happened early in the evening, which lowered the possible body count.
The detective told us it appeared the bomber was unfamiliar with college town bar culture, and was likely a more recent immigrant.
As we walked toward a gathering of uniformed officers at the corner, the sounds of crying and screams could be heard as relatives and friends found names on the list of victims posted across the street and updated hourly. I nearly cried watching the dreadful display of inhumanity; I could tell David was pissed-off and wanted to terminate the perp. There was a strong odor of burnt wood and death in the air.
We saw some of the evidence; police already identified the bomb location and the origin of the vehicle. It was probably a fertilizer bomb inside a commercial delivery van reported stolen nearby, earlier that day.
While David received a verbal report from the Fargo Police I used our tablet computer to download all cell records for the towers in Fargo and along the interstate highways for the entire day. He also asked about security camera tapes and was told both bars used them but the machines and tapes were destroyed. We confirmed the precise time of the explosion too, because that was needed to locate the perp's cell in a very long list of calls.
While the three story retail/apartment building seemed to be the main target, on the other three corners of the intersection were a credit union and two university buildings. The police had called the bank manager to request video from the ATM but the university buildings had no cameras. The bank building was badly damaged but didn't catch on fire. Luckily, their street-facing wall was brick, not glass.
The police captain walked us to the spot where the van stopped, it had made a one foot deep crater in the street. Dozens of solemn people were milling around in the cold night air beyond the police tape, watching us and taking cell photos; I considered putting on a disguise. We had Hollywood facial disguises in our Batsuit case, but it was at night and their photos would probably not identify us.
The traffic lights at the intersection didn't use cameras; they switched on timers. So the only known possible recording they knew of was the ATM, but those had notoriously bad distance video. Behind the building was a large parking area and beyond that were apartments for students but they didn't have cameras. Fargo Police did not have a helicopter and according to our records there were no satellites photographing from the sky that day.
They had already found the license plate from the van and police had gone door to door in the apartments and the entire area in search of witnesses. So far there wasn't much to go on and it sounded like cell tower records might offer the best information. David was busy questioning the campus police manager while I searched cell records three minutes before the blast to two minutes after. Civilian agencies had no access to cell phone records without a search warrant. Our DOD account got us instant access to data on citizens including medical records, tax and income, banking, legal actions, military, and police/FBI/CIA records.
When we downloaded cell site records it printed the data on spreadsheet like reports by site and by time. Each record showed each phone's serial numbers, phone numbers, and basic phone information. It showed the newest record of speed, location, direction of travel, time, signal strength into the cell tower, and if any data was being exchanged. Once I located the nearest two towers (each one had multiple cell carriers) and the pages starting three minutes before the blast and which locations were on the two streets involved. Yes, using these reports required some experience and training, and there were no street maps only coordinates north and south as a nine digit number. The hardest part was determining the coordinates of the exact location then searching the records for the closest cell units.
The exact location of the blast was 46.89044 and -96.80206, beside the Buffalo Apartments. It took a while to cement those numbers and start my numerical search in the cell tower logs. Within three minutes, using a search function, I located my targets and identified the owners and made a separate list and sent it immediately to the OD to help confirm my work. All it takes is one digit off and I'm chasing phantoms, so it's always wise to have someone else doing the same searches.
I identified several cell numbers that were in moving vehicles that drove north on Albrecht within minutes of the blast and believed I identified one number for the perp so I selected it and downloaded the account records. Then I made a list of cell numbers that stopped at the light within three minutes and started researching each one. The blast occurred during a brief low point in traffic at that intersection moving in any direction. It was easy to tell from the cell tower logs when the blast occurred because it halted most local traffic. Suddenly thirty five cell units dropped off the networks.
One of those three was an 88 year old woman, we'd contact her tomorrow to see if she saw anything.
We stayed at the scene until 11am the next day examining evidence while I sat in the detective's car focused on computer records and suspect histories. Eventually David said we could leave and get a hotel room.
David walked me to the intersection, across the street to point out what happened. He showed me how the streets were covered with debris from the building collapse, which extended from the ground up to the roof of the building. He said the blast was so powerful anyone outside on the patio was blown to pieces and those body parts flew out onto the street. People inside the building were killed by pieces of flying debris and large slices of plate glass. Some were crushed under the debris, some received severe impact trauma, and some were burnt alive in the fire.
He said one lady was in the bathroom when the bomb went off, she survived but was in a coma in the ICU and was not expected to survive. Customers in the sandwich shop next door to the bar survived but received burns and deep lacerations from flying chunks of plate glass. I saw in his eyes as he told me how the bomb blast killed people that he was really angry inside, he hated fanatics and religious martyrs. After his brief lecture that included showing me plastic number markers on the street used to identify chunks of human body, we called for a taxi ride to a car rental agency near the airport.
We stopped at a gas station and bought a large paper map with all the city streets, which I hung on the wall in the hotel room. I built the list of suspects, which was down to four names by noon. Our #1 suspect was probably in the stolen van, who then took off on foot and appeared on cell phone records later in a mobile home park beside an industrial area, near the intersection of I-94 at I-29, just southeast of that intersection, along 25th Street at 6th Avenue; about two to three miles south of the incident. From a quick look at my list, one cell activated seconds before the blast and drove away from the location heading south. I think that meant he ran away but stopped to shoot video of the blast then got in another vehicle and left.
Our second suspect was a young man driving his own car toward the university moments before the blast, he was possibly involved or a witness. He was a NDSU student originally from Bismarck, a farmer's son and Agri-Science major. The student's name was Austin Black. The alleged driver of the van that lived in the mobile home park was named Lewis Garanos, an immigrant from Turkey; his mother was born in New Jersey, his father was born in Turkey. And the elderly lady we discovered was a passenger in her car and she was visually impaired so we took her off the list but not the driver, her neighbor.
We decided to take a nap and set an alarm for three hours, wake up time around 4pm. That afternoon we went to Waffle House and while we waited for our food I searched the cell phone live map for the current location of their cell numbers; all of them were on Verizon. We both still felt exhausted with only a three hour nap after so many hours on the run. It sort of reminded me of Seal school where we were sleep deprived for weeks and slowly got used to functioning in zombie mode all the time. Our entire Seal company looked like the walking dead brigade in the swamps near Lake Michigan.
I showed the tablet display to David, Austin was on campus and Lewis was near his home at a sandwich shop in the industrial park. Cheryl was at home near the campus. We ate and drove to a parking lot near Lewis's home and watched it from a hardware store parking lot across the street, about 150' away. It was a mobile home park that was wide open so anyone could walk through the complex or leave in any direction; beyond it were more residential neighborhoods.
We saw no signs of life inside his trailer home and decided not to question the manager because he could be a friend of Lewis; our best bet would be to deploy a spider. David jumped out of the rental car and flagged down a boy on a bicycle and offered him twenty bucks to borrow his bicycle for four minutes, so the kid sat in our car with me and watched David ride off on his bike with a spider in his shirt pocket with an extra battery and one sleep gas capsule in its back. He rode around the mobile home park and dropped the spider in the grass near the parking spot and left. He returned the bicycle to the kid and gave him an extra five bucks and the kid left totally happy. I told David the boy asked me if we were CIA but I laughed and said we were with the Tag Police investigating people for removing tags from pillows and cushions, under penalty of law. Saying that usually stopped further conversation, but the boy didn't seem concerned since his bike was returned undamaged and now he had cash in his pocket; a lot of money for a nine year old boy in Fargo.
Within nine minutes we started to get floor plan details for the trailer. David had it take photos looking outside the windows to confirm it was in the correct trailer. We saw nobody inside and no signs of any involvement in the attack on the campus bar. It had happened to us before, where the spider ended up in the residence next door, and it wasted a lot of our time so we often try to photograph us by looking out a window at something we could identify, like a parked vehicle. After the mobile home was completely mapped I drove it to the kitchen and parked on top of a wall cabinet with the camera watching the front door, and put the spider in low power mode until there was movement inside the home.
Next, we left the parking lot and drove a few blocks away where the cell network said his cell was currently located; it appeared to be an ethnic sandwich shop in the industrial park. We only had a driver's license image to identify our suspect and it was four years old; the OD was searching online for social media selfies of Lewis. Parked in a factory lot across the street it seemed most of the people working in this area looked Middle Eastern or maybe southeastern Europe (former Yugoslavia or Greece). It was going to be hard to identify our suspect by his face. We saw several people outside eating at picnic tables but none were talking; it was just individual people eating falafel in pita on wax paper sheets. Most of the signs outside the place were in a language we couldn't read.
David mumbled to me that falafel sounded wonderful, he was getting hungry. I smiled and patted his thigh. I thought to myself, 'That's my husband, always thinking with his stomach.'
David used the tablet computer's phone app, and called the cell number that had left the parking lot seconds after the blast while we watched closely everyone outside eating. As soon as Lewis answered David hung-up, I saw one guy raise his cell and set it down and go back to eating his falafel; so we found our guy. He was wearing a striped shirt and blue jeans and white shoes with a red Nike baseball cap backwards, probably the same cap he wore during the bombing.
We discussed what to do with him and decided if he was a zealot he might be very willing to boast about his big accomplishment. But likely he had accomplices, as somebody had to supply him with the explosives. We discussed it for a while and decided to let the Fargo Police deal with that investigation after we left; they could search his records and his home and identify his accomplices. All we wanted to know was if he drove the van, lit the fuse, and took off on foot about forty seconds before the blast.
We drove back to the hardware store parking lot and activated the spider and sat there waiting for Lewis to arrive. At 5:39 he arrived and put his leftovers from his meal in the refrigerator, and then he went back to the bedrooms and took a shower.
At 6:15pm we called the old police detective to discuss what they had found during the day; they were about to review the ATM video and talk to hundreds of people from the area as well as those who survived the blast.
The best news was the delivery van was captured on tape but not when the bomb exploded, that view was blocked by part of the bank building. It also caught an image of someone running south down the center of Barrett Street towards the parking lot about twenty seconds before the explosion but the image was poor. They identified the clothing and colors: a white long sleeve hooded jacket over blue jeans, white gym shoes, and a red baseball cap but that was all. Ten people remembered seeing the van but not the driver; they all said the area was very busy and they were eating or drinking with friends and not paying attention to vehicles on the streets. About three people that saw him said he wore a red baseball cap backwards.
There was one lady in the hospital, she was walking down the sidewalk across the street towards the intersection. The lady said she was across the street because the sidewalk in front of the bar was too crowded. She saw the van pull up to the light, the driver got out and ran away. She also said he had a red cap on backwards and some kind of white jacket with long sleeves.
While our suspect Lewis was opening his mail and sitting at a small kitchen table David moved the spider across the ceiling into his bedroom and looked for a white long sleeve hoodie and found one on a hangar in the closet, but all he owned were blue jeans and white athletic shoes. So far all we had was circumstantial evidence so we decided to confront him and tighten the screws. Before we got out of the car I called the old detective to say we had a suspect and he got really angry when I refused to identify him. David even said he gave a likelihood of Lewis being the van driver of around 90% but he had accomplices locally that the police needed to investigate after we were finished with our work.
When David told the old cop that if we confirmed that our perp lit the fuse we would kill him immediately. The detective got really mad because they wanted him behind bars to stand trial. David told him it was too risky due to a lack of quality evidence; he was too likely to go free or flee the state. So we were going to confront him right now and see if he admitted anything.
At 7:05pm someone knocked on Lewis's door and was let in; we watched and listened from on top of a kitchen cabinet. We recorded what the spider captured but with the TV on it was hard to hear. The other problem was they spoke in a strange language, but every once in a while we heard English words, like 'bomb' and 'infidels' and several more that added to the growing list of evidence.
We saw him use his arms to demonstrate the huge blast and the fire and collapse of the corner of the brick building. He used his fingers to count the dead, which matched the report from the newspaper. David moved the spider and found he had several newspapers with front page coverage of the attack. He drove the spider all around the kitchen ceiling and didn't see anything out of the ordinary so back in the bedrooms he looked on tables and dressers and saw what looked exactly like a 100' spool of explosive fuse. He snapped photos and searched every room while the guys visited in the living room. When the spider was back in the kitchen we saw Lewis show the visitor video on his cell, which made the other guy applaud and hug Lewis. We assumed it was video of the blast and not of Lewis masturbating on Chaturbate. Soon after viewing the explosion video his friend left with a big smile and the perp was alone again.
We had a short conversation to re-cap the evidence. We could place him in the van and someone dressed like him in the area seconds before the blast, and similar clothes in his closet, bomb fuse, but we had no definite motive. So we decided to walk across the street and break into his mobile home and have a conversation. We never detected any weapons except maybe kitchen knives.
We left the rental car in the parking lot across the street (with our cases in the trunk) and walked over to the mobile home and stood outside nearby for a few minutes pretending to be talking on the sidewalk, but the parking lot was quiet. It was dinner time and people were doing family stuff, so we probably had decent cover. I held my machine gun against my stomach loaded and ready, we had our gas filters in our pockets. We were in our Batsuits with jackets over the top. I had my folding knife in my jacket pocket and stayed close behind David as we crossed the busy street.
We silently tiptoed up the metal steps at the front door of the trailer home and saw Lewis's shadow on the kitchen floor. David tried the knob but the door was locked so I handed him our basic lock picking set. David got on his knees and inserted the flat tool for rotating the cylinder and started lifting each pin until all six were aligned and the cylinder rotated to the unlocked position. He slid the tools in his pocket and got back on his feet and glanced at me with a nervous smile. He gripped the knob and slowly turned it and opened the door, I was directly behind with one finger on the trigger guard. When I stepped inside I saw my laser dot on the wall inside the living room. The door squeaked as it slowly opened but we were already inside and I was almost touching David's back side.
Lewis appeared by the kitchen table looking across the room; he thought he locked the door after his friend left and now there were two strange young men moving towards him. After quietly shutting the door I stepped to the side and ordered him to raise his hands while I pointed the automatic at him, the red laser dot on his chest. He immediately recognized the danger and slowly raised both arms. After checking him for weapons David told him to sit on a chair at the table but keep his hands flat on the table and not to move. Lewis silently did as instructed and looked totally freaked out scared. I started to snoop around the living room while David moved closer to interrogate Lewis in his usual good-cop style.
"Why'd you do it?" David got right to the point, but you could see the confusion on Lewis's face; we clearly weren't cops. To most people we sort of resembled two young cowboys in Goth clothes. Under indoor lighting our Batsuits were slightly shiny, but we were both mostly dressed in black clothes with a black machine gun.
"Do what?" Lewis laughed and looked unafraid but his arm pits got soaking wet immediately.
"Kill all those Christian people. We saw you run from the van on video. It was on a tape shot by the bank." I stated softly, but it was a total lie.
We all stood there staring at each other briefly, then David spoke, "Brother, were they all infidels? They deserved it for not observing the law?"
Lewis smiled and asked if we were on his side, and David said yes, we were from Istanbul. He seemed to relax but when his hands started to move I reactivated the laser dot on his chest and made sure he followed our rule: do not move. I moved the laser light across his eyes to help convince him we were serious.
We asked where he got the explosives from but he laughed and said, 'On Ebay.' So David stepped closer which made his eyes open wider. I reached over and shut off the TV and looked around the living room again but saw nothing of interest. I caught a glimpse of our spider on the kitchen ceiling. While David kept pressing him for where the explosives came from I used my wrist panel to drive the spider directly above Lewis's curly black hair.
I got out my filters and inserted them and whispered to David to put his in, there was no way Lewis would understand what was about to happen, but he was very scared, it was obvious in his voice and body language. A few times it looked like he was about to cry.
Finally, Lewis said the bomb was a gift from The Brotherhood; David asked where that was and he looked out the window and said about 'four blocks that way,' but he couldn't raise his hands to point, but it was near where he had lunch today.
"How was your lunch?" David asked. Lewis said he went there every other day at lunch time. "You work over there?"
And Lewis laughed and said he went to prayers over there twice a day too. So we had more research to pass along to the cops. We would leave it for the Fargo Police to investigate where the 97 gallon fertilizer bomb came from. I heard Lewis boast to David that he organized the bombing, he stole the van, and drove it to the bar, lit the fuse and ran to his car, which he had stashed in the parking lot. He did it because he hated Christians. David asked him why he lived in the US if he hated Christians and Lewis said he liked it here because he'd never run out of lazy Americans to kill. It was hard not to break out of character in front of him but I felt David's anger building from several feet away. I heard what sounded like faint growling over Whispernet.
I wanted to ask Lewis, 'Let me get this right. You think killing innocent civilians will attract new people to your religion? Is that why you did it? You really believe that'll work? Buddy let me tell you in case you didn't already figure it out but you are seriously sick in the head and a danger to not only your religion but the entire world, and that's why we're here.' But I decided Lewis was probably too sick in the head to discuss anything but falafel in pita.
We ran out of stuff to ask and Lewis seemed to believe he was a hero and that the more we talked the less likely we were to shoot him. So we inched slowly back toward the front door. Over Whispernet I asked if he was done; David told me to gas him. It took less than one second to send the command, then I put the folded knife in his hand, which he hid behind his back. He knew I always put it in his palm the same way every time. It had to face exactly the correct way so he could quickly flick open the blade. We actually practiced that hand-off like a nurse handing surgical instruments to the surgeon.
Lewis sat there watching us briefly with a pleased look on his face like he believed he was about to be declared Hero of the Week. To me it didn't matter what he believed because Lewis was about to face the final judgment. I would have suggested he not stand in the '12 Sins or Less Express Line' at the Pearly Gates.
The spider was about four feet above Lewis, we had our air filters inserted and after about five seconds Lewis got a weird expression on his face, then his head wobbled and dropped to the kitchen table with a thud and his body became limp. His face was visible to me, his eyes were still open and saliva dribbled from his mouth onto the kitchen table as his hands hung in the air under the table. I was ready to look away because I never liked seeing blood spray from someone's neck. I stood at the door with my hand on the knob ready to leave.
David stepped beside the table and stood on another chair and picked the spider off the ceiling, switched it off and dropped it in his pocket. Then he opened the knife and lifted Lewis's head by his curly black hair and quickly jabbed his neck. Blood gushed across the table and onto the wall and down to the floor. I stepped outside and kept the 9mm firmly against my body while I looked around and waited for David. We've been told our machine guns were hard to see if we held them against our Batsuits, so that's what I did while I waited for my husband.
Moments later he opened the door, turned off the lights, and shut it behind him. We walked between the trailers toward the street, across to the hardware store parking lot and got in our rental car. David called the cops and said we found the van driver, but he was dead. We gave them the address and drove to our hotel room by the airport. I called the OD and told her what had happened so far and we'd be leaving Fargo tomorrow.
An hour later the old detective guy called David back so we told him what the suspect admitted to, and where he got the bomb. That made a lot of investigation work for them to do but that was their job, not ours. The main suspect was dead which was what we came to do, justice for the people he murdered. The number of dead was expected to grow as a few badly injured people circled the drain in the Fargo hospital. While he had that chat I researched flights.
It looked like our best bet (for getting far away from Fargo) was to take a Greyhound bus from the University Transit Station to Denver tomorrow morning at 5am; we had to buy our tickets online tonight. Once we got to Denver it would be easy to get home. Since we got totally reimbursed we could legally take an Uber (or a limo) home from Denver, but that bill would be hundreds. We considered renting a car but there was a hefty surcharge for taking a car one-way to El Paso, so we never did that. The charge had something to do with car theft in a border town.
Before we returned to our hotel room we drove to the apartment of Austin Black and had a conversation with him. When David pounded on his door Austin had been at his kitchen table studying for a biology exam. He said he saw the news on TV and realized he was at the very spot where the blast happened two minutes later but never heard or saw anything. So we shook hands and parted ways and drove to our next suspect: Cheryl. She drove her neighbor to a store and were at the intersection about 90 seconds before the blast and never heard or saw anything. That concluded our mission; we marked it a success but Fargo PD had a lot more investigating to do. They probably had at least four accomplices to arrest. The source for the liquid fertilizer was an agri-chemical company in that industrial park.
We returned to our hotel room but sat outside for a short time to see if we were being followed. Then we dropped our cases in the room and walked to a nearby taco stand for dinner and ate back in our room. This hotel did not have a pool; which did not surprise me for a hotel only miles away from Santa's Workshop. I was half expecting to see a candy cane factory in Fargo, or at least a snowshoe factory.
Actually, we were impressed by how clean Fargo looked. If you didn't mind living far from the mountains in a place with a very long winter it was probably a very nice place to live. Small town attitude in a growing metro area with all the mod-cons. Fargo made a positive impression on us.
That morning we returned the car by the airport and took a taxi to the university bus terminal, and had the entire waiting room to ourselves. Only four other people boarded with us, but it had another stop in North Dakota before hitting the highway. We wanted to get away from Fargo out of fear of being arrested for killing the suspect or being stalked by his buddies. It was likely he was not the only insane person in Fargo.
We arrived at the Denver airport at 10:15pm that evening and spent the night at the same hotel and flew home the next day, first flight and got home at 10:35am. It felt weird to land at ELP but not go to our office. Instead, we drove home to write our report and soak in the pool with stem-less glasses of wine. Both of us felt some sorrow any time we killed someone, regardless of what they had done. Their crimes only made it easier to end their lives but it didn't mean a life wasn't wasted. We'd never know how that young man became a religious nut case, but that was God's job to get sorted out.
David told me that evening after the sun went down that Lewis was a weird 'stick.' He said his artery was very far forward, he barely broke flesh before hot blood gushed out. Then, still holding his hair he turned his head so it didn't spray on him, then he dropped his face and heard it thud on the table. Heads are heavy. He went to the kitchen sink and washed his hands and the knife then joined me outside while the body twitched at the table, but Lewis never fell to the floor. As a joke he said Lewis probably lost his security deposit to cover the landlord's expense cleaning up all that blood.
A story on the news about the bombing said the suspect was found dead in his home and was under investigation for accomplices who provided the explosives and selected the target. There were other suspects arrested and a restaurant nearby was raided as well as an agri-supply distributor in the industrial park.
An article we saw in their newspaper showed photos of the dead, which was very sad to see with so many young faces. The oldest victim so far was 34 years old, she was a bartender in the corner tavern. The incident became known in Fargo as the Corner Tavern Murders. The newspaper said the building owner planned to repair and re-open the entire building within the year. Half the renters in the upper floors returned two days later and decided to stay there since it was so close to campus.
David's only regret in that mission was that we couldn't offer Lewis a traditional Tibetan sky burial. I told him we could have put an incendiary pellet in the spider instead of a second battery. Then we could drop that spider down his shirt. When the cops found him he would have been reduced to ash above the hips.
Contact the author: borischenaz mailfence